The Land of Painted Caves - Jean M. Auel [242]
“Where is everyone else?” Jondalar said when she got to the campsite.
“They’re coming. I came ahead to make another pole-drag for Whinney to help get the meat moved. We’re going to bring some to another Cave. They call themselves the Zelandonii That Watches Over the Most Ancient Sacred Site. Amelana is from the Third Cave, but we’re going to the First Cave. There is a gathering of the zelandonia, and the First knew it! Or at least she guessed there might be. It’s hard to believe how much she knows. Where’s Jonayla?”
“Beladora and Levela are watching her along with their children. That meat has drawn every meat-eater in the region, on legs and wings, and we thought it would be a good idea to keep the little ones in a tent, out of sight. It’s been keeping all of us busy protecting that ‘lucky’ hunt,” Jondalar said.
“Have you killed anything?” Ayla asked.
“Mostly we’ve just been trying to scare them off, shouting and throwing stones.”
Just then a pack of hyenas appeared and, drawn by the scent of meat, went straight for the pile of bison. Without even giving it a second thought, Ayla pulled her sling off her head, reached for a couple of stones from her pouch, and in a smooth motion had a stone in the air aimed at the animal in the lead. A second stone quickly followed it. The leader was down when the second hyena gave a yelp that ended in the sound of a cackling laugh. The leaders of hyena packs were female, but all females had pseudo male organs and tended to be larger than the males. The hyena pack stopped advancing and were running back and forth thrashing about, grunting and howling their peculiar laughing sound, at a loss without their leader. The woman armed her spear-thrower and started for the indecisive pack.
Jondalar jumped in ahead of her. “What are you doing?” he said.
“Chasing off that dirty pack of hyenas,” she said, her face screwed up in an expression of disgust and the sound of loathing in her voice.
“I know you hate hyenas, but you don’t have to kill every one you see. They’re just animals like any other, and have their place among the Mother’s children. If we drag the leader off, the rest will likely follow,” Jondalar said.
Ayla stopped and looked at him, then felt her tension leave. “You are right, Jondalar. They are just animals.”
With spear-throwers armed, Jondalar picked up one hind foot and Ayla the other and started dragging. She noticed the hyena was still nursing, but she knew that hyenas often nursed for a year until the young were nearly full grown and the only way to tell the difference was in coat color. Young ones were darker. The snuffling, snorting, laughing pack followed; the other one she had hit was limping badly. They dumped the animal far away from the camp and as they walked back, they noticed that some of the other carnivores had followed them.
“Good!” Ayla said. “Maybe that will keep some of them away. I’m going to wash my hands. Those animals smell bad.”
Most of the time Ayla’s Zelandonii friends and relatives thought of her as an ordinary woman and mother, and didn’t even notice her accent, but when she did something like walking into a pack of hungry hyenas and killing their leader with a stone from her sling without seeming to give it a second thought, then they suddenly became aware of her differences. She was not born to the Zelandonii, her upbringing had been totally unlike any of theirs, and her unusual way of speaking became noticeable.
“We need to cut down some small trees for a new pole-drag. It was Zelandoni’s suggestion. I don’t think she wants blood on hers. She does consider it hers, you know,” Ayla said.
“It is hers. No one else would think of using it,” Jondalar said.
It took two trips to haul all the meat from the auspicious