The valley of horses_ a novel - Jean M. Auel [238]
“The man forced her?”
“And killed her first daughter, too. Oda was with two other women, and many of the Others came, but they didn’t give the signal. When one of them grabbed her, Oda’s first baby fell and hit her head on a rock.”
Suddenly Jondalar remembered the gang of young men from a Cave far to the west. He wanted to reject the conclusions he was beginning to draw. Yet, if one gang of young men would do it, why not another? “Ayla, you keep saying you are not like the Clan. How are they different?”
“They’re shorter—that’s why I was so surprised when you stood up. I’ve always been taller than everyone, including the men. That’s why they didn’t want me, I am too tall, and too ugly.”
“What else?” He didn’t want to ask, but he couldn’t stop himself. He had to know.
“Their eyes are brown. Iza thought something was wrong with my eyes because they were the color of the sky. Durc has their eyes, and the … I don’t know how to say it, the big brows, but his forehead is like mine. Their heads are flatter …”
“Flatheads!” His lips pulled back in disgust. “Good Mother, Ayla! You’ve been living with those animals! You let one of their males …” He shuddered. “You gave birth to … an abomination of mixed spirits, half human and half animal!” As though he had touched something filthy, Jondalar backed away and jumped up. It was a reaction born of irrational prejudice, of harsh, unthinking assumptions, never questioned by most people he knew.
Ayla didn’t comprehend at first, and she looked at him with a puzzled frown. But his expression was filled with loathing, just as hers was when she thought of hyenas. Then his words took on meaning.
Animals! He was calling the people she loved animals! Stinking hyenas! Gentle loving Creb, who was nonetheless the most awesome and powerful holy man of the Clan—Creb was an animal? Iza, who had nursed her and mothered her, who taught her medicine—Iza was a stinking hyena? And Durc! Her son!
“What do you mean, animals?” Ayla cried, on her feet and facing him. She had never raised her voice in anger before and she surprised herself at the volume—and the venom. “Creb and Iza, animals? My son, half human? People of the Clan are not some kind of awful stinking hyenas.
“Would animals pick up a little girl who was hurt? Would they accept her as one of them? Would they take care of her? Raise her? Where do you think I learned to find food? Or cook it? Where do you think I learned healing? If it were not for those animals, I would not be alive today, and neither would you, Jondalar!
“You say the Clan are animals, and the Others are human? Well, remember this: The Clan saved a child of the Others, and the Others killed one of theirs. If I could make a choice between human and animal, I’d take the stinking hyenas!”
She stormed out of the cave and down the path, then whistled for Whinney.
24
Jondalar was dumbfounded. He followed her out and watched her from the ledge. She mounted the horse with a practiced leap and galloped down the valley. Ayla had always been so complaisant, had never showed anger. The contrast made her outburst all the more astounding.
He had always thought of himself as fair and open-minded about flatheads. He thought they should be left alone, not bothered or baited, and he would not have intentionally killed one. But his sensibilities had been grossly offended by the idea of a man using a flathead female for Pleasures. That one of their males should have used a human female the same way had exposed a deeply buried nerve. The woman would be defiled.
And he had been so eager for her. He thought of the vulgar stories told by sniggering boys and young men and felt a shrinking in his loins, as though he were already contaminated and his member would shrivel up and rot off. By some grace of the Great Earth Mother, he had been spared.
But worse, she had birthed an abomination, a whelp of malignant spirits who couldn