The Plains of Passage - Jean M. Auel [176]
Ayla anticipated Tholie’s words as much as everyone else, but for an entirely different reason. Jondalar had observed with awe her ability to learn new languages quickly when he first started teaching her to speak his, and he wondered how she did it. He didn’t know her skill with language was derived from a unique set of circumstances. In order to exist among people who learned from the memories of their ancestors, that were stored from birth in their huge brains as a kind of evolved and conscious form of instinct, the girl of the Others had been forced to develop her own memorizing abilities. She had trained herself to remember quickly so she would not be considered so stupid by the rest of her clan.
She had been a normal, talkative little girl before she was adopted, and though she had lost most of her vocal language when she began to speak as the Clan did, the patterns were set. Her driving need to relearn verbal speech so she could communicate with Jondalar had added impetus to a natural ability. Once begun, the process she had unconsciously used was further developed when she went to live with the Lion Camp and had to learn yet another language. She could memorize vocabulary after one hearing, though syntax and structure took a little longer. But the language of the Sharamudoi was close to Mamutoi in structure, and many words were similar. Ayla listened carefully to Tholie’s translation of her words, because as she was relating her story, she was learning their language.
As fascinating as her story of adopting a baby horse was, even Tholie had to stop and ask her to repeat herself when Ayla talked about finding the injured cave lion cub. Perhaps loneliness might drive someone to live with a grass-eating horse, but a gigantic carnivore? A full-grown male cave lion, walking on all fours, could nearly reach the height of the smallish steppe horses, and was more massive. Tholie wanted to know how she could even consider taking in a lion cub.
“He wasn’t so big then, not even the size of a small wolf, and he was a baby … and he was hurt.”
Though Ayla had meant to describe a smaller animal, people glanced toward the canine beside Roshario. Wolf was of northern stock, and big even for that large breed. He was the biggest wolf any of them had ever seen. The idea of taking in a lion that size did not appeal to many.
“The word she named him meant ‘baby,’ and she called him that even after he was full grown. He was the biggest Baby I ever saw,” Jondalar added, which brought chuckles.
Jondalar smiled, too, but then told a more sobering fact. “I thought that was humorous, too, later, but there was nothing funny about the first time I saw him. Baby was the lion that killed Thonolan, and almost killed me.” Dolando looked apprehensively at the wolf beside his woman again. “But what else can you expect when you walk into a lion’s den? Though we had watched his mate leave and didn’t know Baby was in there, it was a stupid thing to do. As it turned out, I was lucky that it happened to be that particular lion.”
“What do you mean, ‘lucky’?” Markeno asked.
“I was badly mauled and unconscious, but Ayla was able to stop him before he killed me,” Jondalar said.
Everyone turned back to the woman. “How could she stop a cave lion?” Tholie asked.
“The same way she controls Wolf and Whinney,” Jondalar said. “She told him to stop, and he did.”
Heads were shaking in disbelief. “How do you know that’s what she did? You said you were unconscious,” someone called out.
Jondalar looked to see who the speaker was. It was a young River man he had known, though not well. “Because I saw her do the same thing later, Rondo. Baby came to visit her once when I was still recovering. He knew I was a stranger, and perhaps he remembered when Thonolan and I went into