The shelters of stone - Jean M. Auel [456]
The man with the flaming beard looked thoughtful for a while, then, unexpectedly, he lunged for Jondalar and grabbed the tall blond man in a bone-crunching bear hug.
“Then we are related!” he boomed, a broad smile warming his face. “Tholie is the daughter of my cousin!”
. “Tholie! A Mamutoi woman named Tholie was my brother’s cross-mate! She taught me your language.”
“Of course! I told you. We are related.” He grasped the hands that Jondalar had extended in friendship, which he had rejected before. “I am Talut, headman of the Lion Camp.”
Everyone was smiling, Ayla noticed. Talut beamed a grin at her, then eyed her appreciatively. “I see you are not traveling with a brother now,” he said to Jondalar.
Jondalar put his arm around her again, and she noticed a fleeting look of pain wrinkle his brow before he spoke. “This is Ayla.”
“It’s an unusual name. Is she of the river people?”
Jondalar was taken aback by the abruptness of his questioning, then, remembering Tholie, he smiled inwardly. The short, stocky woman he knew bore little resemblance to the great hulk of a man standing there on the riverbank, but they were chipped from the same flint. They both had the same direct approach, the same unselfconscious—almost ingenuous—candor. He didn’t know what to say. Ayla was not going to be easy to explain.
“No, she has been living in a valley some days’ journey from here.”
Talut looked puzzled. “I have not heard of a woman with her name living nearby. Are you sure she is Mamutoi?”
“I’m sure she is not.”
“Then who are her people? Only we who hunt mammoth live in this region.”
“I have no people,” Ayla said, lifting her chin with a touch of defiance.
Talut appraised her shrewdly. She had spoken the words in his language, but the quality of her voice and the way she made the sounds were … strange. Not unpleasant, but unusual. Jondalar spoke with the accent of a language foreign to him; the difference in the way she spoke went beyond accent. Talut’s interest was piqued.
“Well, this is no place to talk,” Talut said, finally. “Nezzie will give me the Mother’s own wrath if I don’t invite you to visit. Visitors always bring a little excitement, and we haven’t had visitors for a while. The Lion Camp would welcome you, Jondalar of the Zelandonii, and Ayla of No People. Will you come?”
“What do you say, Ayla? Would you like to visit?” Jondalar asked, switching to Zelandonii so she could answer truthfully without fear of offending. “Isn’t it time you met your own kind? Isn’t that what Iza told you to do? Find your own people?” He didn’t want to seem too eager, but after so long without anyone else to talk to, he was anxious to visit.
“I don’t know,” she said, frowning with indecision. “What will they think of me? He wanted to know who my people were. I don’t have any people any more. What if they don’t like me?”
“They will like you, Ayla, believe me. I know they will. Talut invited you, didn’t he? It didn’t matter to him that you have no people. Besides, you’ll never know if they will accept you—or if you will like them—if you don’t give them a chance. These are the kind of people you should have grown up with, you know. We don’t have to stay long. We can leave any time.”
“We can leave any time?”
“Of course.”
Ayla looked down at the ground, trying to make up her mind. She wanted to go with them; she felt an attraction to these people, and a curiosity to know more about them, but she felt a tight knot of fear in her stomach. She glanced up and saw two shaggy steppe horses grazing on the rich grass of the plain near the river, and her fear intensified.
“What about Whinney! What will we do with her? What if they want to kill her? I can’t let anyone hurt Whinney!”
Jondalar hadn’t thought about Whinney. What would they think? he wondered. “I don’t know what they will do, Ayla, but I don’t think they would kill her if we tell them she is special and not meant for food.” He remembered his surprise, and his initial feeling of awe over Ayla’s relationship with the horse. It would be interesting to see their reaction. “I