The clan of the cave bear_ a novel - Jean M. Auel [166]
“Yes, Brun.”
“I’m surprised to see you. I didn’t expect it.”
“This girl did not expect to be back, either.”
Brun was at a loss. He wanted to talk to her, but he didn’t know what to say, and he didn’t know how to end the audience he had requested. Ayla waited, then made a gesture of request.
“This girl would speak, Brun.”
“You may speak.”
She hesitated, trying to find the right expression to say what she wanted to say.
“This girl is glad to be back, Brun. More than once I was frightened, more than once I was sure I would never return.”
Brun grunted. I’m sure of that, he thought.
“It was difficult, but I think my totem protected me. At first, there was so much work to do, I didn’t have much time to think. But after I was trapped, I didn’t have much else to do.”
Work? Trapped? What kind of world is the spirit world? Brun almost asked her, then changed his mind. He didn’t really want to know.
“I think I began to understand something then.”
Ayla stopped, still groping. She wanted to express a feeling that was akin to gratitude, but not the way gratitude was normally felt, not gratitude that carried a sense of obligation or the kind a woman usually expressed to a man. She wanted to say something to him as a person, she wanted to tell him she understood. She wanted to say thank you, thank you for giving me a chance, but she didn’t quite know how.
“Brun, this girl is … is grateful to you. You said that to me. You said you were grateful for Brac’s life. I am grateful to you for my own.”
Brun leaned back and studied the girl—tall, flat-faced, blue-eyed. The last thing he expected was her gratitude. He had cursed her. But she didn’t say she was grateful for the death curse, he thought, she said she was grateful for her life. Did she understand he had no choice? Did she understand he had given her the only chance he could? Did this strange girl understand that more than his hunters, more even than Mog-ur? Yes, he decided, she does understand. For an instant, Brun had a feeling toward Ayla he’d never before had toward a woman. At that moment, he wished she were a man. He didn’t have to think any more about what he wanted to ask Mog-ur. He knew.
“I don’t know what they’re planning, I don’t think the rest of the hunters even know,” Ebra was saying. “All I know is I’ve never seen Brun so nervous.”
The women were sitting together preparing food for a feast. They didn’t know the reason for the feast—Brun just told them to prepare a feast that night—and they plied Iza and Ebra with questions trying to get some hint.
“Mog-ur has been spending all day and half the night in the place of the spirits. It must be a ceremony. While Ayla was gone, he wouldn’t go near it; now he hardly ever comes out,” Iza commented. “When he does, he’s so absentminded he forgets to eat. Sometimes he forgets to eat while he’s eating.”
“But if they’re having a ceremony, why did Brun work half a day clearing out a space in back of the cave?” Ebra motioned. “When I offered to do it, he chased me away. They have their place for ceremonies; why would he work like a woman clearing out the back?”
“What else could it be?” Iza asked. “Seems like every time I look, Brun and Mog-ur have their heads together. And if they notice me, they stop talking and have guilty looks on their faces. What else could those two be planning? And why are we having a feast tonight? Mog-ur’s been back in that space Brun cleared out all day. Sometimes he goes into the place of the spirits, but he comes right back out again. It looks like he’s carrying something, but it’s so dark back there I can’t tell.”
Ayla was just enjoying the companionship. After five days, it was still hard for her to believe she was back in the cave of the clan sitting with the women preparing food just as though she had never been away. It wasn’t exactly the same. The women were not entirely comfortable around her. They thought she had been dead; her return to life was nothing less than miraculous. They didn’t know what to say