The shelters of stone - Jean M. Auel [60]
“This is very comfortable,” Ayla said.
“And I have just the thing to set it off,” Marona said, showing her a belt woven out of various colored fibers into an intricate pattern.
“This is beautifully made and very interesting,” Ayla said as Marona tied it low around her waist. She felt satisfied with the outfit. “This one will do,” she said. “I thank you for your gift.” She put on her amulet and folded her other clothes.
Lorava choked and coughed. “I need some water,” she said, and dashed from the room.
“Now, you must let me fix your hair,” Wylopa said, still smiling broadly.
“I promise to do your face after I do Portula’s,” Marona said.
“And you said you’d fix my hair, Wylopa,” Portula said.
“You promised to do me, too,” Lorava said from the entrance to the room.
“If you are over your coughing spell,” Marona said, giving the young woman a hard look.
While Wylopa combed and fussed with her hair, Ayla watched with interest as Marona decorated the faces of the two other women. She used solidified fats mixed with finely powdered red and yellow ochres to add color to mouths, cheeks, and forehead, and mixed with black charcoal to emphasize the eyes. Then she used more intense shades of the same colors to add carefully drawn designs of dots, curved lines, and various other shapes to their faces in a way that reminded Ayla of the tattoos she had seen on some people.
“Let me do your face now, Ayla,” Marona said. “I think Wylopa is done with your hair.”
“Oh, yes!” Wylopa said. “I’m finished. Let Marona do your face.”
While the face decorations of the women were interesting, Ayla felt uncomfortable with the idea. In Marthona’s dwelling, there was a subtle use of color and design that was very pleasing, but Ayla wasn’t sure she liked the way the women looked. It seemed too much, somehow.
“No … I don’t think so,” Ayla said.
“But you have to!” Lorava said, looking dismayed.
“Everyone does it,” Marona said. “You would be the only one without it.”
“Yes! Go on. Let Marona do it. It’s what all the women do,” Wylopa said.
“You really should,” Lorava urged. “Everyone always wants Marona to paint her face. You’re lucky she’s willing.”
They were pressing her so hard, it made Ayla want to resist. Marthona had not said anything to her about having to get her face painted. She wanted to take the time to find her way and not be pushed into customs she was not familiar with.
“No, not this time. Perhaps later,” Ayla said.
“Oh, go ahead and do it. Don’t spoil everything,” Lorava said.
“No! I don’t want to have my face painted,” Ayla said with such firm resolve, they finally stopped pressing her.
She watched them dress each other’s hair in intricate plaits and coils, placing decorated combs and pins attractively. Finally, they added facial ornaments. Ayla hadn’t really noticed the holes at strategic locations in their faces until they put earrings into their earlobes and pluglike ornaments into their noses, cheeks, and under the lower lips, but she saw that Some of the painted decorations now accentuated the ornaments that had been added.
“Don’t you have any piercings?” Lorava asked. “You’ll just have to get some. Too bad we can’t do them now.”
Ayla wasn’t sure if she wanted to be pierced, except perhaps in the earlobes so she could wear the earrings she had brought with her all the way from the Summer Meeting of the Mammoth Hunters. She watched the women add beads and pendants around their necks and bracelets on their arms.
She noticed that the women glanced from time to time at something behind a dividing panel. Finally, a little bored with all the combing and decorating, she got up and wandered over to see what they were looking at. She heard Lorava gasp when she saw the piece of blackened shiny wood, similar to the reflector in Marthona’s dwelling, and looked at herself.
Ayla was not happy with the reflection she saw. Her hair had been dressed into braids and coils, but they seemed to be in odd unattractive placements,