The Plains of Passage - Jean M. Auel [302]
She awoke as the first glimmerings of day broke through the bare branches of willow and birch to the east, near the stream. It was still dark in the rest of their secluded glen, but as she watched, she began to see thick-needled spruce and the longer needle-shafts of stone pine defined in the growing light. A fine powdering of dry snow had sprinkled down during the night, dusting evergreens, tangled brush, dry grass, and bedrolls with white, but Ayla was cozily warm.
She had almost forgotten how good it felt to have Jondalar sleeping beside her, and she stayed still for a while, just enjoying his nearness. But her mind would not stay still. She kept worrying about the day ahead and thinking over what she was going to make for the feast. She finally decided to get up, but when she tried to slip out of the furs, she felt Jondalar’s arm tightening around her, holding her back.
“Do you have to get up? It’s been so long since I’ve felt you beside me, I hate to let you go,” Jondalar said, nuzzling her neck.
She settled back into his warmth. “I don’t want to get up either. It’s cold, and I’d like to stay here in the furs with you, but I need to start cooking something for Attaroa’s ‘feast,’ and make your morning meal. Aren’t you hungry?”
“Now that you mention it, I think I could eat a horse!” Jondalar said, eying the two nearby exaggeratedly.
“Jondalar!” Ayla said, looking shocked.
He grinned at her. “Not one of ours, but that is what I’ve been eating lately—when I’ve had anything at all. If I hadn’t been so hungry, I don’t think I would have eaten horsemeat, but when there is nothing else, you eat what you can get. And there’s nothing wrong with it.”
“I know, but you don’t have to eat it any more. We have other food,” she said. They snuggled together for a moment longer, then Ayla pulled back the fur. “The fire has gone out. If you start a new one, I’ll make our morning tea. We’ll need a hot fire today, and a lot of wood.”
For their meal the evening before, Ayla had prepared a larger than usual amount of a hearty soup from dried bison meat and dried roots, adding a few pine nuts from the cones of the stone pines, but Jondalar had not been able to eat as much as he thought. After she put the rest aside, she had taken out a basket of small whole apples, hardly bigger than cherries, which she had found while trailing Jondalar. They had frozen but were still clinging to a dwarfed clump of leafless trees on the south face of a hillside. She had cut the hard little apples in half, seeded them, then boiled them for a while with dried rose hips. She left the result overnight near the fire. By morning it had cooled and thickened from the natural pectin to a sauce of a jellylike consistency with bits of chewy apple skin.
Before she made their morning tea, Ayla added a little water to the soup that was left and put extra cooking stones in the fire to heat it for their breakfast. She also tasted the thickened apple mixture. Freezing had moderated the usual tart sourness of the hard apples and adding rose hips had imparted a reddish tinge and a tangy sweet flavor. She served a bowl to Jondalar along with his soup.
“This is the best food I’ve ever eaten!” Jondalar said after the first few bites. “What did you put in it to make it taste so good?”
Ayla smiled. “It’s flavored with hunger.”
Jondalar nodded, and between mouthfuls he said, “I suppose you’re right. It makes me feel sorry for the ones still in the Holding.”
“No one should have to go hungry when there is food available,” Ayla said, her anger flaring for a moment. “It’s another thing when everyone is starving.”
“Sometimes, near the end of a bad winter, that can happen,” Jondalar said. “Have you ever gone hungry?”
“I’ve missed a few meals, and favorite foods always