Plains of Passage (128 page)

Ayla thought of her son, grateful he had been accepted as a baby, and grateful there were people who loved him and wanted him when she had to leave him behind.

“Echozar, don’t hate your mother’s people,” she said. “It is not that they are bad, they are just so ancient that it’s hard for them to change. Their traditions go back so far, and they don’t understand new ways.”

“And they are people,” Jondalar said to Dalanar. “That’s one thing I’ve learned on this Journey. We met a couple just before we started over the glacier—that’s another story—but they’re planning meetings about the problems they’ve been having with some of us, especially some young Losadunai men. Someone has even approached them about trading.”

“Flatheads having meetings? Trading? This world is changing faster than I can understand,” Dalanar said. “Until I met Echozar, I wouldn’t have believed it.”

“People may call them flatheads, and animals, but you know your mother was a brave woman, Echozar,” Ayla said, then held out her
hands to him. “I know how it feels to have no people. Now I am Ayla of the Mamutoi. Will you welcome me, Echozar of the Lanzadonii?”

He took her hands and she felt them tremble. “You are welcome here, Ayla of the Mamutoi,” he said.

Jondalar stepped forward with his hands outstretched. “I greet you, Echozar of the Lanzadonii,” he said.

“I welcome you, Jondalar of the Zelandonii,” Echozar said, “but you don’t need to be welcomed here. I’ve heard about the son of Dalanar’s hearth. There’s no doubt you were born of his spirit. You are much like him.”

Jondalar grinned. “Everyone says so, but don’t you think his nose is a little bigger than mine?”

“I don’t. I think yours is bigger than mine,” Dalanar laughed, clapping the younger man’s shoulder. “Come inside. The food is getting cold.”

Ayla lingered a moment to talk to Echozar, and when she turned to go in, Joplaya detained her.

“I want to talk to Ayla, Echozar, but don’t go in yet. I want to talk to you, too,” she said. He walked away quickly to leave the two women alone, but not before Ayla saw the adoration in his eyes when he looked at Joplaya.

“Ayla, I…” Joplaya began. “I … think I know why Jondalar loves you. I want to say … I want to wish you both happiness.”

Ayla studied the dark-haired woman. She sensed a change in her, a drawing in, a feeling of grim finality. Suddenly Ayla knew why she had been so uneasy about the woman.

“Thank you, Joplaya. I love him very much; it would be hard to live without him. It would leave me with a great emptiness inside that would be very hard to bear.”

“Yes, very hard to bear,” Joplaya said, closing her eyes for a moment.

“Aren’t you going to come in and eat?” Jondalar said, coming back out of the cave.

“You go ahead, Ayla. There’s something I have to do first.”

E
chozar glanced at the large piece of obsidian, then looked away. The ripples in the shiny black glass distorted his reflection, but nothing could change it, and he didn’t want to see himself today. He was dressed in a deerskin tunic, fringed with tufts of fur and decorated with beads made of hollow bird bones, dyed quills, and sharp animal teeth. He had never owned anything so fine. Joplaya had made it for him, for the ceremony that officially adopted him into the First Cave of the Lanzadonii.

As he walked into the main area of the cave, he felt the soft leather, smoothing it with reverence knowing her hands had made it. It almost hurt just to think about her. He had loved her from the first. It was she who had talked to him, listened to him, tried to draw him out. He would never have faced all those Zelandonii at the Summer Meeting that year if it hadn’t been for her, and when he saw how the men flocked around her, he wanted to die. It had taken months to work up the courage to ask her: How could anyone who looked like him dare to dream of a woman like her? When she didn’t refuse, he nourished his hope. But she had put off giving him an answer for so long, he was sure it was her way of saying no.

Then, on the day Ayla and Jondalar arrived, when she asked him if he still wanted her, he couldn’t believe it. Wanted her! He had never wanted anything so much in his life. He waited for a time when he could talk to Dalanar alone. But the visitors were always with him. He didn’t want to bother them. And he was afraid to ask. Only the thought of losing his one chance for more happiness than he ever dreamed possible gave him the courage.

Then Dalanar said she was Jerika’s daughter and he’d have to talk it over with her, but all he had asked was did Joplaya agree, and did he love her. Did he love her? Did he love her? O Mother, did he love her!

