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Part of every woman’s heredity was the knowledge of how to test unfamiliar vegetation, and like the rest, Iza experimented on herself. Similarities to known plants placed new ones in relative categories, but she knew the dangers of assuming similar characteristics meant identical properties. The procedure for testing was simple. She took a small bite. If the taste was unpleasant, she spit it out immediately. If it was agreeable, she held the tiny portion in her mouth, carefully noting any tingling or burning sensations or any changes in taste. If there were none, she swallowed it and waited to see if she could detect any effects. The following day, she took a larger bite and went through the same procedure. If no ill effects were noticed after a third trial, the new food was considered edible, in small portions at first.
But Iza was often more interested when there were noticeable effects, for that indicated a possibility of a medicinal use. The other women brought anything unusual to her when they applied the same test for edibility or anything that had characteristics similar to plants known to be poisonous or toxic. Proceeding with caution, she experimented with these too, using her own methods. But such experimentation took time, and she stayed with plants she knew while they traveled.
Near this campsite, Iza found several tall, wandlike, slim-stemmed hollyhocks with large bright flowers. The roots of the multicolored flowering plants could be made into a poultice similar to iris roots to promote healing and reduce swelling and inflammation. An infusion of the flowers would both numb the child’s pain and make her sleepy. She collected them along with her wood.
After the evening meal, the little girl sat propped up against a large rock watching the activities of the people around her. Food and a fresh dressing had refreshed her and she jabbered at Iza, though she could tell the woman didn’t understand her. Other clan members glanced disapprovingly in her direction, but the child was unaware of the meaning of the looks. Their underdeveloped vocal organs made precise articulation impossible for people of the Clan. The few sounds they used as emphasis had evolved from cries of warning or a need to gain attention, and the importance attached to verbalizations was a part of their traditions. Their primary means of communication—hand signals, gestures, positions; and an intuition born of intimate contact, established customs, and perceptive discernment of expressions and postures—were expressive, but limited. Specific objects seen by one were difficult to describe to others, and abstract concepts even more so. The child’s volubility perplexed the clan and made them distrustful.
They treasured children, reared them with gentle fond affection and discipline which grew more stern as they grew older. Babies were pampered by women and men alike, young children rebuked most often by simply being ignored. When children became aware of the higher status of older children and adults, they emulated their elders and resisted pampering as fit only for babies. Youngsters learned early to behave within the strict confines of established custom, and one custom was that superfluous sounds were inappropriate. Because of her height, the girl seemed older than her years, and the clan considered her undisciplined, not well brought up.
Iza, who had been in much closer contact with her, guessed she was younger than she seemed. She was coming to a close approximation of the girl’s true age and she responded to her helplessness more leniently. She sensed, too, from her mutterings while she was delirious, that her kind verbalized more fluently and more frequently. Iza was drawn to the child whose life depended on her and who had wrapped scrawny little arms around her neck in complete trust. There will be time, Iza thought, to teach her better manners. She was already beginning to think of the child as hers.
Creb wandered over while Iza was pouring boiling water over the flowers of the hollyhocks, and sat down near the child. He was interested in the stranger, and since the preparations for the evening ceremony were not yet complete, he went to see how she was recovering. They stared at each other, the young girl and the crippled, scarred old man, studying each other with equal intensity. He had never been so close to one of her kind and had never seen a young one of the Others at all. She didn’t even know of the existence of Clan people until she woke up to find herself among them, but more than their racial characteristics, she was curious about the puckered skin of his face. In her limited experience, she had never seen a face so horribly scarred. Impetuously, with the uninhibited reactions of a child, she reached out to touch his face, to see if the scar felt different.
Creb was taken aback as she lightly stroked his face. None of the children of the clan had ever reached out to him like that. No adults reached out to him either. They avoided contact with him, as though they might somehow catch his deformity by touching him. Only Iza, who nursed him through his sieges of arthritis which attacked with greater severity every winter, seemed to have no compunction about it. She was neither repulsed by his misshapen body and ugly scars nor in awe of his power and position. The little girl’s gentle touch struck an inner chord in his lonely old heart. He wanted to communicate with her and thought for a moment about how to begin.
“Creb,” he said, pointing to himself. Iza was watching quietly, waiting for the flowers to steep. She was glad Creb was taking an interest in the girl, and the use of his personal name was not lost on her.
“Creb,” he repeated, tapping his chest.
The child cocked her head, trying to understand. There was something he wanted her to do. Creb said his name a third time. Suddenly she brightened, sat up straight, and smiled.
“Grub?” she responded, rolling the r to mimic his sound.
The old man nodded approval; her pronunciation was close. Then he pointed at her. She frowned slightly, not quite sure what he wanted now. He tapped his chest, repeated his name, then tapped hers. Her wide smile of understanding looked like a grimace to him, and the polysyllabic word that rolled out of her mouth was not only unpronounceable, it was almost incomprehensible. He went through the same motions, leaning close to hear better. She said her name.
