The Valley of Horses (21 page)

She picked up a few pieces of driftwood on her way back to the cave. Whinney was on the ledge and nickered a greeting, and butted her gently, looking for affection. Ayla smiled, but hurried into the cave, followed closely by Whinney, trying to get her nose under the woman’s hand.

All right, Whinney, Ayla thought after she put the wood and water down. She patted and scratched the foal for a moment, then put some grain into her basket. She ate some cold leftover rabbit and wished she had some hot tea, but she drank cold water instead. It was cold in the cave. She
blew on her hands and put them under her arms to warm them, then got out a basket of tools which she kept near the bed.

She had made a few new ones shortly after she arrived and had been meaning to make more, but something else always seemed more important. She picked out her hand-axe, the one she had carried with her, and took it outside to examine in better light. If handled properly, a hand-axe could be self-sharpening. Tiny spalls usually chipped off the edge with use, always leaving a sharp edge behind. But mishandling could cause a large flake to break off, or even break the brittle stone into fragments.

Ayla didn’t notice the clop of Whinney’s hooves coming up behind her; she was too accustomed to the sound. The young animal tried to put her nose in Ayla’s hand.

“Oh, Whinney!” she cried, as the brittle flint hand-axe fell on the hard stone ledge and broke in several pieces. “That was my only hand-axe. I need it to chop wood.” I don’t know what is wrong, she thought. My fire goes out just when it turns cold. Hyenas come, as though they didn’t expect to find a fire, all ready to attack you. And now, my only hand-axe breaks. She was getting worried, a streak of bad luck was not a good omen. I’ll have to make a new hand-axe now, before I do anything else.

She picked up the pieces of the hand-axe—it might be possible to shape them to some other purpose—and put them near the cold fireplace. From a niche behind her sleeping place, she took out a bundle wrapped in the hide of a giant hamster and tied with a cord, and brought it down to the rocky beach.

Whinney followed, but when her nudging and butting caused the woman to push her away rather than pet her, she left Ayla to her stones and wandered around the wall into the valley.

Ayla unwrapped the bundle carefully, reverently; an attitude assimilated early from Droog, the clan’s master tool-maker. It held an assortment of objects. The first she picked up was an oval stone. The first time she worked the flint, she had searched for a hammerstone that felt good in her hand and had the right resilience when struck against flint. All stone working tools were important, but none had the significance of the hammerstone. It was the first implement to touch the flint.

Hers had only a few nicks, unlike Droog’s hammerstone, battered from repeated use. But nothing could have convinced him to give it up. Anyone could rough out a flint tool, but the truly fine ones were made by expert toolmakers who cared for their implements and knew how to keep a hammerstone spirit happy. Ayla worried about the spirit of her hammerstone, though she never had before. It was so much more important now that she had to be her own master toolmaker. She knew rituals were required to avert bad luck if a hammerstone broke, to placate the stone’s spirit and coax it into lodging in a new stone, and she didn’t know them.

She put the hammerstone aside and examined a sturdy piece of legbone from a grazing animal for signs of splintering from the last time she used it. After the bone hammer, she looked over a retoucher, the canine tooth of a large cat dislodged from a jawbone she had found in the pile at the bottom of the wall, and then she checked the other pieces of bone and stone.

She had learned to knap flint by watching Droog and then practicing. He didn’t mind showing her how to work the stone. She paid attention and she knew he approved of her efforts, but she was not his apprentice. It wasn’t worthwhile to consider a female; the range of tools they were allowed to make was limited. They could not make tools that were used to hunt or those used to make weapons. She had found out that the tools women used were not so different. A knife was a knife after all, and a notched flake could be used to sharpen a point on a digging stick or a spear.

She looked over her implements and picked up a nodule of flint, then put it down. If she was going to do some serious flint knapping, she needed an anvil, something to support the stone while she worked it. Droog didn’t need an anvil to make a hand-axe, he only used it for more advanced tools, but Ayla found she had more control if she had support for the heavy flint, though she could rough out tools without one. She wanted a firm flat surface, not too hard or the flint would shatter under hard blows. The foot bone of a mammoth was what Droog used, and she decided to see if she could find one in the bone pile.

