purposes. Such preshaped flakes of ivory with smooth, slightly rounded outside surfaces could be used for more than dishes. Decorative images could be etched on them.
'Thank you, Marthona, but I have to get some things and go to see Zelandoni,' Ayla said. Suddenly she stopped and hunkered down in front of the older woman, who was sitting on a small stool woven together out of reeds, cattail leaves, and flexible branches. 'I really do want to thank you, for being so kind to me since the first day I arrived. I don't remember my own mother, only Iza, the Clan woman who raised me, but I like to think that my real mother would have been like you.'
'I think of you as a daughter, Ayla,' Marthona said, more moved than she would have expected. 'My son was lucky to find you'; then she shook her head slightly. 'Sometimes I wish he were more like you.'
Ayla hugged her, then turned to Proleva. 'Thank you, too, Proleva. You've been such a good friend to me, and I appreciate, more than I can say, the way you've taken care of Jonayla when I had to stay back at the Ninth Cave, and when I've been busy here.' She hugged Proleva too. 'I wish Folara were here, but I know she's busy with the preparations for her Matrimonial. I think Aldanor is a good man. I'm so happy for her. I have to go now,' she said suddenly, hugged her daughter again, then hurried to the dwelling, misty eyed with the tears she was holding back.
'I wonder what that was all about.' Proleva said.
'If I didn't know better, I'd think she almost sounded like she was saying good-bye,' Marthona said.
'Is mother going someplace, 'Thona?' Jonayla asked.
'I don't think so. At least no one has said anything to me.'
Ayla stayed in the summer dwelling for a while making preparations. First she cut out a roughly circular shape from the belly of the skin of the red deer she had brought with her to the Summer Meeting. She had found the soft buckskin hide the day before folded up on her sleeping roll. When she asked Jonayla who had cured the deer skin, she was told, 'Everybody did.'
Cordage, fibrous rope, twine, thread, tough sinew, and strips of leather thong, in various sizes, were always useful and easy to make without having to think about it, once the techniques were learned. Most people busied themselves making things when they were sitting around talking or listening to stories, out of materials that were collected whenever they were found. So there was always some cordage around for anyone to use. Ayla got some strips of leather thong and a long piece of thin, flexible rope that were hanging on pegs pounded into posts near the entrance. After she had cut off the belly part into a circular shape, she folded the rest of the hide, then coiled up the rope and put it on top. She measured out a length of the leather thong around her neck, added additional length, then threaded it through the holes she cut around the edge of the leather circle.
She seldom wore her amulet anymore, not even her more modern one. Most Zelandonii wore necklaces, and it was hard to wear a lumpy leather pouch and a necklace at the same time. Instead, she usually kept her amulet in her medicine bag, which she customarily wore attached to a belt or waist thong. It wasn't a Clan medicine bag. She had thought about making another one several times, but never seemed to find the time. Releasing the drawstring that held her medicine bag closed, she searched inside and pulled out the small decorated pouch, her amulet, that was full of odd-shaped objects. She undid the knots and poured the strange collection of objects into her hand. They were the signs from her totem that signified important moments in her life. Most of them were given to her by the spirit of the Great Cave Lion after she had made a critical decision as a sign that she had made the right choice, but not all.
The piece of red ochre that was the first object to go into the bag was worn smooth. It was given to her by Iza when she was accepted into the Clan. Ayla put it into the new amulet. The piece of black manganese dioxide that was given to her when she became a medicine woman was also worn down just from being inside the small pouch with the other objects for so long. The red and black material that was often used for coloration had left their residue on the other objects in the pouch. The mineral objects could be brushed off, such as the fossil cast of a seashell, the sign from her totem that her decision to hunt was proper for her, even though she was female.
He must have known even then that I would need to hunt if I was going to survive, she thought. My Cave Lion even told Brun to let me hunt, although then, only with the sling. The disc of mammoth ivory, her hunting talisman that had been given to her when she was declared the Woman Who Hunts, had absorbed colour that couldn't be brushed off, mostly red from the ochre.
