The clan of the cave bear_ a novel - Jean M. Auel [168]
“I don’t know,” Ayla shook her head. “If I wasn’t around, I don’t think he’d lose it so much. I think I bring out the worst in him.”
A strained silence followed. Women did not ordinarily discuss the real failings of their men so openly, but the discussion had cleared the air of tension around the girl. Iza wisely decided it was time to drop the subject.
“Does anyone know where the yams are?” she motioned.
“I think they were in the place Brun cleared out,” Ebra answered. “We may not find them until next summer.”
Broud noticed Ayla sitting with the women and frowned when he saw her examine Brac and hold him in her lap. It made him remember it was she who had saved the boy’s life, and that reminded him that she had been witness to his humiliation. Broud had been as overwhelmed by her return as the rest of them. The first day he viewed her with awe, and some apprehension. But the change that Creb had interpreted as growing maturity, and Brun had seen as her sense of her own luck, Broud took as flagrant insolence. During her trial by snow, Ayla had gained not only the confidence that she could survive, but a serene acceptance of life’s noisome trivialities. After her ordeal, with its life-and-death struggles, nothing as insignificant as a reprimand, whose effectiveness had long since worn thin from overuse, could ruffle her placid composure.
Ayla had missed Broud. In her utter isolation, even his harassment would have been preferable to the stark emptiness of total invisibility to people who loved her. The first few days, she positively relished his close, if abusive, attention. He not only saw her, he saw every move she made.
By the third day of her return, old patterns reestablished themselves but with a difference. Ayla didn’t have to fight herself to bend to his will, her response didn’t even have the undercurrent of subtle condescension. She was genuinely unmoved. He could do nothing to disturb her. He could cuff and curse and work himself up to the edge of explosive violence. It had absolutely no effect. She patiently acquiesced to his most unreasonable demands. Though it was unintentional, Ayla was giving Broud a small measure of the ostracism she had been dealt in such abundance. She excluded him from her responses. His most towering rage, controlled only by supreme expenditures of effort, was met with no more reaction than the bite of a flea; less, for a fleabite is at least scratched. It was the worst thing she could do, she infuriated him.
Broud craved attention, he thrived on it. For him, it was a necessity. Nothing drove him to greater heights of frustration than someone who failed to react to him. It mattered little, in the depths of his being, whether the reaction was positive or negative, but there had to be one. He was sure her indifference was because she had seen him belittled, witnessed his disgrace, had no respect for his authority. He was partly right. She knew the outer limits of his control over her, had tested the mettle of his inner strength, and found them both insufficient to gain her respect. But it wasn’t only that she didn’t respect him and didn’t respond to him, she usurped the attention he wanted.
By her very appearance she drew attention to herself, and everything about her drew attention: her powerful totem; sharing the hearth, and the love, of the formidable magician; training to become a medicine woman; saving Ona’s life; her skill with the sling; killing the hyena that saved Brac’s life; and now, returning from the world of the spirits. Every time Broud had exhibited great courage and rightfully deserved the admiration, respect, and attention of the clan, she upstaged him.
Broud glowered at the girl from a distance. Why did she have to come back? Everybody is talking about her; they’re always talking about her. When I killed the bison and became a man, everybody talked