The Mammoth Hunters - Jean M. Auel [245]
“Fralie? Are you all right?” Frebec said, still standing there with the water.
She tried to smile at him, seeing his distress, his feeling of helplessness. “It’s this cough,” she said. “Everyone gets sick in spring.”
No one understood him, she thought, least of all her mother. He was trying so hard to show everyone that he was worth something. That’s why he wouldn’t give in, that’s why he argued so much, and was so quick to take offense. He embarrassed Crozie. He didn’t understand that you showed your worth—the number and quality of your affiliations, and the strength of your influence—by how much you could claim from kin and kind to give away, so everyone could see it. Her mother had tried to show him by giving him the right to the Crane, not just the hearth Fralie brought to him when they joined, but the right to claim the Crane as his own birthright.
Crozie had expected gracious acquiescence to her wishes and requests, to show that he appreciated and understood that the Crane Hearth, which was still hers in name, though she had little else, was his to claim. But her demands could be excessive. She had lost so much it was hard for her to give away any of her remaining claim to status, particularly to one who had so little. Crozie feared he would diminish it, and she needed constant reassurance that it was appreciated. Fralie wouldn’t shame him by trying to explain. It was a subtle thing, something you grew up knowing … if you always had it. But Frebec never had anything.
Fralie began to feel an ache in her back again. If she lay there quietly, maybe it would go away … if she could keep from coughing. She was beginning to wish she could talk to Ayla, at least to get something for the cough, but she didn’t want Frebec to think she was siding with her mother. And long explanations would just irritate her throat, and make Frebec defensive. She began coughing again, just as the contraction was reaching a peak. She muffled a cry of pain.
“Fralie? Is it … more than the cough?” Frebec asked, looking at her hard. He didn’t think a cough should make her moan like that.
She hesitated. “What do you mean, more?” she asked.
“Well, the baby … but you’ve had two children, you know how to do these things, don’t you?”
Fralie became lost in a racking cough, and when she regained control, she sidestepped the question.
Light was beginning to show around the edges of the smoke-hole cover when Ayla went back to her bed to finish dressing. Most of the Camp had been awake half the night. First it was Fralie’s uncontrollable cough that woke them, but soon it became apparent that she was suffering from more than a cold. Tronie was having some difficulty with Tasher, who wanted to return to his mother. She picked him up and carried him to the Mammoth Hearth instead. He still wailed, so Ayla took him and carried him around the large hearth, offering him objects to distract him. The wolf puppy followed her. She carried Tasher through the Fox Hearth and the Lion Hearth, and then into the cooking hearth.
Jondalar watched her approaching, trying to quiet and comfort the child, and his heart beat faster. In his mind he willed her to come closer, but he felt nervous and anxious. They had hardly spoken since he moved away and he didn’t know what to say. He looked around trying to think of something that might appease the baby, and noticed a small bone from a leftover roast.
“He might want to chew on this,” Jondalar volunteered, when she stepped into the large communal hearth, holding the bone out to her.
She took the bone and put it in the child’s hand. “Here, would you like this, Tasher?”
The meat was gone, but it still had some flavor. He put the knob end in his mouth, tasted, decided he liked it, and finally quieted.
“That was a good idea, Jondalar,” Ayla said. She was holding the three-year-old, standing close and looking