The Land of Painted Caves - Jean M. Auel [285]
Part Three
29
Ayla climbed the steep path to the top of the cliff. She carried a load of wood in a carrier that hung from a tumpline across her forehead and set it down near the battered column of basalt that seemed to grow at a precarious angle out of the edge of the limestone cliff. She stopped to gaze at the whole panorama. As often as she had seen it this past year that she had been marking the risings and settings of the moon and sun, the expansive view never failed to move her. She watched The River below flow in sinuous curves from north to south. Darkening clouds hugged the crests of the hills across The River to the east, obscuring their sharp outline. They would likely become more clear near dawn tomorrow, when she needed to see where the sun rose to compare it with the day before.
She turned the other way. The sun, blindingly brilliant, was on its downward path; it would soon be sunset and the bottoms of the few white fluffy clouds were tinged with pink, promising a grand show. Her eyes continued their movement to the horizon. She was almost sorry to see that the view toward the west was clear. She would have no excuse to avoid coming up tonight, she thought, as she headed back down to the Ninth Cave.
When she reached her dwelling under the sheltering limestone overhang, it was cold and empty. Jondalar and Jonayla must have gone to Proleva’s for their meal tonight, Ayla thought, or maybe Marthona’s. She was tempted to go look for them, but what was the use if she had to go out anyway?
She found tinder, flint, and a firestone near the cold hearth and started a fire. When it was well established, she added some cooking stones to it, then checked the waterbag and was glad to find it full. She poured some water into a wooden cooking bowl for tea. She searched around the hearth area and found some cold soup in a tightly woven basket that had been coated with river clay to make the cooking and storage pot even more watertight, something most of the women had started doing only within the last few years. With a ladle carved out of an ibex horn, she scooped up some of the contents from the bottom, and with her fingers picked out a few bites of cold meat and a rather soggy root of some kind, then moved the pot closer to the fire, and with bentwood tongs pushed some hot coals around it.
She added a few more sticks of wood to the fire, then sat down cross-legged on a low cushion while she waited for the stones to heat so she could bring the tea water to a boil, and closed her eyes. She was tired. The past year had been particularly difficult for her because she had to be awake during the night so much. She almost drifted off to sleep sitting up, but jerked awake when her head bobbed down.
With her fingers, she flicked a few drops of water on the cooking stones, watched them disappear with a hiss and a wisp of vapor, then using the bentwood tongs with the charred ends she picked up a cooking stone from the fire and dropped it into the bowl of water. The water roiled and sent up a cloud of steam. She added a second stone and when the water calmed down, she dipped her little finger in to test the heat. It was hot, but not as hot as she wanted. She added a third stone from the fire and waited for it to settle, then scooped out a large cupful of steaming water and dropped in a few pinches of dried leaves from a row of covered baskets on a shelf near the hearth and set down the tightly woven cup to wait for the tea to steep.
She checked a pouch that was dangling from a peg pounded into a support post. It held two small, flat sections of a megaceros antler and a flint burin that she had been using to gouge marks on the flat pieces cut out of the giant deer horn. She checked the tool to see if its chisel-like end was still sharp; with use, pieces spalled off. For a handle, the opposite end had been inserted into a section of antler from a roe deer that had been softened in boiling water. It hardened again when it dried. On one piece of flat antler she had been keeping a record of the sun’s and moon’s settings.