The Land of Painted Caves (92 page)

“Yes, we wanted children at our hearth.”

“So you love him.”

“Of course I love him.”

“Would you love him more if you knew for sure that he was started by your essence?”

Willadan glanced at the boy. “No, of course not,” he said, frowning.

“If you knew the rest of your children were started with your own essence, would you love them more?”

He paused, thinking about the point he knew she was making. “No. I could not love them more.”

“Then does it make any difference if the essence that started them came from you or someone else?” Zelandoni noticed that his frown deepened. She decided to continue. “I have never been pregnant; I have never conceived a child, though there was a time when I wanted one, more than you will know. I am content now. I know the Mother chose what was best for me. But, it is possible, Willadan, that you were born as I was. Perhaps, for some reason known only to Doni, your essence could not start a child with your mate at that time. But the Great Earth Mother, in Her wisdom, gave you and your mate the children you wanted. If you were not the one who started them, would you be willing to give them back if you found the name of the man who may have started them?”

“No. I have provided for them all their lives,” Willadan said.

“Exactly. You have cared for them, you love them, they are the children of your hearth. That means they are your children, Willadan.”

“Yes, they are the children of my hearth, but you said
if
I am not the one who started them. Do you think they could have been started by my essence?” Willadan asked, a bit wistfully.

“It may well be that the honor your mate paid to the Mother was accepted as sufficient offering, and that she allowed your essence to start all of them. We don’t know, but if you could not love them more, Willadan, does it make any difference?”

“No, I guess not.”

“They may have been started by your essense, or they may not have,” Zelandoni said, “but they will always be more than the children of your hearth. They are your children.”

“Will we ever know for sure?”

“I don’t know if we will ever know. With a woman, it is obvious. She is either pregnant or not. With a man, his children are always the children of his mate. That’s the way it has always been. Nothing has changed. No man can be certain who started the children of his hearth.”

“Jondalar can,” came a voice from the audience. Everyone stopped and stared at the one who had spoken. It was Jalodan, a young man from the Third Cave. He was sitting with Folara’s friend, Galeya, whom he had mated two years before. He suddenly flushed from all the penetrating attention, including the hard look from Zelandoni. “Well, he can,” he said defensively. “Everyone knows Ayla never chose anyone but him—until last night. If children are started from the essence of a man’s organ, and Ayla never shared Pleasures with anyone but Jondalar, then the child of his hearth has to be his, had to come from his essence. That’s what he was fighting about last night, wasn’t he? He kept screaming, ‘He’s making my baby!’ every time he hit Laramar.”

Now all the attention was focused on Jondalar, and he squirmed under the intense scrutiny. Some people glanced at Ayla, but she was sitting rigidly still, looking down.

Suddenly Joharran stood up. “Jondalar was not in control of himself. He let himself drink too much, and it drowned his brains,” he said with exasperated sarcasm.

There were smiles and snickers. “I’ll wager his head was full of the ‘morning-after’ when the sun came up,” another young man called out. There was a touch of admiration in his tone, as though he found Jondalar’s violent behavior somehow laudable.

“Since both Jondalar and Laramar are from the Ninth Cave, this is an issue that will be settled by the Ninth Cave. This is not the place to discuss Jondalar’s actions,” Joharran said, trying to end the issue. He had heard the appreciation in the voices of some of the young men, and the last thing he wanted was for anyone to be emulating that kind of behavior.

“Except to say, Jemoral,” Zelandoni added, “that Jondalar will be suffering from more than a morning-after headache, I’m afraid. There will be serious consequences to pay, you can be sure.” It was difficult to know all the people at the meeting, though she tried. Their clothing was always a clue, as well as the beads and belts and other accoutrements they wore. This was a young man from the Fifth Cave, related to their Zelandoni. They all tended to be a little showier than most, and wore more beads, since they were known for making and trading them. And he was sitting closer to the front, which allowed her to see him clearly enough to recognize him.

“But I think I understand how he felt,” Jemoral persisted. “What if I want the child of my mate to come from me?”

“Yes,” another man spoke out, “what then?”

Another voice added, “What if I want the children of my hearth to be mine?”

Zelandoni waited until the commotion settled down, surveying the audience to see that most of the comments were coming from the Fifth Cave. Then she fixed the entire group with a stern look.

“You want the children of your hearth to be yours, Jemoral,” she said, looking directly at the young man who had asked the question. “Do you mean like your clothes, or your tools, or your beads? You want to own them?”

“No-ah-no. I-ah-didn’t mean that,” the young man stuttered.

“I’m glad to hear that, because children cannot be owned. They can’t be yours, or your mate’s. No one can own them. Children are ours to love and care for, to provide for, to teach, as the Mother does for us, and you can do that whether they come from your essence, or from someone else’s. We are all children of the Great Earth Mother. We learn from Her. Remember in the Mother’s Song:

To Woman and Man the Mother gave birth
,

And then for their home, She gave them the Earth
,

The water, the land, and all Her creation
.

To use them with care was their obligation
.

It was their home to use, But not to abuse
.

Several zelandonia joined in the response, then they continued.

For the Children of Earth the Mother provided
,

The Gifts to survive, and then She decided
,

To give them the Gift of Pleasure and caring
,

That honors the Mother with the joy of their pairing
.

The Gifts are well earned, When honor’s returned
.

“She provides for us, cares for us, teaches us, and in return for Her Gifts, we honor Her,” the One Who Was First continued. “Doni’s Gift of the Knowledge of Life was not given to you so that you might own the children born to your hearth, to claim them as yours.” She looked at several of the young men who had spoken out. “It was given so that we would know that women are not the only ones who are the Blessed of Doni. Men have a purpose that is equal to that of women. They are not here just to provide and to help; men are necessary. Without men there would be no children. Isn’t that enough? Do your children have to be yours? Do you have to own them?”

