The valley of horses_ a novel - Jean M. Auel [48]
When she climbed down, she decided to get cherry bark for coughs. With her hand-axe, she chopped away a section of the tough outer bark, then scraped off the inner cambium layer with a knife. It reminded her of the time when she was a girl and had gone to collect wild cherry bark for Iza. She had spied on the men practicing with their weapons in the field. She knew it was wrong, but she was afraid they might see her leaving, and she became intrigued when old Zoug began teaching the boy to use a sling.
She knew women weren’t supposed to touch weapons, but when they left the sling behind, she couldn’t resist. She wanted to try it, too. Would I be alive today if I hadn’t picked up that sling? Would Broud have hated me so much if I hadn’t learned to use it? Maybe he wouldn’t have made me leave if he didn’t hate me so much. But if he hadn’t hated me, he wouldn’t have enjoyed forcing me, and maybe Durc would not have been born.
Maybe! Maybe! Maybe! she thought angrily. What’s the sense of thinking about what might have been? I’m here now, and that sling isn’t going to help me hunt a big animal. For that I need a spear!
She picked her way through a stand of young aspen to get a drink and wash the sticky cherry juice off her hands. There was something about the tall, straight young trees that made her stop. She grasped the trunk of one; then it struck her. This would work! This would make a spear.
She quailed for a moment. Brun would be furious, she thought. When he allowed me to hunt, he told me I must never hunt with anything but a sling. He’d …
What would he do? What could he do? What more can any of them do to me, even if they knew? I’m dead. I’m already dead. There’s no one here except me.
Then, like a cord pulled so taut it breaks from the strain, something inside her snapped. She fell to her knees. Oh, how I wish there were someone here besides me. Someone. Anyone. I’d even be glad to see Broud. I’d never touch a sling again if he’d let me go back, if he’d let me see Durc again. Kneeling at the base of the slender aspen, Ayla buried her face in her hands, heaving and choking.
Her sobs fell on indifferent ears. The small creatures of meadow and woodland only avoided the stranger in their midst and her incomprehensible sounds. There was no one else to hear, no one to understand. While she had been traveling, she had nursed the hope of finding people, people like herself. Now that she had decided to stop, she had to put that hope aside, accept her solitude, and learn to live with it. The gnawing worry of survival, alone, in an unknown place through a winter of unknown severity, added to the strain. The crying relieved the tension.
When she got up, she was shaking, but she took out her hand-axe and hacked angrily at the base of the young aspen, then attacked a second sapling. I’ve watched the men make spears often enough, she said to herself as she stripped off the branches. It didn’t look that hard. She dragged the poles to the field and left them while she gathered seed heads of einkorn wheat and rye for the rest of the afternoon, then dragged them back to the cave.
She spent the early evening stripping bark and smoothing shafts, stopping only to cook herself some grain to have with the rest of her fish, and to spread the cherries out to dry. By the time it was dark, she was ready for the next step. She took the shafts into her cave, and, remembering how the men had done it, she measured off a length on one somewhat taller than herself and marked it. Then she put the marked section in the fire, turning the shaft to char it all around. With a notched scraper, she shaved away the blackened section and continued to char and scrape until the upper piece broke off. More charring and scraping brought it to a sharp, fire-hardened point.