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Oga had been grief-stricken over the death of her mother, following so soon after the death of her mother’s mate. As the only child of the pair, even though she was a girl she had been dearly loved by both. Brun’s mate was kind to her when she went to live with the leader’s family, sitting with them when she ate and walking behind Ebra while they were searching for a cave. But Brun frightened her. He was more stern than her mother’s mate had been; his responsibility lay heavily on his shoulders. Ebra’s main concern was for Brun and no one had much time for the orphaned girl while they were traveling. But Broud had seen her sitting alone staring dejectedly into the fire one evening. Oga was overwhelmed with gratitude when the proud boy, almost a man, who had seldom paid attention to her before, sat down beside her and put an arm around her shoulder as she softly keened her grief. From that moment on, Oga lived with one desire: when she became a woman, she wanted to be given to Broud as his mate.
The late afternoon sun was warm in the motionless air. Not the hint of a breeze stirred the least leaf. The expectant hush was disturbed only by the drone of flies taking their turn at the remains of the repast and the sounds of the women digging a roasting pit. Ayla was sitting beside Iza as the medicine woman searched in her otter-skin pouch for the red bag. The child had been tagging behind her all day, but now there were certain rituals Iza had to perform with Mog-ur in preparation for the important role she had to play in the cave ceremony the next day, now that they were certain there would be one. She led the tow-headed girl toward the group of women excavating a deep hole not far from the cave mouth. It would be lined with rocks, with a large fire built inside that would burn all night. In the morning, the skinned and quartered bison, wrapped in leaves, would be lowered into the pit, covered with more leaves and a layer of soil, and left to cook in the stone oven until late afternoon.
The excavation was a slow and tedious process. Pointed digging sticks were used to break up the soil that was scooped out by throwing handfuls on a leather cloak, which was hauled up out of the pit and dumped. But once the pit was dug, it could be used many times, only requiring an occasional cleaning out of ashes. While the women dug, Oga and Vorn, under the watchful eye of Uka’s unmated daughter, Ovra, were collecting wood and bringing stones up from the stream.
As Iza approached holding the child’s hand, the women stopped. “I must see Mog-ur,” Iza said with a gesture. Then she gave Ayla a little shove toward the group. Ayla started to follow Iza as she turned to go, but the woman shook her head and pushed her back toward the women, then hurriedly left.
It was Ayla’s first contact with anyone in the clan besides Iza and Creb, and she felt lost and shy without Iza’s comforting presence. She stood rooted to the spot, nervously staring at her feet, glancing up apprehensively now and then. Against all propriety, everyone stared at the thin, long-legged girl with the peculiar flat face and bulging forehead. They had all been curious about the child, but this was their first opportunity to get a close look at her.
Ebra finally broke the spell. “She can gather wood,” the leader’s mate indicated with an unspoken motion to Ovra, then started digging again. The young woman walked toward a patch of trees and fallen logs. Oga and Vorn could hardly tear themselves away. Ovra beckoned to the two children impatiently, then beckoned to Ayla as well. The girl thought she understood the gesture, but she wasn’t sure what was expected of her. Ovra motioned again, then turned and headed for the trees. The two clan members who were closest to Ayla’s age reluctantly trailed after Ovra. The girl watched them go, then took a few hesitant steps after them.
When she reached the trees, Ayla stood around for a while watching Oga and Vorn pick up dried branches while Ovra hacked away at a good-sized fallen log with her stone hand-axe. Oga, returning from depositing a load of wood near the pit, started dragging toward the woodpile a section of the log Ovra had detached. Ayla saw her struggling and walked over to help. She bent over to pick up the opposite end of the log, and as they both stood up, she looked into Oga’s dark eyes. They stopped and stared at each other for a moment.
The two girls were so different, yet so provocatively similar. Sprung from the same ancient seed, the progeny of their common ancestor took alternate routes, both leading to a richly developed, if dissimilar, intelligence. Both sapient, for a time both dominant, the gulf that separated them was not great. But the subtle differences created a vastly different destiny.
