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"I'm afraid you have an enemy in Laramar," she said.
"I'm sorry about that," Ayla said. "I didn't mean to cause problems for him."
"You didn't cause his problems. He was trying to cause you problems, or rather trying to humiliate Marthona and her family, and brought problems on himself instead. But now, I think he will blame you," Zelandoni said.
"Why should he want to make trouble for Marthona?"
"Because he is the lowest-ranked member of the Ninth Cave and she and Joharran are the highest, and he managed to catch her in a slight mistake the other day. As you may already know, that is hard to do. I think it may have given him a temporary illusion of triumph, and he liked it so well, he thought he'd try it again," the donier said.
Ayla's frown deepened as Zelandoni explained. "It may not be just Marthona he wanted to get the better of," Ayla said. "I think I made a mistake the other day, too."
"What do you mean?"
"The day I went there to show Lanoga how to make food for the baby and give her a bath, and clean herself, Laramar came home. I'm sure he didn't know the baby had no milk, he didn't even know about Bologan's injuries. It made me angry; I don't like him. Wolf was with me, and I know when Laramar saw him, he got scared. He tried to cover up his fear, and I found myself feeling like a wolf pack leader wanting to put a lower-ranked wolf in his place. I knew I shouldn't have done it. It just gave him bad feelings toward me," Ayla said.
"Do leaders of wolf packs really put lower-ranked wolves in their place?" Zelandoni said. "How do you know?"
"I learned to hunt meat-eaters before I learned to hunt meat," Ayla said. "I'd spend whole days watching them. That may be why Wolf can live with people. Their ways are not so different from ours."
"How amazing!" Zelandoni said. "And, I'm afraid you're right. You created some bad feelings, but it wasn't entirely your fault. At the burial, you were among the highest ranked of the Ninth Cave, which is where I thought you belonged; Marthona and I agreed. He wanted you in the place he thought you belonged, which was behind him. Traditionally, he was correct.
"At a burial, all the members of a Cave should go before anyone who is visiting. But you are not exactly a visitor. First you were with the zelandonia, because you are a healer, and they always go first. Then you were with Jondalar and his family, which is also where you belong, as everybody agreed today. But at the burial, he mentioned it to Marthona and caught her off guard. That's why he thought he'd triumphed. Then, without even knowing it, you put him in his place. He thought he could get back at both of you through Marthona, but he seriously underestimated her."
"There you are," Jondalar said. "We were just talking about Laramar."
"So were we," Ayla said, but she doubted that their conversation had brought out the same insights. Partly because of her own doing, and partly because of circumstances she wasn't aware of, she had created an enemy. Another one, she realized. She hadn't wanted to cause bad feelings in any of Jondalar's people, but in the short time she had been there, she had made two people angry at her. Marona hated her, too. She realized she hadn't seen the woman for some time and wondered where she was.
Chapter 21
The people of the Ninth Cave had been making preparations for their a
A few people would stay behind for one reason or another: temporary or more serious illness, to finish a project, to wait for someone. Others would return occasionally to their winter home, but most would be gone all summer. Some people would stay close to the place that had been chosen for the Summer Meeting, but many would travel to different places for diverse reasons throughout the warm season.
There would be hunting trips, harvesting treks, visits to relatives, sojourns to group meetings of other Zelandonii, and travels to neighboring peoples. Some young people would venture farther afield and go on Journeys. Jondalar's return with new discoveries and inventions, a beautiful and exotic woman with rare talents, and exciting stories would encourage some of those who had been thinking about it to decide to go on a Journey of their own, and some mothers who knew that his brother had died far away would be unhappy that Jondalar had returned and caused such excitement.
The evening before they pla
Ayla had long ago accepted the fact that she would never know the people to whom she was born, or even who they were, and realized that it didn't matter. When she was living with the Clan, she had wanted to be one of them, a woman of the Clan, which clan was not important. But when she finally understood that she was not Clan, and never would be, then the only distinction that mattered was that she was one of the Others, in her mind kin to all of the Others. She had been happy to be Mamutoi, the people who had adopted her, and she would have been content to be Sharamudoi, the people who had asked Jondalar and her to stay and live with them. She wanted to be Zelandonii only because they were Jondalar's people, not because they were any better than, or even very different from, any of the Others.
During the long winter, when most people stayed close to the Ninth Cave, many of them spent time making gifts they would be giving to people when they saw them again at the next Summer Meeting. When she heard people talking about gifts, Ayla decided to make some, too. Though she'd had only a short time to work on them, she made small tokens that she pla
Jondalar was pla
Pla