Echozar took his place among the people waiting expectantly, and he felt his heart beat faster when he saw Dalanar get up and walk toward a hearth in the middle of the cave. A small wood sculpture of a well-rounded female was stuck in the ground in front of the hearth. The ample breasts, full stomach, and broad buttocks of the donii were
accurately portrayed, but the head was little more than a knob with no features and the arms and legs were only suggested. Dalanar stood beside the hearth and faced the assembled group.

“First I want to announce that we are going to the Zelandonii Summer Meeting again this year,” Dalanar began, “and we invite any who want to join us to come. It’s a long trip for us, but I hope to persuade one of the younger zelandoni to return and make a home with us. We have no lanzadoni, and we need One Who Serves the Mother. We are growing, soon there will be a Second Cave, and someday the Lanzadonii will have their own Summer Meetings.

“There is another reason for going. Not only will the mating of Jondalar and Ayla be sanctified at the Matrimonial, we will have another reason to celebrate it this year, too.”

Dalanar picked up the wooden representation of the Great Earth Mother and nodded. Echozar was nervous, even though he knew this was only an announcement ceremony and much more casual than the elaborate Matrimonial would be, with its purifying rituals and taboos. When they both stood before him, Dalanar began.

“Echozar, Son of Woman blessed of Doni, of the First Cave of the Lanzadonii, you have asked Joplaya, Daughter of Jerika mated to Dalanar, to be your mate. This is true?”

“It is true,” Echozar said in a voice so weak it could hardly be heard.

“Joplaya, Daughter of Jerika mated to Dalanar…”

The words were not the same, but the meaning was, and Ayla shook with sobs as she recalled a similar ceremony when she stood beside a dusky man who looked at her the way Echozar looked at Joplaya.

“Ayla, don’t cry, this is a happy occasion,” Jondalar said, holding her tenderly.

She could hardly speak; she knew how it felt to stand beside the wrong man. But there was no hope for Joplaya, not even dreams that someday the man she loved would flout custom for her. He didn’t even know she loved him, and she couldn’t speak of it. He was a cousin, a close-cousin, more sibling than cousin, an unmatable man—and he loved another. Ayla felt Joplaya’s pain as her own as she sobbed beside the man they both loved.

“I was thinking of the time I stood beside Ranec like that,” she finally said.

Jondalar remembered only too well. He felt a constriction in his chest, a pain in his throat, and he held her fiercely. “Hey, woman, you’re going to have me crying soon.”

He glanced at Jerika, who sat with stiff dignity while tears rolled down her face. “Why do women always cry at these things?” he said.

Jerika looked at Jondalar with an unfathomable expression, then at
Ayla sobbing quietly in his arms. “It’s time she mated, time she put away impossible dreams. We can’t all have the perfect man,” she whispered softly, then turned back to the ceremony.

“…Does the First Cave of the Lanzadonii accept this mating?” Dalanar asked, looking up.

“We accept,” they all replied in unison.

“Echozar, Joplaya, you have promised to mate. May Doni, the Great Earth Mother, bless your mating,” the leader concluded, touching the wooden carving to the top of Echozar’s head and Joplaya’s stomach. He put the donii back in front of the hearth, pushing the peglike legs into the ground so it would stand unsupported.

The couple turned to face the assembled Cave, then began to walk slowly around the central hearth. In the solemn silence, the ineffable air of melancholy surrounding the compellingly beautiful woman added a quality that made her seem even more exquisitely lovely.

The man beside her was a fraction shorter. His large beaky nose protruded beyond a heavy chinless jaw that jutted forward. His overhanging brow ridges, joined at the center, were accented by thick, unruly eyebrows that crossed his forehead in a single hairy line. His arms were heavily muscled, and his huge barrel chest and long body were supported by short, hairy, bowed legs. Those were the features that marked him as Clan. But he could not be called flathead. Unlike them, he lacked the low sloping forehead that swept back into a large long head—the squashed-flat look that prompted the name. Instead, Echozar’s forehead rose as straight and high above his bony brow ridges as that of any other member of the Cave.

But Echozar was incredibly ugly. The antithesis of the woman beside him. Only his eyes belied the comparison, but they overwhelmed. His large, liquid, brown eyes were so fall of tender adoration for the woman he loved, they even overwhelmed the unspeakable sadness that hung in the atmosphere through which Joplaya moved.

