'One question at a time, please,' the First said. 'There are many things we'd all like to know, but we are in no rush. Do you have any interpretations for those things, Ayla?'
'I don't have to interpret, I know what they are,' Ayla said. 'But I don't understand them.'
'Well, what were they?' Zelandoni of the Third Cave asked.
'I think most people know that when I lived with the Clan, the woman who was like a mother to me was a medicine woman who taught me most of what I know about healing. She also had a daughter and we all lived at the hearth of her sibling, her brother, who was called Creb. Most people of the Clan knew Creb as The Mog-ur. A mog-ur was a man who knew the spirit world, and The Mog-ur was like the One Who Was First, the most powerful of all the mogurs.'
'He was like a zelandoni, then,' the visiting Zelandoni said.
'In a sense. He wasn't a healer. The medicine women are the healers, they are the ones who know healing plants and practices, but it is the mog-ur who calls upon the spirit world to aid in the healing,' Ayla explained.
'The two parts are separate? I always thought of them as inseparable,' the woman unknown to Ayla said.
'You might also be surprised to know that only men were allowed to contact the spirit world, to be mog-urs, and only women were healers, medicine women,' Ayla said.
'That is surprising.'
'I don't know about the other mog-urs, but The Mog-ur had a special ability in the way he called upon the spirit world. He could go back to their beginnings and show others the way. He even took me back once, although he wasn't supposed to, and I think he was very sorry that he did. He changed after that; he lost something. I wish it had never happened.'
'How did it happen?' the First asked.
'There was a root they used, only for the special ceremony with all the mog-urs at the Clan Gathering. It had to be prepared a particular way, and only the medicine women of Iza's line knew how.'
'You mean they have Summer Meetings, too?' the Zelandoni of the Eleventh asked.
'Not every summer, only once in seven years. When it was time for the Clan Gathering, Iza was sick. She couldn't make the trip, and her daughter was not yet a woman, and the root had to be prepared by a woman, not a girl. Although I didn't have the Clan memories, Iza had been training me to be a medicine woman. It was decided that I would have to be the one to prepare the root for the mog-urs. Iza explained how I would have to chew the root and then spit it out into a special bowl. She cautioned me not to swallow any of the juice while I was chewing. When we got to the Clan Gathering, the mog-urs were not going to allow me to make it. I was born to the Others, not to the Clan, but finally at the last moment Creb came for me and told me to prepare myself.
'I went through the ritual, but it was difficult for me and I ended up swallowing some, and I had made a little too much. Iza had told me it was too precious to be wasted, and by then I wasn't thinking clearly. I drank what was left in the bowl so it wouldn't go to waste, and without meaning to, I went into the cave nearby and deep inside I found the mog-urs. No woman was ever supposed to participate in the men's ceremonies, but I was there, and had also swallowed the drink.
'I can't really explain what happened after that, but somehow Creb knew I was there. I was falling into a deep black void; I thought I would be lost in it forever, but Creb came for me, pulled me back. I'm sure he saved my life. The people of the Clan have a special quality to their minds that we don't, just as we have a quality that they don't. They have memories; they can remember what their ancestors knew. They don't really have to learn what they need to know, like we do. They only have to need to know it, or to be 'reminded' to remember. They can learn something new, but it's more difficult for them.
'Their memories go back a long way. In certain circumstances they can go back to their beginnings, to a time so long ago, there were no people and the earth was different. Perhaps back to the time when the Great Earth Mother gave birth to her son and first made the land green with her birth waters. Creb had the ability to direct the other mog-urs and lead them back to those times. After he saved me, he took me with him and the other mog-urs back into the memories. If you go back far enough, we all have the same memories, and he helped me to find mine. I shared the experience with them.
'In the memories, when the earth was different, so long ago it is hard to imagine, those who came before people once lived in the depths of the ocean. When the water dried and they were stranded in the mud, they changed and learned to live on land. They changed many times after that, and with Creb, I was able to go there with them. It was not quite the same for me as it was for them, but still, I was able to go there. I saw the Ninth Cave before the Zelandonii lived there; I recognised the Falling Stone when I first arrived. And then I went someplace Creb was not able to go. He blocked out the other mog-urs so they wouldn't know I was there, and then he told me to leave, to get out of the cave before they discovered me. He never told them I was there. I would have been killed outright if they knew, but he was never the same after that.'
There was a silence when Ayla finished. Zelandoni who was First broke the silence. 'In our histories and legends, the Great Earth Mother gave birth to all life, and then to those like us who would remember Her. Who is to say how Doni formed us? What child remembers its life in the womb? Before it is born, a baby breathes water and struggles to breathe when first born. You have all seen and examined human life before it was fully formed, when it was expelled early. In the first stages, it does resemble a fish, and then animals. It may be she is remembering her own life in the womb, before she was born. Ayla's interpretation of her early experience with the ones she calls the Clan does not deny the legends or the Mother's Song. It adds to them, explains them. But I am overwhelmed that those we have called animals for so long would have such great knowledge of the Mother, and having such knowledge in their 'memories', how they could not recognise Her.'
The zelandonia were relieved. The First had managed to take what at first seemed like a basic conflict of beliefs, told by Ayla with such credible conviction that it could almost create a schism, and instead blend them together. Her interpretation added strength to their beliefs rather than tearing them apart. They could, perhaps, accept that the ones they called Flatheads were intelligent in their own way, but the zelandonia had to maintain that the beliefs of those people were still inferior to their own. The Flatheads had not recognised the Great Earth Mother.
'So it was that root that brought on the black void and the strange creatures,' Zelandoni of the Fifth said.
'It is a powerful root. When I left the Clan, I had taken some with me. I didn't plan to; it was just in my medicine bag. After I became a Mamutoi, I told Mamut about the root and my experience with Creb in the cave. As a young man, he had once been injured while travelling and a Clan medicine woman healed him. He stayed with them for a while, learned some of their ways, and participated at least once in a ceremony with the men of the Clan. He wanted us to try the root together. I think he felt that if Creb could control it, so could he, but there are some differences between the Clan and the Others. With Mamut we did not go back into past memories; we went somewhere else. I don't know where — it was very strange and frightening. We went through that void and almost didn't return, but … someone … wanted us back so much, his need overpowered everything else.'
Ayla looked down at her hands. 'His love was so strong … then,' she said under her breath. Only Zelandoni noticed the pain in Ayla's eyes when she looked up. 'Mamut said he would never use that root again. He said he was afraid he'd get lost in that void and never return, never find the next world. Mamut said that if I ever used that root again, I should make sure that I had strong protection or I might never return.'
'You still have some of that root?' the First was quick to ask.
'Yes. I found more in the mountains near the Sharamudoi, but I haven't seen any since. I don't think it grows in this region,' Ayla said.
'The root you have, is it still good? It's been a long time since your Journey,' the large woman pressed.
'If it's dried properly and kept out of the light, Iza told me that the root concentrates, gets stronger with age,' Ayla said. The One Who Was First nodded, more to herself than anyone.
'I got a strong impression that you felt the pain of childbirth,' the visiting Zelandoni said. 'Did you ever come near death giving birth?'
Ayla had told the First about her harrowing experience giving birth to her first child, her son of mixed spirits, and the large woman thought that might account for part of Ayla's ordeal of childbirth in the cave, but she didn't think it was necessary to tell everyone.
'I think the most important question is the one we have all been avoiding,' the First interjected. 'The Mother's Song is perhaps the oldest of the Elder Legends. Different Caves, different traditions often have minor variations,
