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“Ayla, do you have anything I can give Racer? Like some grain or something?” he asked as soon as he went in.
Ayla was sitting near the bed with an assortment of piles and mounds of objects arrayed around her. “Why don’t you give him some of those little apples in that bowl over there? I looked over some, and those have bruises,” she said.
Jondalar scooped out a handful of the small, round tart fruits, and fed them to Racer one at a time. After a few more pats, the man walked over to Ayla. He was followed by the friendly horse.
“Jondalar, push Racer out of there! He might step on something!”
He turned around and bumped into the young animal. “That’s enough, now, Racer,” the man said, walking back with him to the other side of the cave opening, where the young stallion and his dam customarily stayed. But when Jondalar went to leave, he was followed again. He took Racer back to his place again, but had no more luck getting him to stay. “Now that he’s so friendly, how do I get him to stop?”
Ayla had been watching the antics, smiling. “You might try pouring a little water in his bowl, or putting some grain in his feeding tray.”
Jo
ndalar did both, and when the horse was finally distracted enough, walked back to Ayla, carefully watching behind him to make sure the young horse was no longer there. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m trying to decide what to take with me and what to leave behind,” she explained. “What do you think I should give Tulie at the adoption ceremony? It has to be something especially nice.”
Jondalar looked over the piles and stacks of things Ayla had made to occupy herself during the empty nights and long cold winters she had spent alone in the cave. Even when she lived with the Clan, she had become recognized for her skill and the quality of her work, and during her years in the valley, she’d had little else to do. She gave extra time and careful attention to each project, to make it last. The results showed.
He picked up a bowl from a stack of them. It was deceptively simple. It was almost perfectly circular and had been made from a single piece of wood. The quality of the finish was so smooth it almost felt alive. She had told him how she made them. The process was essentially the same as any he knew of; the difference was the care and attention to detail. First, she gouged out the rough shape with a stone adze, then carved it closer with a hand-held flint knife. With a rounded stone and sand, she smoothed both inside and out until hardly a ripple could be felt, and gave it a final finish with scouring horsetail fern.
Her baskets, whether open weave or watertight, had the same quality of simplicity and expert craftsmanship. There was no use of dyes or colors, but textural interest had been created by changing the style of weave, and by using natural color variations of the fibers. Mats for the ground had the same characteristic. Coils of ropes and twines of sinew and bark, no matter what size, were even and uniform, as were the long thongs, cut in a spiral from a single hide.
The hides she made into leather were soft and supple, but more than anything, he was impressed with her furs. It was one thing to make buckskin pliable by scraping off the grain with the fur on the outside, as well as scraping the inside, but with the fur left on, hides were usually stiffer. Ayla’s were not only luxurious on the fur side but velvety soft and yielding on the inside.
“What are you giving Nezzie?” he asked.
“Food, like those apples, and containers to hold it.”
“That’s a good idea. What were you thinking of giving Tulie?”
“She is very proud of Deegie’s leather, so I don’t think I should give her that, and I don’t want to give her food like Nezzie. Nothing too practical. She’s headwoman. It should be something special to wear, like amber or seashells, but I don’t have anything special like that,” Ayla said.
“Yes, you do.”
“I thought about giving her the amber I found, but that’s a sign from my totem. I can’t give that away.”
“I don’t mean the amber. She probably has plenty of amber. Give her fur. It was the first thing she mentioned.”
“But she must have many furs, too.”
“No furs are as beautiful and special as yours, Ayla. Only once in my life before have I ever seen anything like them. I’m sure she never has. The one I saw was made by a flathe—by a Clan woman.”
By evening, Ayla had made some hard decisions, and the accumulation of years of work was settling into two piles. The larger one was to be left behind, along with the cave and the valley. The smaller one was all she would take with her … and her memories. It was a wrenching, sometimes agonizing process that left her feeling drained. Her mood was communicated to Jondalar, who found himself thinking more of his home and his past and his life than he had for many years. His mind kept straying to painful memories he thought he’d forgotten, and wished he could. He wondered why he kept remembering now.
The evening meal was quiet. They made sporadic comments, and often lapsed into silence, each occupied with private thoughts.
“The birds are delicious, as usual,” Jondalar remarked.
“Creb liked them that way.”
She had mentioned that before. It was still hard to believe, sometimes, that she had learned so much from the flatheads she lived with. When he thought of it, though, why wouldn’t they know how to cook as well as anyone?
“My mother is a good cook. She would probably like them, too.”
Jondalar has been thinking a lot about his mother lately, Ayla thought. He said he woke up this morning dreaming about her.
“When I was growing up, she had special foods she liked to make … when she wasn’t busy with the matters of the Cave.”
