The Mammoth Hunters - Jean M. Auel [115]
Underlying her feeling was a deep elemental fear, a combination of the primordial terror of heaving earth and the convulsive grief of a small girl who had lost everything, even her memory of those to whom she had belonged. There was nothing Ayla feared more than wrenching earth movements. They always seemed to signal changes in her life as abrupt and violent as the changes they wrought on the land. It was almost as though the earth itself was telling her what to expect … or shuddering in sympathy.
But after the first time she lost everything, the Clan had become her people. Now, if she chose, she could have people again. She could become Mamutoi; she would not be alone.
But what about Jondalar? How could she choose a people different from his? Would he want to stay and become Mamutoi? Ayla doubted it. She was sure he wanted to return to his own home. But he had been afraid all of the Others would behave toward her as Frebec did. He didn’t want her to speak of the Clan. What if she went with him and they would not accept her? Maybe his people were all like Frebec. She would not refrain from mentioning them, as though Iza, and Creb, and Brun, and her son, were people she should be ashamed of. She would not be ashamed of the people she loved!
Did she want to go to his home and risk being treated like an animal? Or did she want to stay here where she was wanted, and accepted? The Lion Camp had even taken in a mixed child, a boy like her son.… Suddenly a thought struck her. If they had taken in one, might they take another? One who was not weak or sickly? One who could learn to talk? Mamutoi territory extended all the way to Beran Sea. Didn’t Talut say someone had a Willow Camp there? The peninsula where the Clan lived was not far beyond. If she became one of the Mamutoi, maybe, someday, she could … But what about Jondalar? What if he left? Ayla felt a deep ache in the pit of her stomach at the thought. Could she bear to live without Jondalar? she wondered, as she wrestled with mixed feelings.
Jondalar struggled with conflicting desires, too. He hardly considered the offer made to him, except that he wanted to find a reason to refuse that would not offend Talut and the Mamutoi. He was Jondalar of the Zelandonii, and he knew his brother had been right. He could never be anything else. He wanted to go home, but it was a nagging ache rather than a great urgency. It was impossible to think in any other terms. His home was so far away, it would take a year just to travel the distance.
His mental turmoil was about Ayla. Though he’d never lacked for willing partners, most of whom would have been more than willing to form a more lasting tie, he’d never found a woman the way he wanted Ayla. None of the women among his own people, and none of the women he met on his travels, had been able to cause in him that state he had seen in others, but had not felt himself, until he met her. He loved her more than he thought was possible. She was everything he’d ever wanted in a woman, and more. He could not bear the thought of living without her.
But he also knew what it was like to bring disgrace upon himself. And the very qualities that attracted him—her combination of innocence and wisdom, of honesty and mystery, of self-confidence and vulnerability—were the result of the same circumstances that could cause him to feel the pain of disgrace and exile again.
Ayla had been raised by the Clan, people who Were different in unexplainable ways. To most people he knew, the ones Ayla referred to as Clan were not human. They were animals, but not like the other animals created by the Mother for their needs. Though not admitted, the similarities between them were recognized, but the Clan’s obvious human characteristics did not cause close feelings of brotherhood. Rather, they were seen as a threat and their differences were emphasized. To people like Jondalar, the Clan was viewed as an unspeakably bestial species not even