The Land of Painted Caves (30 page)

When she walked into their camp, both Jondalar and Zelandoni gawked for a moment. “It’s looks like you’ve been busy,” Zelandoni said.

“I didn’t think you were going hunting,” Jondalar said, walking toward her to relieve her of some of her burdens, “especially for a wolverine.”

“I didn’t plan to,” Ayla said, then told him what had happened.

“I wondered why you were taking your weapons with you just to gather some growing things,” Zelandoni said. “Now I know.”

“Usually women go out in a group. They talk and laugh and sing, and make a lot of noise,” Ayla said. “It can be fun, but it also warns animals away.”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Jondalar said, “but you’re right. Several women together probably would keep most animals away.”

“We always tell young women whenever they leave their homes, to visit, or to pick berries, or gather wood, or whatever, to go with someone,” Zelandoni said. “We wouldn’t have to tell them to talk and laugh, and make noise. That happens whenever they get together, and it is a measure of safety.”

“In the Clan, people don’t talk as much, and they don’t laugh, but they make rhythms as they walk by banging digging sticks or rocks together,” Ayla said, “and sometimes shouting and making other loud noises along with the rhythms. It’s not singing, but it feels something like music when you do it.”

Jondalar and Zelandoni looked at each other, at a loss for words. Every so often Ayla would make a comment that gave them an insight into her life when she was young and living with the Clan, and how dissimilar her childhood had been from theirs, or anyone they knew. It also gave them an insight into how much the people of the Clan were like themselves—and how much different.

“I want that wolverine fur, Jondalar. I could make a new lining around the face of a hood for you with it, and for me and Jonayla, too, but I need to skin it right away. Would you watch her?” Ayla asked.

“I’ll do better than that. I’ll help you with it, and we can both keep an eye on her,” Jondalar said.

“Why don’t you both work on that animal, and I’ll watch the baby,” Zelandoni said. “It’s not like I haven’t cared for babies before. And Wolf will help me,” she added, looking at the large, usually dangerous animal, “won’t you, Wolf?”

Ayla dragged the wolverine to a clearing some distance beyond the boundaries of their camp; she didn’t want to invite any passing scavengers into their living area. Then she took her salvaged flint points out of its belly cavity.

“Only one has to be reworked,” she said, giving them to Jondalar. “The first spear went into his hind quarters. He saw me make the throw and moved fast. Then Wolf chased him and cornered him in some bushes. I threw the second spear hard, harder than I needed to. That’s why the tip broke, but I knew he was going after Jonayla, and I was angry.”

“I’m sure you were. I would have been, too. I think my day was much less exciting than yours,” Jondalar said as they began skinning the wolverine. He made a cut through the pelt down the left hind leg to the belly cut Ayla had made earlier.

“Did you find flint in the cave today?” Ayla asked, making a similar cut down the left foreleg.

“There’s a lot there. It’s not the finest quality, but it’s serviceable, especially for practice,” Jondalar said. “Do you remember Matagan? The boy who was gored in the leg by the rhino last year? The one whose leg you fixed?”

“Yes. I didn’t get a chance to talk to him, but I saw him. He walks with a limp, but he seems to get around fine,” she said, making a cut in the right front leg, while Jondalar worked on the right hind leg.

“I talked to him and to his mother and her mate, and some others from their cave. If it’s agreeable to Joharran and the Cave—and I can’t imagine why anyone would object—he’s going to come and live at the Ninth Cave at the end of summer. I’m going to show him how to knap flint, and see if he has any talent or inclination for it,” Jondalar said. Then, looking up, “Do you want to save the feet?”

“Those are sharp claws, but I don’t know what I’d use them for,” Ayla said.

“You can always trade them. I’m sure they’d make good decorations, for a necklace, or sewn on a tunic. The teeth, too, for that matter. And what do you want to do with this gorgeous tail?” Jondalar said.

“I think I’ll keep the tail along with the pelt,” Ayla said, “but I may trade the claws and the teeth … or maybe I could use a claw as a hole-maker.”

They cut off the feet, breaking through the joints and cutting the tendons, then pulled the furry skin off the right side to the backbone, using their hands to tear it off more than their knives. They balled up fists to break through the membrane between the body and the hide as they got to the meatier part of the legs. Then they turned it over and started on the left side.