With each holding an end of the log, Ayla and Oga carried it to the pile of wood. As they walked back, side by side, the women stopped their work again and watched them go. The two girls were near the same height, though the taller was nearly twice the age of the other. One was slender, straight-limbed, fair-haired; the other stocky, bow-legged, darker. The women compared them, but the young girls, as with children everywhere, soon forgot their differences. Sharing made the task easier, and before the day was through they found ways to communicate and to add an element of play into the chore.
That evening they sought each other out and sat together while they ate, enjoying the pleasure of company closer to their own size. Iza was happy to see that Oga was accepting Ayla and waited until dark before she went to get the child for bed. They stared after each other as they parted, then Oga turned away and walked to her fur beside Ebra. The women and men still slept separately. Mog-ur’s prohibition would not be lifted until they moved into the cave.
Iza’s eyes were open with the first glimmer of early light. She lay still, listening to the melodious cacophony of birds chirping, warbling, twittering, and trilling in greeting to the new day. Soon, she was thinking, she would open her eyes to stone walls. She didn’t mind sleeping outside as long as the weather was pleasant, but she looked forward to the security of walls. Her thoughts made her remember everything she had to do that day, and thinking about the cave ceremony with growing excitement, she quietly got up.
Creb was already awake. She wondered if he had slept at all; he was still sitting in the same place she left him the night before, staring in contemplative silence at the fire. She started heating water, and by the time she brought him his morning tea of mint, alfalfa, and nettle leaves, Ayla was up and sitting beside the crippled man. Iza brought the child a breakfast of leftovers from the previous evening’s meal. The men and women would not eat that day until the ritual feast.
By late afternoon, delicious smells were drifting away from the several fires where food was cooking, and pervading the area near the cave. Utensils and other cooking paraphernalia that had been salvaged from their former cave and carried in the bundles by the women had been unpacked. Finely made, tightly woven waterproof baskets of subtle texture and design, created by slight alterations in weaving, were used to dip water from the pool and as cooking pots and containers. Wooden bowls were used in similar ways. Rib bones were stirrers, large flat pelvic bones were plates and platters along with thin sections of logs. Jaw and head bones were ladles, cups, and bowls. Birch-bark glued together with balsam gum, some reinforced with a well-placed knot of sinew, were folded into shapes for many uses.
In an animal hide, hung from a thong-lashed frame set over a fire, a savory broth bubbled. Careful watch was kept to make sure the liquid didn’t boil down too far. As long as the level of boiling broth was above the level reached by the flames, it kept the temperature of the skin pot too low to burn. Ayla watched Uka stir up chunks of the meat and bone from the neck of the bison that were cooking with wild onion, salty coltsfoot, and other herbs. Uka tasted it, then added peeled thistle stalks, mushrooms, lily buds and roots, watercress, milkweed buds, small immature yams, cranberries carried from the other cave, and wilted flowers from the previous day’s growth of day lilies for thickening.
The hard fibrous old roots of cattails had been crushed and the fibers separated and removed. Dried blueberries they had carried with them and parched ground grains were added to the resulting starch that settled in the bottom of the baskets of cold water. Lumps of the flat, dark, unleavened bread were cook
ing on hot stones near the fire. Pigweed greens, lamb’s-quarter, young clover, and dandelion leaves seasoned with coltsfoot were cooking in another pot, and a sauce of dried, tart apples mixed with wild rose petals and a lucky find of honey steamed near another fire.
Iza had been especially pleased when she saw Zoug returning from a trip to the steppes with a clutch of ptarmigan. The low-flying, heavy birds, easily brought down with stones from the marksman’s sling, were Creb’s favorite. Stuffed with herbs and edible greens that nested their own whole eggs, and wrapped in wild grape leaves, the savory fowl were cooking in a smaller stone-lined pit. Hares and giant hamsters, skinned and skewered, were roasting over hot coals, and mounds of tiny, fresh wild strawberries glistened bright red in the sun.
