The Mammoth Hunters - Jean M. Auel [372]
Ayla felt hot tears at the corners of her eyes. Why should I care about him, when he doesn’t really care about me? She sniffed, and wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands. All this time when I’ve been thinking about him, and wanting him, he just wanted to forget me.
Well, Ranec wants me, and he makes good Pleasures, too. And he is so good to me. He wants to share a hearth with me, and I haven’t even been very nice to him. And he makes nice babies, too, at least Tricie’s baby is nice. I think I should start being nicer to Ranec, and forget about Jondalar, she thought. But even as the words formed in her mind, her tears broke forth again, and try as she would she could not stop the thought that rose up from deep within. Yes, Ranec is good to me but Ranec is not Jondalar, and I love Jondalar.
Ayla was still awake when people started to come into the tent. She watched Jondalar come through the opening, and saw him look in her direction, hesitating. She looked back at him for a moment, then she raised her chin and looked away. Ranec came in just then. She sat up and smiled at him.
“I thought you were tired. That’s why you went to bed early,” the carver said.
“I thought I was, but I couldn’t go to sleep. I think maybe I’d like to share your furs, after all,” she said.
The brightness of Ranec’s smile could have rivaled the sun, if it had been shining.
“It’s a good thing nothing can keep me awake when I’m tired,” Talut said with a good-natured grin, as he sat down on his sleeping roll to untie his boots. But Ayla noticed that Jondalar did not smile. He had closed his eyes, but it didn’t hide his grimace of pain, or the slump of defeat as he walked toward his sleeping place. Suddenly, he turned around and hurried back out of the tent. Ranec and Talut exchanged a glance, but then the dark man looked at Ayla.
When they reached the bog, they decided to look for a way around. They were carrying too much to fight their way through it again. The ivory route map of the previous year was consulted, and a decision was made to change direction the following morning. Talut was sure it would not take any more time to go the long way around, though he had some trouble convincing Ranec, who could not abide any delays.
The evening before they decided to take the new route, Ayla felt unusually edgy. The horses had been skittish all day, too, and even the attention of brushing and currying them hadn’t settled them down. Something felt wrong. She didn’t know what it was, just a strange unease. She started walking across the open steppes, trying to relax, and wandered away from camp.
She spied a covey of ptarmigan, and looked for her sling, but she had forgotten it. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, they took flight in a panic. Then a golden eagle appeared above the horizon. With deceptively slow wing motions, it rode the currents of air, and seemed in no great hurry. Yet, more quickly than she realized, the eagle was gaining on the low-flying grouse. Suddenly, in a flurry of speed, the eagle snatched its victim in strong talons, and squeezed the ptarmigan to death.
Ayla shuddered and hurried back to camp. She stayed up late, talking to people, trying to distract herself. But when she went to bed, sleep came slowly, and then was filled with unsettling dreams. She woke often, and sometime around daybreak, found herself awake again, and unable to go back to sleep. Slipping out of her bedroll, she went out of the tent, and started up the fire to boil water.
She sipped her morning tea as the sky grew lighter, staring absently at a thin stalk with a dried flower umbel growing near the fireplace.