The shelters of stone - Jean M. Auel [350]
“I wish they’d hurry,” one of the other newly mated men said under his breath. “I’m starving. With all dus fasting today, I’m sure they could hear my stomach growling all the way in the back.”
Ayla was rather glad for the Zelandoni’s long recitation of the names and ties, it gave her time to think and be alone with her own thoughts. She was mated. Jondalar was her mate. Maybe now she could begin to feel that she really was Ayla of the Ninth Cave of the Zelandonii, although she was glad that Ayla of the Mamutoi was a part of her names. Just because they were going to be living with the Ninth Cave didn’t mean she was a different person. She just had new names and ties to add to her list of connections and relations. She hadn’t lost her Clan totem, either.
Her mind wandered back to the time when she was a girl living with the Clan. When they mated, they had no such knot-tying customs, but they didn’t need them. From the time they were young, women of the Clan were taught always to be aware of the men of the Clan, particularly the one to whom they were mated. A good Clan woman was expected to anticipate the requirements and wishes of her mate, because a man of the Clan learned from an early age never to be aware of, or at least not to show that he was aware of, his own needs, discomfort, or pain. He could never ask for her help, she had to know when it was needed.
Broud didn’t need her help when he asked, but he made demands all the time. He invented things for her to do just because he could make her do them—bring him a drink of water, tie on his leg coverings. He could claim that she was just a girl and had to learn, but he didn’t care if she learned, and it didn’t make any difference when she tried to please him. He wanted to show his power over her because she had resisted him, and women of the Clan did not willfully disobey men. She had made him feel less than a man and he hated her for it, or perhaps at some instinctual level he knew that her kind were different. It had not been an easy lesson for her to learn, but she had learned, and it was Broud, with his constant demands, who taught her, but Jondalar was the recipient. She was always aware of him, and it occurred to her that was why she was always uncomfortable when she didn’t know where he was. She was that way about her animals, too.
Suddenly, as though thinking about him had made him appear, Wolf was there. It was her right hand and Jondalar’s left that were tied together, and she stooped down and hugged him with her left. She looked up at Jondalar.
“I’ve been worried about him, wondering where he was,” Ayla said, “but he seems rather pleased with himself.”
“Maybe he has reason,” Jondalar said with a grin.
“When Baby found a mate, he left. He came back to visit once in a while, but he lived with his own kind. If Wolf has a mate, do you think he’ll decide to leave and live with her?”
“I don’t know. You’ve said before that he thinks of people as his pack, but if he’s going to mate, it has to be with his own kind,” he said.
“I want him to be happy, but I would miss him so much if he never came back,” Ayla said, standing. Most of the people around her were watching her with the wolf, especially those who didn’t know her well. She signaled him to stay close to her.
“He’s a very big wolf, isn’t he,” one of the women said, edging back a little.
“Yes, he is,” Levela said, “but people who know him say he has never threatened people.”
At that moment a flea decided to annoy the wolf. He sat down, hunched himself around, and started scratching. The woman tittered nervously. “That certainly doesn’t look very threatening,” she said.
“Except to the bug that’s bothering him,” Levela said.
Suddenly he stopped, cocked his head as though he was hearing or smelling or perceiving something, then stood up and looked up at Ayla.
“Go ahead, Wolf,” Ayla said, signaling his release. “If you want to go, go ahead.”
He raced off, weaving his way around people, some of whom looked rather startled when they caught sight of him.