“Aay-rr.” He hesitated, shook his head, tried again. “Aay-lla, Ayla?” It was the best approximation he could make. There were not many in the clan who could have come as close. She beamed and nodded her head up and down vigorously. It was not exactly what she had said, but she accepted it, sensing even in her young mind that he could not say the word for her name any better.
“Ayla,” Creb repeated, getting used to the sound.
“Creb?” the girl said, tugging at his arm to get his attention, then pointed at the woman.
“Iza,” Creb said, “Iza.”
“Eeez-sa,” she repeated. She was delighted with the word game. “Iza, Iza,” she reiterated, looking at the woman.
Iza nodded solemnly; name sounds were very important. She leaned forward and tapped the child’s chest the way Creb had, wanting her to say her name-word again. The girl repeated her full name, but Iza just shook her head. She couldn’t begin to make that combination of sounds that the girl made so easily. The child was dismayed, then glancing at Creb, said her name the way he had.
“Eye-ghha?” the woman tried. The girl shook her head and said it again. “Eye-ya?” Iza tried again.
“Aay, Aay, not Eye,” Creb said. “Aaay-llla,” he repeated very slowly so Iza could hear the unfamiliar combination of sounds.
“Aay-lla,” the woman said carefully, struggling to make the word the way Creb had.
The girl smiled. It didn’t matter that the name wasn’t exactly right; Iza had tried so hard to say the name Creb had given her, she accepted it as her own. She would be Ayla for them. Spontaneously, she reached out and hugged the woman.
Iza squeezed her gently, then pulled away. She would have to teach the child that displays of affection were unseemly in public, but she was pleased nonetheless.
Ayla was beside herself with joy. She had felt so lost, so isolated among these strange people. She had tried so hard to communicate with the woman who was caring for her, and she was so frustrated when all her attempts failed. It was only a beginn
ing, but at least she had a name to call the woman and a name to be called. She turned back to the man who had initiated the communication. He didn’t seem nearly so ugly to her anymore. Her joy bubbled over, she felt a warmth toward him, and as she had done many times to another man she remembered only vaguely, the little girl put her arms around the crippled man’s neck, pulled his head down to her, and rested her cheek against his.
Her gesture of affection unsettled him. He resisted an urge to return the hug. It would be totally improper to be seen hugging this strange little creature outside the boundary of a family hearth. But he allowed her to press her smooth, firm little cheek to his bushy-bearded face a moment longer before he gently removed her arms from around his neck.
Creb picked up his staff and used it to pull himself up. As he limped away, he thought about the girl. I must teach her to speak, she should learn to communicate properly, he said to himself. After all, I can’t entrust all her instruction to a woman. He knew, though, that he really wanted to spend more time with her. Without realizing it, he thought of her as a permanent part of the clan.
Brun had not considered the implications of allowing Iza to pick up a strange child along the way. It was not a failing of him as a leader, it was the failing of his race. He could not have anticipated finding a wounded child who was not Clan and he could not foresee the logical consequences of rescuing her. Her life had been saved; the only alternative to letting her stay with them was to turn her out to wander alone again. She could not survive alone—that did not take foresight, it was fact. After saving her life, to expose her to death again he would have to oppose Iza, who, although she had no power personally, did have a formidable array of spirits on her side—-and now Creb, the Mog-ur who had the ability to call upon any and all spirits. Spirits were a potent force to Brun, he had no desire to find himself at odds with them. To give him full credit, it was just that eventuality that bothered him about the girl. He hadn’t been able to express it to himself, but the thought had been hovering. He didn’t know it yet, but Brun’s clan had increased to twenty-one.
When the medicine woman examined Ayla’s leg the next morning, she could see the improvement. Under her expert care, the infection was nearly gone and the four parallel gashes were closed and healing, though she would always carry the scars. Iza decided a poultice was no longer needed, but she made a willow-bark tea for the child. When she moved her off the sleeping fur, Ayla tried to stand. Iza helped her and supported her while the girl gingerly tried to put her weight on the leg. It hurt, but after a few careful steps, it felt better.
Standing up at her full height, the girl was even taller than Iza thought. Her legs were long, spindly with knobby knees, and straight. Iza wondered if they were deformed. The legs of Clan people were bowed in an outward curvature, but, except for a limp, the child had no problem moving around. Straight legs must be normal for her too, Iza decided—like blue eyes.
The medicine woman wrapped the cloak around her and lifted the child to her hip as the clan got under way; her leg wasn’t healed enough yet for her to walk any great distance. At intervals during the day’s march, Iza let her down to walk for a while. The girl had been eating ravenously, making up for her long hunger, and Iza thought she could notice a weight gain already. She was glad to be relieved of the extra burden occasionally, especially since traveling was becoming more difficult.
The clan left the broad flat steppes behind and for the next few days traversed rolling hills that grew progressively steeper. They were in the foothills of the mountains whose glistening ice caps drew closer every day. The hills were thickly forested, not with the evergreens of boreal forest, but with the rich green leaves and thick gnarled trunks of broad-leafed deciduous trees. The temperature had warmed much faster than the season usually progressed, which puzzled Brun. The men had replaced their wraps with a shorter leather hide that left the torso bare. The women didn’t change to their summer wear; it was easier to carry their loads with a full wrap that eased chafing.
