The Mammoth Hunters - Jean M. Auel [187]
Ayla’s next step incorporated a suggestion from Deegie. After soaking and washing, Ayla had planned to rub fat into the hide to soften it, as she was accustomed to doing. But Deegie showed Ayla how to make a thin gruel of the putrefying brains of the animal to soak the hide in instead. Ayla was both surprised and pleased at the results. She could feel the change in the hide, the softening and elasticity which the brain tissue imparted, even while she was rubbing it in. But it was after thoroughly wringing out the hide that the work began. It had to be pulled and stretched constantly while it was drying, and the quality of the finished leather depended upon how well the hide was worked at this stage.
“You do have a good hand for leather, Ayla. Bison hide is heavy, and this is so soft. It feels wonderful. Have you decided what you want to make out of it?”
“No.” Ayla shook her head. “But I want to make leather red. What do you think? Footwear?”
“It’s heavy enough for it, but soft enough for a tunic. Let’s go ahead and color it. You can think about what to make with it later,” Deegie said, and as they walked toward the last hearth together, she asked, “What would you do with that hide now? If you were not going to color it?”
“I would put over very smoky fire, so leather will not get stiff again, if it gets wet, from rain, or even from swimming,” Ayla said.
Deegie nodded. “That’s what I would do, too. But what we are going to do to the hide will make the rain slide off.”
They passed by Crozie when they walked through the Crane Hearth, which reminded Ayla of something she had been meaning to ask about. “Deegie, do you know how to make leather white, too? Like tunic Crozie wear? I like red, but after that, I would like to learn white. I think I know someone who would like white.”
“White is hard to do, hard to get leather really snowy white. I think Crozie could show you better than I could. You would need chalk … Wymez might have some. Flint is found in chalk, and usually the pieces he gets from the mine up north have a covering of chalk on the outside,” Deegie said.
The young women walked back to the Mammoth Hearth with some small mortars and pestles, and several lumps of red ochre coloring material in various shades. Deegie set some fat to melting over the fire, then arrayed the colored bits of material around Ayla. There were bits of charcoal for black, manganese for a blue-black, and a bright sulphurous yellow, in addition to ochres of many colors: browns, reds, maroons, yellows. The mortars were the natural bowl shapes of certain bones, such as the frontal bone of a deer, or pecked out of granite or basalt, just as the stone lamps were. Pestles were shaped out of hard ivory or bone, except one, which was an elongated natural stone.
“What shade of red do you want, Ayla? Deep red, blood red, earth red, yellow red; that’s sort of a sun color.”
Ayla didn’t know she would have so many choices. “I don’t know … red red,” she replied.
Deegie studied the colors. “I think if we take this one,” she said, picking up a piece that was a rather bright earth red, “and add a little yellow to it, to bring out the red more, it might be a color you would like.”
She put the small lump of red ochre in the stone mortar and showed Ayla how to grind it very fine, then had her grind up the yellow color in a separate bowl. In a third bowl, Deegie mixed the two colors until she was satisfied with the shade. Then she added the hot fat, which changed the color, and brightened it to a