Jonayla wasn't out of her sight more than a few moments, just when she was in the marsh getting the cattails. But she hadn't considered a wolverine. She shook her head. There was always more than one kind of predator around.
She nursed the baby for a while, as much to comfort herself as the child, and praised Wolf, petting him with her other hand and talking to him.
'Right now I have to skin out that wolverine. I would rather have killed something we could eat, though I suppose you could eat him, Wolf, but I do want that fur. It's the one thing wolverines are good for. They are mean and vicious and steal food from traps and when meat is drying, even if people are around. If they get inside a shelter, they destroy everything they can and make a big stink, but their fur makes the best trim around a winter hood. Ice doesn't cling to it when you breathe. I think I'll make a hood for Jonayla, and a new one for me, and maybe Jondalar, too. But you don't need one, Wolf. Ice doesn't cling much to your fur, either. Besides, you'd look funny with wolverine fur around your head.'
Ayla recalled the wolverine that had been bothering the women of Brun's clan when they were cutting up an animal from a hunt. It kept dashing into their midst and stealing the freshly cut strips of meat they had set out to dry on cords stretched close to the ground. Even when they threw stones, it wasn't deterred for long. Finally some of the men had to go after it. That incident had given her one of the reasons she had used to rationalise her decision when she resolved she would teach herself to hunt with the sling she had secretly learned to use.
Ayla put her baby down on the soft buckskin carrying blanket again, this time on her stomach, since she seemed to like pushing up and looking around. Then she dragged the wolverine carcass a few more paces away and turned it on its back. First she cut out the two flint points that were still embedded in the animal. The one stuck in the hindquarters was still good — she would only need to wash off the blood — but the one she had thrown with such force that it went clear through the neck had a broken tip. She could resharpen it and use it for a knife if not a spear point, but Jondalar could do it better, she thought.
With the new knife he had recently given her, she turned to the wolverine. Starting at the anus, she cut away his genital organs and made a deft cut up toward the stomach but stopped short of the ventral scent gland. One of the ways wolverines marked their territory was to straddle low logs or bushes and rub the strong-smelling material that issued from the gland on them. They also marked territory with urine and faeces, but it was the gland that could ruin the fur. It was almost impossible to get the smell out and unbearable to wear the fur around the face if it was contaminated by the gland whose smell was almost as strong as a skunk's.
Carefully pulling the skin away to avoid cutting through the stomach lining and breaking into the intestines, she cut all the way around the gland, then gingerly feeling with her hand, reached under it with the knife and cut it free. She was going to just toss it toward the woods, then realised that Wolf would likely pick up the odour and go after it, and she didn't want him smelling terrible either. She cautiously picked it up by the edge of the skin and walked back toward the woods where she had killed the creature. There was a fork in a tree above her head and she laid the gland on top of a branch. When she came back, she finished cutting through the skin, making a slit up the stomach to the throat.
Next she went back to where she started, at the anus, and began to slice through both skin and flesh. When she got to the pelvic bone, she felt for the ridge that was between the left and right sides, and cut through the muscle down to the bone. Then forcing the legs apart and again feeling for just the right spot, she exerted more pressure, and split the bone, cutting the stomach membrane just a bit to relieve tension. Now the bowel could be removed with the rest of the innards after she finished cutting the opening. Once this delicate task was accomplished cleanly, she cut the meat up to the breastbone, being careful not to penetrate the intestines.
Cutting through the breastbone would be somewhat more difficult, and would require more than just her stone knife. She needed a hammer. She knew she had a small hammerstone in the same pouch in which she kept her bowl and cup, but she looked around first to see if she could find something else to use. She should have taken the rounded stone out before she started the task of field-dressing the wolverine, but she had been a little disconcerted and forgot. She had some blood on her hands and didn't want to reach into her pouch and leave wolverine blood inside. She saw a stone sticking out of the ground and, using her digging stick, tried to pry it out, but it turned out to be bigger than it seemed. Finally, she wiped her hand on the grass and removed the hammerstone from her pouch.
