The valley of horses_ a novel - Jean M. Auel [204]
“You live here alone, don’t you?”
Ayla glanced at him again, surprised to see a look of wonder on his face—as though he were seeing her for the first time. For some reason, it made her conscious of her discourtesy again, and she quickly looked down at the broth. Yet he had seemed unaware of her indiscretion. He was looking around at her cave and making his mouth sounds. She filiad a bowl, then sat down in front of him with it and bowed her head, trying to give him the opportunity to tap her shoulder and acknowledge her presence. She felt no tap, and when she looked up, he was gazing at her questioningly and speaking his words.
He doesn’t know! He doesn’t see what I’m asking. I don’t think he knows any signals at all. With sudden insight, a thought occurred to her. How are we going to communicate if he doesn’t see my signals, and I don’t know his words?
She was jarred by a memory of when Creb had been trying to teach her to talk, but she didn’t know he was talking with his hands. She didn’t know people could talk with their hands; she had only spoken with sounds! She had spoken the language of the Clan for so long that she could not remember the meaning of words.
But I am not a woman of the Clan anymore. I am dead. I was cursed. I can never go back. I must live with the Others now, and I must speak the way they speak. I must learn to understand words again, and I must learn to speak them, or I will never be understood. Even if I had found a clan of Others, I would not have been able to talk to them, and they would not have known what I was saying. Is that why my totem made me stay? Until this man could be brought? So he could teach me to speak again? She shuddered, feeling a sudden cold, but there had been no draft.
Jondalar had been rambling on, asking questions for which he didn’t expect answers, just to hear himself talk. There had been no response from the woman, and he thought he knew the reason. He felt sure she was either training to be, or in the Service of the Mother. It answered so many questions: her healing skills, her power over the horse, why she was living alone and would not speak to him, perhaps even how she had found him and brought him to this cave. He wondered where he was, but for the moment it didn’t matter. He was lucky to be alive. He was troubled, though, by something else the Shamud had said.
He realized now, that if he had paid attention to the old white-haired healer, he would have known Thonolan was going to die—but hadn’t he also been told that he followed his brother because Thonolan would lead him where he would not otherwise go? Why had he been led here?
Ayla had been trying to think of some way to begin to learn his words, and then she remembered how Creb had begun, with the name sounds. Steeling herself, she looked directly in his eyes, tapped her chest, and said, “Ayla.”
Jondalar’s eyes opened wide. “So you have decided to talk after all! Was that your name?” He pointed to her. “Say it again.”
“Ayla.”
She had a strange accent. The two parts of the word were clipped, the insides pronounced back in her throat as though she were swallowing them. He had heard many languages, but none had the quality of the sounds she made. He couldn’t quite say them, but tried for the closest approximation: “Aaay-lah.”
She almost couldn’t recognize the sounds he made as her name. Some people in the Clan had had great difficulty, but none said it the way he did. He strung the sounds together, altered the pitch so that the first syllable rose and the second dropped. She couldn’t ever remember hearing her name said that way, yet it seemed so right. She pointed at him and leaned forward expectantly.
“Jondalar,” he said. “My name is Jondalar