'I grew up near a sea, far to the east,' Ayla said. 'I'd like to see some of your shells.'
The couple — Ayla couldn't decide if they were mates or sister and brother — brought out bags and containers from where they were stored, and poured them out for display, eager to show their riches. There were hundreds of shells, mostly small, globular molluscs like periwinkles or long shapes such as dentalia that could be sewn onto clothes or strung into necklaces. There were also some scallop shells, but for the most part, the shells were from creatures that were essentially inedible, which meant they had been collected for their decorative value alone, not as food, and from a great distance away. They had either travelled to both seashores themselves, or traded for them from someone who had. The amount of time invested in acquiring items solely for display meant that as a society, the Zelandonii were not living on the edge of survival; they had abundance. According to the customs and practices of their time, they were wealthy.
Both Jondalar and the First had come to see what had been brought out and displayed for Ayla. Though they had both been aware of the Fifth Cave's status, partly because of their jewellery-makers, seeing so much at once was almost overwhelming. They couldn't help but make comparisons in their minds to the Ninth Cave, but when they thought about it, they knew that their Cave was equally wealthy, in a slightly different way. In fact, most of the Zelandonii Caves were.
The Zelandoni of the Fifth Cave took them into another shelter nearby, and again it was well decorated, primarily with engravings of horses, bison, deer, even a partial mammoth, often accented with both red ochre and black manganese paint. The antlers of an engraved deer, for example, had been outlined in black, while a bison had been painted mostly red. Again they were introduced to the people who were there. Ayla noticed that the children who had been around their shelter, which was on the same side of the small stream, had gathered around again; she recognised several of them.
Suddenly Ayla felt dizzy and nauseous, and had a very strong need to get out of the shelter. She couldn't explain her intense urge to leave, but she had to get outside.
'I'm thirsty, I want to get some water,' she said, walking out quickly, and heading toward the stream.
'You don't have to go out,' a woman said, following behind her. 'We have a spring inside.'
'I think we all need to go anyway. The feast must be ready, and I'm hungry,' the Zelandoni of the Fifth Cave said. 'I should think you must be, too.'
They returned to the main shelter, or what Ayla had come to think of as the main shelter, and found everything for the feast set up and waiting for them. Although extra dishes were stacked up for the visitors, Ayla and Jondalar got their personal eating cups, bowls, and knives out of their pouches. The First carried her own dishes as well. Ayla took out Wolf's water bowl, which also served as an eating dish if one was needed, and thought that she should start making eating dishes for Jonayla soon. Though she planned to nurse her until she could count at least three years, she would be giving her tastes of other food long before that.
Someone had recently hunted an aurochs; a roast haunch, turned on a spit over coals, was the main dish. Lately, they only saw the wild cattle in summer, but it was one of Ayla's favourite foods. The taste was similar to bison, except richer, but then they were similar animals, with hard, round, curving horns that grew to a point and were permanent, not shed every year like deer antlers.
There were summer vegetables, too: sow-thistle stems, cooked pigweed, coltsfoot, and nettle leaves flavoured with sorrel, and cowslips and wild rose petals in a salad of young dandelion leaves and clover. Fragrant meadowsweet flowers gave a honey-like sweetness to a sauce of crabapples and rhubarb served with the meat. A mixture of summer berries required no sweetening. They had raspberrries, an early-ripening variety of blackberries, cherries, blackcurrants, elderberries, and pitted blackthorn plums, though pitting the small sloes was a time- consuming job. Rose leaf tea finished off the delicious meal.
When she took out Wolf's bowl and gave him the bone she had chosen with a little meat left on, one of the women looked at the wolf with disapproval, and Ayla heard her say to another woman that she didn't think it was right to feed a wolf food that was meant for people. The other woman nodded her head in agreement, but Ayla had noticed that both of them had looked at the four-legged hunter with trepidation earlier in the day. She had hoped to introduce Wolf to the women to perhaps reduce their fearfulness, but they made a point of avoiding both Ayla and the meat-eater.