It was a feast worthy of the occasion.
Ayla wasn’t sure she could wait. She had been wandering aimlessly around the fringes of the cooking area all day. Both Iza and Creb were off somewhere most of the time, and when Iza was around she was busy. Oga, too, was busily working with the women preparing the feast and no one had time or inclination to bother with the girl. After a few gruff words and not-so-gentle nudges from the harried women, she tried to stay out of the way.
As the long shadows of the late afternoon sun lay across the red soil that fronted the cave, a hush of anticipation descended on the clan. Everyone gathered around the large pit in which the haunches of bison were cooking. Ebra and Uka began removing the warm soil from the top. They pulled back limp, scorched leaves and exposed the sacrificial beast in a cloud of mouth-watering steam. So tender it almost fell from the bones, the meat was carefully raised. To Ebra, as the leader’s mate, fell the duty of carving and serving, and her pride was obvious when she gave the first piece to her son.
Broud evidenced no false modesty as he stepped forward to receive his due. After all the men were served, the women received their share and then the children. Ayla was last, but there was more than enough for everyone, with leftovers to spare. The next hush that descended was the result of the hungry clan busily devouring the meal.
It was a leisurely feast, with one person or another going back to pick at a bit more bison or a second helping of a favorite dish. The women had worked hard, but their reward was not only the comments from the satisfied clan; they would not have to cook again for a few days. They all rested afterward, getting ready for a long evening.
When the lengthening shadows merged into the dull gray half-light of approaching darkness, the mood of the lazy afternoon subtly altered, became charged with expectation. At a glance from Brun, the women quickly cleared away the remains of the feast and took up places around an unlit fireplace at the mouth of the cave. The random look of the group belied the formality of their positions. The women stood in relation to each other according to their status. The men who gathered on the other side fell into a pattern according to their hierarchical place within the clan, but Mog-ur was not in sight.
Brun, closest to the front, signaled Grod, who stepped forward with slow dignity and from his aurochs horn produced a glowing coal. It was the most important in the long line of coals that began with the fire lighted in the debris of the old cave. A continuation of that fire symbolized the continuation of the life of the clan. Lighting this fire at the entrance would lay claim to the cave, establish it as their place of residence.
Controlled fire was a device of man, essential to life in a cold climate. Even smoke had beneficial properties; the smell alone evoked a feeling of safety and home. The smoke from the cave fire, filtering up through the cavern to the high-vaulted ceiling, would find its way out through cracks and on drafts through the opening. It would take away with it any unseen forces that might be inimical to them, purge the cave, and permeate it with their essence, the essence of human.
Lighting the fire was sufficient ritual to purify and lay claim to the cave, but certain other rituals were performed so often along with it, they were almost considered a part of the cave ceremony. One was familiarizing the spirits of their protective totems with their new home, usually done in private by Mog-ur with an audience of men only. Women were allowed their own celebration, which gave Iza reason to make a special drink for the men.
The successful hunt had already shown that their totems approved of the site, and the feast confirmed their intention to make it a permanent home, though the clan might be gone for extended periods at certain times. Totemic spirits traveled too, but as long as members of the clan had their amulets, their totems could track them from the cave and come when they were needed.
Since the spirits would be present at the cave ceremony anyway, other ceremonies could be included, and often were. Any ceremony was enhanced by association with the establishment of a new home and, in turn, added to the clan’s territorial bond. Though each kind of ceremony had its own traditional ritual which never changed, ceremonial occasions had different characters depending upon which rituals were conducted.
Mog-ur, usually in consultation with Brun, decided how the various parts would be put together to form the total celebration, but it was an organic thing that depended on how they felt. This one would include Broud’s manhood ceremony and one to name the totems of certain youngsters, since that needed to be done and they had a desire to please the spirits. Time was not an important factor—it would take as long as it took—but had they been harassed or in danger, simply lighting a fire would have made the cave theirs.
