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The long-awaited Spring Festival was both a new year’s celebration and a festival of thanksgiving. Held not at the beginning, but at the height of the season when the first green buds and shoots were well established and could be harvested, it marked the start of the yearly cycle for the Mamutoi. With fervent joy and unspoken relief, that could only be fully appreciated by those who lived on the edge of survival, they welcomed the greening of the earth, which guaranteed life for themselves arid the animals with whom they shared the land.
On the deepest, coldest nights of the harsh glacial winter, when it seemed the air itself would freeze, doubt that warmth and life would ever return again could arise in the most believing heart. Those times when spring seemed most remote, memories and stories of previous Spring Festivals relieved deep-seated fears and gave renewed hope that the Earth Mother’s cycle of seasons would indeed continue. They made each Spring Festival as exciting and memorable as possible.
For the big Spring Feast, nothing left over from the previous year would be eaten. Individuals and small groups had been out for days fishing, hunting, trapping, and gathering. Jondalar had put his spear-thrower to good use and was pleased to contribute a pregnant bison entirely by himself, thin and gaunt though she was. Every edible vegetable product they could find was collected. Birch and willow catkins; the young unfolding stems of ferns as well as the old rootstocks which could be roasted, peeled, and pounded into flour; the juicy inner cambium bark of pines and birch, sweet with new rising sap; a few purplish-black curlewberries, filled with hard seeds, growing beside the small pink flowers on the ever-bearing low shrub; and from sheltered areas, where they had been covered with snow, bright red lingonberries, frozen and thawed to a soft sweetness, lingered with the dark leathery leaves on low tufted branches.
Buds, shoots, bulbs, roots, leaves, flowers of every description; the earth abounded with delicious fresh foods. Shoots and young pods of milkweed were used for vegetables, while the flower, full of rich nectar, was used for sweetening. New green leaves of clover, pigweed, nettles, balsam root, dandelion, and wild lettuce would be cooked or eaten raw; thistle stalks and, especially, sweet thistle roots were searched out. Lily bulbs were a favorite, and cattail shoots and bulrush stems. Sweet, flavorful licorice roots could be eaten raw or roasted in ashes. Some plants were collected for sustenance, others mainly for the flavor they imparted, and many were used for teas. Ayla knew the medicinal qualities of most of them, and gathered some for her uses, as well.
On rocky slopes, the narrow tubular new shoots of wild onion were picked, and in dry, bare places, small leaves of lemony sorrel. Coltsfoot was collected from damp open ground near the river. Its slightly salty taste made it useful for seasoning, though Ayla gathered some for coughs and asthma. Garlicky-tasting ramson greens were picked for taste and flavor, as were tart juniper berries, peppery tiger lily bulbs, flavorful basil, sage, thyme, mint, linden, which grew as a prostrate shrub, and a variety of other herbs and greens. Some would be dried and stored, some used to season the recently caught fish and the various kinds of meats brought back for the feast.
The fish were plentiful, and favored at this time of year, since most of the animals were still lean from the ravages of winter. But fresh meat, including at least one, symbolic, spring-born young animal—this year a tender bison calf—was always included in the feast. To make a feast of only the fresh products of the earth showed that the Earth Mother was offering Her full bounty again, that She would continue to provide for and nurture Her children.
With the foraging and collecting of foods for the feast, the anticipation of the Spring Festival had been building up for days. Even the horses could sense it. Ayla noticed they were nervous. In the morning she took them outside, some distance from the earthlodge, to curry and brush them. It was an activity that relaxed Whinney and Racer and that relaxed her, and it gave her an excuse to get off by herself to think. She knew she should give Ranec an answer today. Tomorrow was the Spring Festival.
Wolf was curled up nearby, watching her. He sniffed the air, lifted his head and looked, and banged his tail against the ground, signaling the approach of someone friendly. Ayla turned, and felt her face flush and her heart pound.
“I was hoping I’d find you alone, Ayla. I’d like to talk to you, if you don’t mind,” Jondalar said, in a strangely subdued voice.
“No, I don’t mind,” she said.
He was shaved, his light hair pulled back neatly and tied at the nape of his neck, and he was wearing one of his new outfits from Tulie. He looked so good to her—handsome was the word Deegie used—he almost took her breath away, and her voice caught in her throat. But it was more than his appearance that moved Ayla. Even when he was wearing Talut’s hand-me-downs, he looked good to her. His presence filled the space around him and touched her, as though he were a glowing ember that warmed her, even standing apart. It was a warmth that was not heat, but larger, more filling, and she wanted to touch that warmth, ached to feel it enfold her, and swayed toward him. But something in his eyes held her back, something ineffably sad that she had not seen there before. She stood quietly, waiting for him to speak.
