Jondalar picked up one of the blades and gave it to Ayla. She checked the sharpness of the edge lightly with her thumb, exerted some pressure to test its strength, and turned it over in her hand. It curved up at the ends; it was the nature of the material, but more noticeable in the long thin blade. She held her palm out flat and watched it rock on its bowed back. The shape did not, however, limit its function.

  “Jondalar, this is … I don’t know the word. It’s wonderful … important. You made so many … You are not through with these, are you?”

  He smiled. “No, I’m not through.”

  “They are so thin and fine—they are beautiful. They might break more easily, but I think with the ends retouched, they’d be strong scrapers.” Her practical side was already imagining the blanks into tools.

  “Yes, and like yours, good knives—though I’d want to put a tang on it for a handle.”

  “I don’t know what ‘tang’ is.”

  He picked up a blade to explain. “I can blunt the back of this and shape a point, and I would have a knife. If I pressure off a few flakes on the inner face, I can even straighten out the curve somewhat. Now, about halfway down the blade, if I use pressure to break off the edge and make a shoulder, and leave just a prong on the lower end, that is a tang.”

  He picked up a small segment of antler. “If I fit the tang into a piece of bone, or wood, or antler like this, the knife will have a handle. It’s easier to use with a handle. If you boil antler for a while, it will swell and soften, and then you can force the tang into the middle where it’s softer. When the antler dries, it shrinks and tightens around the tang. Often it will hold without binding or glue for a long time.”

  Ayla was excited about the new method, and wanted to practice it as she had always done after watching Droog, but she wasn’t sure if it would violate Jondalar’s customs or traditions. The more she learned about the ways of his people, the less sense they made. He didn’t seem to mind her hunting, but he might not want her to make his kind of tools.

  “I would like to try.… Is there … objection to women making tools?”

  Her question pleased him. It took skill to make her kind of tools. He was sure even the best toolmaker had inconsistent results, though the worst could probably turn out some that were usable—even smashing a flint boulder by accident usually produced a few pieces that were usable. But he would have understood if she had tried to justify her method. Instead, she seemed to recognize his technique for what it was—a vast improvement—and wanted to try it. He wondered how he would feel if someone showed him as radical an improvement.

  I’d want to learn it, he said to himself with a wry grin.

  “Women can be good flint knappers. Joplaya, my cousin, is one of the best. But she’s a terrible tease—so I would never tell her that. She’d never let me forget it.” He smiled at the memory.

  “In the Clan, women can make tools, but not weapons.”

  “Women make weapons. After they have children, Zelandonii women seldom hunt, but if they learned when they were young, they understand how weapons are used. Many tools and weapons are lost or broken on a hunt. A man whose mate knows how to make new ones always has a fresh supply. And women are closer to the Mother. Some men think women-made weapons are luckier. But if a man has bad luck—or lacks skill—he’ll always blame the toolmaker, especially if it’s a woman.”

  “Could I learn?”

  “Anyone who can make tools the way you did can certainly learn to make them this way.”

  He answered her question in a slightly different sense than she meant it. She knew she was capable of learning—she had been trying to assure herself that it was allowable. But his answer made her stop and think.

  “No … I don’t think so.”

  “Of course you can learn.”

  “I know I can learn, Jondalar, but not anyone who makes tools the Clan way can learn to make them your way. Some could, I think Droog could, but anything new is difficult for them. They learn from their memories.”

  He thought at first she was joking, but she was serious. Could she be right? Given the opportunity, would fla … Clan toolmakers be, not unwilling, but unable to learn?

  Then it occurred to him that he would not have thought them capable of making tools at all not so long ago. They made tools, they communicated, and they took in a strange orphan child. He had learned more about flatheads in the past few days than anyone knew, except Ayla. It could be useful to know more about them, perhaps. There seemed to be more to them than anyone realized.

  Thinking about flatheads suddenly made him recall the day before, and an unexpected flush of embarrassment rushed him. With their concentration on toolmaking, he had forgotten. He had been looking at the woman, but not really seeing her golden braids shining in the sunlight, offering marked contrast to her deep rich tan; or her eyes, blue gray and clear, like the translucent color of fine flint.

  O Mother, she was beautiful! He became acutely conscious of her sitting so close to him and felt a movement in his groin. He could not have kept his sudden shift of interest out of his eyes if he’d tried. And he didn’t try.

  Ayla felt his change in mood; it washed over her, caught her unprepared. How could anyone’s eyes be so blue? Not the sky, not the blue gentians growing in the mountain meadows near the clan’s cave were so deeply, vibrantly hued. She could feel that … that feeling starting. Her body tingled, ached for him to touch her. She was leaning forward, pulled, drawn to him, and only with supreme effort of will did she close her eyes and pull away.

  Why does he look at me that way when I’m … abomination? When he can’t touch me without jerking away as if he were burned? Her heart was pounding; she was panting as though she had been running, and she tried to slow her breaths.

  She heard him get up before she opened her eyes. The leather lap cover had been flung aside and his carefully wrought blades were scattered. She watched him walking away with stiff movements, his shoulders hunched, until he was around the wall. He seemed miserable, as miserable as she was.