Talking as they worked, they continued separating the hide from the carcass by pulling and tearing, wanting to make as few cuts in the skin as possible. “Where will Matagan stay? Does he have any family at the Ninth Cave?” Ayla asked.

“No, he doesn’t. We haven’t decided yet where he should stay.”

“He’ll miss his home, especially at first. We have a lot of room, Jondalar; he could stay with us,” Ayla said.

“I was thinking of that, and was going to ask if you’d mind. We’d have to rearrange some things, give him his own sleeping space, but that might be the best place for him. I could work with him, watch what he does, see how much interest he shows. No point in making him work at it if he doesn’t like it, but I wouldn’t mind having an apprentice,” Jondalar said. “And with his bad leg, it would be a good skill for him to learn.”

They had to use their knives more to release the skin from the backbone and around the shoulders, where it was tight and the membrane between the meat and the skin was not as defined. Then they had to remove the head. With Jondalar holding the animal taut, Ayla found where the head met the neck and swiveled easily, then cut through the meat to the bone. With a twist, a quick break, and a cut through membranes and tendons, the head was off, and the pelt was free.

Jondalar held up the luxuriant hide, and they admired the thick, beautiful fur. With his help, skinning the wolverine had been short work. Ayla recalled the first time that he had helped her cut up a kill, when they were living in the valley where she found her horse, and he was still recovering from being mauled by the lion. It had come as a surprise to her not only that he was willing, but that he was able. Men of the Clan didn’t do that kind of work, they didn’t have the memories for it, and Ayla still forgot sometimes that Jondalar could help her with tasks that in the Clan had been women’s work. She was accustomed to doing it herself and seldom asked for assistance, but she was as grateful now as she had been then for his help.

“I’ll give this meat to Wolf,” Ayla said, looking down at what was left of the wolverine.

“I was wondering what you were going to do with it,” Jondalar said.

“I’ll wrap the hide up now, with the head inside, and make us an evening meal. Maybe tonight I can start scraping the skin,” Ayla said.

“Do you have to start on it tonight?” Jondalar said.

“I’ll need the brains for softening it, and they’ll go bad fast if I don’t start using them soon. This is such beautiful fur, I don’t want to spoil it, especially if it is going to be as cold next winter as Marthona thinks it will.”

They started to leave, but Ayla spied a patch of plants with coarsely toothed heart-shaped leaves growing about three feet tall in the rich, moist soil along the stream they were using for water. “Before we go back to camp, I want to collect some of those stinging nettles,” Ayla said. “They’ll be good to eat tonight.”

“They sting,” Jondalar said.

“Once they are cooked, they don’t sting, and they taste good,” Ayla said.

“I know, but I wonder how people first thought of cooking nettles for food. Why would they even think of eating them?” Jondalar said.

“I don’t know if we’ll ever find out, but I have to find something to pick them with. Some big leaves to cover the hands so the nettles won’t sting me.” She looked around, then noticed a tall, stiff plant with showy thistle-like purple flower heads, and big heart-shaped soft, downy leaves growing from the ground around the stems. “There’s some burdock. Those leaves feel like fine buckskin, they’ll work.”

   “These strawberries are delicious,” Zelandoni said. “A perfect ending to a wonderful meal. Thank you, Ayla.”

“I didn’t do much. The roast came from the hind quarters of a red deer that Solaban and Rushemar gave me before we left. I just made a stone oven and roasted it, and cooked up some cattails and greens.”

Zelandoni had watched Ayla dig a hole in the ground with a small shoulder bone that had been shaped and sharpened at one end and used like a trowel. To remove the loose dirt, she transferred it by small shovelfuls onto an old hide; then gathering the ends together, she hauled the hide away. She lined the hole with stones, leaving a space not much bigger than the meat, then built a fire in it until the rocks were hot. From her medicine bag, she took out a pouch and sprinkled some of the contents on the meat; some plants could be both medicinal and flavorful herbs. Then she added some of the tiny rootlets growing out of the wood avens rhizome, which tasted like cloves, along with hyssop and woodruff.

She wrapped the red deer roast in the burdock leaves. Then she covered the hot coals in the bottom of the hole with a layer of dirt so they wouldn’t burn the meat, and dropped the leaf-wrapped roast in the little oven. She piled wet grasses on top and more leaves, and covered it all with more dirt to make it airtight. She topped it with a large, flat stone that she had also heated over a fire, and let the roast cook slowly in the residual heat and its own steam.

