The clan of the cave bear_ a novel - Jean M. Auel [160]
When she woke the next day, the first thing she did was check her air hole again, but the gale raged on. Will it never stop? It can’t just go on like that, can it? I want to go back. What if Brun had made my curse permanent? What if I could never go back, even if it did stop blowing? If I’m not dead now, I would die for sure. There just wasn’t enough time. I hardly had time to get enough to last a moon; I would never make it through the whole winter. I wonder why Brun made it a limited death curse? I wasn’t expecting it. Could I really have come back if I went to the spirit world instead of my totem? How do I know my spirit didn’t go? Maybe my totem has been protecting my body here while my spirit is away. I don’t know. I just don’t know. I only know if Brun hadn’t made the curse temporary, I’d never have a chance.
A chance? Did Brun mean to give me a chance? With a flash of insight, everything came together with a new depth that revealed her growing maturity. I think Brun really meant it when he said he was grateful to me for saving Brac’s life. He had to curse me, it’s the Clan way, even if he didn’t want to, but he wanted to give me a chance. I don’t know if I’m dead. Do people eat or sleep or breathe when they’re dead? She shivered with a chill not caused by the cold. I think most people just don’t want to. And I know why.
Then what made me decide to live? It would have been so easy to die if I had just stayed where I fell when I ran away from the cave. If Brun hadn’t told me I could come back, would I have gotten up again? If I didn’t know there was some chance, would I have kept trying? Brun said, “by the grace of the spirits …” What spirits? Mine? My totem’s? Does it matter? Something made me want to live. Maybe it was my totem protecting me, and maybe it was just knowing I had a chance. Maybe it was both. Yes, I think it was both.
It took a while for Ayla to comprehend that she was awake, and then she had to touch her eyes to know they were open. She stifled a scream in the thick suffocating blackness of the cave. I’m dead! Brun cursed me, and now I’m dead! I’ll never get out of here, I’ll never get back to the cave, it’s too late. The evil spirits, they tricked me. They made me think I was alive, safe in my cave, but I’m dead. They were mad when I wouldn’t go with them by the stream, so they punished me. They made me think I was alive when all the while I was really dead. The girl shook with fear, huddled in her fur, afraid to move.
The girl had not slept well. She kept waking and remembering eerie, frightening dreams of hideous evil spirits and earthquakes, and lynxes that attacked and turned into cave lions, and snow, endless snow. The cave had a dank, peculiar odor, but the smell was the first thing that made her realize her other senses were functioning, if not her sight. The next was when she panicked, bolted upright, and banged her head on the stone wall.
“Where’s my stick?” she motioned in the darkness. “It’s night and I have to mark my stick.” She scrambled around in the dark looking for her stick as though it was the most important thing in her life. I’m supposed to mark it at night; how can I mark it if I can’t find it? Did I mark it already? How will I know if I can go home if I can’t find my stick? No, that’s not right. She shook her head trying to clear it. I can go home, it’s past the