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By Root 1474 0

just not especially gifted with words. He had learned to tell a story well enough, but he wasn’t quick with glib answers and humorous retorts. He was a serious and private man, who didn’t like to talk about himself, though he was a sensitive listener, which attracted confessions and confidences from others. At home, he had been renowned as a fine craftsman, but the same hands that could so carefully shape hard stone into fine tools were also skilled in the ways of a woman’s body. It was another expression of his physical nature, and, though not as openly, he had been equally renowned for it. Women pursued him, and jokes were made of his “other” craft.

It was a skill he had learned as he had learned to shape flint. He knew where to touch, was receptive and responsive to subtle signals, and he derived pleasure from giving Pleasure. His hands, his eyes, his entire body, spoke more eloquently than any words he ever uttered. If Ranec had been a woman, he would have called him an artist.

Jondalar had developed genuine affection and warmth for some women, and enjoyed them all physically, but he did not love, until he met Ayla, and he did not feel confident that she truly loved him. How could she? She had no basis for comparison. He was the only man she knew until they came here. He recognized the carver as a man of distinction and considerable charm, and saw the signs of his growing attraction to Ayla. He knew that if any man could, Ranec was capable of winning Ayla’s love. Jondalar had traveled half the world before he found a woman he could love. Now that he had finally found her, would he lose her so soon?

But did he deserve to lose her? Could he bring her back with him knowing how his people felt about women like her? For all his jealousy, he was beginning to wonder if he was the right person for her. He told himself that he wanted to be fair to her, but in his innermost heart he wondered if he could bear the stigma of loving the wrong woman, again.

Danug saw Jondalar’s anguish and looked at Wymez with troubled eyes. Wymez only nodded knowingly. He, too, had once loved a woman of exotic beauty, but Ranec was the son of his hearth, and overdue in finding a woman to settle down and raise a family with.

Ranec led Ayla to the Hearth of the Fox. Though she had passed through it several times every day, she had studiously avoided curious looks at the private quarters; it was one custom from her life with the Clan that applied to the Lion Camp. In the open house plan of the earthlodge, privacy was not so much a matter of closed doors as of consideration, respect, and tolerance for each other.

“Sit down,” he said, motioning her to a bed platform strewn with soft, luxurious furs. She looked around, now that it was acceptable to satisfy her curiosity. Though they shared a hearth, the two men who lived on opposite sides of the central passageway had living spaces that were uniquely individual.

Across the fireplace, the toolmaker’s area had a look of indifferent simplicity. There was a bed platform with a stuffed pad and furs, and a leather drape haphazardly tied above that looked as though it hadn’t been untied in years. Some clothing hung from pegs, and more was piled on a section of the bed platform extending along the wall beyond the partition at the head of the bed.

The working area took up most of the room, defined by chunks, broken pieces, and chips of flint surrounding a mammoth foot bone used as both a seat and an anvil. Various stone and bone hammers and retouchers were in evidence on the extension of the bed platform at the foot. The only decorative objects were an ivory figurine of the Mother in a niche on the wall, and hanging next to it, an intricately decorated girdle from which a dried and withered grass skirt hung. Ayla knew without asking that it had belonged to Ranec’s mother.

In contrast, the carver’s side was tastefully sumptuous. Ranec was a collector, but a very selective one. Everything was chosen with care, and displayed to show its best qualities and to complement the whole with a textural richness. The