The Mammoth Hunters ec-3 Read online

  He spun around. "Stay away from me!" he snarled, full of guilty anger at himself.

  She backed off. What had she done wrong now? "Jondalar…?" she said again, taking a step toward him.

  "Stay away from me! Didn't you hear me? If you don't stay away from me, I may lose control and force you again!" It came out sounding like a threat.

  "You didn't force me, Jondalar," she said as he turned and strode off. "You cannot force me. There is no time I am not ready for you…"

  But his thoughts were so full of remorse and self-loathing he didn't hear her.

  He kept walking, back toward the Lion Camp. She watched him go for some time, trying to sort out her confusion. Then she went back for the horses. She took Racer's lead rope in her hand, and holding on to Whinney's stand-up mane, mounted the mare, and quickly caught up to Jondalar.

  "You're not going to walk all the way back, are you?" she said.

  He didn't answer at first, didn't even turn around to look at her. If she thought he was going to ride double with her again… he thought, as she pulled up along side. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that she was leading the young stallion behind her, and he finally turned to face her.

  He looked at her with tenderness and yearning. She seemed more appealing, more desirable, and he loved her more than ever, now that he was sure he'd spoiled it all. She ached to be near him, to tell him how wonderful it had been, how full and complete she felt, how she loved him. But he had been so angry, and she was so confused, she didn't know what to say.

  They stared at each other, wanting each other, drawn to each other, but their silent shout of love went unheard in the roar of misunderstanding, and the clatter of culturally ingrained beliefs.

  27

  "I think you should ride back on Racer," Ayla said. "It's a long way to walk."

  A long way, he thought. How long had he walked from his home? But he nodded, and followed her to a rock beside a small creek. Racer wasn't used to having riders. It was still better to ease on him gently. The stallion's ears went back, and he pranced a few skittish steps, but he settled down quickly and followed behind his dam as he had done many times before.

  They didn't speak on the way back, and when they arrived, they were both glad that people were either inside the lodge, or at some distance from it. Neither of them was in a mood for casual conversation. As soon as they stopped, Jondalar dismounted and headed for the front entrance. He turned back just as Ayla was going into the annex, feeling he should say something.

  "Uh… Ayla?"

  She stopped and looked up.

  "I meant it, you know. I'll never forget this afternoon. The ride, I mean. Thank you."

  "Don't thank me, Jondalar. Thank Racer."

  "Yes, well, Racer didn't do it alone."

  "No, you did it with him."

  He started to say something else, then changed his mind, frowned, looked down, and went in through the front archway.

  Ayla stared for a moment at the place he had been, closed her eyes, and struggled to swallow down a sob that threatened to start a flood. When she regained her composure, she went in. Though the horses had drunk from streams along the way, she poured water into their large drinking bowls, then pulled out the soft leather cloths, and started rubbing down Whinney again. Soon she just had her arms around the mare, leaning against her, her forehead pressed on the shaggy neck of her old friend, the only friend she'd had when she lived in the valley. Soon Racer was leaning on her, and she was caught in a vise between the two horses, but the familiar pressure was comforting.

  Mamut had seen Jondalar come in the front, and heard Ayla and the horses in the annex. He had the distinct feeling that something was very wrong. When he saw her come into the Mammoth Hearth, her disheveled appearance made him wonder if she had fallen and hurt herself, but it was more than that. Something was troubling her. From the shadows of his platform he watched her. She changed, and he noticed her clothing was torn. Something must have happened. Wolf came racing in, followed by Rydag and Danug, who proudly held up a net bag with several fish in it. Ayla smiled and complimented the fishers, but as soon as they headed for the Lion Hearth to deposit their catch and collect more compliments, she picked up the young wolf and held him in her arms, and rocked back and forth. The old man was worried. He got up and walked over to Ayla's bed platform.

  "I'd like to go over the Clan ritual with the root again," Mamut said. "Just to make sure we do everything right."

  "What?" she said, her eyes focusing on him. "Oh… if you want, Mamut." She put Wolf into his basket, but he immediately jumped out and headed for the Lion Hearth and Rydag. He was in no mood to rest.

