The Plains of Passage - Jean M. Auel [32]
It took several trials at first, but she had long since worked out the best way to use the firestone. Now she could make fire more quickly than anyone with a fire-drill and hearth, and hard concentrated effort, could even imagine. The first time Jondalar had seen it, he couldn’t believe it, and the sheer wonder of it had contributed to her being accepted by the Lion Camp when Talut wanted them to adopt her. They thought she had done it with magic.
Ayla thought it was magic, too, but she believed the magic was in the firestone, not in her. Before they left her valley for the last time, she and Jondalar had collected as many of the grayish-yellow metallic stones as they could, not knowing if they would ever find them in any other place. They had given some to the Lion Camp and other Mamutoi, but still had many left. Jondalar wanted to share them with his people. The ability to make a fire quickly could be extremely useful, for many purposes.
Inside the ring of stones, the young woman made a small pile of very dry bark shavings and the fuzz from fireweed as tinder, and laid beside it another pile of twigs and smallwood for kindling. Nearby was some of the dry deadfall from the woodpile. Getting down very close to the tinder, Ayla held a piece of iron pyrite at an angle that she knew from experience would work best, then struck the magical yellowish stone, down the middle of a groove that was forming from use, with a piece of flint. A large, bright, long-lived spark flew from the stone and landed on the tinder, sending a wisp of smoke into the air. Quickly she put her hand around it and blew gently. A small coal glowed with a red light and a shower of tiny sun-yellow sparks. A second breath produced a small flame. She added twigs, and smallwood, and when it was going well, a stick of deadfall.
By the time Jondalar returned, Ayla had several roundish stones, collected from a dry wash near the river, heating in the fire for cooking, and a nice chunk of bison spitted over the flames, the outer layer of fat sizzling. She had washed and was cutting up cattail roots, and another white starchy root with dark brown skin called groundnuts, preparing to put them in a tightly woven waterproof basket half-full of water, in which the fat-rich tongue was waiting. Beside it was a small pile of whole wild carrots. The tall man put down his load of wood.
“It smells good already!” he said. “What are you making?”
“I’m roasting the bison, but that’s mostly for traveling. It’s easy to eat cold roast along the way. For tonight, and tomorrow morning, I’m making soup with the tongue and vegetables, and the little bit we have left from Feather Grass Camp,” she said.
With a stick, she fished a hot stone from the fire and brushed the ashes off with a leafy twig. Then, picking up a second stick and using them as tongs, she lifted the stone and dropped it in the basket with the water and the tongue. It sizzled and steamed as it transferred its heat to the water. Quickly she dropped several more stones in the basket pot, added some leaves she had cut up, and put on a lid.
“What are you putting in the soup?”
Ayla smiled to herself. He always like to know the details of her cooking, even the herbs that she used for making tea. It was another of his little traits that had surprised her because no man of the Clan would ever dream of showing so much interest, even if he might have been curious, in anything that was in the memories of the women.
“Besides these roots, I’m going to add the green tops of the cattails, the bulbs, leaves, and flowers of these green onions, slices of peeled thistle stalks, the peas from milk vetch pods, and I just put in some sage and thyme leaves, for flavor. And maybe I’ll put