With gravity befitting the importance of the task, Grod kneeled down, put the glowing ember on the dry tinder, and began to blow. The clan leaned forward anxiously and expelled their breath in one communal sigh as flaming tongues licked the dry sticks in their first fatal taste. The fire took hold and, suddenly, appearing from nowhere, a frightful figure was seen standing so close to the bonfire, its roaring flames seemed to envelop him in their midst. It had a bright red face surmounted by an eerie white skull that appeared to hang within the fire itself unscathed by the leaping tendrils of lambent energy.
Ayla didn’t see the fiery apparition at first and gasped when she caught sight of it. She felt Iza squeeze her hand in reassurance. The child felt the vibrations of the dull thud of spear butts pounding the ground and jumped back when the newest hunter leaped to the area in front of the flames just as Dorv beat a sharp tattoo in rhythmic counterpoint on a large wooden bowl-shaped instrument, turned face down against a log.
Broud crouched down and looked far into the distance, his hand shading his eyes from a nonexistent sun, as other hunters leaped up to join him in a reenactment of the bison hunt. So evocative was their skill at pantomime, polished by generations of communicating by gesture and signal, the intense emotion of the hunt was re-created. Even the five-year-old stranger was captivated by the impact of the drama. The women of the clan, perceptive of the fine nuances, were transported to the hot dusty plains. They could feel the thundering hooves vibrating the earth, taste the choking dust, share the exultation of the kill. It was a rare privilege for them to be allowed this glimpse into the sacrosanct life of the hunters.
From the first, Broud took command of the dance. It had been his kill, and it was his night. He could sense the empathetic emotions, feel the women quivering with fear, and he responded with more passionately intense dramatics. Broud was a consummate actor and never more in his element than when he was the center of attention. He played on the emotions of his audience, and the ecstatic shudder that passed through the women as he replayed his final thrust had an erotic quality. Mog-ur, watching from behind the fire, was no less impressed: he often saw the men talk of hunting, but only during these infrequent ceremonies was he able to share the experience in anything close to its full range of excitement. The lad did well, the magician thought, moving around to the front of the fire; he earned his totem mark. Perhaps he deserves to swagger a little.
The young man’s final lunge brought him directly in front of the powerful man of magic as the dull thudding rhythm and the excited staccato counterpoint ended with a flouri
sh. The old magician and the young hunter stood facing each other. Mog-ur knew how to play his role, too. The master of timing waited, letting the excitement of the hunt dance subside and a sense of expectancy rise. His hulking, lopsided figure, cloaked in a heavy bearskin, was silhouetted against the blazing fire. His ochre-reddened face was shadowed by his own frame, masking his features to an indefinable blur with the baleful, asymmetrical eye of a supernatural daemon.
The stillness of the night was disturbed only by the crackling fire, a soft wind soughing through the trees, and the whooping cackle of a hyena in the distance. Broud was panting and his eyes glittered, partly from the exertion of the dance, partly from the excitement and his pride, but more from a growing, disquieting fear.
He knew what came next, and the longer it took, the more he fought to control a chill that wanted to be a tremble. It was time for Mog-ur to carve his totem mark into his flesh. He hadn’t let himself think about it, but now that the time had come, Broud found himself dreading more than the pain. The magician projected an aura that filled the young man with a much greater fear.
He was treading on the threshold of the spirit world; the place that encompassed beings far more terrifying than gigantic bison. For all their size and strength, bison were at least solid, substantial creatures of the physical world, creatures that a man could come to grips with. But the invisible yet far more powerful forces that could make the very earth shake were another matter entirely. Broud was not the only one present who stifled a shudder as thoughts of the recently experienced earthquake suddenly imploded on their minds. Only holy men, mog-urs, dared to face that insubstantial plane, and the superstitious young man wished this greatest of all mog-urs would hurry and get it over with.