  She had obviously been deep in some thought that was distressing her. She looked as though she had been crying, or was about to. "You said," he began, trying to get her to talk, and perhaps unburden herself, "Iza told you how to prepare the drink."

  "Yes."

  "And she told you how to prepare yourself. Do you have everything you need?"

  "It's necessary to purify myself. I don't have exactly the same things, it's a different season, but I can use other things to cleanse myself."

  "Your Mog-ur, your Creb, he controlled the experience for you?"

  She hesitated. "Yes."

  "He must have been very powerful."

  "The Cave Bear was his totem. It chose him, gave him power."

  "In the ritual with the root, were others involved?"

  Ayla hung her head, then nodded.

  There was something she hadn't told him, Mamut thought, wondering if it was important. "Did they assist him in controlling it?"

  "No. Creb's power was greater than all of them. I know, I felt it."

  "How did you feel it, Ayla? You never did tell me. I thought women of the Clan were barred from participating in the deepest rituals."

  She looked down again. "They are," she mumbled.

  He lifted her chin. "Perhaps you should tell me about it, Ayla."

  She nodded. "Iza never did show me how to make it, she said it was too sacred to be wasted for practice, but she tried to tell me exactly how to do it. When we got to the Clan Gathering, the mog-urs didn't want me to make the drink for them. They said I was not Clan. Maybe they were right," Ayla added, putting her head down again. "But, there was no one else."

  Was she pleading for understanding? Mamut wondered.

  "I think I made it too strong, or too much. They didn't finish it all. Later, after the datura and the women's dance, I found it. I was dizzy, all I could think of was that Iza said it was too sacred to be wasted. So I drank it. I don't remember what happened after that, and yet I'll never forget it. Somehow, I found Creb and the mog-urs, and he took me all the way back to the beginning of the memories. I remember breathing the warm water of the sea, burrowing in the loam… Clan and the Others, we both come from the same beginnings, did you know that?"

  "I'm not surprised," Mamut said, thinking how much he would have given for that experience.

  "But I was frightened, too, especially before Creb found me, and guided me. And… since then, I'm… not the same. Sometimes my dreams frighten me. I think he changed me."

  Mamut was nodding. "That could explain it," he said. "I wondered how you could do so much without training."

  "Creb changed, too. For a long time, it wasn't the same between us. With me, he saw something he hadn't seen before. I hurt him, I don't know how, but I hurt him," Ayla said, as tears welled up.

  Mamut put his arms around her as she cried softly on his shoulder. Then her tears became the threatened flood, and she sobbed and shook with more recent grief. Her sadness for Creb brought up the tears she had been holding back, the tears of her sorrow, confusion, and thwarted love.

  Jondalar had been watching from the cooking hearth. He had wanted to go to her, somehow make amends, and was trying to think of what to say when Mamut went over to talk to her. When he saw Ayla crying, he was sure she had told the old shaman. Jondalar's face burned with shame. He coul
dn't stop thinking about the incident on the steppes, and the more he thought about it, the worse it became.

  And afterward, he said to himself, all you did was walk away. You didn't even try to help her, didn't even try to tell her you were sorry, or how terrible you felt. Jondalar hated himself and wanted to leave, to pack up everything and leave, and not face Ayla or Mamut, or anyone, again, but he had promised Mamut he would stay until after the Spring Festival. Mamut already must think I am contemptible, he thought. Would breaking a promise be that much worse? But it was more than his promise that held him. Mamut had said Ayla might be in danger, and no matter how much he hated himself, how much he wanted to run away, Jondalar could not leave Ayla to face that danger alone.

  "Do you feel better now?" Mamut said, when she sat up and wiped her eyes.

  "Yes," she said.

  "And you were not harmed?"

  Ayla was surprised by his question. How did he know? "No, not at all, but he thinks so. I wish I could understand him," she said, as tears threatened again. Then she tried to smile. "I didn't cry so much when I lived with the Clan. It made them uneasy. Iza thought I had weak eyes, because they watered when I was sad, and she would always treat them with special medicine when I cried. I used to wonder if it was just me, or if all the Others had watery eyes."