“It wasn’t just cooked meat,” Zelandoni insisted. “It was very tender and had a flavor that I wasn’t familiar with, but it tasted very good. Where did you learn to cook like that?”

“From Iza. She was the medicine woman of Brun’s clan, but she knew more than the healing uses of plants; she knew how they tasted,” Ayla said.

“That’s exactly how I felt when I first tasted Ayla’s cooking,” Jondalar said. “The flavors were unfamiliar, but the food was delicious. I’ve gotten accustomed to it now.”

“It was also a smart idea to make those little cooking bags out of the cattail leaves, then putting the nettle greens and the green cattail tops and shoots in them before putting them in the boiling water. It was so easy to pull them out. You didn’t have to fish around in the bottom of the pot,” the First said. “I’m going to use that idea for making decoctions and tisanes.” She saw a frown of puzzlement on Jondalar’s face and added a clarification. “Cooking medicines and steeping teas.”

“I learned that at the Summer Meeting of the Mamutoi. A woman there was cooking that way, and many of the other women started doing it too,” Ayla said.

“I also liked the way you put a little fat on top of the hot flat stone and cooked those cattail flour cakes on it. You put something in them as well, I noticed. What is in that pouch that you use?” the Woman Who Was First asked.

“The ashes of coltsfoot leaves.” Ayla said. “They have a salty flavor, especially if you dry them first and then burn them. I like to use sea salt, when I can get it. The Mamutoi traded for it. The Losadunai live near a mountain made of salt, and they mine it. They gave me some before we left, and I still had some when we arrived here, but it’s gone now, so I use the ashes of coltsfoot leaves made the way Nezzie did. I used coltsfoot before, but not the ashes.”

“You have learned a lot from all your travels, and you have many talents, Ayla. I didn’t realize cooking was one of them, but you are very good at it.” Ayla didn’t quite know what to say. She didn’t consider cooking a talent. It was just something you did. She still didn’t feel comfortable with direct praise and didn’t know if she would ever be, so she didn’t respond to it. “Big, flat rocks like that are hard to find. I think I’ll keep that one. Since Racer is pulling a pole-drag, I can pack it and won’t have to carry it,” Ayla said. “Would anyone like some tea?”

“What kind are you making?” Jondalar said.

“I thought I’d start with the cooking water that was used for the nettles and cattails, and add some hyssop,” Ayla said, “and maybe woodruff.”

“That ought to be interesting,” Zelandoni said.

“The water is still warm. It won’t take much to heat it up again,” she said, putting cooking stones in the fire again.

Then she started putting things away. She carried aurochs fat in a cleaned intestine, and had used some to cook with. To close it, she twisted the end of the intestine, then put it in the stiff rawhide container that held meats and fats. The fat had been rendered in simmering water to a smooth white tallow and was used both for cooking and for light when it got dark, and on this trip when going into a cave. The food left over from their evening meal was wrapped in large leaves, tied with cord, and hung from the tripod of tall poles along with the meat container.

Tallow was the fuel that was put in the shallow stone lamps. Wicks could be any of a number of absorbent materials such as lichen or dried boletus mushrooms. When lit in the absolute dark of a cave, the light shed by the lamps was much brighter than seemed possible. They would be using them in the morning when they went into the nearby cave.

“I’m going to the river to clean our bowls. Would you like me to clean yours, too, Zelandoni?” Ayla asked as she added hot stones to the liquid, watched it boil up in a hiss of steam, then added whole fresh hyssop plants.

“Yes, that would be nice.”

When she returned she found her cup filled with hot tea, and Jondalar holding Jonayla, making her laugh with funny sounds and faces. “I think she’s hungry,” he said.

“She usually is,” Ayla said, smiling as she took the child and settled down near the campfire, with her cup of hot tea nearby.

Jondalar and Zelandoni had been talking before the baby started fussing, apparently about his mother, and picked up the conversation once Jonayla was content and quiet again.

“I didn’t know Marthona all that well when I first became a Zelandoni, though there were always stories about her, stories of her great love for Dalanar,” the First said. “Once I became the acolyte of the Zelandoni before me, she told me about the relationships of the woman who was known for her competent leadership of the Ninth Cave so I would understand the situation.