The Plains of Passage - Jean M. Auel [303]
“I’ve known of people who starved because they ran out of food and didn’t know where to find more, but you always seem to find something to eat, Ayla. How do you know so much?”
“Iza taught me. I think I’ve always been interested in food and things that grow,” Ayla said, then paused. “I guess there was a time when I nearly starved, just before Iza found me. I was young, and I don’t remember much about it.” A fond smile of remembrance flitted across her face. “Iza said that she never knew anyone who learned to find food as fast as I did, especially since I was not born with the memories of where or how to look for it. She told me that hunger taught me.”
After he finished devouring a second large serving, Jondalar watched Ayla sort through her carefully hoarded preserved food supplies and begin preparations for the dish she wanted to make for the feast. She had been thinking about what container she could cook in that would be large enough to make the amount she would need for the entire S’Armunai Camp, since they had cached most of their equipment and brought only bare essentials with them.
She took down their largest waterbag and emptied it into smaller bowls and cooking utensils, then separated the lining from the hide covering, which had been sewn together with the fur side out. The lining had been made from the stomach of an aurochs, which was not exactly waterproof, but seeped very slowly. The moisture was absorbed by the soft leather of the covering and wicked away by the hair, which kept the outside essentially dry. She cut open the top of the lining, tied it to a frame of wood with sinew from her sewing kit, then refilled it with water and waited until a thin film of moisture had seeped through.
By then the hot fire they had started earlier had burned down to searing coals, and she placed the mounted waterbag directly over them, making sure she had additional water close at hand to keep the skin pot filled. While she waited for it to boil, she started weaving a tight basket out of willow withes and yellowed grasses made flexible by moisture from the snow.
When bubbles appeared, she broke strips of lean dried meat and some fatty cakes of traveling food into the water to make a rich, meaty broth. Then she added a mixture of various grains. Later she planned to mix in some dry roots—wild carrots and starchy groundnuts—plus other pod and stem vegetables, and dried currants and blueberries. She flavored it all with a choice selection of herbs including coltsfoot, ram-sons, sorrel, basil, and meadowsweet, and a bit of salt saved since they left the Mamutoi Summer Meeting, which Jondalar didn’t even know she still had.
He had no desire to go very far, and he stayed nearby gathering wood, getting more water, picking grasses, and cutting willow withes for the baskets she was weaving. He was so happy to be with her that he didn’t want to let her out of his sight. She was just as happy to be in his company again. But when the man noticed the large quantity of their food supplies she was using, he became concerned. He had just been through a very hungry time and was unusually aware of food.
“Ayla, a lot of our emergency food stores are in that dish. If you use up too much, it could leave us short.”
“I want to make enough for all of them, the women and the men of Attaroa’s Camp, to show them what they could have in their own storage if they work together,” Ayla explained.
“Maybe I should take my spear-thrower and see if I can find fresh meat,” he said with a worried frown.
She glanced up at him, surprised at his concern. By far, the majority of the food they had eaten on their Journey had been gleaned from the land they passed through, and most of the time, when they did dip into their stores, it was more for convenience than necessity. Besides, they had more food supplies stashed away with the rest of their things near the river. She looked at him closely. For the first time, she noticed that he was