The clan of the cave bear_ a novel - Jean M. Auel [157]
It was dark by the time she was through, and Ayla was glad for the fire. She banked it to be sure it wouldn’t die before morning and lay down wrapped in the old fur, but sleep eluded her. She stared at the flames while the dismal events of the day marched through her mind in woeful procession, not realizing when tears started to flow. She was afraid, but more, she was lonely. She hadn’t spent a night alone since Iza found her. Finally exhaustion closed her eyes, but her sleep was disturbed by bad dreams. She called out for Iza, and she called out for another woman in a language all but forgotten. But there was no one to comfort the desperately, achingly lonely girl.
Ayla’s days were busy, filled with activity to ensure her survival. She was no longer the inexperienced, unknowledgeable child she was at five. During the years with the clan, she had had to work hard, but she had learned in the process. She wove tight waterproof baskets to carry water and for cooking, and made herself a new collecting basket. She cured the skins of animals she hunted and made rabbit-fur linings for the insides of her foot coverings, leggings wrapped and tied with cord, and hand coverings made in the style of foot coverings—circular pieces that tied at the wrist in a pouch, but with slits cut in the palms for thumbs. She made tools from flint and collected grass to make her bed softer.
The meadow grasses supplied food, too. They were top-heavy with seeds and grains. In the immediate vicinity were also nuts, high-bush cranberries, bearberries, hard small apples, starchy potatolike roots, and edible ferns. She was pleased to find milk vetch, the nonpoisonous variety of the plant whose green pods held rows of small round legumes, and she even collected the tiny hard seeds from dried pigweed to grind and add to grains that she cooked into mush. Her environment supplied her needs.
She decided shortly after she arrived that she needed a new fur wrap. Winter held back the worst of its weather, but it was cold and she knew the snow would not be long in coming. She thought first of a lynx fur; the lynx held a special meaning for her. But its meat would be inedible, at least to her taste, and food was as important to her as fur. She had little trouble taking care of her immediate needs as long as she was able to hunt, but she needed to lay in a store for the time ahead when snow would keep her in the cave. Food was now her reason for hunting.
She hated the thought of killing one of the gentle shy creatures that had shared her retreat for so long, and she wasn’t sure if a deer could be killed with a sling. She was surprised they still used the high pasture when she saw the small herd, but decided she had to take advantage of the opportunity before they moved to lower elevations. A stone hurled with force at close range felled a doe, and a hard blow with a wooden club finished it off.
The fur was thick and soft—nature had prepared the animal for the cold winter—and venison stew made a welcome supper. When the smell of fresh meat brought a bad-tempered wolverine, a swift stone killed it and reminded her the first animal she ever killed was a wolverine who had been stealing from the clan. Wolverines were good for something, she had told Oga. Frost from breathing did not build up on the fur of a wolverine; their pelts always made the best hoods. This time I will make a hood from his pelt, she thought, dragging the slain scavenger back to the cave.
She built fires in a circle around her lines of drying meat to keep other carnivores away and to hasten the process of drying, and she rather liked the taste the smoke gave to the meat. She dug a hole in the rear of her cave, shallow, since the layer of earth was not deep at the back of the small crack in the mountain, and lined it with stones from the stream. After her meat was stored, she covered her cache with heavy rocks.
Her new fur, cured while the meat was drying, had a smoky odor, too, but it was warm and, with the old one, made her bed comfortable. The