The valley of horses_ a novel - Jean M. Auel [249]
“I don’t understand …”
“I’m sorry, Ayla. How could you know what I’m talking about? A carver is someone who makes animals out of stone.”
Ayla frowned. “How can someone make an animal out of stone? An animal is blood and meat; it lives and breathes.”
“I don’t mean a real animal. I mean an image, a representation. A carver makes the likeness of an animal out of stone-makes the stone look like an animal. Some carvers make images of the Great Earth Mother, too, if they receive a vision of Her.”
“A likeness? Out of stone?”
“Out of other things, too. Mammoth ivory, bone, wood, antler. I’ve heard that some people make images out of mud. For that matter, I’ve seen some pretty good likenesses out of snow.”
Ayla had been shaking her head, struggling to understand, until he said snow. Then she remembered one winter day when she had piled bowls of snow against the wall near the cave. Hadn’t she, for a while, imagined the likeness of Brun in that pile of snow?
“A likeness out of snow? Yes,” she nodded, “I think I understand.”
He wasn’t sure if she did, but he could think of no way to make it plainer with no carving to show her. How drab her life must have been, he thought, growing up with flatheads. Even her clothes are no more than serviceable. Did they just hunt and eat and sleep? They don’t even appreciate the Gifts of the Mother. No beauty, no mystery, no imagination. I wonder if she can understand what she missed.
Ayla picked up the small boulder of flint and examined it closely, trying to decide where to start. She would not make a hand axe—even Droog considered them rather simple tools, though very useful. But she didn’t think that was the technique Jondalar wanted to see. She reached for an item missing from the man’s tool kit: the foot bone of a mammoth—the resilient bone that would support the flint while she worked it, so the stone would not shatter. She pulled it around until it was comfortably between her legs.
Next she picked up her hammerstone. There was no real difference between her stone striker and his, except hers was smaller to better fit her hand. Holding the flint firmly on the mammoth-bone anvil, Ayla struck with force. A piece of the cortex, the outer covering, fell away, exposing the dark gray material inside. The piece she had flaked off had a thick bulge where the hammerstone had struck—the bulb of percussion—and tapered to a thin edge on the opposite end. It could have been used as a cutting implement, and the first knives ever made were just such sharp-edged flakes, but the tools Ayla wanted to make required a far more advanced and complex technique.
She studied the deep scar left on the core, the negative impression of the flake. The color was right; the texture was smooth, almost waxy; there was no foreign matter imbedded within it. Good tools could be made from this stone. She struck off another piece of the cortex.
As she continued to chip away, Jondalar could see she was shaping the stone as she removed the chalky coating. When it was off, she continued to knock off a bit here, an unwanted bump there, until the nucleus of flint was shaped like a somewhat flattened egg. Then she exchanged the hammerstone for a sturdy length of bone. Turning the core on its side, and working from the edge toward the center, she struck off pieces from the top end with the bone hammer. The bone was more elastic and the pieces of flint that fell away were longer and thinner with a flatter bulb of percussion. When she was through, the large stone egg had a rather flat oval top, as though the tip had been sliced off.
Then she stopped, and, reaching for the amulet hanging around her neck, she closed her eyes and sent a silent thought to the spirit of the Cave Lion. Droog had always called upon the help of his totem to accomplish the next step. Luck was needed as well as skill, and she was nervous with Jondalar watching her so closely. She wanted to do it right, sensing there was more importance to the making of these tools than to the tools themselves. If she spoiled the stone, it would cast doubt