The Plains of Passage - Jean M. Auel [79]
“They must be gone,” Jondalar said. “They left a donii to guard each lodge.”
“They’re probably hunting, or at a Summer Meeting, or visiting,” Ayla said, feeling real disappointment that there were no people. “That’s too bad. I was looking forward to seeing someone.” She turned to go.
“Wait, Ayla. Where are you going?”
“Back to the river.” She looked puzzled.
“But this is perfect,” he said. “We can stay here.”
“They left a mutoi—a donii—to guard their lodges. The spirit of the Mother is protecting them. We can’t stay here and disturb Her spirit. It will bring us bad luck,” she said, knowing full well that he knew it.
“We can stay, if we need to. We just can’t take anything we don’t need. That’s always understood. Ayla, we need shelter. Our tent is soaked. We have to give it a chance to dry out. While we’re waiting, we can go hunting. If we get the right kind of animal, we can use the hide to make a bowl boat to cross the river.”
Ayla’s frown slowly changed to an enlightened smile, as she grasped his meaning and realized the implications. They did need a few days to recover from their near disaster and replace some of their losses. “Maybe we can get enough hide to make a new parfleche, too,” she said. “Once it’s cleaned and dehaired, rawhide doesn’t take that long to set up, not any longer than it takes to dry meat. It just has to be stretched and left to get hard.” She glanced down toward the river. “And look at those birches down there. I think I could make good poles out of some of those. Jondalar, you’re right. We need to stay here for a few days. The Mother will understand. And we could leave some dry meat for the people who live here, to thank them for the use of their Camp … if we’re lucky with our hunting. Which lodge should we stay in?”
“The Mammoth Hearth. That’s where visitors usually stay.”
“Do you think there is a Mammoth Hearth? I mean, do you think this is a Mamutoi Camp?” Ayla asked.
“I don’t know. It’s not one big earthlodge that everyone lives in like Lion Camp,” Jondalar said, looking at the group of seven round dwellings covered with a smooth layer of hardened earth and river clay. Rather than a single, large, multifamily longhouse, like the one they had lived in during the winter, this place had several smaller dwellings clustered together, but the purpose was the same. It was a settlement, a community of more-or-less related families.
“No, it’s like Wolf Camp, where the Summer Meeting was,” Ayla said, stopping in front of the entrance of one of the small dwellings, still a bit reluctant to push the heavy drape aside and enter the home of strangers without being invited, in spite of generally understood customs that had developed out of a mutual necessity for the sake of survival in time of need.
“Some of the younger people at the Summer Meeting thought the big lodges were old-fashioned,” Jondalar said. “They liked the idea of an individual lodge for just one or two families.”
“You mean they wanted to live by themselves? Just one lodge with one or two families? For a winter Camp?” Ayla asked.
“No,” he said. “No one wanted to live alone all winter. You never see just one of these small lodges by itself; there are always at least five or six, sometimes more. That was the idea. The people I talked to thought it was easier to build a smaller lodge for a new family or two, than to crowd into one big lodge until they had to build another. But they wanted to build near their families, and stay with their Camps, and share in the activities and the food that everyone worked together to collect and store for winter.”
He pushed aside the heavy skin hanging from the joined tusks that formed the entrance,