The Plains of Passage - Jean M. Auel [174]
“What happened after you left here with Thonolan?” Markeno asked.
As painful as it might be to talk about, Jondalar knew Markeno had a right to know. Markeno and Tholie had become cross-tied with Thonolan and Jetamio; Markeno was as close in kinship as he, and he was a brother born of the same mother. Briefly he told how they had traveled downriver in the boat Carlono had given them, some of their close calls, and their meeting with Brecie, the Mamutoi headwoman of Willow Camp.
“We’re related!” Tholie said. “She is a close-cousin.”
“I learned that later, when we lived with Lion Camp, but she was very good to us even before she knew we were kin,” Jondalar said. “That was what made Thonolan decide to go north and visit other Mamutoi Camps. He talked about hunting mammoth with them. I tried to talk him out of it, tried to convince him to come back with me. We had reached the end of the Great Mother River, and that’s as far as he always said he wanted to go.” The tall man closed his eyes, shook his head as if trying to deny the fact, then bowed his head in anguish. The people waited, sharing his pain.
“But it wasn’t the Mamutoi,” he continued after a while. “That was an excuse. He just couldn’t get over Jetamio. All he wanted was to follow her to the next world. He told me he was going to travel until the Mother took him. He was ready, he said, but he was more than ready. He wanted to go so much that he took chances. That’s why he died. And I wasn’t paying attention either. It was stupid of me to follow him when he went after that lioness who stole his kill. If it hadn’t been for Ayla, I would have died with him.”
Jondalar’s last comments piqued everyone’s curiosity, but no one wanted to ask questions that would force him to further relive his grief. Finally Tholie broke the silence. “How did you meet Ayla? Were you near Lion Camp?”
Jondalar looked up at Tholie and then at Ayla. He had been speaking in Sharamudoi and he wasn’t sure how much she had understood. He wished she knew more of the language so she could tell her own story. It was not going to be easy to explain, or rather to make the explanation believable. The more time that passed, the more unreal it all seemed, even to him, but when Ayla told it, it seemed easier to accept.
“No. We didn’t know Lion Camp then. Ayla was living alone, in a valley several days’ journey away from Lion Camp,” he said.
“Alone?” Roshario asked.
“Well, not entirely alone. She shared her small cave with a couple of animals, for company.”
“Do you mean she had another wolf like this one?” the woman asked, reaching over to pat the animal.
“No. She didn’t have Wolf then. She got him while we were living at Lion Camp. She had Whinney.”
“What is a Whinney?”
“Whinney is a horse.”
“A horse? You mean she had a horse, too?”
“Yes. That one, right over there,” Jondalar said, pointing to the horses standing in the field, silhouetted against the red-streaked evening sky.
Roshario’s eyes opened big with surprise, which made everyone else smile. They had all gone through their initial shock, but she hadn’t noticed the horses before. “Ayla lived with those two horses?”
“Not exactly. I was there when the stallion was born. Before that, she lived with just Whinney … and the cave lion,” Jondalar finished, almost under his breath.
“And the what?” Roshario changed to her less than perfect Mamutoi. “Ayla, you should tell us. Jondalar’s confused, I think. And maybe Tholie will translate for us.”
Ayla had caught bits and pieces of the conversation, but she looked to Jondalar for clarification. He looked absolutely relieved.
“I’m afraid I haven’t been very clear, Ayla. Roshario