The clan of the cave bear_ a novel - Jean M. Auel [292]
No I’m not! I’ll never know. I’ll never see Durc again.
Stop thinking about him, she commanded herself, wiping a tear away. She got up and walked to the edge of the river. It doesn’t do any good to think about him. And it doesn’t get me across this river!
She had been so preoccupied with her thoughts that she didn’t notice the forked log drifting close to the bank. She stared with detached awareness as the outstretched limbs of the fallen tree snared it in its tangled branches, and watched, without seeing, the log bumping and straining to break loose for long moments. But as soon as she saw it, she also saw its possibilities.
She waded into the shoal and dragged the log onto the beach. It was the top portion of the trunk of a good-size tree, freshly broken by violent flooding farther upriver, and not too waterlogged. With a flint hand-axe, which she carried in a fold of her leather wrap, she hacked off the longer of the two forking branches fairly even with the other one, and trimmed away obstructing limbs, leaving two rather long stubs.
After a quick look around, she headed for a clump of birch trees draped with clematis vines. Tugging on a fresh woody vine loosened a long tough strand. She walked back pulling off the leaves. Then she spread her hide tent out on the ground and dumped out the contents of her carrying basket. It was time to take stock and repack.
She put her fur leggings and hand coverings in the bottom of the basket along with the fur-lined wrap now that she wore her summer wrap; she wouldn’t need them until next winter. She paused for a moment wondering where she would be next winter, but she did not care to dwell on that. She paused again when she picked up the soft supple leather cloak she had used to help support Durc on her hip when she carried him.
She didn’t need it; it was not necessary for her survival. She had only brought it with her because it was something that had been close to him. She held it to her cheek, then carefully folded it and put it in the basket. On top of it she put the soft, absorbent leather straps she took along to use during her menstrual flow. Next her extra pair of foot coverings went in. She went barefoot now, but still wore a pair when it was wet or cold, and they were wearing out. She was glad she had brought a second pair.
She checked her food next. There was one birchbark packet of maple sugar left. Ayla opened it, broke off a piece, and put it in her mouth, wondering if she’d ever taste maple sugar again after this was gone.
She still had several cakes of traveling food, the kind the men took when they went hunting, made of rendered fat, ground-up dried meat, and dried fruit. Thoughts of the rich fat made her mouth water. The small animals she killed with her sling were lean, for the most part. Without the vegetable food she collected, she would slowly starve on a diet of pure protein. Fats or carbohydrates in some form were necessary.
She put the traveling cakes in the basket without indulging her taste, saving them for emergencies. She added some strips of dried meat—tough as leather but nourishing—a few dried apples, some hazelnuts, a few pouches of grain plucked from the grasses of the steppes near the cave, and threw away a rotten root. On top of the food she put her cup and bowl, her wolverine hood, and the worn foot coverings.
She untied her medicine bag from her waist thong and rubbed her hand over the sleek waterproof fur of the otter skin, feeling the hard bones of the feet and tail. The thong that pulled the pouch closed was threaded around the neck opening, and the oddly flattened head, still attached at the back of the neck, served as a cover flap. Iza had made it for her, passing the legacy from mother to daughter when she became the clan’s medicine woman.
Then, for the first time in many years, Ayla thought of the first medicine bag Iza had made for her, the one Creb had burned the first time she was cursed. Brun had to do it. Women were not allowed to touch weapons, and Ayla had been using her sling for