The Plains of Passage - Jean M. Auel [33]
“What are those leaves for?” he asked, indicating a bunch she had picked but not mentioned. He liked to know what she used and how she thought about food. He enjoyed her cooking, but it was unusual. There were some tastes and flavors that were unique to her methods, and not like the tastes of foods he had grown up with.
“This is goosefoot, to wrap the roast in when I put it away. They are good together when they’re cold.” She paused, looking thoughtful. “Maybe I’ll sprinkle some wood ashes on the roast; they taste a little salty, too. And I might add some of the roast to the soup after it browns, for color, and taste. With the tongue and the roast, it should be a good rich broth, and for tomorrow morning, it will be nice to cook up some of the grain we brought with us. There will be tongue left, too, but I’ll wrap it in dried grass and put it in my meat-keeper for later. There’s room, even with the rest of our raw meat, including the piece we took for Wolf. As long as it stays cold at night, it should all keep for a while.”
“It sounds delicious. I can hardly wait,” Jondalar said, smiling with anticipation, and something more, Ayla thought. “By the way, do you have an extra basket I can use?”
“Yes, but why?”
“I’ll tell you when I get back,” he said, grinning with his secret.
Ayla turned the roast, then removed the stones and added more hot ones to the soup. While the food was cooking, she sorted through the herbs she had gathered for “Wolf repellent,” putting aside the plant she had gathered for her own uses. She mashed up some of the horseradish root in a bit of broth for their meal, then began mashing the rest of the hot root and bruising the other harsh, sharp, strong-smelling herbs she had gathered that morning, trying to develop the most noxious combination of the plants that she could imagine. She thought the hot horseradish would be the most effective, but the strong camphor smell of the artemisia could be very helpful, too.
But the plant she had put aside occupied her thoughts. I’m glad I found it, she was thinking. I know I don’t have enough of the herbs I need for my morning tea to last for the whole Journey. I’m going to have to find more along the way to make sure I don’t have a baby, especially being with Jondalar so much. She smiled at the thought.
I’m sure that’s how babies get started, no matter what people say about spirits. I think that’s why men want to put their organs in that place where babies come from, and why women want them to. And why the Mother made that Her Gift of Pleasure. The Gift of Life is from Her, too, and She wants Her children to enjoy making new life, especially since giving birth is not easy. Women might not want to give birth if the Mother hadn’t made the starting of them Her Gift of Pleasure. Babies are wonderful, but you don’t know how wonderful until you have one. Ayla had been privately developing her unorthodox ideas about the conception of life during the winter as she had been learning about Mut, the Great Earth Mother, from Mamut, the old teacher of the Lion Camp, though the original idea had occurred long before.
But Broud wasn’t a pleasure for me, she recalled. I hated it when he forced me, but now I’m sure that’s how Durc got started. No one believed I would ever have a baby. They thought my Cave Lion totem was too strong for any man’s totem spirit to overcome. It surprised everyone. But it only happened after Broud began forcing me, and I could see his look in my baby. He had to be the one that started Durc growing inside me. My totem knew how much I wanted a baby of my own—maybe the Mother did, too. Maybe that was the only way. Mamut said the way