The clan of the cave bear_ a novel - Jean M. Auel [254]
“What are you doing?” she motioned, protective of anything that was Iza’s.
“I’m looking for Iza’s bowls and things. The tools she used in this life should be buried with her so she has the spirit of them in the next world,” Creb explained.
“I’ll get them,” Ayla said, pushing Creb aside. She gathered together the wooden bowls and bone cups Iza had used to make her medicines and measure dosage, the round hand stone and flat stone base used for crushing and grinding, her personal eating dishes, a few implements, and her medicine bag, and put them on Iza’s bed. Then she stared at the meager pile that represented Iza’s life and work.
“Those are not Iza’s tools!” Ayla gestured angrily, then jumped up and ran out of the cave. Creb watched her go, then shook his head and began to gather up Iza’s tools.
Ayla crossed the stream and ran to a meadow where she and Iza had gone before. She stopped at a stand of colorful hollyhocks on long graceful stems and gathered an armful of different hues. Then she picked the many-petaled, daisylike yarrow used for poultices and pain. She ran through the meadows and woods collecting more plants Iza had used in making her healing magic: white-leafed thistle with round, pale yellow flowers and yellow spikes; large, brilliant yellow groundsels; grape hyacinths, so blue they were almost black.
Every one of the plants she picked had found their way into Iza’s pharmacopoeia at some time, but she selected only those that were also beautiful, with colorful, sweet-smelling flowers. Ayla was crying again as she stopped on the edge of a meadow with her flowers, remembering the times she and Iza had walked together gathering plants. Her arms were so full, she had trouble carrying them without her collecting basket. Several blossoms dropped and she knelt down to pick them up again and saw the tangled branches of a woody horsetail with its small flowers, and almost smiled at the idea that occurred to her.
She searched in a fold, pulled out a knife, and cut a branch of the plant. In the warm sun of early fall, Ayla sat at the edge of the meadow twining the stems of the beautiful blossoms in between and around the supporting network until the entire branch was a riot of color.
The whole clan was astonished when Ayla marched into the cave with her floral wreath. She went straight to the back of the cave and laid it beside the body of the medicine woman resting on its side in the shallow trench within an oval of stones.
“These were Iza’s tools!” Ayla gestured defiantly, daring anyone to dispute her.
The old magician nodded. She’s right, he thought. Those were Iza’s tools, those were what she knew, what she worked with all her life. She might be happy to have them in the world of the spirits. I wonder, do flowers grow there?
Iza’s tools, the implements and the flowers, were put in the grave with the woman, and the clan began to pile the stones around and on top of her body while Mog-ur made motions that asked the Spirit of Great Ursus and her Saiga Antelope totem to guide Iza’s spirit safely to the next world.
“Wait!” Ayla suddenly interrupted. “I forgot something.” She ran back to the hearth and searched for her medicine bag, and carefully withdrew the two halves of the ancient medicine bowl. She rushed back, then laid the pieces in the grave beside Iza’s body.
“I thought she might want to take it with her, now that it can’t be used anymore.”
Mog-ur nodded approval. It was fitting, more fitting than anyone knew; then he resumed his formal gestures. After the last stone had been piled on, the women of the clan began to lay wood around and on top of the stone cairn. An ember from the cave fire was used to start the cooking fire for Iza’s burial feast. The food was cooked on top of her grave, and the fire would be kept burning for seven days. The heat from the bonfire would drive all the moisture from the body, desiccating