The shelters of stone - Jean M. Auel [95]
After Wolf greeted everyone appropriately and drank some water, he went to the corner near the entrance that he had claimed as his own and curled up to rest after a wonderfully tiring day with Jaradal and some of the other children.
“What’s going on?” Folara said after the excitement of greetings, when she noticed the hearth. “Why do you have so many fires in the fireplace?”
“We’ve been learning to make fire with stones,” Willamar said.
“With Ayla’s firestone?” Folara said.
“Yes. It’s so easy,” Marthona said.
“I promised to show you, Folara. Would you like to try now?” Ayla said.
“Have you really done it, mother?” Folara asked.
“Of course.”
“And you, too, Willamar?”
“Yes. It takes some practice, but it’s not hard,” he said.
“Well, I guess I can’t be the only one in the family who doesn’t know how,” Folara said.
While Ayla was showing the young woman the finer points of making a fire with stones, with advice from Jondalar and the new expert, Willamar, Marthona used the existing fires to heat cooking stones. She filled her tea-making basket with water and began to slice some cold cooked bison meat. When the cooking stones were hot, she put several in the teapot basket, bringing forth a steaming cloud, then added a couple along with a bit more water to a container made of willow withes tightly interwoven with fibers attached to a wooden base. It contained vegetables that had been cooked that morning: daylily buds, cut pieces of the green stems of poke, elder shoots, thistle stems, burdock stems, coiled baby ferns, and lily corms, flavored with wild basil, elderberry flowers, and pignut roots for added spice.
By the time Marthona had a light supper ready, Folara had added her small fire to the ones still burning in the hearth. Everyone got their own eating dishes and cups for tea and sat on cushions around the low table. After the meal, Ayla brought a bowl of leftovers and an extra piece of meat to Wolf, poured herself another cup of tea, and rejoined the others.
“I want to know more about these firestones,” Willamar said. “I’ve never heard of people making fire like that before.”
“Where did you learn to do that, Jondé?” Folara asked.
“Ayla showed me,” Jondalar said.
“Where did you learn, Ayla?” Folara said.
“It wasn’t anything I learned or planned or thought about, it just happened.”
“But how could something like that ‘just happen’?” Folara asked.
Ayla took a sip of tea and closed her eyes to recall the event. “It was one of those days when everything seemed to go wrong,” she began. “My first winter in the valley was just beginning, the river was turning to ice, and my fire had gone out in the middle of the night. Whinney was still a baby and hyenas were nosing around my cave in the dark, but I couldn’t find my sling. I had to chase them off by throwing cooking stones. In the morning, I was going to cut wood to make a fire, but I dropped my axe and it broke. It was the only one I had, so I had to make a new one. Luckily, I had noticed that there were flint nodules in the heap of stones and animal bones that had piled up below the cave.
“I went down to the rocky bank by the river to knap a new axe and some other tools. While I was working, I put my stone retoucher down, but my mind was on the flint and I picked up the wrong stone by mistake. It wasn’t my retoucher, it was a stone like this, and when I hit the flint with it, I got a spark. It made me think of fire, and I needed to make a fire, anyway, so I decided to try to make it with a spark from the stone. After a few tries, it worked.”
“You make it sound so simple,” Marthona said, “but I’m not sure I would have tried to make a fire like that, even if I had seen a spark.”
“I was alone