The Land of Painted Caves - Jean M. Auel [392]
When she came to the mouth of the small stream as it emptied into The River, she turned to follow it instead. She had to walk upstream some distance before she found a few soaproot plants, in the woods behind the camp of the Ninth Cave. It was late in the season and most had been picked, and then the variety she found wasn’t the same plant that the Clan used, and she had wanted the ritual to be right. Although, since she was a woman, it would never be a Clan ceremony anyway. Only men of the Clan consumed the roots. The woman’s job was only to prepare them. As she stooped to pull the soaproots out, she thought she caught a glimpse of Jondalar in the woods, walking alongside the small stream, but when she stood up, she didn’t see him and wondered if it was her imagination.
The stallion was glad to see Jondalar. The other horses were, too, but he didn’t want to take them. He was in the mood for a long run alone. When they reached the open plains, Jondalar urged the horse into a thundering gallop across the land. Racer seemed just as eager to live up to his name. Jondalar wasn’t paying much attention to where they were going, or where they were. Suddenly, he was literally jerked out of his moody meditation when he heard a loud belligerent neigh, the sound of hoofs, and felt his mount begin to rear. They were in the middle of a herd of horses. It was only his years of riding and quick reflexes that enabled him to keep his seat. He lunged forward and grabbed a handful of the stand-up mane of the steppe horse and held on, struggling to calm the stallion and get him back under control. Racer was a healthy stallion in his prime. Though he’d never had the experience of living in the auxiliary male herd that stayed near the fringes of a primary herd of females and young, keeping the herd stallion constantly on guard and ready to defend his own, or of the play-fighting with other young males as he was growing up, yet he was instinctively ready to challenge the herd male.
Jondalar’s first thought was to get his horse as far away from the herd as possible, as fast as he could, but it was all he could do to turn the stallion around and head back toward the Campsite. When Racer settled down and they were finally heading steadily back, Jondalar began to wonder if it was fair to keep the virile stallion away from other horses, and for the first time, he seriously contemplated the idea of letting him go. He wasn’t ready to give him up yet, but he began to rethink taking long rides alone on the brown stallion.
On the way back, he found himself moodily introspective again. He remembered the day of the big meeting, and watching Ayla sitting stiffly while Brukeval reviled her. He had ached to comfort her, to force Brukeval to stop, to tell him he was wrong. He had completely understood everything Zelandoni said; he’d heard most of it over the years from Ayla and he was more ready than most to accept it. The thing that was new to him was the name given to the relationship—“far mother,” shortened to “fa’ther”—and he thought about Zelandoni’s final words, that the men would name the boys; fathers would name their sons. He said the word over to himself. Father. He was a father. He was Jonayla’s father.
He wasn’t fit to be Jonayla’s father! It would shame her to name him her father. He had nearly killed a man, with his fists. If it hadn’t been for Danug, he would have. Ayla had lost a baby when she was alone, in the deep passages of Fountain Rocks Cave, and he wasn’t there to help her. What if the child she had lost was a boy? If she hadn’t lost it and it was a boy, would he have been the one to name him? What would it be like to decide on a name for a child?
What did it matter? He would never be able to name a child. He would never have any more children. He had lost his mate; he would have to leave his hearth. After Zelandoni had closed the meeting, he had avoided the conversations that everyone was having and had hurried back to the fa’lodge so he wouldn’t have to see Ayla, or Jonayla.
He was still feeling the same when the