The clan of the cave bear_ a novel - Jean M. Auel [192]
It was fortunate that Uba reached the meadow just as Ayla disappeared into the cave, or she would have thought the woman had vanished into thin air. The thick, old hazelnut bushes with their confusion of branches completely camouflaged the hole in the mountain wall even without summer foliage. Uba ran back to the cave. She had been gone longer than she expected; it had taken Ayla much longer than the girl thought to reach the small cave. She was afraid Iza would be worried and scold her. But Iza ignored Uba’s late return. She had seen her daughter slip out after Ayla and guessed her intention, but she didn’t want to know for sure.
20
“Shouldn’t she be back, Iza?” Creb asked. He had been anxiously pacing in and out of the cave all afternoon. Iza nodded nervously, not looking up from the cold, cooked venison haunch she was cutting into chunks.
“Ouch!” she cried suddenly as the sharp blade she was using opened a gash in her finger. Creb looked up, surprised as much by the fact that she cut herself as by her spontaneous outburst. Iza was so skilled with the stone knife, he couldn’t remember the last time she did it. Poor Iza, Creb thought. I’ve been so worried myself, I forgot how she must feel, he berated himself. No wonder she’s nervous, she’s worried, too.
“I talked to Brun a while ago, Iza,” Creb motioned. “He’s reluctant to look for her yet. No one should know where a woman disposes … where she is at a time like this. You know how unlucky it would be for a man to see her. But she’s so weak, she could be out there lying in the rain someplace. You could go look for her, Iza, you’re a medicine woman. She can’t have gone too far. Don’t worry about cooking, I can wait. Why don’t you go ahead, it’ll be dark soon.”
“I can’t,” Iza gestured and put her cut finger back in her mouth.
“What do you mean, you can’t?” Creb was puzzled.
“I can’t find her.”
“How do you know you can’t find her if you don’t look?” The old magician was thoroughly confused. Why doesn’t Iza want to look for her? Come to think of it, why hasn’t she been out looking long before this? I would have thought she’d be scouring the woods, turning over stones to find Ayla by now. She’s so nervous, something is wrong.
“Iza, why don’t you want to look for Ayla?” he asked.
“It wouldn’t help, I couldn’t find her.”
“Why?” he pressed.
The woman’s eyes were filled with fearful anxiety. “She’s hiding,” Iza confessed.
“Hiding! What is she hiding from?”
“Everyone. Brun, you, me, the whole clan,” she replied.
Creb was completely at a loss, and Iza’s enigmatic answers only made it worse. “Iza, you’d better explain. Why is Ayla hiding from the clan, or me, or you? Especially you. She needs you now.”
“She wants to keep the baby, Creb,” Iza gestured, then rushed on, begging him with her eyes to understand. “I told her it was the mother’s duty to dispose of a deformed baby, but she refused. You know how much she wanted it. She said she was going to take him and hide him until his naming day so Brun would have to accept him.” Creb stared hard at the woman, quickly grasping the full implications of Ayla’s willfulness.
“Yes, Brun will be forced to accept her son, Iza, and then he’ll curse her for deliberate disobedience, this time forever. Don’t you know if a woman forces a man against his will, he loses face? Brun can’t afford that, the men wouldn’t respect him anymore. Even if he curses her he’ll lose face, and the Clan Gathering is this summer. Do you think he can face the other clans now? The whole clan will lose face because of Ayla,” the magician gestured angrily. “What ever made her think of such a thing?”
“It was one of Aba’s stories, about the mother who put her deformed baby up in a tree,” Iza answered. The distraught woman was beside herself. Why hadn’t she thought about it more?
“Old women’s tales!” Creb motioned with disgust. “Aba should know better than to fill a young woman’s head with such nonsense.”
“It wasn’t only Aba, Creb. It was you, too.”
“Me! When did I ever tell her such stories?”
“You didn’t have to tell her