The Plains of Passage - Jean M. Auel [35]
The young animal eagerly dashed after it, but he sniffed it warily before he picked it up. It still had the wonderful rotten odor he adored, but he wasn’t sure about that other strange smell. Finally he snatched it with his mouth. But very quickly he dropped it and began snorting and snuffling and shaking his head. Ayla couldn’t help it. His antics were so funny that she laughed out loud. Wolf sniffed the bone again, then backed off and snorted, looking very displeased, and ran toward the spring.
“You don’t like that, do you, Wolf? Good! You’re not supposed to like it,” she said, feeling the laughter bubbling up inside her as she watched. Lapping water didn’t seem to help much. He lifted a paw and rubbed it down the side of his face, trying to wipe his muzzle, as though he thought that would get rid of the taste. He was still snorting and huffing and shaking his head as he ran into the woods.
Jondalar crossed his path, and when he reached the glade he found Ayla laughing so hard there were tears in her eyes. “What is so funny?” he asked.
“You should have seen him,” she said, still chortling. “Poor Wolf, he was so proud of that rotten old bone he found. He didn’t know what happened to it, and he tried everything to get the taste out of his mouth. If you think you can stand the smell of horseradish and camphor, Jondalar, I think I’ve found a way to keep Wolf away from our things.” She held out the wooden bowl she had been using to mix the ingredients. “Here it is.’ Wolf repellent!’ ”
“I’m glad it works,” Jondalar said. He was smiling, too, but the glee that filled his eyes wasn’t caused by Wolf. Ayla finally noticed that his hands were behind his back.
“What have you got behind your back?” she asked, suddenly curious.
“Well, it just happens that when I was out looking for wood I found something else. And if you promise to be good, I just might give you some.”
“Somewhat?”
He brought the filled basket in front of him. “Big, juicy, red raspberries!”
Ayla’s eyes lit up. “Oh, I love raspberries.”
“Don’t you think I know it? What do I get for them?” he asked with a twinkle in his eye.
Ayla looked up at him and, walking toward him, smiled, a big beautiful wide smile that filled her eyes and beamed her love for him, and the warmth she had been feeling, and her delight because he wanted to give her a surprise.
“I think I just got it,” he said, letting out the breath he realized he’d been holding. “Oh, Mother, you are beautiful when you smile. You’re beautiful all the time, but especially when you smile.”
Suddenly he was consciously aware of her, aware of every feature and detail. Her long, thick, dark blond hair, gleaming with highlights where the sun had lightened it, was held back out of her way with a thong. But it had a natural wave and loose strands that had escaped the leather binding curled around her tanned face; one fell down her forehead in front of her eyes. He restrained an urge to reach out and move it aside.
She was tall, a good match for his own six-foot, six-inch frame, and the lithe, flat, wiry muscles of real physical strength were sharply defined in her long arms and legs. She was one of the strongest women he’d ever met; as physically powerful as many men he knew. The people who had raised her were endowed with an appreciably greater bodily strength than the taller but lighter-weight people she was born to, and though Ayla was not considered particularly strong when she lived with the Clan, she had developed a far greater strength than she normally might have, just to keep up. Coupled with years of observing, tracking, and stalking as a hunter, she used her body with ease and moved with uncommon grace.
The sleeveless