But she needed more than a stone. If she just hit the back of her new flint knife with a hammerstone, it would chip. She needed something to soften the blow. Then she remembered that a corner of the baby's carrying blanket was getting tattered. She got up and walked back to where the baby was kicking her feet and trying to reach for Wolf. Ayla smiled at her then cut off a piece of soft leather from the ragged corner. When she got back to her chore, she placed the blade of her knife lengthwise along the sternum, put the folded-up soft leather over the back of the blade, then picked up the hammerstone and hit the blade. The knife made a cut, but did not split the bone. She hit it again, and then a third time before she felt the bone give way. Once the breastbone was split open, she continued to cut up to the throat to free the windpipe.
She stretched the rib cage apart, then with her knife she cut the diaphragm, which separated the chest from the stomach, free from the walls. She got a good hold on the slippery windpipe and began to pull out the viscera, using her knife to free them from the backbone. The whole connected package of internal organs fell out on the ground. She turned the wolverine over to let it drain. It was now field dressed.
The process was essentially the same for any animal, small or large. If it was an animal that was intended for food, the next step would be to cool it as quickly as possible, by skinning it, rinsing it with cool water, and if it had been winter, laying it on snow. Many of the internal organs of herbivorous animals like bison or aurochs or any of the various deer, or mammoth or rhinoceros, were edible and quite tasty — the liver, the heart, the kidneys — and some parts were usable. The brains were almost always used for tanning the hides. The intestines could be cleaned out and stuffed with rendered fat, or cut-up pieces of meat, sometimes mixed with blood. Well-washed stomachs and bladders made excellent waterbags, and were good containers for other liquids. They also made effective cooking utensils. Cooking could also be done in a fresh skin spread out and stuffed loosely into a hole dug in the ground, adding water, then boiling it with heated rocks. When used for cooking, stomachs, hides, and all organic materials shrank some because they also cooked, so it was never a good idea to fill them too full of liquid.
Though she knew some people did, she never ate the meat of carnivores. The clan who raised her didn't like to eat animals that ate meat, and Ayla found it distasteful the few times she had tried it. She thought that if she was really hungry, she might be able to stomach it, but she was sure she'd have to be starving. These days, she didn't even like horsemeat, though it was the favourite of many people. She knew it was because she felt so close to her horses.
It was time to gather up everything and head back to camp. She stashed the spear shafts in the special quiver, along with her spear-thrower, and put the points she had retrieved into the cavity of the wolverine. She put Jonayla on her back with the carrying blanket, then picked up her gathering basket, and tucked the bundled long stems of cattails under one arm. Then grabbing the avens stems still tied to the head of the wolverine, she started out dragging it behind her. She left its innards where they had fallen; one or more of the Mother's creatures would come along and eat them.
When she walked into their camp, both Jondalar and Zelandoni gawked for a moment. 'It's looks like you've been busy,' Zelandoni said.
'I didn't think you were going hunting,' Jondalar said, walking toward her to relieve her of some of her burdens, 'especially for a wolverine.'
'I didn't plan to,' Ayla said, then told him what had happened.
'I wondered why you were taking your weapons with you just to gather some growing things,' Zelandoni said. 'Now I know.'
'Usually women go out in a group. They talk and laugh and sing, and make a lot of noise,' Ayla said. 'It can be fun, but it also warns animals away.'
'I hadn't thought of it that way,' Jondalar said, 'but you're right. Several women together probably would keep most animals away.'
'We always tell young women whenever they leave their homes, to visit, or to pick berries, or gather wood, or whatever, to go with someone,' Zelandoni said. 'We wouldn't have to tell them to talk and laugh, and make noise. That happens whenever they get together, and it is a measure of safety.'
'In the Clan, people don't talk as much, and they don't laugh, but they make rhythms as they walk by banging