She picked up the piece of iron pyrite and rubbed it against her tunic. It was her favourite sign; it was the one that told her she had been right to run away with Durc. If she hadn't, he would have been exposed without anyone thinking any more about it, since he had been judged deformed. When she took him and hid, knowing she could die as well, it made Brun and Creb stop and think.
The coloured dust clung to the clear quartz crystal but didn't discolour it; that was the sign she found that told her she had made the right decision to stop looking for her people and stay in the valley of horses for a while. It always bothered her when she saw the black manganese stone. She picked it up again and held it in her closed fist. It held the spirits of all the people of the Clan. She had exchanged a piece of her spirit for it so that when she saved someone's life they incurred no obligation to her, since she already had a piece of everyone's spirit.
When Iza died, Creb, the Mog-ur, had taken her medicine woman stone from her before she was buried so she would not take the entire Clan to the spirit world with her, but no one took her stone when Broud cursed her with death. Goov had not been Mog-ur for very long, and it came as such a shock to everyone when Broud did it; no one remembered to get the stone from her, and she forgot to return it. What would happen to the Clan if she still had the stone when she passed to the next world?
She put all of her totem's signs into the new pouch, and knew she would keep them there from then on. It felt right for her Clan totem signs to be in a Clan amulet pouch. As she pulled the drawstring tight, she wondered, as she often had, why she had never been given a sign from her totem when she decided to leave the Mamutoi and go with Jondalar. Had she already become a child of the Mother? Had the Mother told her totem she didn't need a sign? Had she been given a more subtle sign that she didn't recognise? Or — a new and more frightening thought came to her — had she made the wrong decision? She felt a cold chill. For the first time in a long time, Ayla clutched her amulet and sent a silent thought asking for his protection to the spirit of the Great Cave Lion.
When she left the temporary dwelling, Ayla was carrying a folded-up buckskin hide, a leather rucksack lumpy with the objects it held, and her Clan medicine bag. There were several more people around the campfire, and she waved to them as she left, but it wasn't the usual beckoning, 'come-back' motion with her palm facing inward, toward herself, which commonly signified a temporary separation, acknowledging that she would see them soon. She had raised her hand, palm facing out and moved it slightly from side to side. Marthona frowned at the signal.
As she started walking upstream along the small river, a quicker way toward the cave she had found a few years before, Ayla was beginning to wonder whether she should go through with this ceremony. Yes, Zelandoni would be disappointed, and so would the rest of the zelandonia who were preparing to assist, but it was more dangerous than they realised. When she agreed to the ceremony the day before, she had been so depressed, she didn't care if she got lost in the black void, but she was feeling better this morning, especially after her bath in The River, and seeing Jonayla, and Wolf, not to mention Marthona and Proleva. She wasn't as ready to face that terrifying black void now. Maybe she should tell Zelandoni that she had changed her mind.
She hadn't thought about the danger she was facing while she was making her preliminary preparations, but she had felt uncomfortable about her inability to perform all of the rituals in the proper way. That was a very important aspect of Clan ceremony, unlike the Zelandonii, who were more tolerant of deviation. Even the words of the Mother's Song varied slightly from Cave to Cave, which was a favoured topic of discussion among the zelandonia, and that was the most important Elder Legend of all.
If such a legend had been a sacred part of Clan ceremonies, it would have been memorised and recited in precisely the same way every time it was repeated, at least among the clans that had regular direct contact with each other. Even those clans from distant regions would have had a version that was very close. That was why she could communicate in the sacred sign language of the Clan with the clans in this region though it was a year's travel away from the clan she grew up with. There were minor differences, but it was amazingly similar.
Since it was a Clan ceremony she would be performing, using powerful roots prepared according to Clan procedures, she felt everything should be done as close as possible according to Clan tradition. She believed it was the only way she could hope to maintain any control, and she was beginning to have doubts if even that would help.
She was walking past the wooded area with her mind deep in thought, when she nearly bumped into