But not even that evidence of Echozar’s love could overcome the pain Ayla felt for Joplaya. She buried her head in Jondalar’s chest because it hurt too much to look, though she fought to overcome the desolation of her empathy.

When the couple completed the third circuit, the silence was broken as people got up to offer good wishes. Ayla held back, trying to compose herself. Finally, urged by Jondalar, they went to extend their wishes of happiness.

“Joplaya, I’m so glad you’ll be celebrating your Matrimonial with us,” Jondalar said, giving her a hug. She clung to him. He was surprised at the intensity of her embrace. He had the disconcerting feeling she was saying goodbye, as though she would never see him again.

“I don’t have to wish you happiness, Echozar,” Ayla said. “I will wish instead that you are always as happy as you are now.”

“With Joplaya, how can it be any other way?” he said. Spontaneously, she hugged him. He wasn’t ugly to her, he had a comfortable, familiar look. It took him a moment to respond; beautiful women didn’t hug him often, and he felt a warm affection for the golden-haired woman.

Then she turned to Joplaya. As she looked into eyes as green as Jondalar’s were blue, the words she meant to say stuck in her throat. With an aching cry she reached for Joplaya, overcome by her hopeless acceptance. Joplaya held her, patting her back as though it were Ayla who needed consolation.

“It’s all right, Ayla,” Joplaya said, in a voice that sounded hollow, empty. Her eyes were dry. “What else could I do? I’ll never find a man who loves me as much as Echozar does. I’ve known for a long time I would mate him. There just wasn’t any reason to wait any more.”

Ayla stood back, fighting to control tears she shed for the woman who could not, and she saw Echozar move closer. He put a tentative arm around Joplaya’s waist, still not quite able to believe it. He was afraid he would wake up and find it was all a dream. He didn’t know he had only the shell of the woman he loved. It didn’t matter. The shell was enough.

   “Well, no. I didn’t see it with my own eyes,” Hochaman said, “and I can’t say that I believed it, then. But if you can ride horses and teach a wolf to follow you around, then why couldn’t someone ride the back of a mammoth?”

“Where did you say this happened?” Dalanar asked.

“It was not long after we started out, far to the east. It must have been a four-toed mammoth,” Hochaman said.

“A four-toed mammoth? I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Jondalar said, “not even from the Mamutoi.”

“They are not the only ones who hunt mammoths, you know,” Hochaman said, “and they don’t live far enough to the east. Believe me, they are close neighbors, in comparison. When you really go east, and get close to the Endless Sea, mammoths have four toes on their hind feet. They tend to be darker, too. A lot of them are almsot black.”

“Well, if Ayla could ride on the back of a cave lion, I don’t doubt that someone could learn to ride a mammoth. What do you think?” Jondalar asked, looking at Ayla.

“If you got one young enough,” she said. “I think if you raised almost any animal around people from the time it was a baby, you could teach it something. At least not to be afraid of people. Mammoths are smart;
they could learn a lot. We watched the way they broke up ice for water. Many other animals used it, too.”

“They can smell it from a long distance away, too,” Hochaman said. “It’s a lot drier in the east, and the people there always say, ‘If you run out of water, look for a mammoth.’ They can go for quite a while without it, if they have to, but eventually they will lead you to it.”

“That’s good to know,” Echozar said.

“Yes, especially if you travel much,” Joplaya said.

“I don’t plan to travel much,” he said.

“But you will be coming to the Zelandonii Summer Meeting,” Jondalar said.

“For our Matrimonial, of course,” Echozar said. “And I’d like to see you again.” He smiled tentatively. “It would be nice if you and Ayla lived here.”

“Yes. I hope you will both consider our offer,” Dalanar said. “You know this is always your home, Jondalar, and we don’t have a healer, except for Jerika, who is not really trained. We need a lanzadoni and we both think Ayla would be perfect. You could visit with your mother, and return with us after the Summer Meeting.”

“Believe me, we appreciate your offer, Dalanar,” Jondalar said, “and we will consider it.”

Ayla glanced at Joplaya. She had withdrawn, closed in on herself. She liked the woman, but they talked mostly of superficial things. Ayla could not overcome her sorrow at Joplaya’s plight—she had come too close to a similar circumstance—and her own happiness was a constant reminder of Joplaya’s pain. As much as she had grown to like everyone, she was glad they would be leaving in the morning.