The Plains of Passage - Jean M. Auel [409]
Jondalar started to speak. Then he noticed that she was staring into the empty air, and he realized she was looking inside herself.
“…When I was cursed with death,” she continued. “I’ve worried about that for a long time. After Iza died, Creb took all the spirit pieces back, so they would not go with her to the next world. But when Broud had me cursed, no one took them back from me, even though to the Clan I am dead.”
“What would happen if they knew that?” Jondalar asked, indicating with a discreet twist of his head the two Clan people who were watching them.
“I would not exist to them any more. They would not see me; they would not let themselves see me. I could stand right in front of them and scream, and they would not hear it. They would think I was a bad spirit trying to trap them into the next world,” Ayla said, closing her eyes and shuddering with the memory.
“But why did you say you were glad that you still had the spirit pieces?” Jondalar asked.
“Because I can’t say one thing and mean something else. I can’t lie to him. He would know it. But I can refrain from mentioning. That’s allowed, out of courtesy, for the sake of privacy. I don’t have to say anything about the curse, even though he would probably know I was holding something back, but I can talk about being a medicine woman of the Clan, because it’s true. I still am. I still own the spirit pieces.” She frowned then, with worry. “But someday I will really die, Jondalar. If I go to the next world with the spirit pieces of everyone in the Clan, what will happen to them?”
“I don’t know, Ayla,” he said.
She shrugged, putting the thought aside. “Well, it’s this world I need to worry about now. If he will accept me as a medicine woman of the Clan, then he won’t have to be so concerned about owing a debt to me. It’s bad enough for him to owe a kinship debt to one of the Others, but worse if it’s a woman, especially one who used a weapon.”
“But you hunted when you lived with the Clan,” Jondalar reminded her.
“That was a special exception, and only because I survived a moon-cycle curse of death for hunting and using a sling. Brun allowed it because my Cave Lion totem protected me. He thought of it as a testing, and I think it finally gave him a reason to accept a woman with such a strong totem. He’s the one who gave me my hunting talisman and called me the Woman Who Hunts.”
Ayla touched the leather bag she always wore around her neck, and thought of her first one, the simple drawstring pouch that Iza had made for her. As her mother, Iza had put the piece of red ochre inside it when Ayla was accepted by the Clan. That amulet was nothing like the finely decorated one she wore now, which had been given to her at her Mamutoi adoption ceremony, but it still held her special tokens, including that original piece of red ochre. All the signs her totem had given to her were in it, as well as the red-stained oval from the tip of a mammoth tusk that was her hunting talisman, and the black stone, the small chunk of black manganese dioxide that held the spirit pieces of the Clan, which had been given to her when she became the medicine woman of Brun’s clan.
“Jondalar, I think it would help if you would talk to him. He’s unsure. His ways are very traditional, and too many unusual things have been going on. If he had a man to talk to, even one of the Others, rather than a woman, it might ease his mind. Do you remember the sign for a man to greet a man?”
Jondalar made a motion, and Ayla nodded. She knew it lacked finesse, but the meaning was clear. “Don’t attempt