The Plains of Passage - Jean M. Auel [92]
“I’d like to coat that hide after it’s mounted on the frame,” he said. “If I boil up the hooves and scraps of hide and some bones together with water for a long time, it will make a very thick and sticky kind of broth that dries hard. Do we have something that I can use to cook that in?”
“I’m sure we can think of something. Does it have to cook long?”
“Yes. It does need to cook down, to thicken.”
“Then it might be best to cook it directly over the fire, like a soup … maybe a piece of hide. We’ll have to watch it, and keep adding water, but as long as it stays wet, it won’t burn … wait. What about the stomach of that aurochs? I’ve been keeping water in it, so it wouldn’t dry out, and to have it handy for cooking and washing, but it would make a good cooking bag,” Ayla said.
“I don’t think so,” Jondalar said. “We don’t want to keep adding water. We want it to get thick.”
“Then I suppose a good watertight basket and hot stones might be best. I can make one in the morning,” Ayla said, but as she lay quietly, her mind wouldn’t let her sleep. She kept thinking that there was a better way to boil down the mixture Jondalar wanted to make. She just could not quite think of it. She was nearly asleep when it came to her. “Jondalar! Now I remember.”
He, too, was dozing off but was jerked awake. “Huh! What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. I just remembered how Nezzie rendered out fat, and I think it would be the best way to cook your thick stuff. You dig a shallow hole in the ground, in the shape of a bowl, and line it with a piece of hide—there should be a big enough piece left from the aurochs for that. Break up some bones and scatter them over the bottom, then put in the water and the hooves and whatever else you want. You can boil it for as long as we keep heating stones, and the little pieces of bone will keep the hot stones from actually touching the leather, so it won’t burn through.”
“Good, Ayla. That’s what we’ll do,” Jondalar said, still half-asleep. He rolled over and was soon snoring.
But there was still something else on Ayla’s mind that kept her awake. She had planned to leave the aurochs’s stomach for the people of the Camp to use as a waterbag when they left, but it needed to be kept wet. Once it dried out, it got stiff, and would not go back to its original, pliable, nearly waterproof condition. Even if she filled it with water, it would eventually seep out and evaporate away, and she didn’t know when the people would return.
Suddenly it came to her. She almost called out again, but muffled it in time. He was sleeping, and she didn’t want to wake him. She would let the stomach dry out and use it to line her new meat-keeper, shaping it while it was still wet to fit exactly. As she fell asleep in the darkened lodge, Ayla felt pleased that she had thought of a way to replace the very necessary item that had been lost.
During the next few days, while the meat dried, they were both busy. They finished the bowl boat and coated it with the glue Jondalar made by boiling down the hooves, bone, and hide scraps. While it was drying, Ayla made baskets, for the meat they were leaving as a gift for the people of the Camp, for cooking to replace those she had lost, and for gathering, some of which she planned to leave behind. She gathered vegetable produce and medicinal herbs daily, drying some to take with them.
Jondalar accompanied her one day to look for something to make into paddles for the boat. Shortly after they started out, he was pleased to find the skull of a giant deer that had died before the large palmate antlers were shed, giving him two of equal size. Though it was early, he stayed out with Ayla for the