  Once he cleared the wall, Jondalar broke into a run. He raced down the field until his pumping legs ached and his breath raled in ragged sobs; then he slowed and jogged to a halt, heaving great gasps.

  You stupid fool, what does it take to convince you? Just because she’s decent enough to let you get some supplies together doesn’t mean she wants any part of you … particularly that part! Yesterday, she was hurt and offended because you didn’t … That was before you ruined it for yourself!

  He didn’t like to think about it. He knew what he had felt, what she must have seen, the revulsion, the disgust. So, what is different now? She lived with flatheads, remember? For years. She became one of them. One of their males …

  He was purposely bringing out everything loathsome, defiled, unclean that was part of his way of life. Ayla was all of them! When he was a young boy hiding with the other young boys behind bushes, telling each other the foulest words they knew, “flathead female” was among them. When he was older—not much older, but enough to know what “woman-maker” meant—the same boys gathered in dark corners of the cave to talk in hushed voices about girls, and to plot with sneering laughter to get a flathead female, and to scare each other about the consequences.

  Even then the thought of a flathead male and a woman was unthinkable. Only when he was a young man was it mentioned, and then not so any elder might hear. When young men wanted to be snickering boys again and told each other the coarsest, filthiest stories they could think of, it was of flathead males and women, and what would happen to a man who shared Pleasures with such a woman afterward, even unknowingly—especially unknowingly. That was the joke.

  But they did not joke about abominations—or the women who bore them. They were polluted mixtures of spirits, an evil let loose upon the land that even the Mother, the creator of all life, abhorred. And the women who bore them, untouchable.

  Could Ayla be that? Could she be defiled? Unclean? Filth? Evil? Honest, straightforward Ayla? With her Gift of healing? So wise, and fearless, and gentle, and beautiful. Could anyone that beautiful be unclean?

  I don’t think she would even understand the meaning! But what would someone think who didn’t know her? What if they met her and she just told them who raised her? Told them about the … child? What would Zelandoni think? Or Marthona? And she would tell them, too. She’d tell them about her son and stand up to them. I think Ayla could stand up to anyone, even Zelandoni. She could almost be a zelandoni herself, with her skill in healing and her way with animals.

  But if Ayla is not evil, then everything about flatheads is not true! No one will believe that.

  Jondalar had not been paying attention to where he was going and was startled when he felt a soft muzzle in his hand. He hadn’t seen the horses. He stopped to scratch and stroke the young colt. Whinney gradually moved toward the cave, grazing as she went. The colt bounded ahead to her when the man gave him a final pat. Jondalar was not in a hurry to face Ayla again.

  But Ayla was not at the cave. She had followed him around the wall and watched him run down the length of the valley. She felt like running sometimes, but she wondered what made him suddenly need to run so hard. Was it she? She put a hand on the warm dirt over the roasting pit, and then she walked to the large rock. Jondalar, distracted again by his thoughts, was surprised when he looked up to see both animals clustered around her.

  “I … I’m sorry, Ayla. I shouldn’t have run off like that.”

  “Sometimes I need to run. Yesterday, I let Whinney run for me. She goes farther.”

  “I’m sorry about that, too.”

  She nodded. Courtesy again, she thought, custom. What does it really mean? In silence, she leaned against Whinney and the horse dropped her head over the woman’s shoulder. Jondalar had seen them in a similar pose before, when Ayla was upset. They seemed to be drawing support from each other. He was finding satisfaction in stroking the colt, himself.

  But the young horse was too impatient to put up with such inaction for long, as much as he loved attention. He tossed his head, raised his tail, and bounded off. Then with a bucking jump, he turned around, came back, and bumped the man, as though asking him to come and play. Ayla and Jondalar both laughed, breaking the tension.

  “You were going to name him,” she said. It was just a statement, carrying no urging tones. If he didn’t name the colt, she most probably would.

  “I don’t know what to name him. I’ve never had to think of a name before.”

  “I never did either, until Whinney.”

  “What about your … son? Didn’t you name him?”

  “Creb named him. Durc was the name of a young man in a legend. It was my favorite of all the legends and stories, and Creb knew it. I think he chose the name to please me.”

  “I didn’t know your Clan had legends. How do you tell a story without talking?”

  “The same way you’d tell one with words, except, in some ways, it’s easier to show something than to tell it.”

  “I suppose that’s true,” he said, wondering what kind of stories they told, or rather, showed. He wouldn’t have thought flatheads were capable of imagining stories.

  They were both watching the colt, tail out, head reaching forward, enjoying a good run. What a stallion he’s going to be, Jondalar thought. What a racer.

  “Racer!” he said. “What do you think of naming him Racer?” He had used the word so often in reference to the colt that it fit him.

  “I like it. It’s a good name. But if it is to be his, he should be named properly.”

  “How do you name a horse properly?”

  “I’m not sure if it is proper for a horse, but I named Whinney the way children of the Clan are named. I’ll show you.”

