The Mammoth Hunters - Jean M. Auel [92]
That wasn’t entirely true. Though none of the men made comments out loud, there was a break in their conversation as they watched her leave.
She’s a beautiful young woman, Wymez thought. Intelligent, and knowledgeable, and interested in many things. She’d bring a high Bride Price, if she were Mamutoi. Think what status she’d bring to a mate, and pass on to her children.
Danug’s thoughts ran along much the same lines, though they were not as clearly formed in his mind. Vague ideas about Bride Price and Matrimonials and even co-mating occurred to him, but he didn’t think he would stand a chance. Mostly, he just wanted to be around her.
Jondalar wanted her even more. If he could have thought of a reasonable excuse, he would have gotten up and followed her. Yet he feared to clutch too tight. He remembered his feelings when women tried too hard to make him love them. Instead it had made him want to avoid them, and feel pity. He did not want Ayla’s pity. He wanted her love.
A choking gorge of bile rose in his throat when he saw the dark-skinned man come out of the earthlodge, and smile at her. He tried to swallow it down, to control the anger and frustration he felt. He had never known such jealousy, and he hated himself for it. He was sure Ayla would hate him, or worse, pity him, if she knew how he felt. He reached for a large nodule of flint, and with his hammerstone, he smashed it open. The piece was flawed, shot through with the white crumbly chalk of its outer cortex, but Jondalar kept hitting the stone, breaking it into smaller and smaller pieces.
Ranec saw Ayla coming from the direction of the flint-knapping area. The growing excitement and attraction he felt every time he saw her could not be denied. He had been drawn from the beginning to the perfection of form she presented to his aesthetic sense, not just as a beautiful woman to look at, but in the subtle, unstudied grace of her movements. His eye for such detail was sharp, and he could not detect the slightest posturing or affectation. She carried herself with a self-possession, an unafraid confidence, that seemed so completely natural he felt she must have been born with it, and it generated a quality he could only think of as presence.
He flashed a warm smile. It wasn’t a smile that could easily be ignored, and Ayla returned it with matching warmth.
“Have your ears been filled with flint-talk?” Ranec said, making the last two words into one, and thereby giving the phrase a slightly derogatory meaning. Ayla detected the nuance, but wasn’t entirely sure of its meaning, though she thought it was meant to be humorous, a joke.
“Yes. They talk flint. Making blades. Making tools. Points. Wymez make beautiful points.”
“Ah, he brought out his treasures, did he. You are right, they are beautiful. I’m not always sure if he knows it, but Wymez is more than a craftsman. He is an artist.
A frown creased Avla’s forehead. She remembered he had used that word to describe her when she used her sling, and she wasn’t sure if she understood the word the way he used it.
“Are you artist?” she asked.
He made a wry grimace. Her question had touched at the heart of an issue about which he had strong feelings.
His people believed that the Mother had first created a spirit world, and the spirits of all things in it were perfect. The spirits then produced living copies of themselves, to populate the ordinary world. The spirit was the model, the pattern from which all things were derived, but no copy could be as perfect as the original; not even the spirits themselves could make perfect copies, that was why each was different.
People were unique, they were closer to the Mother than other spirits. The Mother gave birth to a copy of Herself and called her Spirit Woman, then caused a Spirit Man to be born of her womb, just as each man was born of woman. Then the Great Mother caused the spirit of the perfect woman to mingle with the spirit of the perfect man, and so give birth to many different spirit children. But She Herself chose which man’s spirit would mingle with a woman