The valley of horses_ a novel - Jean M. Auel [254]
“Could I learn?”
“Anyone who can make tools the way you did can certainly learn to make them this way.”
He answered her question in a slightly different sense than she meant it. She knew she was capable of learning—she had been trying to assure herself that it was allowable. But his answer made her stop and think.
“No … I don’t think so.”
“Of course you can learn.”
“I know I can learn, Jondalar, but not anyone who makes tools the Clan way can learn to make them your way. Some could, I think Droog could, but anything new is difficult for them. They learn from their memories.”
He thought at first she was joking, but she was serious. Could she be right? Given the opportunity, would fla … Clan toolmakers be, not unwilling, but unable to learn?
Then it occurred to him that he would not have thought them capable of making tools at all not so long ago. They made tools, they communicated, and they took in a strange orphan child. He had learned more about flatheads in the past few days than anyone knew, except Ayla. It could be useful to know more about them, perhaps. There seemed to be more to them than anyone realized.
Thinking about flatheads suddenly made him recall the day before, and an unexpected flush of embarrassment rushed him. With their concentration on toolmaking, he had forgotten. He had been looking at the woman, but not really seeing her golden braids shining in the sunlight, offering marked contrast to her deep rich tan; or her eyes, blue gray and clear, like the translucent color of fine flint.
O Mother, she was beautiful! He became acutely conscious of her sitting so close to him and felt a movement in his groin. He could not have kept his sudden shift of interest out of his eyes if he’d tried. And he didn’t try.
Ayla felt his change in mood; it washed over her, caught her unprepared. How could anyone’s eyes be so blue? Not the sky, not the blue gentians growing in the mountain meadows near the clan’s cave were so deeply, vibrantly hued. She could feel that … that feeling starting. Her body tingled, ached for him to touch her. She was leaning forward, pulled, drawn to him, and only with supreme effort of will did she close her eyes and pull away.
Why does he look at me that way when I’m … abomination? When he can’t touch me without jerking away as if he were burned? Her heart was pounding; she was panting as though she had been running, and she tried to slow her breaths.
She heard him get up before she opened her eyes. The leather lap cover had been flung aside and his carefully wrought blades were scattered. She watched him walking away with stiff movements, his shoulders hunched, until he was around the wall. He seemed miserable, as miserable as she was.
Once he cleared the wall, Jondalar broke into a run. He raced down the field until his pumping legs ached and his breath raled in ragged sobs; then he slowed and jogged to a halt, heaving great gasps.
You stupid fool, what does it take to convince you? Just because she’s decent enough to let you get some supplies together doesn’t mean she wants any part of you … particularly that part! Yesterday, she was hurt and offended because you didn’t … That was before you ruined it for yourself!
He didn’t like to think about it. He knew what he had felt, what she must have seen, the revulsion, the disgust. So, what is different now? She lived with flatheads, remember? For years. She became one of them. One of their males …
He was purposely bringing out everything loathsome, defiled, unclean that was part of his way of life. Ayla was all of them! When he was a young boy hiding with the other young boys behind bushes, telling each other the foulest words they knew, “flathead female” was among them. When he was older—not much older, but enough to know what “woman-maker” meant—the same boys gathered in dark corners of the cave to talk in hushed voices about girls, and to plot with sneering laughter to