The Land of Painted Caves - Jean M. Auel [354]
Jondalar was hardly aware that a celebration was being planned, and until Joharran had asked him to join the hunting party, he didn’t care. Then it only became an excuse to get away for a while. He had seen Marona a few times. When she heard the rumors about the estrangement of Ayla and Jondalar, she had made a point of seeking him out, but he had lost all interest in her. He was little more than coldly polite when she spoke to him, but she was not the only one who tried to find out how serious their breach was. Brukeval also came to the camp of the Ninth Cave.
Though he had traveled to the Summer Meeting with the Ninth Cave, Brukeval had long since moved away to sleep in the men’s summer lodges, the “far lodges” that were constructed around the periphery of the Summer Meeting Camp—commonly shortened to “fa’lodges.” Some were used by young men recently elevated to manhood status, some by older men who were not yet mated or were between mates, or men who wished they were. Brukeval had never mated. He’d always had a secret fear of being refused, and had never asked anyone. Besides, none of the available women seemed all that interesting to him. Since he had no immediate family or children, he felt out of place at the Main Camp, and even around the more frequently used areas of the Ninth Cave. As the years went by and most of the men his age took mates, he avoided ordinary activities and familiar people more and more, and by default often ended up with the idlers who attached themselves to Laramar to partake of the brew he made, frequently imbibing of it himself for the forgetfulness it induced.
Brukeval had tried a few different men’s tents at the Summer Meeting, but finally settled in the one that housed many of the men he knew from the Ninth Cave who enjoyed easy access to Laramar’s brew. Laramar himself slept there most of the time rather than returning to the tent of his mate and her children. The children weren’t very welcoming lately, especially since Lanoga mated that boy with the feeble arm. She’d grown up to be pretty enough, Laramar thought; she could have gotten a better man, though he’d heard the boy could hunt. Madroman often chose that men’s tent as well, rather than the large dwelling of patronizing zelandonia, where he was still only an acolyte, even though he told everyone that he had been called.
Brukeval didn’t much like the men he chose to live with, a shiftless bunch who had little to offer and even less respect. He knew he was brighter and more capable than most of them. He was related to the families of those who often became leaders and he had grown up with people who were responsible, intelligent, and often talented. The men with whom he shared a fa’lodge were essentially lazy, weak willed, or slow, with no generosity of spirit or heart and few other redeeming qualities.
As a result, in an effort to bolster their own self-worth and as an outlet for their frustrations, they fed each other’s vanity and conceit with bragging contempt for something they could feel superior to: those dirty, stupid animals called Flatheads. They told each other that while they were not human, they could be tricky. Because Flatheads bore a vague resemblance to real people, they were sometimes clever enough to confuse the spirits that made a woman pregnant so that she gave birth to an abomination, and that was intolerable. For reasons of his own, the one thing Brukeval had in common with the men with whom he shared living space was a deep and abiding hatred for Flatheads.
Some of the men were brutal bullies,