The Mammoth Hunters

After a while he raised himself and looked down at her, his forehead furrowed with concern. "I'm sorry," he said.

"Why are you sorry?"

"It was too fast, and I didn't make you ready, didn't give you Pleasures, too."

"I was ready, Jondalar, I had Pleasure. Did I not ask you? I have Pleasure in your Pleasure. I have Pleasure in your love, in your strong feeling for me."

"But you did not feel the moment as I did."

"I did not need it. I had different feeling, different Pleasure. Is it always necessary?" she asked.

"No, I suppose not," he said, frowning. Then he kissed her and lingered over it. "And this night is not over yet. Come, get up. It's cold out here. Let's go find a warm bed. Deegie and Branag have already pulled their drapes closed. They will be separated until next summer and are eager."

Ayla smiled. "But not as eager as you were." She couldn't see it, but she thought he blushed. "I love you, Jondalar. Everything. All you do. Even your eager…" She shook her head. "No, that's not right, that's the wrong word."

"The word you want is 'eagerness,' I think."

"I love even your eagerness. Yes, that's right. At least I know your words better than Mamutoi." She paused. "Frebec said I didn't speak right. Jondalar, will I ever learn to speak right?"

"I don't speak Mamutoi quite right, either. It's not the language I grew up with. Frebec just likes to make trouble," Jondalar said, helping her up. "Why does every Cave, every Camp, every group have to have a troublemaker? Don't pay any attention to him, no one else does. You speak very well. I'm amazed at the way you pick up languages. You'll be speaking Mamutoi better than I do before long."

"I have to learn how to speak with words. I have nothing else now," she said softly. "I don't know anyone who speaks the language I grew up with, any more." She closed her eyes for a moment as a feeling of bleak emptiness came over her.

She shook it off and started to put her legged garments back on, and then stopped. "Wait," she said, taking them off again. "Long ago, when I first became a woman, Iza told me everything a woman of the Clan needed to know about men and women, even though she doubted that I'd ever find a mate and would need to know it. The Others may not believe the same way, even the signals between men and women are not the same, but the first night I sleep in a place of the Others, I think I should make a cleansing after our Pleasures."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm going to wash in the river."

"Ayla! It's cold. It's dark. It could be dangerous."

"I won't go far. Just here at the edge," she said, throwing down her parka and pulling her i

The water was cold. Jondalar watched from the bank, and got himself just wet enough to know how cold it was. Her feeling for the ceremony of the occasion made him think of the purifying rituals of First Rites, and he decided a little cleansing wouldn't hurt him either. She was shivering when she got out. He held her in his arms to warm her. The shaggy bison fur of his parka dried her, then he helped her get into her tunic and parka.

She felt alive, and tingly, and fresh as they walked back to the earthlodge. Most people were settling down for the night when they entered. Fires were banked low, and voices were softened. The first hearth was empty, though the mammoth roast was still in evidence. As they moved quietly along the passageway through the Lion Hearth, Nezzie got up and detained them.

"I just wanted to thank you, Ayla," she said; glancing at one of the beds along the wall. Ayla followed her eyes and saw three small forms sprawled out on one large bed. Latie and Rugie shared it with Rydag. Danug, sprawled out in sleep, took up another bed, and Talut, stretched to his full length propped up on an elbow waiting for Nezzie, smiled at her from a third. She nodded and smiled back, not sure what the proper response was.

They moved to the next hearth as Nezzie crawled in beside the red-haired giant, and tried to pass through silently, so as not to disturb anyone. Ayla felt someone watching her and looked toward the wall. Two shining eyes and a smile were observing them from the dark recess. She sensed Jondalar's shoulders stiffen and looked quickly away. She thought she heard a soft chuckle, then thought it must have been the snores coming from the bed along the opposite wall.

At the large fourth hearth, one of the beds was hung with a heavy leather drape, closing the space off from the passageway, though sounds and movement could be detected within. Ayla noticed that most of the other sleeping places in the longhouse had similar drapes tied up to mammoth bone rafters above or to posts alongside, though not all of them were closed. Mamut's bed on the side wall opposite theirs was open. He was in it, but she knew he wasn't asleep.

Jondalar lit a stick of wood on a hot coal in the fireplace, and shielding it with his hand, carried it to the wall near the head of their sleeping platform. There, in a niche, a thick, flattish stone in which a saucer-shaped depression had been pecked out, was half-filled with fat. He lit a wick of twisted cattail fuzz, lighting up a small Mother figure behind the stone lamp. Then he untied the thongs that held up the drape around their bed, and when it fell, motioned to her.

She slipped in and climbed up on the platform bed piled high with soft furs. Sitting in the middle, closed off by the drape and lit by the soft flickering light, she felt secluded, and secure. It was a private little place all their own. She was reminded of the small cave she had found when she was a girl, where she used to go when she wanted to be alone.

"They are so clever, Jondalar. I would not have thought of this."

Jondalar stretched out beside her, pleased by her delight. "You like the drape closed?"

"Oh, yes. It makes you feel alone, even if you know people are all around. Yes, I like it." Her smile was radiant.

He pulled her down to him, and kissed her lightly. "You are so beautiful when you smile, Ayla."

She looked at his face, suffused with love: at his compelling eyes, violet in the light of the fire instead of their usual vivid blue; at his long yellow hair disarrayed on the furs; at his strong chin and high forehead so different from the chinless jaw and receding forehead of the men of the Clan.

"Why do you cut off your beard?" she asked, touching the stubble on his jaw.

"I don't know. I'm used to it, I guess. In summer, it's cooler, not as itchy. I usually let it grow in winter. Helps keep the face warm when I'm outside. Don't you like it shaved?"

She frowned in puzzlement. "It is not for me to say. A beard is a man's, to cut or not as he pleases. I only asked because I had not ever seen a man who cut his beard before I met you. Why do you ask if I like it or not?"

"I ask, because I want to please you. If you like a beard, I'll let it grow."

"It does not matter. Your beard is not important. You are important. You give me please… No." She shook her head angrily. "You give me pleases… Pleasures… you please me," she corrected.

He gri

"It is the first time… in a place of the Others," she said, closing her eyes, feeling both anticipation and the solemnity of the moment.

He cupped her face in his hands and kissed both eyelids, then gazed for a long moment at the woman he thought more beautiful than any woman he'd ever known. There was a quality of the exotic about her. Her cheekbones were higher than Zelandonii women, her eyes more widely spaced. They were framed with thick lashes, darker than her heavy hair that was gold as autumn grass. Her jaw was firm, her chin slightly pointed.