The shelters of stone - Jean M. Auel [317]
“I’ve been in here too long,” she said. “I’m cold. I’ll be glad to feel the sun. I should have paid attention.”
“It’s easy to get distracted in this cave. It’s so beautiful, and feels so … I don’t know, special,” he said, holding the light high between them as they started out.
“It does, doesn’t it?”
“It must have been exciting for you to be the first one to see it. We’ve been on these slopes so many times, I couldn’t even say all the counting words, yet no one found it until you came,” Brukeval said.
“Just to see it is exciting, being the first one doesn’t matter. I think it must be just as exciting for anyone the first time they see it. Have you been here before?” Ayla asked.
“Yes. Everyone was talking about it, so before it got dark, I got a torch and came to see it. I didn’t have time to see much, the sun was going down. Just enough to make me decide to come back today,” Brukeval said.
“Well, I’m grateful you did,” Ayla said as they started up the slope of the entranceway. “I probably could have gotten out, a little light reaches back there, and Wolf would have helped me, but I can’t tell you how relieved I was to see your torch corning toward me.”
Brukeval looked down and noticed the wolf. “Yes, I’m sure he would have. I didn’t see him before. He’s special, too, isn’t he?”
“He is to me. Have you met him yet? There’s a kind of formal introduction that I do with him. He understands then that you are a friend,” Ayla said.
“I’d like to be your friend,” Brukeval said.
The way he said it made Ayla look at him, quickly, in her unobtrusive Clan woman way. She felt a chill and a sense of foreboding. There seemed to be more in his statement than a wish for friendship. She sensed a yearning for her and then decided she didn’t want to believe it. Why should Brukeval yearn for her? They hardly knew each other. She smiled at him, partly to cover her disquiet, as they walked out of the cave.
“Then let’s introduce you to Wolf,” she said.
She took Brukeval’s hand and went through the process of giving Wolf his scent in the context of her approval.
“I don’t think I ever told you how much I admired you that day you faced Marona down,” he said when she was through. “She can be a cruel and vicious woman. I know, I lived with her when I was growing up. We’re considered cousins, far cousins, but her mother was the closest relation to my mother after she died, who could nurse a baby, so she was stuck with me. She accepted the responsibility, but she didn’t like it.”
“I admit, I don’t care much for Marona,” Ayla said, “but some people think she may not be able to have children. If that is true, I feel sorry for her.”
“I’m not sure if she can’t, or just doesn’t want to. Some think she just makes sure that she loses it whenever she’s Blessed. She wouldn’t make a decent mother anyway. She doesn’t know how to think of anyone but herself,” Brukeval said. “Not like Lanoga. She’ll be a wonderful mother.”
“She already is,” Ayla said.
“And thanks to you, there’s a good chance Lorala will live,” he said. The way he was looking at her made Ayla uncomfortable again. She looked down and petted Wolf as a distraction.
“It’s the mothers who are nursing her, not me,” she said.
“But no one else bothered to find out that the baby wasn’t getting any milk, or cared enough to get help for Lorala. I’ve seen how you are with Lanoga. You treat her like she’s worth something.”
“Of course she’s worth something,” Ayla said. “She’s an admirable girl, and she’s going to be a wonderful woman.”
“Yes, she is, but she’s still part of the lowest-ranked family in the Ninth Cave,” Brukeval said. “I’d mate her and share my status with her, it doesn’t do me any good, anyway, but I doubt if she’d want me. I’m too old for her, and too … well … no woman wants me. I do hope she finds someone worthy of her.”
“So do I, Brukeval. But why do you think no woman wants you?” Ayla protested. “I understand you have a ranking in the Ninth Cave that is near the first, and Jondalar says that you are an excellent hunter who contributes a lot to the Cave. Jondalar