He closed his eyes for a moment, gathering his thoughts, not sure how to begin. “Do you remember, when we were together in your valley, before you could speak very well, you wanted to tell me something once that was important, but you didn’t know the words for it? You be
gan to speak to me in signs—I remember thinking your movements were beautiful, almost like a dance.”
She remembered only too well. She had been trying to tell him then what she wished she could tell him now: how she felt about him, how he filled her with a feeling that she still had no words for. Even to say she loved him was not enough.
“I’m not sure there are words to say what I need to say. ‘Sorry’ is just a sound that comes out of my mouth, but I don’t know how else to say it. I’m sorry, Ayla, more than I can say. I had no right to force you, but I can’t take back what has already been done. I can only say it won’t ever happen again. I’ll be leaving soon, as soon as Talut thinks it’s safe to travel. This is your home. People here care about you … love you. You are Ayla of the Mamutoi. I am Jondalar of the Zelandonii. It’s time for me to go home.”
Ayla couldn’t speak. She looked down, trying to hide the tears she couldn’t hold back, then turned around and began to rub down Whinney, unable to look at Jondalar. He was leaving. He was going home and he hadn’t asked her to go with him. He didn’t want her. He didn’t love her. She swallowed her sobs as she rubbed the brush over the horse. Not since she’d lived with the Clan had she fought so hard to hold back tears, struggled not to show them.
Jondalar stood there, staring at her back. She doesn’t care, he thought. I should have left a long time ago. She had turned her back on him; he wanted to turn around and leave her to her horses, but the silent body language of her motions signaled a message that he couldn’t put into words. It was only a sense, a feeling that something wasn’t right, but it made him reluctant to go.
“Ayla …?”
“Yes,” she said, keeping her back turned and struggling to keep her voice from cracking.
“Is there … anything I can do before I leave?”
She didn’t answer immediately. She wanted to say something that would change his mind, and tried frantically to think of a way to bring him closer to her, to keep him interested. The horses, he liked Racer. He liked riding him.
“Yes, there is,” she finally said, fighting to sound normal.
He had turned to go when she didn’t answer, but turned back quickly.
“You could help me train Racer … as long as you’re here. I don’t have as much time to take him out as I should.” She allowed herself to turn around and face him again.
Did he imagine that she looked pale, that she was trembling? “I don’t know how long I’ll be here,” he said, “but I’ll do what I can.” He started to say more, he wanted to tell her he loved her and that he was leaving because she deserved more. She deserved someone who would love her without reservation, someone like Ranec. He looked down while he searched for the right words.
Ayla was afraid she wouldn’t be able to hold back the tears much longer. She turned to the mare and began to brush her again, then dropped the brush and was astride her and riding in one smooth action. Jondalar looked up and stepped back a few paces, surprised, and watched Ayla and the mare galloping up the slope, with Racer and the young wolf following behind. He stood there long after they were out of sight, then slowly walked back to the lodge.
The anticipation and tension were so intense on the night before the Spring Festival that no one could sleep. Both children and adults stayed up late. Latie was in a state of especially high excitement, feeling impatient one moment and nervous the next about the short puberty ceremony that would announce her readiness to begin preparations for the Celebration of Womanhood that would take place at the Summer Meeting.
Though she had reached physical maturity, her womanhood would not be complete until the ceremony that would culminate in the First Night of Pleasures when a man would open her so that she could receive the impregnating spirits joined by the Mother. Only when she was capable of motherhood was she considered a woman in all respects and, therefore, available for establishing a hearth and joining with a man to form a union. Until then, she would exist in the in-between state of no-longer-child but not-yet-woman, when she would learn about womanhood, motherhood, and men from older women and Those Who Served the Mother.
The men, except for Mamut, had been chased out of the Mammoth Hearth. All the women had gathered there while Latie was being instructed for the ceremony the next night, to offer moral support, advice, and helpful suggestions to the fledgling woman. Though she was there as an older woman, Ayla was learning as much as the young woman.
“You won’t have much to do tomorrow night, Latie,” Mamut was explaining. “Later you will have more to learn, but this is just to give notice. Talut will make the announcement, then I will give you the muta. Keep it in a safe place until you are ready to establish your own hearth.”
