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“What makes you think I’m nervous? I’m just trying to remember everything and meditate a little,” he said sheepishly.
“What do you need to remember? You’ve been Mog-ur for years, Creb. There can’t be a single ceremony you couldn’t do in your sleep. And I’ve never seen you meditate by jumping up and down. Why don’t you let me fix you a little tea?”
“No. No. I don’t need any tea. Where’s Ayla?”
“She’s over there, just beyond the last hearth looking for yams. Why?”
“I just wanted to know,” Creb replied as he settled back down. Not long afterward, Brun walked by and signaled Mog-ur. The magician got up again and both men walked to the rear of the cave. What can be wrong with those two? Iza shook her head in wonder.
“Isn’t it nearly time?” the leader asked when they reached the place he had cleared out. “Is everything ready?”
“All the preparations are made, but the sun should be lower, I think.”
“You think! Don’t you know? I thought you said you knew what to do. I thought you said you meditated and found a ceremony. Everything must be absolutely right. How can you say ‘you think’?” Brun snapped.
“I did meditate,” Mog-ur countered defensively. “But it was long ago, a different place. There wasn’t any snow. I don’t think there was snow even in winter. It’s not easy to get the time right. I just know the sun was low.”
“You didn’t tell me that! How can you be sure it will be right? Maybe we’d better forget it. It’s a ridiculous idea anyway.”
“I’ve already talked to the spirits; the stones are in place. They’re expecting us.”
“I don’t like the idea of moving the stones, either. Maybe we should’ve decided to have it in the place of the spirits. Are you sure they won’t be upset because we moved them from the small cave, Mog-ur?”
“We already discussed that, Brun. We decided it was better to move the stones than to bring the Ancient Ones to the Totems’ place of the spirits. The old ones might not want to leave again if they see it.”
“How do you know they’ll go back once we wake them up? It’s too dangerous, Mog-ur. We’d better call it off.”
“They may stay for a while,” Mog-ur conceded. “But after everything is put back and they see there is no place for them, they’ll leave. The totems will tell them to go. But it’s up to you. If you want to change your mind, I’ll try to placate the spirits. Just because they’re expecting a ceremony doesn’t mean we have to have one.”
“No. You’re right. We’d better go ahead with it now. They’re expecting something. The men may not be too happy about it, though.”
“Who is leader, Brun? Besides, they’ll get used to it once they understand it’s all right.”
“Is it, Mog-ur? Is it really? It’s been so long. It’s not the men I’m thinking about now. Will our totems accept it? We’ve been so lucky, almost too lucky. I keep thinking something terrible is going to happen. I don’t want to do anything to upset them. I want to do what they want. I want to keep them happy.”
“That’s what we’re doing, Brun,” Mog-ur said gently, “trying to do what they want. All of them.”
“But are you sure the others will understand? If we please one, won’t the others feel slighted?”
“No, Brun, I’m not sure they will.” The magician could feel the leader’s worry and tension. He knew how difficult it was for him. “No one can be absolutely sure. We are only human. Even a mog-ur is only human. We can only try. But you said it yourself, we’ve been lucky. That must mean the spirits of all the totems are happy. If they were fighting with each other, do you think we’d have been so lucky? How often does a clan kill a mammoth without anyone getting hurt? Anything could have gone wrong. You could have traveled all that way and not found a herd, and some of the best hunting time would have been wasted. You took a chance, but it worked. Even Brac is still alive, Brun.”
The leader looked at the serious face of the magician. Then he stood up straighter, and firm resolution replaced the indecision in Brun’s eyes.
“I’ll go get the men,” he gestured.
The women had been told to stay away from the back of the cave, not even to look in that direction. Iza noticed Brun get the men, but she ignored it. Whatever they were doing was their business. She wasn’t sure what made her glance up just as two men, faces painted red with ochre, rushed toward Ayla. Iza felt herself tremble. What could they possibly want with Ayla?
The girl hadn’t even noticed the men going with Brun. She was rummaging through baskets and stiff rawhide containers piled in disordered confusion behind the hearth farthest from the mouth of the cave, looking for yams. When she saw the red-painted face of the leader suddenly appear in front of her, she gasped with surprise.
“Do not resist. Do not make a sound,” Brun signaled.
She didn’t become frightened until she felt the blindfold, but she was petrified when they nearly lifted her off the ground as they dragged her away.
The men were appr
ehensive when they saw Brun and Goov bringing the girl. They knew no more than the women of the reason for the ceremony Brun and Mog-ur were planning, but unlike them, the men knew their curiosity would eventually be satisfied. Mog-ur had only warned them not to make a single gesture or sound after they seated themselves in a circle behind the stones brought out from the small cave, but the warning gained force when he passed out two long cave bear bones to each man to be held crossed like an x in front of him. The danger must be great indeed if they needed such extreme protection. They began to get an inkling of the danger when they saw Ayla.
Brun forced the female to sit in the open space in the circle directly opposite Mog-ur, and sat down behind the girl. At the magician’s signal, Brun removed her blindfold. Ayla blinked to clear her vision. In the light from the torches, she could see Mog-ur seated behind a cave bear skull and the men holding the crossed bones, and she huddled down with fear, trying to sink lower into the ground.
What have I done? I haven’t touched a sling, she thought, trying to remember if she had committed some terrible crime that would supply a reason for her being there. She couldn’t think of a thing she had done wrong.
“Do not move. Do not make a sound,” Mog-ur warned again.
She didn’t think she could if she wanted to. Wide-eyed, she watched the magician pull himself up, lay his staff down, and begin the formal motions entreating Ursus and the totemic spirits to watch over them. Many of the gestures were unfamiliar to her, but she stared in rapt attention, not so much for the meaning of the symbols Mog-ur was making as for the old magician himself.
She knew Creb, knew him well, a crippled old man who hobbled awkwardly when he moved, leaning heavily on his staff. He was a lopsided caricature of a man, one side of his body stunted, muscles atrophied with disuse, the other side overdeveloped to make up for the paralysis that forced him to depend on it so heavily. In the past she had noticed his graceful motions when he used the formal language for public ceremonies—abbreviated by the absence of one arm, yet in some indefinable way fraught with subtleties and complexities, and fuller in meaning. But the motions of the man standing behind the skull showed a side of the magician she never knew existed.
