The Mammoth Hunters - Jean M. Auel [190]
“No, I don’t think so, but as long as you know the plant, I’m satisfied,” Mamut said. “Your remedies for my arthritis have helped, you are good with medicine for elders.”
“Creb was old. He was lame and had pain from arthritis. I learn from Iza how to help. Then I help others in clan.” Ayla paused and looked up from her mixing. “I think Crozie suffer pains of age, too. I want to help. You think she object, Mamut?”
“She doesn’t like to admit to the failings of age. She was a proud beauty in her younger years, but I think you are right. You could ask her, especially if you can think of a way that wouldn’t bruise her pride. That’s all she has left now.”
Ayla nodded. When the preparation was ready, Mamut removed his clothing. “When you are resting, with poultice,” she said, “I have root powder of other plant I want to put on hot coals for you to smell. Will make you sweat, and is good for pain. Then, before you sleep tonight, I have new wash for joints. Apple juice and hot root …”
“You mean horseradish? The root Nezzie uses, with food.”
“I think, yes, with apple juice and Talut’s bouza. Will make skin warm, and inside skin warm, too.”
Mamut laughed. “How did you ever get Talut to let you put his bouza outside on the skin, and not inside?”
Ayla smiled. “He likes ‘magic morning-after medicine.’ I say I will always make for him,” she said while she applied a thick, gummy, hot healing plaster to the old man’s aching joints. He lay back comfortably, and closed his eyes.
“This arm look good,” Ayla commented, working on the arm that had been broken. “I think was bad break.”
“It was a bad break,” Mamut said, opening his eyes again. He glanced at Rydag, who was quietly taking everything in. Mamut had not spoken of his experience to anyone but Ayla. He paused, then nodded sharply with decision. “It’s time you knew, Rydag. When I was a young man on a Journey, I fell down a cliff and broke my arm. I was dazed, and finally wandered into a Camp of flatheads, people of the Clan. I lived with them for a while.”
“That is why you quick to learn signs!” Rydag smiled. “I thought you very smart.”
“I am very smart, young man,” Mamut said, grinning back, “but I also remembered some of them, once Ayla reminded me.”
Rydag’s smile widened. Except for Nezzie, and the rest of his Lion Hearth family, he loved these two people more than anyone in the world, and he had never been so happy since Ayla came. For the first time in his life, he could talk, he could make people understand him, he could even make someone smile. He watched Ayla working on Mamut, and even he could recognize her thoroughness and knowledge. When Mamut looked in his direction, he signaled, “Ayla is good Healer.”
“The medicine women of the Clan are very skilled; she learned from them. No one could have done a better job on my arm. The skin was scraped, with dirt ground in, and it was torn open with the broken bone poking through. It looked like a piece of meat. The woman, Uba, cleaned it and set it right, and it did not even swell up with pus and fever. I had full use when it healed, and only in these later years have I felt a little ache now and then. Ayla learned from the granddaughter of the woman who fixed my arm. I was told she was considered the best,” Mamut announced, watching Rydag’s reaction. The boy looked at both of them quizzically, wondering how they could know the same people.
“Yes. And Iza was best, like her mother and her grandmother,” Ayla said, finishing up. She hadn’t been paying attention to the silent communication between the boy and the old man. “She knew all her mother knew, had mother’s memories, and grandmother’s memories.”
Ayla moved some stones from the fireplace closer to Mamut’s bed, scooped up a few live coals with two sticks and put them on the stones, then sprinkled powdered honeybloom root on the coals. She went to get covers for Mamut to keep the heat in, but while she was