The terrain lost all resemblance to the cold prairie that had surrounded their old cave. Iza found herself depending more and more on knowledge of memories more ancient than her own as the clan passed through shaded glens and over grassy knolls of a full temperate forest. The heavy brown barks of oak, beech, walnut, apple, and maple were intermixed with supple, straight, thin-barked willow, birch, hornbeam, aspen, and the high brush of alder and hazelnut. There was a tang to the air Iza couldn’t readily identify that seemed to ride on the warm soft breeze from the south. Catkins still clung to fully leafed birches. Delicate petals of pink and white drifted down, blown blossoms of fruit and nut trees, giving early promise of autumn’s bounty.
They struggled through brush and vines of the dense forest and climbed exposed faces. As they mounted rocky outcrops, the hillsides around them were resplendent with greens of every hue. The deep shades of pine reappeared as they climbed, along with silver fir. Higher up, blue spruce made an occasional appearance. The deeper colors of conifers intermingled with the rich primary greens of the broad-leafed trees and the limes and pale-white greens of the small-leafed varieties. Mosses and grass added their shades to the verdant mosaic of lush growth and small plants, from oxalis, the cloverlike wood sorrel, to tiny succulents clinging to exposed rock faces. Wild flowers were scattered through the woods, white trilliums, yellow violets, rose pink hawthorn, while yellow jonquils and blue and yellow gentians dominated some of the higher meadows. In a few of the heavily shaded places, the last of the yellow and white and purple crocus, off to a later start, still bravely showed their heads.
The clan stopped for a rest after reaching the top of a steep incline. Below, the panorama of wooded hillsides ended abruptly at the steppes expanding to the horizon. From their vantage point, several herds could be seen in the distance grazing on the tall grass already fading to summer gold. Fast-moving hunters, traveling light and unencumbered by heavily burdened women, could pick and choose among the several varieties of game and reach the steppes easily in far less than half a morning. The sky to the east, over the broad prairie, was clear, but scudding up fast from the south, thunderheads were brewing. If they continued to develop, the high mountain range to the north would cause the clouds to dump their load of moisture on the clan.
Brun and the men were having a meeting just out of range of the women and children, but the worried scowls and hand gestures left no doubt about the reason for the discussion. They were trying to decide if they should turn back. The countryside was unfamiliar, but more important, they were moving too far away from the steppes. Though they had caught glimpses of many animals in the wooded foothills, it was nothing like the tremendous herds supported by the plentiful fodder of the grassy plains below. Animals were easier to hunt out in the open, easier to see without the cover of forest to hide them, cover that hid their four-legged hunters as well. Plains animals were more social, tended to form in herds, not as isolated individuals or small family groups like the forest prey.
Iza guessed they would probably turn back, making their struggle to climb the steep hills all in vain. The gathering clouds and threatening rain cast a dreary pall over the dispirited travelers. While they were waiting, Iza let Ayla down and eased off her heavy load. The child, enjoying the freedom of movement her healing leg allowed after being confined to the woman’s hip, wandered off. Iza saw her as she moved out of sight beyond the nose of a jutting ridge just ahead. She didn’t want the girl to stray too far. The meeting might end at any time, and Brun would not look with favor on the girl if she held up their departure. She went after her, and rounding the ridge, Iza saw the child, but what she saw beyond the girl made her heart race.
She hurried back, casting quick glances over her shoulder. She didn’t dare interrupt Brun and the men, and waited impatiently for the meeting to break up. Brun saw her, and though he gave no indication of it, he knew something was bothering her. As soon as the men separated, Iza ran to Brun, sat down in front of him, and looked at
the ground—the position which meant she wanted to talk to him. He could grant an audience or not; the choice was his. If he ignored her, she would not be allowed to tell him what was on her mind.
Brun wondered what she wanted. He had noticed the girl exploring ahead—there was little about his clan that escaped his attention—but he had had more pressing problems. It must be about that girl, he thought scowling, and was tempted to disregard Iza’s petition. No matter what Mog-ur said, he didn’t like the child traveling with them. Glancing up, Brun saw the magician watching him and tried to discern what the one-eyed man was thinking, but he could not read the impassive face.
The leader looked back at the woman sitting at his feet; her posture gave away her tense agitation. She is really disturbed, he thought. Brun was not an unfeeling man, and he held his sibling in high regard. Despite the problems she had had with her mate, she had always conducted herself well. She was an example to the other women and seldom bothered him with insignificant requests. Perhaps he should let her speak; he did not have to act upon her request. He reached down and tapped her shoulder.
Iza’s breath exploded at the touch; she hadn’t realized she had been holding it. He would let her speak! He had taken so long to decide, she was sure he was going to ignore her. Iza stood up and, pointing in the direction of the ridge, she said one word, “Cave!”
