The Mammoth Hunters - Jean M. Auel [361]
“You may have prepared a way, but I wasn’t prepared,” Ayla said, avoiding Vincavec’s gaze. She looked up when he laughed. His eyes were gray, not black.
“You’re good! You’re strong, Ayla. I’ve never met anyone like you. You are so right for the Mammoth Hearth, for the Mammoth Camp. Tell me you’ll share my hearth,” Vincavec said, with every bit of persuasion and feeling he could bring to bear.
“I have Promised Ranec,” she said.
“That doesn’t matter, Ayla. Bring him along, if you wish. I would not mind sharing the Mammoth Hearth with so gifted a carver. Take us both! Or I’ll take you both.” He laughed again. “It would not be the first time. A man has a certain appeal, too!”
“I … I don’t know,” she said, then looked up at the muffled pounding of hooves.
“Ayla, I’m going to take Racer into the river and brush down his legs. Mud is caked up and drying on them. Do you want me to take Whinney, too?” Jondalar said.
“I’ll take her myself,” Ayla said, glad for the excuse to get away. Vincavec was fascinating, but a little frightening.
“She’s over there, near Ranec,” Jondalar said, turning toward the river.
Vincavec’s eves followed after the tall blond man. I wonder what-part he plays in all this, the Mamut-headman thought. They arrived together, and he understands her animals, perhaps as well as she does, but they don’t seem to be lovers, and it’s not because he has trouble with women. Avarie tells me they love him, but he never touches Ayla, never sleeps with her. It’s said he turned down the Womanhood ritual because his feelings were too brotherly. Is that how he feels toward Ayla? Brotherly? Is that why he interrupted us and directed her back to the carver? Vincavec frowned, then carefully pulled up several of the large mushrooms and, with a cord, tied them upside down to the branches of the “Old Mothers” to dry. He planned to get them on the way back.
After they crossed the tributary, they reached a dryer area, with open treeless bogs, farther apart. The honking, clacking, and squealing of waterfowl warned them of the large melt lake ahead. They set up camp not far from it and several people headed for the water to bring back supper. No fish were to be found in the temporary bodies of water, unless they happened to become part of a year-round river or stream, but amid the roots of tall phragmite reeds, bulrushes, sedges, and cattails swam the tadpoles of edible frogs and fire-bellied toads.
By some mysterious seasonal signal a vast array of birds, mostly waterfowl, came north to join the ptarmigan, the golden eagle, and the snowy owl. The spring thaw, that brought renewed plant growth and the great reedy marshes, invited the uncountable numbers of migrating fowl to stop, build nests, and proliferate. Many birds fed on the immature amphibians, and some on the adults, as well as newts and snakes, seeds and bulbs, on the inevitable insects, even on small mammals.
“Wolf would love this place,” Ayla said to Brecie as she watched a couple of circling birds, with sling in hand, hoping they would come in closer to the edge so she wouldn’t have to wade out too far to retrieve them. “He’s getting very good at going in after them for me.”
Brecie had promised to show Ayla her throwing stick, and wanted to see the young woman’s much-touted expertise with the sling. Both had been mutually impressed. Brecie’s weapon was an elongated, roughly diamond-shaped, crosswise section of leg bone, with the knobby epiphysis at the end removed and the edge sharpened. Its flight was circular, and thrown into a flock, several birds could be killed at one time. Ayla thought the throwing stick was much better for hunting birds than her sling, but the sling had more general application. She could also hunt animals with it.
“You brought the horses, why did you leave the wolf behind?” Brecie asked.
“Wolf is still so young I wasn’t sure how he’d behave on