  With the horses following them, she led him to a draw on the steppes that had once been a riverbed, but had been dry for so long that it was partially filled in. One side had eroded to show the horizontal layers of strata. To Jondalar’s surprise, she loosened a layer of red ochre with a stick and gathered up the deep brownish red earth in both hands. Back at the stream, she mixed the red earth with water to a muddy paste.

  “Creb mixed the red color with cave bear grease, but I don’t have any, and I think plain mud is better for a horse. It dries and brushes off. It’s the naming that counts. You’ll have to hold his head.”

  Jondalar beckoned. The colt was full of lively antics but understood the gesture. He stood still while the man put an arm around his neck and scratched. Ayla made some movements in the Old Language requesting the attention of the spirits. She did not want to make it too serious. She still wasn’t sure if spirits were offended by the naming of a horse, though naming Whinney had produced no ill effects. Then she picked up a handful of red mud.

  “The name of this male horse is Racer,” she said, making the gestures at the same time. Then she smeared the wet red earth down his face, from the tuft of white hair on his forehead to the end of his rather long nose.

  It was done quickly, before the colt could wriggle out of Jondalar’s grasp. He pranced away, tossing his head, trying to rid himself of the unaccustomed wetness, then butted up against Jondalar, leaving a red streak on his bare chest.

  “I think he just named me,” the man said, smiling. Then, true to his name, Racer sped down the field. Jondalar brushed at the reddish smear on his chest. “Why did you use this? The red earth?”

  “It is special … holy … for spirits,” she said.

  “Sacred? We call it sacred. The blood of the Mother.”

  “The blood, yes. Creb … the Mog-ur rubbed a salve of red earth and cave bear grease on Iza’s body after her spirit left. He called it the blood of birth, so Iza could be born into the next world.” The memory still brought her pain.

  Jondalar’s eyes widened. “Flatheads … I mean, your Clan uses the sacred earth to send a spirit to the next world? Are you sure?”

  “No one is buried properly without it.”

  “Ayla, we use the red earth. It is the blood of the Mother. It is put on the body and the grave so she will take the spirit back into Her womb to be born again.” A look of pain came into his eyes. “Thonolan had no red earth.”

  “I had none for him, Jondalar, and I couldn’t take the time to get it. I had to get you back here, or I would have needed to make a second grave. I did ask my totem, and the spirit of Ursus, the Great Cave Bear, to help him find his way.”

  “You buried him?! His body was not left to scavengers?”

  “I put his body next to the wall and loosened a rock so the gravel and stones covered him. But I had no red earth.”

  Jondalar found the idea of flathead burials the hardest to comprehend. Animals did not bury their dead. Only humans thought about where they came from, and where they were going after this life. Could her Clan spirits guide Thonolan on his way?

  “It is more than my brother would have had if you hadn’t been there, Ayla. And I have so much more—I have my life.”

  26

  “Ayla, I can’t remember when I’ve tasted anything this good. Where did you learn to cook like this?” Jondalar said, reaching for another piece of the rich, delicately seasoned ptarmigan.

  “Iza taught me. Where else would I have learned? This was Creb’s favorite dish.” Ayla didn’t know why, but his question irritated her a little. Why shouldn’t she know how to cook? “A medicine woman knows herbs, Jondalar, those that flavor as well as those that heal.”

  He detected the tone of annoyance in her voice and wondered what had brought it on. He had only meant to compliment her. The meal was good. Excellent, in fact. When he thought about it, everything she prepared was delicious. Many of the foods were unusual to his taste, but new experiences were one reason for traveling, and though unfamiliar, the quality was evident.

  And she did it all. Like the hot tea in the morning, she makes it so easy to forget how much she does. She hunted, foraged, cooked this meal. She provided everything. All you’ve done is eat it, Jondalar. You haven’t contributed a thing. You’ve taken it all and given nothing back … less than nothing.

  And now you give her compliments, words. Can you blame her for being annoyed? She’ll be glad to see you go, you just make more work for her.

  You could do some hunting, repay some of the meat you’ve eaten, at least. That seems so little, after everything she’s done for you. Can’t you think of something more … lasting? She hunts well enough herself. How worthwhile is a little hunting?

  How she does it, though, with that clumsy spear? I wonder … would she think I was insulting her Clan if I offered …

  “Ayla … I, um … I want to say something, but I don’t want to offend you.”

  “Why do you worry now about offending me? If you have something to say, say it.” The prickles of her irritation were still showing, and his chagrin almost stopped him.

  “You’re right. It is a little late. But, I was wondering … ahhh … how do you hunt with that spear?”

  She was puzzled by his question. “I dig a hole, and run, no, stampede, a herd toward it. But last winter …”

  “A pit trap! Of course, so you can get close enough to use that spear. Ayla, you’ve done so much for me, I want to do something for you before I leave, something worthwhile. But I don’t want you to feel offended by my suggestion. If you don’t like it, just forget I said anything, all right?”

  She nodded, a little apprehensive, but curious.

  “You are … you are a good hunter, especially considering your weapon, but I think I can show you a way to make it easier, a better hunting weapon, if you’ll let me.”

  Her annoyance evaporated. “You want to show me a better hunting weapon?”