The Plains of Passage - Jean M. Auel [48]
“Do you really think you’ll be able to teach him not to threaten strangers?” Jondalar asked, after watching the first seemingly unsuccessful attempts. “Didn’t you tell me that it’s natural for wolves to be mistrustful of others? How can you hope to teach him something that is against his natural inclinations?” He mounted Racer while she put the rope away, and then she climbed on Whinney’s back.
“Is it a natural inclination for that horse to let you ride on his back?” she asked.
“I don’t think that’s the same, Ayla,” Jondalar said as they started out from the camp riding the horses side by side. “Horses eat grass, they don’t eat meat, and I think they are by nature more inclined to avoid trouble. When they see strangers, or something that seems threatening, they want to run away. A stallion may fight another stallion sometimes, or something directly threatening, but Racer and Whinney want to get away from a strange situation. Wolf gets defensive. He’s much more ready to fight.”
“He would run away, too, Jondalar, if we’d run with him. He gets defensive because he’s protecting us. And, yes, he’s a meat eater, and he could kill a man, but he doesn’t. I don’t think he would unless he thought one of us was threatened. Animals can learn, just like people can. It’s not his natural inclination to think of people and horses as his ‘pack.’ Even Whinney has learned things that she would not have if she lived with other horses. How natural is it for a horse to think of a wolf as a friend? She even had a cave lion for a friend. Is that a natural inclination?”
“Maybe not,” Jondalar said, “but I can’t tell you how worried I was when Baby showed up at the Summer Meeting and you rode straight up to him on Whinney. How did you know he’d remember you? Or Whinney? Or that Whinney would remember him?”
“They grew up together. Baby … I mean Baby…”
The word she used meant “baby” but it had an odd sound and inflection, unlike any language she and Jondalar usually spoke, a rough, guttural quality, as though spoken from the throat. Jondalar could not reproduce it, could hardly even approximate the sound; it was one of the relatively few spoken words from the language of the Clan. Though she had said it often enough that he recognized it, Ayla had formed the habit of immediately translating any Clan word she happened to use to make it easier. When Jondalar referred to the lion Ayla had raised from a cub, he used the translated form of the name she had given him, but it always struck him as incongruous that a gigantic male cave lion should have the name “Baby.”
“ … Baby was … a cub when I found him, a baby. He hadn’t even been weaned. He’d been kicked in the head, by a running deer, I think, and was almost dead. That’s why his mother left him. He was like a baby to Whinney, too. She helped me take care of him—it was so funny when they started playing with each other, especially when Baby would sneak up and try to get Whinney’s tail. I know there were times when she waved it at him on purpose. Or they’d each grab an end of a hide and try to pull it away from each other. I lost so many hides that year, but they made me laugh.”
Ayla’s expression turned pensive. “I never really learned to laugh until then. The people of the Clan didn’t laugh out loud. They didn’t like unnecessary noises, and loud sounds were usually meant for warnings. And that look you like, with teeth showing, that we call a smile? They made it to mean they were nervous, or feeling protective and defensive, or with a certain hand sign as implying a threatening gesture. It wasn’t a happy look to them. They didn’t like it when I was little if I smiled or laughed, so I learned not to do it very much.”
They rode along the river’s edge for a distance, on a flat, wide stretch of gravel. “Many people smile when they’re nervous, and when they meet strangers,” Jondalar said. “It’s not meant to be defensive or threatening, though. I think a smile is meant to show that you’re not afraid.”
Going ahead in single file, Ayla leaned to the side