The clan of the cave bear_ a novel - Jean M. Auel [73]
“Yes, but only a stronger spirit can defeat hers. Often the totem of a woman’s mate asks another spirit to help. Then the other spirit may be allowed to leave its essence. It’s usually the spirit of a woman’s mate that tries most; it’s the closest one, but it often needs help. If a boy has the same totem as his mother’s mate, it means he will be lucky,” Creb explained carefully.
“Can only women have babies?” she asked, warming to her subject.
“Yes,” he nodded.
“Does a woman have to be mated to have a baby?”
“No, sometimes she swallows a spirit before she is mated. But if she doesn’t have a mate by the time the baby is born, the baby may be unlucky.”
“Could I have a baby?” was her next hopeful query.
Creb thought about her powerful totem. Its vital principle was too strong. Even with the help of another spirit, it was not likely it would ever be defeated. But she will find that out soon enough, he thought.
“You’re not old enough, yet,” he evaded.
“When will I be old enough?”
“When you are a woman.”
“When will I be a woman?”
Creb was beginning to think she would never run out of questions. “The first time your totem’s spirit battles with another spirit, you will bleed. That is the sign that it was wounded. Some of the essence of the spirit that fought with it is left behind to make your body ready. Your breasts will grow, and there will be some other changes. After that, your totem’s spirit will fight with other spirits regularly. When the time for blood to flow comes and there is none, it means the spirit you swallowed has defeated yours and a new life has started.”
“But when will I be a woman?”
“Perhaps when you have lived through the cycle of all the seasons eight or nine times. That’s when most girls become women, some as early as seven years,” he replied.
“But how long will that be?” she insisted.
The patient old magician heaved a sigh. “Come here, I’ll see if I can explain,” he said, picking up a stick and taking a flint knife from his pouch. He doubted that she would understand, but it might still her questions.
Numbers were a difficult abstraction for people of the Clan to comprehend. Most could not think beyond three: you, me, and another. It was not a matter of intelligence; for example, Brun knew immediately when one of the twenty-two members of his clan was missing. He had only to think of each individual, and he could do it quickly without being conscious of it. But to transfer that individual into a concept called “one” took effort few could master. “How can this person be one and another time that person also be one—they are different people?” was the first question usually asked.
The Clan’s inability to synthesize and abstract extended into other areas of their lives. They had a name for everything. They knew oak, willow, pine, but they had no generic concept for all of them; they had no word for tree. Every kind of soil, each kind of rock, even the different kinds of snow had a name. The Clan depended on their rich memory and their ability to add to that memory—they forgot almost nothing. Their language was replete with color and description but almost totally devoid of abstractions. The idea was foreign to their nature, their customs, the way they had developed. They depended on Mog-ur to keep track of those few things that needed to be counted: the time between Clan Gatherings, the ages of the members of the clan, the length of isolation after a mating ceremony, and the first seven days of a child’s life. That he could do so was one of his most magical of powers.
Sitting down, Creb held the stick firmly wedged between his foot and a rock. “Iza says she thinks you are a little older than Vorn,” Creb began. “Vorn has lived through his birth year, his walking year, his nursing year, and his weaning year,” he explained, cutting a slash in the stick for each year as he said it. “I will make one more mark for you. This is how old you are now. If I take my hand and fit it in each mark, I will cover all of them with one hand, see?”
Ayla looked with concentration at the slash marks, holding out