She climbed around the jumbled mound of bones, wood, and stone. There were tusks; there had to be foot bones. She found a long branch and used it as a lever to move heavy
pieces. It snapped when she tried to pry up a boulder. Then she found a small ivory tusk of a young mammoth which proved to be much stronger. Finally, near the edge of the pile closest to the inside wall, she saw what she was looking for and managed to extricate it from the mass of rubble.

As she dragged the foot bone back to her work area, her eye was caught by a gray-yellow stone that gleamed in the sunlight and flashed from facets. It looked familiar, but it wasn’t until she stopped and picked up a piece of the iron pyrite that she remembered why.

My amulet, she thought, touching the small leather pouch hanging around her neck. My Cave Lion gave me a stone like this to tell me my son would live. Suddenly she noticed the beach was strewn with the brassy gray stones glittering in the sun; recognition had made her conscious of them, though she had overlooked them before. It made her aware, too, that the clouds were breaking up. It was the only one when I found mine. Here there’s nothing special about them, they’re all over.

She dropped the stone and dragged the mammoth foot bone down the beach, then sat down and pulled it between her legs. She covered her lap with the hamster hide and picked up the flint again. She turned it over and over, trying to decide where to make the first strike, but she couldn’t settle down and concentrate. Something was bothering her. She thought it must be the hard, lumpy, cold stones she was sitting on. She ran up to the cave for a mat, and she brought down her fire drill and platform, and some tinder. I’ll be glad when I get a fire going. The morning is half gone and it’s still cold.

She settled herself on the mat, put the toolmaking implements within reach, pulled the foot bone between her legs, and laid the hide across her lap. Then she reached for the chalky gray stone and positioned it on the anvil. She picked up the hammerstone, hefted it a few times to get the right grip, then put it down. What’s wrong with me? Why am I so restless? Droog always asked his totem for help before he started; maybe that’s what I need to do.

She clasped her hand around her amulet, closed her eyes and took several slow deep breaths to calm herself. She didn’t make a specific request—she just tried to reach the spirit of the Cave Lion with her mind and with her heart.
The spirit that protected her was part of her, inside her, the old magician had explained, and she believed him.

Trying to reach the spirit of the great beast who had chosen her did have a soothing effect. She felt herself relax, and, when she opened her eyes, she flexed her fingers and reached again for the hammerstone.

After the first blows broke away the chalky cortex, she stopped to examine the flint critically. It had good color, a dark gray sheen, but the grain was not the finest. Still, there were no inclusions; about right for a hand-axe. Many of the thick flakes that fell away as she began to shape the flint into a hand-axe could be used. They had a bulge, a bulb of percussion, on the end of the flake where the hammerstone struck, but they tapered to a sharp edge. Many had semicircular ripples that left a deep rippled scar on the core, but such flakes could be used for heavy-duty cutting implements, like cleavers to cut through tough hide and meat, or sickles to cut grass.

When Ayla had the general shape she wanted, she transferred to the bone hammer. Bone was softer, more elastic, and would not crush the thin, sharp, if somewhat wavy edge, as the stone striker would have. Taking careful aim, she struck very close to the rippled edge. Longer, thinner flakes, with a flatter percussion bulge and less rippled edges were detached with each blow. In much less time than it took her to get prepared, the tool was finished.

It was about five inches long, in outline shaped like a pear with a pointed end, but flat. It had a strong, rather thin cross section, and straight cutting edges from the point down the sloping sides. Its rounded base was made to hold in the hand. It could be used as an axe to chop wood, as an adze—perhaps to make a bowl. With it a piece of mammoth ivory could be broken to a smaller size, as could animal bones when butchering. It was a strong, sharp hitting tool with many uses.

Ayla was feeling better, looser, ready to try the more advanced and difficult technique. She reached for another chalky nodule of flint and her hammerstone, and struck the outer covering. The stone was flawed. The chalky surface extended into the dark gray interior, all the way through the core. The inclusion made it unusable and interrupted the flow of her work and concentration. It put her on edge again. She put her hammerstone down on the rocky beach.