After the meal, more wood was put on the fire to provide stronger light against the encroaching darkness. Ayla was nursing Jonayla and sipping a cup of hot tea with Wolf at her feet in the company of Jondalar, the First, and the Zelandoni of the Fifth. A group of people approached, including Madroman, though he stayed in the background. Ayla recognised others, and gathered that they were the Acolytes of the Fifth, probably wanting to spend some time with the One Who Was First.
'I have completed 'Marking the Suns and Moons',' said one of them. The young woman opened up her hand and revealed a small plaque of ivory covered with strange markings.
The Fifth picked it out of her hand and examined it carefully, turning it over to see the back side and even checking around the edges. Then he smiled. 'This is about a half year,' he said, then gave it to the First. 'She is my Third Acolyte, and started the Marking this time last year. Her plaque for the first half is put away.'
The large woman looked at the piece with the same careful scrutiny as the Zelandoni of the Fifth, but not as long. 'This is an interesting method of marking,' she said. 'You show the turns by position and the crescents with curved marks for two of the moons you've marked. The rest are around the edge and on the back. Very good.'
The young woman beamed under the praise from the First.
'Perhaps you could explain what you've done to my Acolyte. Marking the Suns and Moons is something she has yet to do,' the First said.
'I would have thought it was something she had already done. I've heard she is known for her medicinal knowledge, and she is mated. There are not many Acolytes I know who are mated and have children, not even many Zelandonia,' the Third Acolyte of the Zelandoni of the Fifth Cave said.
'Ayla's training has been unconventional. As you know, she was not born to the Zelandonii, so the order in which she has gained her knowledge is not the same as ours. She is an exceptional healer. She started young, but she is just beginning her Donier Tour, and hasn't yet learned to Mark the Suns and Moons,' the Zelandoni Who Was First carefully explained.
'I'll be happy to explain the way I marked them to her,' the Third Acolyte of the Fifth said, and sat down next to Ayla.
Ayla was more than interested. This was the first she had heard of Marking the Suns and Moons, and didn't know it was another task she'd have to complete as part of her training. She wondered what else there was that she didn't know she would have to do.
'You see, I made one mark each night,' the young woman said, showing her the marks she had etched into the ivory with a pointed tool of sharp flint. 'I'd already marked the first half year on another piece, so I was getting an idea of how to keep track of more than just the count of the days. I started this just before the moon was new and I was trying to show where the moon was in the sky, so I began here.' She indicated a mark that was in the middle of what seemed to be just random haphazard pitting. 'The next few nights it snowed. It was a big storm and blocked out the moon and the stars, but I wouldn't have been able to see the moon anyway. It was the time when Lumi was closing his great eye. The next time I saw him, he was a thin crescent, waking up again, so I made a curved mark here.'
Ayla looked where the young woman indicated and was rather surprised to see that what had appeared at first to be hole made by a sharp point was indeed a small curved line. She looked more closely at the group of markings and suddenly they didn't look so random. There did seem to be a pattern to it, and she was interested in how the young woman would proceed.
'Since the time of Lumi's sleeping is the beginning of a Moon, that's here on the right where I decided to turn back to mark the next set of nights,' the Third Acolyte continued. 'Right about here was the first eye-half-closed; some people call it the first half-face. Then it keeps getting bigger until it's full. It's hard to tell when it's exactly full — it looks full for a few days — so that's here on the left where I turned back again. I made four curved marks, two below and two above. I kept marking until it was the second half-face, when Lumi starts to close his eye again, and you notice it's just above the first half-face.
'I kept marking until his eye was closed again — see here on the right, where I curved down? All the way around the line with the first right-end turn. You take it and see if you can follow it. I always make the turns when he's full face, on the right, or when he's sleeping, on the left. You'll see that you can count two Moons, plus another half. I stopped at the first half-face after the second Moon. I was waiting for Bali to catch up. It was the time when
