The Mammoth Hunters - Jean M. Auel [244]
Mamuts comments stayed on Her mind long after the conversation was over, and she went to bed still thinking about them. He was right, of course. In spite of Fralie’s feelings for her mother and Frebec, it wasn’t her fight. Ayla tried to think of some way she could convince Fralie, but she had tried before, and now with Frebec keeping her away from his hearth, she had no opportunity to talk about it. When she went to sleep the worry was heavy on her mind.
She woke up in the middle of the night, and lay still, listening. She wasn’t sure what woke her, but she thought it was the sound of Fralie’s voice moaning in the darkness of the earthlodge. After a long silence, she decided it must have been a dream. Wolf whimpered, and she reached up to comfort him. Perhaps he was having a bad dream, too, and that’s what woke her. Her hand stopped before it reached the pup as she strained to hear what she thought was a muffled moan.
Ayla pulled the covers back and got up. Quietly, she stepped around the drape and felt her way to the basket to relieve herself, then pulled a tunic over her head and went to the fireplace. She heard a muffled cough, then a spasm of coughs, that finally stopped in an equally muffled moan. Ayla stirred the coals, added a bit of kindling and bone shavings until she had a small fire, then dropped in a few cooking stones and reached for the waterbag.
“You can make some tea for me, too,” Mamut said in a quiet voice from the dark of his sleeping platform, then pushed back his covers and sat up. “I think we’ll all be up soon.”
Ayla nodded, and poured extra water in the cooking basket. There was another coughing spell, then stirring around and subdued voices from the Crane Hearth.
“She needs something to quiet the cough, and something to calm the labor … if it’s not too late. I think I’ll check my medicines,” Ayla said, putting her drinking bowl down, then hesitated, “ … just in case someone asks.”
She picked up a firebrand and Mamut watched her moving among the racks of dried plants she had brought back with her from the valley. It’s a wonder to watch her practice her healing arts, Mamut thought. She’s young to have such skill, though. If I were Frebec, I would have been more concerned about her youth, and possible inexperience, than her background. I know she was trained by the best, but how can she know so much already? She must have been born with it, and that medicine woman, Iza, must have seen her gift from the beginning. His musing was interrupted by another coughing spell from the Crane Hearth.
“Here, Fralie, have a drink of water,” Frebec said anxiously.
Fralie shook her head, unable to talk, trying to control the cough. She was on her side, up on one elbow, holding a piece of soft leather to her mouth. Her eyes were glazed with fever, and her face red from the exertion. She glanced at her mother, who was sitting on the bed across the passageway, glaring at her.
Crozie’s anger, and her distress, were both apparent. She had tried everything to convince her daughter to ask for help: persuasion, argument, diatribe; nothing worked. Even she had gotten some medicine from Ayla for her cold, and it was stupid of Fralie not to use the help that was available. It was all the fault of that stupid man, that stupid Frebec, but it did no good to talk about it. Crozie had decided she would not say another word.
Fralie’s cough subsided, and she dropped back down on the bed, exhausted. Maybe the other pain, the one she didn’t want to admit to, would not come this time. Fralie waited, holding her breath so as not to disturb anything, fearfully anticipating. An ache started in her lower back. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, and tried to will it