The young men exchanged sheepish looks, but Zelandoni wasn’t sure if they truly understood. Then a young woman spoke up.

“What about before? We know our mothers and our grandmothers. I am my mother’s daughter, but what about the men?”

The young woman wasn’t immediately familiar to Zelandoni, but reflexively, the astute mind of the First tried to place her. She was sitting with the Twenty-third Cave, and the designs and patterns on her tunic and necklace indicated she was a member of that Cave, not from another Cave and sitting with friends. Though the outfit she wore indicated a woman and not a girl, she was obviously quite young. Probably just had her First Rites, the donier thought. For one so young to speak out in a large crowd indicated she was either brash and impetuous or brave and accustomed to being with people who spoke their minds, which would indicate leadership. The leader of the Twenty-third Cave was a woman, Dinara. Zelandoni recalled then that Dinara’s eldest daughter was among those having First Rites this year, and Zelandoni noticed that Dinara was smiling at the young woman. Then she remembered the young woman’s name.

“Nothing has changed, Diresa,” the First said. “Children have always been the result of the joining of a man and a woman. Just because we didn’t know before doesn’t mean it hasn’t always been that way. Doni just chose to tell us now. She must have felt we were ready for this knowledge. Do you know who your mother’s mate was when you were born?”

“Yes, everyone knows who her mate is. It’s Joncoran,” Diresa said.

“Then Joncoran is your
Fa-ther.
” Zelandoni said. She had been waiting for the right opportunity to bring up the word that had been chosen. “Fa-ther is the name that has been given to a man who has children. A man is necessary for a life to begin, but he doesn’t carry the baby inside him, nor does he give birth or nurse, but a man can love the child as much as a mother. He is a far-mother, a fa-ther. It was also chosen to indicate that while women are the Blessed of Doni, men may now think of themselves as the Favored of Doni. It is similar to ‘mother,’ but the
fa
sound was chosen to make it clear that it is a name for a man, just as ‘fa’lodge’ is the name for the men’s place.”

There was an immediate outburst of noisy talk from the gathering. In the audience, Ayla heard the new term being repeated several times, as though the people were tasting it, getting used to it. Zelandoni waited until the noise settled down.

“You, Diresa, are the daughter of your mother, Dinara, and you are the daughter of your father, Joncoran. Your mother has sons and daughters, and your father also has sons and daughters. Those children may call him ‘father,’ just as they call the woman who gave birth to them ‘mother.’ ”

“What if the man who coupled with my mother and started me was not the man she mated?” asked Jemoral, the young man from the Fifth Cave.

“The man who is mated to your mother, the one who is the man of your hearth, is your father,” Zelandoni said without hesitation.

“But if he didn’t start me, how could he be my father?” Jemoral persisted.

That young man is going to be trouble, the One Who Was First thought. “You don’t know who may have started you, but you know the man who lives with you and your mother. He is the one who is most likely to have ‘fathered’ you. If you don’t know of anyone else for sure, he may as well not exist, and there is no point in naming a relationship that does not exist. Your mother’s mate is the one who promised to provide for you. He’s the one who cared for you, loved you, helped to raise you. It is not the coupling, it is the caring that makes a man your father. If the man to whom your mother was mated had died, and if she mated another man who loved you and cared for you, would you love him less?”

“But which one is the real ‘father’?”

“You may always call the man who provides for you ‘father.’ When you name your ties, as in a formal introduction, your father is the man who was mated to your mother when you were born, the man you call ‘the man of your hearth.’ If the one who provides for you is not the one who was there when you were born, you will refer to him as your ‘second father,’ to distinguish between the two when it is necessary,” Zelandoni explained. She was glad now that she spent a night, when she was unable to sleep, thinking about all the kinship ramifications this new knowledge would cause.

The One Who Was First had another announcement she wanted to make. “This may be a good time to bring up one more matter that needs to be mentioned. The zelandonia felt that the men need to be included in some of the rituals and customs associated with the welcoming of a new baby, to give them a deeper feeling and understanding of their part in the creation of new life. Therefore, from now on, the men will name the male children born to their hearths; the women will, of course, continue to name the female children.”

Her statement was received with mixed feelings. The men looked surprised, but several of them were smiling. She could see by their expressions, however, that some of the women did not want to give up their prerogative of naming the children. No one wanted to make an issue of it just then, and no questions were asked, but she knew this idea was not settled. There would be problems, she was sure.

“What about children who are born to women who are not mated?” asked a very young-looking woman who was nevertheless cuddling a baby in her arms.

Second Cave, Zelandoni thought, looking at her clothing and jewelry. Could that be a child of last summer’s First Rites? “The women who give birth before mating are Blessed, like the women who have new life started within them at the time they are mated. A woman who has been Blessed with a child has demonstrated that she can carry and deliver a healthy baby, and she is often the one who is chosen to be Blessed again. Until she mates, her children are provided for by her family or her Cave, and their ‘father’ is Lumi, the mate of Doni, the Great Earth Mother.”

She smiled at the young woman. “Nothing has really changed, Shaleda.” The name had suddenly come to her. “The Cave always provides for a woman with children who has no mate, whether her mate was lost to the next world or not yet chosen. But most men find a young woman with a baby very desirable. She usually mates quickly since she can bring a child to a man’s hearth immediately, a child who is a favorite of Doni. The man she mates becomes the child’s father, of course,” the large woman explained, and watched the woman who was little more than a girl glancing shyly at a young man from the Third Cave who was staring at her with rapt adoration.

“But what about the man who is really the father?” said the familiar voice of the young man from the Fifth Cave who had been asking so many questions. “Isn’t the man whose essence actually started the baby the father?”