The Land of Painted Caves - Jean M. Auel [178]
“Do you know where your Cave is?”
“It’s on the central highland, a little toward the east, not far from the Southern Sea.”
“We may not be going there directly. There are some places we need to stop along the way.”
“I don’t mind if we stop,” Amelana said, then added a little tentatively, “but I would like to get home before the baby comes.”
“I think we can manage that,” said the One Who Was First.
After Amelana left, Zelandoni mumbled under her breath, “The handsome stranger visits your Cave and it seems so romantic to run off with him to make a home in a new place. I have no doubt she pleaded just as hard with her mother to let her get mated and go live with him at his home. But once you arrive, you find it’s not so different from the old one, only you don’t know anyone. Then your exciting new mate decides to join with a group that wants to make a new Cave. They expect you to be as excited about making a place of your own as they are, but they have only moved around the hill from their old Cave, and they are with people they know.
“Amelana is a total stranger, with a slightly different way of speaking, and probably used to a little coddling, who has moved to a new place where customs and expectations are a little different. She doesn’t need the excitement of making a new home; she has just moved to a new home. She needs to be able to settle down and learn about her new people. But her mate, who has already shown that he likes to take risks just by going on a Journey, is ready for the adventure of creating a new Cave with his—but not her—friends and relatives.
“They were probably both beginning to regret their hasty mating, beginning to argue about differences, perceived and real, and then she finds herself pregnant with no one to make a fuss over her. Her mother and aunts, and all her sisters and cousins and friends, are back at the home she left. And then her danger-loving mate takes one risk too many and dies. It’s probably better for everyone if she goes back to her home, a little wiser for her adventure. She really doesn’t have anyone here with whom she has a close attachment.”
“I didn’t have anyone here when I came,” Ayla said.
“But you did. You had Jondalar,” Zelandoni said.
“You said that her mate already had shown that he liked to take risks by going on a Journey. I met Jondalar on his Journey. Didn’t that make him a man who liked risks?”
“He was not the one who loved to take risks; his brother was. He went along to be with Thonolan, to protect him, knowing of his tendency to rush into precarious situations. And he had no one here to hold him. Marona really had nothing to offer him, except an occasional interlude of Pleasures. He loved his brother more than her, and perhaps he wanted to get out of the implied Promise that she was assuming much more than he was, but he wasn’t able to just come out and tell her. He was always looking for someone special. For a while he thought he found it with me, and I admit I was tempted, but I knew that it would never work. I’m glad that he found what he wanted with you, Ayla,” the large woman said. “Your situation, though superficially similar, is not at all the same as Amelana’s.”
Ayla thought about how wise Zelandoni was; then she suddenly wondered how many people were going to be making this Journey south that the First had proposed. The Donier, Jondalar, herself, and Jonayla, of course; she was saying the counting words under her breath, and touching her leg with her fingers, tallying the people as she named them. That’s four. Willamar and his two assistants are going, seven. He said he wanted to give them the full measure of his experience. He also said it would likely be his last extended trading mission, that he was tired of traveling. No doubt he is, Ayla thought, but she wondered if part of it was because he knew Marthona was not well and he wanted to spend more time with her.
And now Amelana is going; that’s eight. And if Jonokol comes, nine: eight adults and one child. Ayla had a feeling there would be more. Almost as though someone had known