The Shelters of Stone (111 page)

“Where are you going, Ayla?” Jondalar asked. “We should be heading back. I need to go to the main camp this afternoon.”

“I won’t be long,” she said.

Jondalar could see her moving through the screen of trees and wondered if she had seen something moving back there. Maybe something that could be a danger to the horses. Maybe he should go with her, he was thinking when he heard her cry out in a loud scream.

“No! Oh, no!”

The man raced as fast as his long legs could go toward the sound, crashing through brush and bruising himself banging into a tree. When he reached her, he cried out a denial, too, and dropped to his knees.

I
n the mud at the edge of the small stream, Jondalar bent over Ayla. She was lying almost flat beside the large wolf, who was down on his side, holding his head in her hands. A torn bloody ear was staining the back of her hand. He tried to lick her face.

“It’s Wolf! He’s hurt!” Ayla said. The tears streaming down her face left white streaks through a muddy smudge on her cheek.

“What do you think happened to him?” Jondalar asked.

“I don’t know, but we’ve got to help him,” she said, sitting up. “We need to make a stretcher to carry him to camp.” Wolf tried to get up when she did, but fell back.

“Stay with him, Ayla. I’ll make a stretcher from those spear shafts I just cut,” Jondalar said.

When she and Jondalar brought him in, several people hurried over to see if they could help. It made Ayla understand how many people had come to care about the wolf.

“I’ll make a place for him in the lodge,” Marthona said, going in ahead of them.

“Is there anything I can do?” Joharran said. He had just returned to the camp.

“You can find out if Zelandoni has any comfrey left from Matagan’s injuries, also marigold petals. I think Wolf’s been in a fight with other wolves, and wounds from bites can be
bad. They need strong medicine, and they have to be well cleaned,” Ayla said.

“Will you need to boil some water?” Willamar asked. She nodded. “I’ll get a fire going. It’s a good thing we just brought in a load of wood.”

When Joharran came back from the zelandonia lodge, Folara and Proleva were with him, and Zelandoni had said she would come by shortly. Before long the entire Summer Meeting knew that Ayla’s wolf was hurt, and most people were concerned.

Jondalar stayed with her while she examined the wolf and knew from her expression that his wounds were serious. She was sure he had been attacked by an entire pack, and she was surprised that he was still alive. She asked Proleva for a piece of aurochs meat, scraped it the way she did for baby food, then mixed it with ground datura and put it down his throat to help him relax and make him sleep.

“Jondalar, will you get some of that skin from the unborn calf of the aurochs I killed? I need soft absorbent hides to clean his wounds,” Ayla said.

Marthona watched her put roots and powders into various bowls of hot water, then handed her some material. “Zelandoni likes to use this,” she said.

Ayla looked at it. The soft material was not made from hides. It looked more like the finely woven material that the long tunic Marthona had given her was made of. She dipped it in the water of one of the bowls. The fabric absorbed it quickly. “This will do, very well, in fact. Thank you,” Ayla said.

Zelandoni arrived about the time that Jondalar and Joharran were helping her turn the wolf over so she could work on his other side. The First worked with Ayla to clean a particularly bad wound, then Ayla surprised several people when she threaded a thin piece of sinew through the small hole in her thread-puller and used it to sew the worst of the wounds together with some strategically placed knots. She had shown the ingenious device to several people, but no one
had ever seen it used to sew living skin. She even sewed his torn ear, though it would still have a jagged edge.

“So that’s what you did to me,” Jondalar said with a grim smile.

“It does seem to help to hold the wound together so it can heal properly,” Zelandoni said. “Is that something you learned from your Clan medicine woman, too? To sew skin together?”

“No. Iza never did this. They don’t exactly sew, but they do knot things together. They like to use that sharp little bone that is in the lower foreleg of a deer as an awl to pierce holes in skins, and sinew after it’s partially dried and hard at the ends to poke through the holes, and then they de it into knots. They make birch bark containers that way, too. It was when Jondalar’s wounds kept sliding apart and opening up even when I tried to wrap it tight to hold everything together that I wondered if I could make some knots that would keep his skin and muscles in the right place. So I tried it. It seemed to work, but I wasn’t sure how soon to take them out. I didn’t want the wounds to tear apart, but I didn’t want the knots to heal into his skin, either. I might have waited a little too long before I finally cut them. It probably hurt a little more than it should have when I pulled diem out,” Ayla said.

“You mean that was the first time you sewed someone’s wound together?” Jondalar said. “You didn’t know if it would work, but you tried it out on me?” He laughed. “I’m glad you did. Except for the scars, you would hardly know I was mauled by that lion.”

“So you invented this technique to sew wounds,” Zelandoni said. “Only someone very skilled and with a natural aptitude for healing and medicine would think of something like that. Ayla, you belong in the zelandonia.”

Ayla looked unhappy. “But I don’t want to be in the zelandonia,” she said. “I … I appreciate … I mean … please don’t misunderstand me, I feel honored, but I just want to be mated to Jondalar and have his baby, and be a good Zelandonii woman.” She avoided looking at the donier.

“Please, don’t you misunderstand me,” the woman said.
“It wasn’t an offhand offer, made lightly with only a moment’s thought, like a casual invitation to a meal. I said you belong in the zelandonia. I have thought so for some time. A person with your skill needs to associate with others who have a similar level of knowledge. You like being a healer, don’t you?”

“I am a medicine woman. I cannot change that,” Ayla said.

“Of course you are, that’s not the issue,” the First said. “But among the Zelandonii only those who belong to the zelandonia are healers. People would not be comfortable with a healer who is not. You would not be called upon when a healer is needed if you are not in the zelandonia. You would not be able to be a medicine woman, as you call it. Why do you resist the zelandonia?”

