The Mammoth Hunters - Jean M. Auel [73]
Nezzie came out of the lodge carrying a large piece of leather stained from use, and saw Ayla and Deegie together. “Oh, Deegie. I was looking for someone to help me,” she said. “I thought I’d make a big stew for everyone. The bison hunt was so successful, Talut said he thought we should have a feast to celebrate. Will you set this up for cooking? I put hot coals in the pit by the big fireplace, and put the frame over it. There is a bag of dried mammoth dung out there to put in the coals. I’ll send Danug and Latie for water.”
“For one of your stews, I’ll help any time, Nezzie.”
“Can I help?” Ayla asked.
“And me,” Jondalar said. He had just come up to talk to Ayla and overheard.
“You can help me carry some food out,” Nezzie said as she turned to go back in.
They followed her toward one of the mammoth tusk archways that were along the walls inside the earthlodge. She pulled back a rather stiff, heavy drape of mammoth hide, which had not been dehaired. The double layer of reddish fur, with its downy undercoat and long outer hair, faced the outside. A second drape hung behind it and when it was pulled back they felt a breath of cold air. Looking into the dimly lit area, they saw a large pit the size of a small room. It was about three feet deeper than the floor level with the bare earth of the slope high up the walls, and it was almost full of frozen slabs and chunks, and smaller carcasses of meat.
“Storage!” Jondalar said, holding back the heavy drapes while Nezzie let herself down. “We keep meat frozen for winter, too, but not as conveniently close. Our shelters are built underneath the cliff overhangs, or in the front of some caves. But it’s hard to keep meat frozen there, so our meat is outside.”
“Clan keeps meat frozen in cold season in cache, under pile of stones,” Ayla said, understanding now what had happened to the bison meat they brought back.
Nezzie and Jondalar both looked surprised. They never thought about people of the Clan storing meat for winter, and were still amazed when Ayla mentioned activities that seemed so advanced, so human. But then Jondalar’s comments about the place where he lived had surprised Ayla. She had assumed all of the Others lived in the same kind of dwelling, and didn’t realize the earthlodges were constructions as unusual to him as they were to her.
“We don’t have a lot of stones around here to make caches with,” Talut said in his booming voice. They looked up at the red-bearded giant coming toward them. He relieved Jondalar of one of the drapes. “Deegie told me you decided to make a stew, Nezzie,” he said with an appreciative grin. “I thought I’d come and help.”
“That man can smell food before it’s even cooking!” Nezzie chuckled, as she rummaged around in the pit below.
Jondalar was still interested in the storage rooms. “How does the meat stay frozen like this? It’s warm inside the lodge,” Jondalar said.
“In winter, all the ground is frozen hard as a rock, but it melts enough to dig in summer. When we build a lodge, we dig down far enough to reach the ground that is always frozen, for storage rooms. They will keep food cold even in summer, though not always frozen. In fall, as soon as the weather turns cold outside, the ground starts to freeze up. Then meat will freeze in the pits and we start storing for winter. The hide of the mammoth keeps the warm inside and the cold outside,” Talut explained. “Just like it does for the mammoth,” he added with a grin.
“Here, Talut, take this,” Nezzie said, holding out a hard, frosty, reddish-brown chunk with a thick layer of yellowish fat on one side.