The Mammoth Hunters - Jean M. Auel [26]
When he stopped talking, it took a moment to realize he was through. Everyone wanted to hear more. Even though most of them had heard many of his adventures, he always seemed to have new stories or new twists to old stories.
“I think Nezzie would be everyone’s mother, if she could,” Tulie said, recalling the time of his return. “I had Deegie at the breast then, and Nezzie couldn’t get enough of playing with her.”
“She does more than mother me!” Talut said, with a playful grin as he patted her broad backside. He had gotten another waterbag of the powerful drink and was passing it on after taking a swallow.
“Talut! I’ll do more than mother you, all right!” She was trying to sound angry, but stifling a smile.
“Is that a promise?” he countered.
“You know what I meant, Talut,” Tulie said, brushing aside the rather obvious innuendos between her brother and his woman. “She couldn’t even let Rydag go. He’s so sickly, he’d have been better off.”
Ayla’s eye was drawn to the child. Tulie’s comment had bothered him. Her words had not been intentionally unkind, but Ayla knew he didn’t like being spoken of as though he wasn’t there. There wasn’t anything he could do about it, though. He couldn’t tell her how he felt, and without thinking, she assumed that because he couldn’t speak, he didn’t feel.
Ayla wanted to ask about the child, too, but felt it might be presumptuous. Jondalar did it for her, though it was to satisfy his own curiosity.
“Nezzie, would you tell us about Rydag? I think Ayla would be particularly interested—and so would I.”
Nezzie leaned over and took the child from Latie, and held him on her lap while she gathered her thoughts.
“We were out after megaceros, you know, the giant deer with the great antlers,” she began, “and planned to build a surround to drive them into—that’s the best way to hunt the big-antlered ones. When I first noticed the woman hiding near our hunting camp, I thought it was strange. You seldom see flathead women, and never alone.”
Ayla was leaning close, listening intently.
“She didn’t run away when she saw me looking at her, either, only when I tried to get closer. Then I saw she was pregnant. I thought she might be hungry, so I left some food out near the place she was hiding. In the morning it was gone, so I left more before we broke camp.
“I thought I saw her the next day a few times, but I wasn’t sure. Then that night, when I was by the fire nursing Rugie, I saw her again. I got up and tried to get closer to her. She ran away again, but she moved like she was in pain, and I realized she was in labor. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to help, but she kept running away, and it was getting dark. I told Talut, and he got some people together to go after her.”
“That was strange, too,” Talut said, adding his part to Nezzie’s story. “I thought we’d have to circle around and trap her, but when I yelled at her to stop, she just sat on the ground and waited. She didn’t seem too frightened of me, and when I beckoned to her to come, she got right up and followed behind me, like she knew what to do and understood I wouldn’t hurt her.”
“I don’t know how she even walked,” Nezzie continued. “She was in such pain. She was quick to understand that I wanted to help her, but I don’t know how much help I was. I wasn’t even sure she’d live to deliver her baby. She never cried out, though. Finally, near morning, her son was born. I was surprised to see he was one of mixed spirits. Even that young you could tell he was different.
“The woman was so weak I thought it might give her reason to live if I showed her that her son was alive, and she seemed eager to see him. But I guess she was too far gone, must have lost too much blood. It was as though she just gave up. She died before the sun came up.
“Everybody told me to leave him to die with his mother, but I was nursing Rugie anyway,