The valley of horses_ a novel - Jean M. Auel [213]
She mistook his dazed look for lack of understanding. She touched her chest and said her name, trying to explain. Then she pointed at him and said his name. Next she pointed to the horse and made the soft neigh again.
“Is that the mare’s name? Ayla, I can’t make a noise like that. I don’t know how to talk to horses.”
After a second, and more patient, explanation, he made an attempt, but it was more like a word that sounded like it. That seemed to satisfy her, and she led the two horses back to the mare’s place in the cave. “He’s teaching me words, Whinney. I’m going to learn all his words, but I had to tell him your name. We’ll have to think of a name for your little one.… I wonder, do you think he’d like to name your baby?”
Jondalar had heard of certain zelandonii who were said to have the ability to lure animals to hunters. Some hunters could even make a good imitation of the sounds of certain animals, which helped them get closer. But he’d never heard of anyone who could talk with an animal, or who had convinced one to live with her. Because of her, a wild mare had foaled right before his eyes, and had even let him touch her baby. It suddenly struck him, with wonder and a little fear, what the woman had done. Who was she? And what kind of magic did she possess? But as she walked toward him with a happy smile on her face, she seemed no more than an ordinary woman. Just an ordinary woman, who could talk to horses but not to people.
“Don-da-lah go out?”
He had almost forgotten. His face lit up with eagerness, and, before she could reach him, he tried to get up. His enthusiasm paled. He was weak, and it was painful to move. Dizziness and nausea threatened, then passed. Ayla watched his expression change from an eager smile to a grimace of pain and then a sudden blanching.
“I may need a little help,” he said. His smile was strained, but earnest.
“Ayla help,” she said, offering her shoulder for support and her hand for assistance. At first he didn’t want to put too much weight on her, but as he saw that she was bearing up under it, had the strength, and knew how to pull him up, he took her help.
When he finally stood on his good leg, braced against a post of the drying rack, and Ayla looked up at him, her jaw dropped and her eyes opened wide. The top of her head barely reached his chin. She knew his body was longer than men of the Clan, but she hadn’t projected that length into height, hadn’t perceived how he would appear standing up. She had never seen anyone so tall.
Not since she was a child could she remember looking up to anyone. Even before she had reached womanhood, she was taller than everyone in the Clan, including the men. She had always been big and ugly; too tall, too pale, too fiat faced. No man would have her, not even after her powerful totem was defeated and they would all have liked to think their totem had overcome her Cave Lion and made her pregnant; not even when they knew that if she wasn’t mated before she gave birth, her child would be unlucky. And Durc was unlucky. They weren’t going to let him live. They said he was deformed, but then Brun accepted him anyway. Her son had overcome his bad luck. He would overcome the bad luck of losing his mother, too. And he was going to be tall—she had known that before she left—but not as tall as Jondalar.
This man made her feel positively little. Her first impression of him had been that he was young, and young implied small. He had looked younger, too. She looked up at him from her new perspective and noticed his beard had been growing in. She didn’t know why he hadn’t had one when she had first seen him, but seeing the coarse golden hair now sprouting from his chin made her realize that he was not a boy. He was a man—a tall, powerful, fully mature man.
Her look of amazement made him smile, though he didn’t know the cause. She was taller than he had guessed, too. The way she moved and held herself gave the effect of someone of much shorter stature. Actually, she was quite tall, and he liked tall women. They were the ones