The Plains of Passage - Jean M. Auel [365]
Ayla looked around and, still not seeing the fireplace burning material, wondered if she had been understood.
Solandia saw her puzzled look and smiled. She reached over and picked up one of the brown stones. “We use this, burning stone,” she said.
Ayla took the stone from her hand and examined it closely. She saw a distinctive wood grain, yet it was definitely stone, not wood. She had never seen anything quite like it before; it was lignite, brown coal, a material between peat and bituminous coal. Jondalar had awakened, and he walked up behind her. She smiled at him, then gave the stone to him. “Solandia says this is what they burn in the fireplace,” she said, noticing the smudge it left on her hand.
It was Jondalar’s turn to examine it and look puzzled. “It does look something like wood, but it’s stone. Not a hard stone like flint, though. This must break up easily.”
“Yes,” Solandia said. “Burning stone breaks easy.”
“Where does it come from?” Jondalar asked.
“South, toward the mountains, are fields of it. Still use some wood, start fires, but this burns hotter, longer than wood,” the woman said.
Ayla and Jondalar looked at each other, and a knowing expression passed between them. “I’ll get one,” Jondalar said. By the time he returned, Losaduna and the eldest boy, Larogi, were awake. “You have burning stones, we have a firestone, a stone that will start a fire.”
“And it was Ayla who discovered it?” Losaduna said, more a statement than a question.
“How did you know?” Jondalar said.
“Maybe because he discovered the stones that burn,” Solandia said.
“It looked enough like wood that I thought I would try burning it. It worked,” Losaduna said.
Jondalar nodded. “Ayla, why don’t you show them,” he said, giving her the iron pyrite and flint along with the tinder.
Ayla arranged the tinder, then turned the metallic yellow stone around in her hand until it felt comfortable and the groove worn into the iron pyrite from continued use faced the right way. Then she picked up the piece of flint. Her motion was so practiced that it almost never took more than one strike to draw off a spark. It was caught by the tinder, and, with just a few blows of air, a little flame burst forth. There was a collective sigh from the watchers, who had been holding their breaths.
“That is amazing,” Losaduna said.
“No more amazing than your stones that burn,” Ayla said. “We have a few extra. I’d like to give you one, for the Cave. Perhaps we can demonstrate it during the Ceremony.”
“Yes! That would be a perfect time, and I will be happy to accept your gift for the Cave,” Losaduna said. “But we must give you something in return.”
“Laduni has already promised to give us whatever we need to get over the glacier and continue our Journey. He owes me a future claim, though he would have done as much anyway. Wolves broke into our cache and got our traveling food,” Jondalar said.
“You plan to cross the glacier with the horses?” Losaduna asked.
“Yes, of course,” Ayla said.
“What will you do for food for them? And two horses must drink much more than two people—what will you do for water when everything is frozen solid?” the One Who Serves asked.
Ayla looked at Jondalar. “I’ve been thinking about that,” he said. “I thought we could take some dry grass in the bowl boat.”
“And perhaps burning stones? If you can find a place to start a fire on top of the ice. You don’t have to worry about getting them wet, and it would be much less to carry,” Losaduna said.
Jondalar looked thoughtful, and then a big happy grin warmed his face. “That would do it! We can put them in the bowl boat—it will slide across the ice even with a heavy load—and add a few other stones to use as a base for a fireplace. I’ve been worrying about that for so long … I can’t thank you enough, Losaduna.”
Ayla discovered by accident, when she happened to overhear some of the people talking about her, that they considered her unusual speech mannerism to be a Mamutoi accent, although Solandia thought it was a minor speech impediment. No matter how hard she tried, she