The shelters of stone - Jean M. Auel [418]
The next day Zelandoni stopped to see Ayla. She had been waiting and watching for a time when she was alone. Ayla was sitting on a cushion on the floor, nursing her baby, and Zelandoni lowered herself to a cushion on the floor beside her.
“Why don’t you use the stool, Zelandoni,” Ayla said.
“This is fine, Ayla. It isn’t that I can’t sit on the floor, it’s just that there are times when I prefer not to. How is Jonayla?”
“She’s fine. She’s a good baby. She woke me up last night, but she sleeps most of the rime,” Ayla said.
“I wanted to tell you that she will be named as a Zelandonii to Jondalar’s hearth on the day after next, and her name given to the Cave,” the woman said.
“Good,” Ayla said. “I’ll be glad when she’s Zelandonii, and named to Jondalar’s hearth. It will make everything complete.”
“Have you heard about Relona? The mate of Shevonar, the man who was trampled on by the bison shortly after you arrived?” Zelandoni asked, sounding as though she were making friendly conversation.
“No, what about her?”
“She and Ranokol, Shevonar’s brother, are going to mate next summer. He started out by helping her to compensate for the loss of her mate, and then they grew to care for each other. I think it may be a good pairing,” the older woman said.
“I’m glad to hear that. He was so upset when Shevonar died. It was almost as though he blamed himself. I think he thought he should have died instead,” Ayla said. There was a silence then, but she felt a sense of expectancy. She wondered if the First had come for a reason that she hadn’t yet said.
“There is something else I want to talk to you about,” Zelandoni said. “I’d like to know more about your son. I understand why you never mentioned him, especially after all that trouble about Echozar, but if you wouldn’t mind talking about him, there are some things I would like to know.”
“I don’t mind talking about him. Sometimes I ache to talk about him,” Ayla said.
She talked at length to the donier about the son she had when she lived with the Clan, the one of mixed spirits, about her morning sickness that lasted all day and almost for her entire pregnancy, and about her bone-wrenching delivery. She had already forgotten whatever discomfort she had felt giving birth to Jonayla, but she still remembered the pain of giving birth to Durc. She told her about his deformity in the eyes of the Clan, her flight to her small cave to save his life, and her return though she thought she would still lose him. She spoke of her joy at his acceptance, and the name Creb picked out for him, Durc, and the legend of Durc, where his name came from. She talked about their life together, his laughter and her delight that he could make sounds the way she could, and the language they started to make up together, and she talked about leaving him behind with the Clan when she was forced to go. Toward the end of her story, she was finding it difficult to talk for the tears.
“Zelandoni,” Ayla said, looking at the large, motherly woman, “I had an idea when I was hiding in the small cave with him, and the more I have thought about it since, the more I believe it is true. It’s about the way life begins. I don’t think it is the blending of spirits that starts new life. I think life begins when a man and a woman couple. I think men start life to grow inside women.”
It was a startling idea coming from the young woman, especially since no one had ever said anything like it to Zelandoni before, but it wasn’t an entirely unfamiliar idea, though the only person she knew of who had ever thought of such a thing was herself.
“I have thought about it for a long time since then, and I am now even more convinced that life begins when a man puts his member inside a woman, into the place that a baby comes from, and leaves his essence. I think that is what starts a