The Mammoth Hunters - Jean M. Auel [271]
On the deepest, coldest nights of the harsh glacial winter, when it seemed the air itself would freeze, doubt that warmth and life would ever return again could arise in the most believing heart. Those times when spring seemed most remote, memories and stories of previous Spring Festivals relieved deep-seated fears and gave renewed hope that the Earth Mother’s cycle of seasons would indeed continue. They made each Spring Festival as exciting and memorable as possible.
For the big Spring Feast, nothing left over from the previous year would be eaten. Individuals and small groups had been out for days fishing, hunting, trapping, and gathering. Jondalar had put his spear-thrower to good use and was pleased to contribute a pregnant bison entirely by himself, thin and gaunt though she was. Every edible vegetable product they could find was collected. Birch and willow catkins; the young unfolding stems of ferns as well as the old rootstocks which could be roasted, peeled, and pounded into flour; the juicy inner cambium bark of pines and birch, sweet with new rising sap; a few purplish-black curlewberries, filled with hard seeds, growing beside the small pink flowers on the ever-bearing low shrub; and from sheltered areas, where they had been covered with snow, bright red lingonberries, frozen and thawed to a soft sweetness, lingered with the dark leathery leaves on low tufted branches.
Buds, shoots, bulbs, roots, leaves, flowers of every description; the earth abounded with delicious fresh foods. Shoots and young pods of milkweed were used for vegetables, while the flower, full of rich nectar, was used for sweetening. New green leaves of clover, pigweed, nettles, balsam root, dandelion, and wild lettuce would be cooked or eaten raw; thistle stalks and, especially, sweet thistle roots were searched out. Lily bulbs were a favorite, and cattail shoots and bulrush stems. Sweet, flavorful licorice roots could be eaten raw or roasted in ashes. Some plants were collected for sustenance, others mainly for the flavor they imparted, and many were used for teas. Ayla knew the medicinal qualities of most of them, and gathered some for her uses, as well.
On rocky slopes, the narrow tubular new shoots of wild onion were picked, and in dry, bare places, small leaves of lemony sorrel. Coltsfoot was collected from damp open ground near the river. Its slightly salty taste made it useful for seasoning, though Ayla gathered some for coughs and asthma. Garlicky-tasting ramson greens were picked for taste and flavor, as were tart juniper berries, peppery tiger lily bulbs, flavorful basil, sage, thyme, mint, linden, which grew as a prostrate shrub, and a variety of other herbs and greens. Some would be dried and stored, some used to season the recently caught fish and the various kinds of meats brought back for the feast.
The fish were plentiful, and favored at this time of year, since most of the animals were still lean from the ravages of winter. But fresh meat, including at least one, symbolic, spring-born young animal—this year a tender bison calf—was always included in the feast. To make a feast of only the fresh products of the earth showed that the Earth Mother was offering Her full bounty again, that She would continue to provide for and nurture Her children.
With the foraging and collecting of foods for the feast, the anticipation of the Spring Festival had been building up for days. Even the horses could sense it. Ayla noticed they were nervous. In the morning she took them outside, some distance from the earthlodge, to curry and brush them. It was an activity that relaxed Whinney and Racer and that relaxed her, and it gave her an excuse to get off by herself to think. She knew she should give Ranec an answer today. Tomorrow was the Spring Festival.
Wolf was curled up nearby, watching her. He sniffed the air, lifted his head and looked, and banged his tail against the ground, signaling the approach of someone friendly. Ayla turned, and felt