“You’ve talked about all that must be learned, and the time that it takes. How can I be a good mate to Jondalar and take care of my children if I have to spend so much time learning to be a Zelandoni?” Ayla said.

“There are Those Who Serve The Mother who are mated and have children. You yourself told me about the one across the glacier with a mate and several children, and you have met Zelandoni of the Second Cave,” the woman said. “There are others.”

“But not very many,” Ayla said.

The First observed the young woman closely and was convinced there was more to it than Ayla was saying. Her reasons weren’t in character. She was an excellent healer, and she was curious, learned quickly, and obviously enjoyed it. She wouldn’t neglect a mate and children, and if there were rimes that she had to be away, there would always be someone who would help her. If anything, she was almost too attentive. Look how much time she devoted to those animals, but she was usually available and always willing to help whenever anything needed to be done, and she took on more than was required.

The First had been impressed with the way she got everyone involved in helping Lanoga to care for her youngest
sister and the other children. And the way she was helping the boy with the deformed arm. Those were the kinds of things that a good Zelandoni did. She had naturally assumed the role. The donier decided that she was going to have to discover her real problem, because one way or another, the First was determined that Ayla was going to be One Who Served The Great Earth Mother. She had to be brought in, it could pose too great a threat to the stability of the zelandonia to have someone with her knowledge and innate skills outside of their influence.

People smiled when they saw the wolf with bandages tied on him, made of Marthona’s fiber material and soft hides, as he walked beside Ayla through the main camp. It made Wolf almost seem to be dressed in human clothing, and he seemed to be a caricature of a fierce, wild meat-eater. Many stopped to ask how he was, or to offer the opinion that he was looking good. But he stayed very close to Ayla. He was so unhappy the first time she left him behind that he howled, then broke loose and found her. Some of the Story-Tellers had already begun to weave tales about the wolf who loved the woman.

She had to train him all over again to stay where she told him. He finally did begin to feel comfortable staying with Jondalar, or Marthona, or Folara, but he also felt defensive about the territory of the camp of the Ninth Cave, and she had to retrain him not to threaten visitors. People, especially those who were close to her, were amazed at Ayla’s seemingly unlimited patience with the animal, but they also saw the results. Many of them had thought that it might be interesting to have a wolf that obeyed commands, but they weren’t sure it was worth the time and effort. It did make them understand, though, that her control of her animals wasn’t magic.

Ayla was beginning to relax, thinking that he was finally getting comfortable with casual visitors again, until a young man—she heard him introduced as Palidar of the Eleventh Cave—came to visit Willamar’s apprentice trader, Tivonan. When Wolf got close to him, he began to growl and bare his
fangs with real menace. She had to hold him to keep him down, and even then, he growled under his breath. The young man backed away in fear, and she apologized profusely. Willamar, Tivonan, and several others who were standing around watching were surprised.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with him. I thought he was over being defensive about his territory. Wolf doesn’t usually behave like this, but he’s had some trouble and he is still getting over it,” Ayla said.

“I heard he was hurt,” the young man said.

Then she noticed that he wore a necklace of wolf teeth and carried a pack decorated with wolf fur. “Can I ask where you got the wolf fur?” she asked.

“Well … most people think I went out and hunted wolf, but I’ll tell you the truth. I found it. I actually found two wolves, and they must have been in a big fight because they were really torn up. One was a black female, the other, a normal gray wolf, was male. I took the teeth first, and then decided to salvage some of the fur.”

“And you’ve got the gray male on your pack,” Ayla said. “Now I think I understand. Wolf must have been in that same fight, that’s how he got hurt. I knew that he’d found a friend, probably the black female. He’s still young, and I don’t think he was actually mating yet. He cannot yet count two years, but they were getting to know each other. She was either the lowest-ranked female of the local pack or a lone wolf from another pack.”

“How do you know that?” Tivonan asked. Several more people were now gathered around them, listening.

“Wolves like wolves to look like wolves. I think they can read each other’s expressions better if they have normal wolf coloring. Wolves that are out of the ordinary, all black, or all white, or spotted, are not accepted as well—except I was told by some Mamutoi friends that where there is a lot of snow all year long, white wolves are more normal. But the odd one, like that black wolf, is often the lowest ranked in a pack, so she probably left them and became a lone wolf. Lone wolves usually move on the fringes in between other wolves’ territories,
looking for a place of their own, and if they find another lone wolf, they may try to establish their own pack. My guess is that the wolves of this region were defending their territory against the two new ones,” Ayla said. “And though he’s big, Wolf was at a disadvantage. He only knows people. He was not raised around wolves. He would know some things, just because he is a wolf, but he never had brothers and sisters, or aunts and uncles, other wolves to teach him what wolves learn from each other.”

“How do you know all that?” Palidar asked.

“I watched wolves for many years. When I was learning to hunt, I only hunted meat-eaters, not food animals. I’d like to ask you a favor, Palidar,” Ayla said. “Can I trade with you for that wolf fur? I think the reason Wolf is growling and threatening you is that he smells the wolf he fought with, at least one of them, and he likely killed that one. But they also killed his friend and almost killed him. It could be a danger for you to wear it around him. You should never come here with it because I don’t know what Wolf would do.”

“Why don’t I just give it to you,” the young man said. “It’s only a scrap of fur sewn on my pack loosely. I don’t want to go down in songs and stories as the man who was attacked by the wolf who loved the woman. Is it all right if I keep the teeth? They have some value.”

“Yes, keep the teeth, but I’d suggest that you soak them in a light-colored strong tea for a few days. And would you show me where you found the wolves?”