The Land of Painted Caves - Jean M. Auel [48]
“There you are, Ayla!” Proleva said as she approached. She had four other women with her.
Ayla recognized Beladora and Jayvena, the mates of the leaders of the Second and Seventh Caves, and nodded at them. They acknowledged her as well. She wondered if the other two women were also the mates of leaders. She thought she recognized one of them. The other was drawing back from Wolf.
“Zelandoni has been looking for you,” Proleva continued. “And several young men have been asking about you, Jondalar. I told them if I saw you, I’d tell you to meet them at Manvelar’s lodge in the camp of the Third Cave.”
“Proleva, where is the zelandonia lodge?” Ayla asked.
“Not far from the Third Cave’s camp, right next to the camp of the Twenty-sixth Cave,” Proleva said, pointing in the general direction.
“I didn’t know the Twenty-sixth had set up a camp,” Jondalar said.
“Stevadal likes to be in the middle of things,” Proleva said. “His whole Cave isn’t staying at the Meeting Camp, but there are a couple of lodges for those who happen to stay late and want a place to sleep. I’m sure there will be a lot of coming and going, at least until after the First Matrimonial.”
“When will that be?” Jondalar asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t think they’ve decided yet. Maybe Ayla can ask Zelandoni,” Proleva said, as she and the women with her continued on to wherever they were heading when she stopped to pass on the messages.
Ayla and Jondalar said their farewells and headed toward the camps to which they had been directed. When they neared the camp of the Third Cave, Ayla recognized the large zelandonia lodge with its ancillary lodges close by. Right now, she thought, recalling the Summer Meeting of the year before, the young women who were being prepared for their Rites of First Pleasures were cloistered in one of the special dwellings, while appropriate men were being selected for them. In the other lodge were the women who had decided to wear the red fringe, to be donii-women this season. They had chosen to make themselves available to the young men who were wearing puberty belts, to teach them how to understand a woman’s needs.
Pleasures were a Gift from the Mother, and the zelandonia considered it a sacred duty to make sure the first experience of young adults was appropriate and educational. It was felt that both young women and young men needed to learn how to appreciate the Mother’s Great Gift properly, and that older, more experienced people needed to demonstrate and explain, to share the Gift with them the first time under the discreet but watchful eyes of the zelandonia. It was a Rite of Passage too important to be left to chance encounters.
Both ancillary lodges were very well guarded since most men found them almost irresistible. Some men couldn’t even look in the direction of either lodge without feeling aroused. Men, especially young men who had already had their manhood rites but were not yet mated, tried to peek in, and sometimes sneak into the lodge of the young women, and some older men liked to hover around it in hopes of catching a glimpse. Nearly every available man wanted to be selected for a young woman’s First Rites, though there was also a certain anxiety involved if they were. They knew they would be observed and they feared they might not perform well, but there was also a special sense of satisfaction when they did. Most men also had exciting memories of their own donii-women when they first became men.
But there were restrictions imposed on those who had the important task of sharing and teaching the Mother’s Gift of Pleasure. Neither the selected men nor the donii-women were to have any close ties with the younger ones for a year after the ceremony. They were considered too impressionable, too vulnerable, and not without reason. It wasn’t unusual for a young woman who had had a pleasurable first experience with an older man to want to share it again, even though it was forbidden. After First