The clan of the cave bear_ a novel - Jean M. Auel [92]
“Does Zoug have other uses for the pieces left? The leather looks so soft,” she motioned.
Zoug felt expansive toward the attentive, admiring girl. “I have no farther use for the scraps. Would you like them?”
“This girl would be grateful. I think some of the pieces are large enough to use,” she gestured with her head bowed.
The next day Zoug rather missed Ayla working beside him and bringing him water. But his task was finished, the weapons were made. He noticed her heading for the woods with her new collecting basket strapped to her back and her digging stick in her hand. She must be going to gather plants for Iza, he thought. I don’t understand Broud at all. Zoug didn’t care much for the young man; he hadn’t forgotten the attack on him earlier in the season. Why does he always keep after her? The girl is hardworking, respectful, a credit to Mog-ur. He’s fortunate to have her and Iza. Zoug was remembering the pleasant evening he had spent with the great magician, and though he never mentioned it, he recalled it was Ayla who had asked Mog-ur to invite him to share a meal with them. He watched the tall, straight-legged girl walking away. It’s a shame she’s so ugly, he thought, she’d make some man a good mate someday.
After Ayla made herself a new sling out of Zoug’s scraps to replace the old one that had finally worn out, she decided to look for a place to practice away from the cave. She was always afraid someone would catch her. She started upstream along the watercourse that flowed near the cave, then began ascending the mountain along a tributary creek, forcing her way through heavy underbrush.
She was stopped by a steep rock wall over which the creek spilled in a cascading spray. Jutting rocks, whose jagged outlines were softened by a deep cushion of lush green moss, separated the falling water bouncing from rock to rock into long thin streams that splashed up, creating veils of mist, and fell again. The water collected itself in a foaming pool that filled a shallow rocky basin at the foot of the waterfall before it continued down to meet the larger waterway. The wall presented a barrier that ran parallel to the stream, but as Ayla hiked along its base back toward the cave, the sheer drop angled up in a steep but climbable grade. At the top the ground leveled out, and as she continued she came to the upper course of the creek and began to follow it upstream again.
Moist, gray green lichen draped the pine and spruce that dominated the higher elevation. Squirrels darted up the tall trees and across the underlying turf of variegated moss, carpeting earth and stones and fallen logs alike in a continuous cover that shaded from light yellow to deep green. Ahead she could see bright sunshine filtering through the evergreen woods. As she followed the creek, the trees thinned out, intermixed with a few deciduous trees dwarfed to brush, then opened out to a clearing. She emerged from the woods into a small field whose far end terminated in the gray brown rock of the mountain, sparsely covered with clinging growth as it soared to higher reaches.
The creek, which meandered across one side of the meadow, found its source in a large spring gushing out of the side of a rock wall near a large hazelnut clump growing flush against the rock. The mountain range was honeycombed with underground fissures and chutes that filtered the glacial runoff, which appeared again as clear, sparkling springs.
Ayla crossed the high mountain meadow and drank deeply of the cold water, then stopped to examine the still unripe double and triple clusters of nuts encased in their green, prickly coverings. She picked a clump, peeled away the casing, and cracked the soft shell with her teeth, exposing a shiny white half-grown nut. She always liked unripe hazelnuts better than fully mature ones that had dropped to the ground. The taste aroused her appetite and she began to pick several clusters and put them into her basket. While reaching, she noticed a dark space behind the heavy foliage.
Cautiously,