The clan of the cave bear_ a novel - Jean M. Auel [19]
The Clan lived by unchanging tradition. Every facet of their lives from the time they were born until they were called to the world of the spirits was circumscribed by the past. It was an attempt at survival, unconscious and unplanned except by nature in a last-ditch effort to save the race from extinction, and doomed to failure. They could not stop change, and resistance to it was self-defeating, antisurvival.
They were slow to adapt. Inventions were accidental and often not utilized. If something new happened to them, it could be added to their backlog of information; but change was accomplished only with great effort, and once it was forced on them, they were adamant in following the new course. It came too hard to alter it again. But a race with no room for learning, no room for growth, was no longer equipped for an inherently changing environment, and they had passed beyond the point of developing in a different way. That would be left for a newer form, a different experiment of nature.
As Mog-ur sat alone on the open plain watching the last of the torches sputter and die, he thought of the strange girl Iza had found, and his uneasiness grew until it became a physical discomfort. Her kind had been met before, but only recently in his concept of reckoning, and not many of the chance meetings had been pleasant. Where they had come from was a mystery—her people were newcomers to their land—but since they arrived things had been changing. They seemed to bring change with them.
Creb shrugged off his uneasiness, carefully wrapped the cave bear’s skull in his cloak, reached for his staff, and hobbled to bed.
3
The child turned over and began to thrash.
“Mother,” she moaned. Flailing her arms wildly, she called out again, louder, “Mother!”
Iza held her, murmuring a soft rumbling undertone. The warm closeness of the woman’s body and her soothing sounds penetrated the girl’s feverish brain and quieted her. She had slept fitfully through the night, awakening the woman often with her tossing and moaning and delirious mutterings. The sounds were strange, different from the words spoken by Clan people. They flowed easily, fluently, one sound blending into another. Iza could not begin to reproduce many of them; her ear was not even conditioned to hearing the finer variations. But that particular set of sounds was repeated so often, Iza guessed it was a name for someone close to the child, and when she saw that her presence comforted the girl, she sensed who the someone was.
She can’t be very old, Iza thought, she didn’t even know how to find food. I wonder how long she’s been alone? What could have happened to her people? Could it have been the earthquake? Has she been wandering by herself that long? And how did she escape from a cave lion with only a few scratches? Iza had treated enough maulings to know the girl’s wounds were inflicted by the huge cat. Powerful spirits must protect her, Iza decided.
It was still dark, though dawn was approaching, when the child’s fever finally broke in a drenching sweat. Iza cuddled her close, adding her warmth and making sure she was well covered. The girl woke shortly afterward and wondered where she was, but it was too dark to see. She felt the reassurance of the woman’s body next to her and closed her eyes again, drifting into a more restful sleep.
As the sky lightened, silhouetting the trees against its faint glow, Iza crept quietly out of the warm fur. She stoked the fire, added more wood, then went to the small creek to fill her bowl and peel bark off a willow tree. She paused for a moment, clutched her amulet, and thanked the spirits for willow. She always thanked the spirits for willow, for its ubiquitous presence as well as for its painkilling bark. She couldn’t remember how many times she had peeled willow bark for a tea to