Another piece of bad luck, another bad omen. She didn’t
want to believe that, didn’t want to give in. She looked at the flint again, wondered if she could make some usable flakes from it, and picked up her hammerstone again. She broke off one flake, but it needed retouching, so she put her hammerstone down and reached for a stone retoucher. But she only glanced in the direction of her other implements. Her eye was on the flint when she picked up a stone from the beach—and caused an event that would change her life.

Not all inventions are wrought by necessity. Sometimes serendipity plays a part. The trick is recognition. All the elements were there, but chance alone had put them together in just the right way. And chance was the essential ingredient. No one, least of all the young woman sitting on a rocky beach in a lonely valley, would have dreamed of making such an experiment on purpose.

When Ayla’s hand reached for the stone retoucher, it found instead a piece of iron pyrite of close to the same size. When she struck the exposed fresh flint from the flawed stone, the dry tinder from her cave happened to be nearby, and the spark produced when the two stones hit happened to fly into the ball of shaggy fiber. Most important, Ayla just happened to be looking in that direction when the spark flew, landed on the tinder, smoldered for a moment, and sent up a wisp of smoke before it died.

That was the serendipity. Ayla supplied the recognition and the other necessary elements: she understood the process of making fire, she needed fire, and she wasn’t afraid to try something new. Even then, it took her a while to recognize, and appreciate, what she had observed. First the smoke puzzled her. She had to think about it before she made the connection between the wisp of smoke and the spark, but then the spark puzzled her more. Where had it come from? That was when she looked at the stone in her hand.

It was the wrong stone! It wasn’t her retoucher, it was one of those shiny stones that were scattered all over the beach. But it was still a stone, and stone didn’t burn. Yet something had made a spark that had made the tinder smoke. The tinder had smoked, hadn’t it?

She picked up the ball of shaggy bark fiber, ready to believe she had imagined the smoke, but the small black hole left soot on her fingers. She picked up the iron pyrite again, and looked at it closely. How had the spark been drawn from the stone? What had she done? The flint flake, she had
struck the flint. Feeling a little silly, she banged the two stones together. Nothing happened.

What did I expect? she thought, Then she banged them together again, with more force, striking sharply, and watched a spark fly. Suddenly, an idea that had been tenuously forming sprang into her mind full blown. A strange, exciting idea, and a little frightening, too.

She put the two stones down carefully on the leather lap cover, on top of the mammoth foot bone, then gathered together the materials to build a fire. When she was ready, she picked up the stones, held them close to the tinder, and struck them together. A spark flew and then died on the cold stones. She changed the angle, tried again, but the force was less. She struck harder and watched a spark land squarely in the middle of the tinder. It singed a few strands and died, but the wisp of smoke was encouraging. The next time she struck the stones, the wind gusted, and the smoldering tinder flared before it went out.

Of course! I have to blow on it. She changed her position so she could blow on the incipient flame, and made another spark with the stones. It was a strong, bright, long-burning spark, and it landed right. She was close enough to feel the heat as she blew the smoldering tinder into flame. She fed it shavings, and slivers, and, almost before she knew it, she had a fire.

It was ridiculously easy. She couldn’t believe how easy. She had to prove it to herself again. She gathered together more tinder, more shavings, more kindling, and then she had a second fire, and then a third, and a fourth. She felt an excitement that was part fear, part awe, part joy of discovery, and a large dose of sheer wonder, as she stood back and gazed at four separate fires, each made from the firestone.

Whinney trotted back around the wall, drawn by the smell of smoke. Fire, once so fearful, smelled of safety now.

“Whinney!” Ayla called, running to the little horse. She had to tell someone, to share her discovery, even if just with a horse. “Look!” she motioned. “Look at those fires! They were made with stones, Whinney. Stones!” The sun broke through the clouds, and suddenly the whole beach seemed to glitter.

I was wrong when I thought there was nothing special about those stones. I should have known; my totem gave one to me. Look at them. Now that I know, I can see the fire that lives inside. She grew thoughtful then. But why me?
Why was I shown? My Cave Lion gave one to me once to tell me Durc would live. What is he telling me now?