  "Now you know." Mamut smiled. "Tears were given to us to relieve pain. Life is not always easy."

  "Creb used to say a powerful totem is not always easy to live with. He was right. The Cave Lion gives powerful protection, but difficult tests, too. I have always learned from them, and have always been grateful, but it is not easy."

  "But necessary, I believe. You were chosen for a special purpose."

  "Why me, Mamut?" Ayla cried out. "I don't want to be special. I just want to be a woman, and find a mate, and have children, like every other woman."

  "You must be what you must be, Ayla. It is your fate, your destiny. If you were not able to do it, you would not have been chosen. Perhaps it is something only a woman can do. But don't be unhappy, child. Your life will not be all trials and tests. There will be much happiness, too. It just may not turn out as you want it to, or as you think it should."

  "Mamut, Jondalar's totem is the Cave Lion, too, now. He was chosen and marked, too, like I was." Her hands unconsciously reached for the scars on her leg, but they were covered by her leggings. "I thought he was chosen for me, because a woman with a powerful totem must have a man with a powerful totem. Now, I don't know. Do you think he will be my mate?"

  "It is for the Mother to decide, and no matter what you do, you cannot change that. But if he was chosen, there must be a reason for it."

  Ranec knew Ayla had gone riding with Jondalar. He, too, had gone fishing with some of the others, but he worried the whole day that the tall, handsome man would win her back. In Darnev's clothes, Jondalar was a striking figure, and the carver, with his well-developed aesthetic sensibility, was quite aware of the visitor's undeniably compelling quality, particularly for women. He was relieved to see they were still separated, and seemed to be as distant as ever, but when he asked her to come to his bed, she said she was tired. He smiled and told her to get some rest, glad to see that she was, at least, sleeping alone, if she wasn't going to sleep with him.

  Ayla was not so much tired as emotionally spent when she went to bed, and she lay awake for a long time, thinking. She was glad Ranec hadn't been at the lodge when she and Jondalar returned, and grateful that he wasn't angry when she refused him – she still kept expecting anger, and punishment for daring to be disobedient. But Ranec was not demanding, and his understanding almost changed her mind.

  She tried to sort out what had happened, and even more, her feelings about it. Why did Jondalar take her if he didn't want her? And why had he been so rough with her? He was almost like Broud… Then why was she so ready for Jondalar? When Broud had forced her, it had been an ordeal. Was it love? Did she feel Pleasures because she loved him? But Ranec made her feel Pleasures, and she didn't love him, or did she?

  Maybe she did, in a way, but that wasn't it. Jondalar's impatience made it seem like her experience with Broud, but it was not the same. He was rough, and excited, but he didn't force her. She knew the difference. Broud had wanted only to hurt her, and make her yield to him. Jondalar wanted her, and she had responded deeply, with every ounce of her being, and felt satisfied and completed. She would not have felt that way if he had hurt her. Would he have forced her if she hadn't wanted him? No, she thought, he wouldn't have. She was convinced that if she had objected, if she had pushed him away, he would have stopped. But she hadn't objected, she had welcomed him, wanted him, and he must have felt it.

  He wanted her, but did he love her? Just because he wanted to share Pleasures with her didn't mean he still loved her. Maybe love could make Pleasures better, but it was possible to have one without the other. Ranec showed her that. Ranec loved her, she had no doubt about him. He wanted to join with her, wanted to settle with her, wanted her children. Jondalar had never asked her to join, never said he wanted her children.

  He loved her once, though. Maybe she felt Pleasures because she loved him, even if he didn't love her any more. But he still wanted her, and he took her. Why was he so cold afterward? Why had he rejected her again? Why had he stopped loving her? Once she thought she knew him. Now, she didn't understand him at all. She rolled over and curled into a tight ball, and wept quietly again, wept with wanting Jondalar to love her again.

