The Land of Painted Caves - Jean M. Auel [308]
Have I been called? Am I Zelandoni now? Because I made the sacrifice of my baby, the Great Mother spoke to me, and gave me the rest of the Mother’s Song, so I could share it, and bring this wonderful Gift to Her Children. Now Jondalar will know for certain that Jonayla is his as much as she is mine. And we’ll know how to start a new baby when we want one. Now all men will know that it is more than spirits—it is him, his essence; his children are a part of him.
But what if a woman doesn’t want another child? Or shouldn’t have another one because she’s too weak, or exhausted from having too many? Then she will know how to stop it! Now a woman will know how not to have a child if she is not ready, or doesn’t want one. She doesn’t have to ask the Mother, she won’t have to take any special medicine, she will just have to stop sharing Pleasures and she won’t have any more children. For the first time, a woman can be in control of her own body, her own life. This is very powerful knowledge … but there is another side. What about the man?
What if he doesn’t want to stop sharing Pleasures? Or what if he wants a child that he knows comes from him? Or what if he doesn’t want a child?
I want another baby, and I know Jondalar would want another baby, too. He’s so good with Jonayla, and he’s so good with the youngsters who are learning to knap flint, his apprentices. I’m sorry I lost this baby. Tears came to her eyes as she thought about the baby she miscarried. But I can have another one. If only Jondalar were here, we could begin to start another one now, but he’s at the Summer Meeting. I can’t even tell him about losing the baby if I’m here and he’s at the Summer Meeting. He would feel bad, I know he would. He would want to start another one.
Why don’t I go? I don’t have to watch the sky anymore. I don’t have to stay up late; my training is over. I have been “called.” I am Zelandoni! And I need to tell the rest of the zelandonia. The Mother not only called me, She gave me a great Gift. A Gift for everyone. I need to go so I can tell all the Zelandonii about the Mother’s wonderful new Gift. And so I can tell Jondalar, and maybe start another baby.
31
Ayla quickly got up from the rock, put on her clean clothes, gathered up her soiled ones and the drying skin, and whistled to Wolf as she hurried back along the path. As she walked up to the stone front porch of the shelter, she remembered her first swim with Jondalar, and then Marona and her friends offering to give her some new clothes.
Though Ayla had developed varying levels of tolerance toward the other women who were involved in the trick, she never got over her aversion to Marona, and avoided contact with her. The feeling was more than mutual. Marona had never made any effort to reconcile with the woman Jondalar brought home with him from his Journey. She had mated for a second time the same summer that Ayla and Jondalar did, but at the Second Matrimonial, and once again more recently. That mating had apparently not worked out, either; she had moved back to the Ninth Cave to stay with her cousin a year or so before. But for all her matings, she had no children.
Ayla couldn’t abide the woman, and didn’t know why she should be thinking of her. She shook off thoughts of Marona and concentrated on Jondalar. I’m so glad to finally be going to the Summer Meeting, she thought. I can ride Whinney, and it won’t take long at all to get there, no more than a day, if I don’t stop along the way.
The Summer Meeting was being held this year about twenty miles to the north along The River, at her favorite place for a Meeting. It was the same location as the first Zelandonii Summer Meeting she had ever gone to, and the one where she and Jondalar were mated. Such Meetings usually used up nearly all the resources around the area, but if enough time was allowed to pass, Mother Earth healed the place from the misuse caused by the large concentration of people and it was refreshed enough