  "I'm glad I thought about inviting Jondalar along on the first mammoth hunt," Talut said to Nezzie as they retired to the Lion Hearth. "He's been so busy making that spear all night, I think he must really want to go."

  Nezzie looked at him, raising an eyebrow and shaking her head. "Mammoth hunting is the furthest thing from his mind," she said, then tucked a fur around the sleeping blond head of her youngest daughter, and smiled with gentle affection at the girl-woman form of her eldest, curled up next to her younger sister. "We're going to have to think about a separate place for Latie next winter, she'll be a woman, but Rugie will miss her."

  Talut glanced back and saw the visitor brushing off chips of flint while he tried to see Ayla through the intervening hearths. When he didn't see her, he looked toward the Fox Hearth. Talut turned his head and saw Ranec getting into his bed alone, but he, too, kept glancing toward Ayla's bed. Nezzie is probably right, he thought.

  Jondalar had stayed up until the last person left the cooking hearth, working on a long flint blade that he would haft to a sturdy shaft the same way Wymez did, learning how to make a Mamutoi mammoth hunting spear by first making an exact copy of one. The part of his mind that was always aware of the nuances of his craft had already thought of ideas for possible improvements, or at least interesting experiments, but the work was a familiar process that took little concentration, which was just as well. He couldn't think about anything but Ayla, and he was only using the work as a way to avoid company and conversation and be alone with his thoughts.

  He felt a great relief when he saw her going to her bed alone earlier; he didn't think he could have borne it if she had gone to Ranec's bed. He carefully folded his new clothes, then got into new sleeping furs which were spread out on top of his old traveling roll. He folded his hands behind his head and stared up at the too-familiar ceiling of the cooking hearth. He had lain awake studying it many nights. He still ached with remorse and shame, but not, on this night, with the burning ache of need, and as much as he hated himself for it, he remembered the Pleasure of the afternoon. He thought about it, carefully recalling every moment, turning over every detail in his mind, slowly savoring now what he had not taken time to think about then.

  He was more relaxed than he had been since Ayla's adoption, and he slipped into a half-dozing, musing reverie. Had he imagined that she had been so willing? He must have; she could not have been that eager for him. Had she really responded with such feeling? Reaching for him as though she had wanted him as much as he wanted her?
He felt the pull in his loins as he thought of her again, of filling her, of her deep warmth embracing him fully. But the need was easier, more like a warm afterglow, not the driving, hurting pain that was a combination of repressed desire, powerful love, and burning jealousy. He thought about Pleasuring her – he loved to Pleasure her – and he started to get up to go to her again.

  It was only when he pushed back the cover and sat up, when he started to act on the urge brought on by his dreamy intimate ruminations, that the consequences of the afternoon struck him. He couldn't go to her bed. Not ever. He could never touch her again. He had lost her. It was no longer a matter of choice. He had destroyed any chance he had that she might choose him. He had taken her by force, against her will.

  Sitting on his sleeping furs, with his feet on a floor mat and his elbows leaning on his bent-up knees, he held his bowed head and felt an agony of shame. His body shook with silent heaves of disgust. Of all the despicable things he had done in his life, this unnatural act was by far the worst.

  There was no worse abomination, not even the child of mixed spirits, or the woman who gave birth to one, than a man who took a woman against her will. The Great Earth Mother Herself decried it, forbade it. One had only to observe the animals of Her creation to know how unnatural it was. No male animal ever took a female against her will.

  In their season the stags might fight each other for the privilege of Pleasuring the does, but when the male deer tried to mount the female, she had only to walk away if she didn't want him. He could try and try, but she had to allow it, she had to stand for it. He could not force her. It was the same for every animal. The female wolf or the she-lion invited the male of her choice. She rubbed against him, passed her tempting odor before his nose, and moved her tail aside when he mounted, but she would turn angrily on any male who tried to mount against her will. He paid dearly for his audacity. A male could be as persistent as he liked, but the choice was always the female's. That was the way the Mother meant it to be. Only the human male ever forced a female, only an unnatural, abominable human male.