The Mammoth Hunters

"You sent Wolf, didn't you?" Ayla asked.

"I know he find," the boy motioned. "Wolf smart."

Rydag closed his eyes then, and Ayla had to turn her head aside, and close her eyes. It hurt to see the way he labored to breathe, to see his pain.

"When did you last have your medicine?" Ayla asked, when he opened his eyes and she could look at him.

Rydag shook his head slightly. "Not help. Nothing help."

"What do you mean, nothing will help? You're not a medicine woman. How do you know? I'm the one who knows that," Ayla said, trying to sound firm and positive.

He shook his head slightly again. "I know."

"Well, I'm going to examine you, but first, I'm going to get you some medicine," Ayla said, but it was more that she was afraid she would break down right there. He touched her hand as she started to leave.

"Not go." He closed his eyes again, and she watched him struggle for one more tortured breath, and then another, powerless to do anything. "Wolf here?" he finally signed.

Ayla whistled, and whoever it was outside that had been trying to keep Wolf from going in the tent, suddenly found it impossible. He was there, jumping up on the boy's bed, trying to lick his face. Rydag smiled. It was almost more than Ayla could stand, that smile on a Clan face that was so uniquely Rydag. The rambunctious young animal could be too much. Ayla motioned him down.

"I send Wolf. Want Ayla," Rydag motioned again. "I want…" He didn't seem to know the word in signs.

"What is it you want, Rydag?" Ayla encouraged.

"He tried to tell me," Nezzie said. "But I couldn't understand him. I hope you can. It seems so important to him."

Rydag closed his eyes and wrinkled his brow, and Ayla had the feeling he was trying to remember something.

"Durc lucky. He… belongs. Ayla, I want… mog-ur."

He was trying so hard, and it was taking so much out of him, but all Ayla could do was try to understand. "Mog-ur?" The sign was silent. "You mean a man of the spirit world?" Ayla said, aloud.

Rydag nodded, encouraged. But the expression on Nezzie's face was unfathomable. "Is that what he's been trying to say?" the woman asked.

"Yes, I think so," Ayla said. "Does that help?"

Nezzie nodded, a short, clipped nod of anger. "I know what he wants. He doesn't want to be an animal, he wants to go to the spirit world. He wants to be buried… like a person."

Rydag was nodding now, agreeing.

"Of course," Ayla said. "He is a person." She looked perplexed.

"No. He's not. He was never numbered among the Mamutoi. They wouldn't accept him. They said he was an animal," Nezzie said.

"You mean he ca

"The Mammoth Hearth," Nezzie said. "They won't allow it."

"Well, am I not the daughter of the Mammoth Hearth? I will allow it!" Ayla stated.

"It won't do any good. Mamut would, too. The Mammoth Hearth has to agree, and they won't agree," Nezzie said.

Rydag had been listening, hopeful, but now his hope was dimming. Ayla saw his expression, his disappointment, and was more angry than she had ever been.

"The Mammoth Hearth doesn't have to agree. They are not the ones who decide if someone is human or not. Rydag is a person. He is no more an animal than my son is. The Mammoth Hearth can keep their burial. He doesn't need it. When the time comes, I will do it, the Clan way, the way I did it for Creb, the Mog-ur. Rydag will walk the world of the spirits, Mammoth Hearth or no!"

Nezzie glanced at the boy. He seemed more relaxed now. No, she decided. At peace. The strain, the tension, he had been showing was gone. He touched Ayla's arm.

"I am not animal," he signed.

He seemed about to say something else. Ayla waited. Then suddenly she realized there was no sound, no struggle to take one more tortured breath. He was not in pain any more.

But Ayla was. She looked up and saw Jondalar. He had been there all along, and his face was as racked with grief as hers, or Nezzie's. Suddenly all three of them were clinging together, trying to find solace in each other.

Then another showed his grief. From the floor beneath Rydag's bed, a low whine rose in a furry throat, then yips that extended and deepened and soared into Wolf's first full, ringing howl. When his breath ran out, he began again, crying out his loss in the sonorous, eerie, spine-tingling, unmistakable tones of wolfsong. People gathered at the entrance of the tent to look, but were hesitant to enter. Even the three who were awash in their own sorrow paused to listen and wonder. Jondalar thought to himself that animal or human, no one could ask for a more poignant or awesome elegy.

After the first racking tears of grief were spent, Ayla sat beside the small thin body, unmoving, but her tears had not stopped. She stared into space, silently remembering her life with the Clan, and her son, and the first time she saw Rydag. She loved Rydag. He had come to mean as much to her as Durc and, in a certain way, stood in for him. Even though her son had been taken from her, Rydag had given her an opportunity to know more about him, to learn how he might be growing and maturing, how he might look, how he might think. When she smiled at Rydag's gentle humor, or was pleased at his perceptiveness and intelligence, she could imagine that Durc had the same kind of understanding. Now Rydag was gone, and her tenuous link to Durc was gone. Her grief was for both.

Nezzie's grief was not less, but the needs of the living were important, too. Rugie climbed up on her lap, hurt and confused that her playmate, and friend, and brother, couldn't play any more, couldn't even make words with his hands. Danug was stretched out full-length on his bed, his head buried under a cover, sobbing, and someone had to go and tell Latie.

"Ayla? Ayla," Nezzie finally said. "What do we have to do to bury him in the Clan way? We need to start getting him ready."

It took Ayla a moment to comprehend that someone was talking to her. She frowned, and focused on Nezzie. "What?"

"We have to get him ready for burial. What do we have to do? I don't know anything about Clan burials."

No, none of the Mamutoi did, she thought. Especially the Mammoth Hearth. But she did. She thought about the Clan burials she had seen and considered what should be done for Rydag. Before he can be buried in the Clan way, he has to be Clan. That means he has to be named, and he needs an amulet with a piece of red ochre in it. Suddenly, Ayla got up and rushed out.

Jondalar went after her. "Where are you going?"

"If Rydag is going to be Clan, I have to make him an amulet," she said.

Ayla stalked through the encampment, obviously angry, marching past the Camp of the Mammoth Hearth without even a glance, and straight to the flint-workers' area. Jondalar followed behind. He had some idea what she was up to. She asked for a flint nodule, which no one was ready to refuse her. Then she looked around and found a hammerstone, and cleared herself a place to work.

As she began to preshape the flint in the Clan way, and the Mamutoi flint knappers realized what she was doing, they were eager to watch, and crowded as close as they dared. No one wanted to raise her ire even more, but this was a rare opportunity. Jondalar had tried to explain the Clan techniques once, after Ayla's background became generally known, but his training was different. He didn't have the necessary control using their methods. Even when he succeeded, they thought it was his own skill, not the unusual process.

Ayla decided to make two separate tools, a sharp knife and a pointed awl, and bring them both back to Cattail Camp to make the amulet. She managed to make a serviceable knife, but she was so full of grief and anger, her hands shook. The first time she tried to make the more difficult narrow, sharp point, she shattered it, and then noticed that many people were watching her, which made her nervous. She felt that the Mamutoi flint workers were judging the Clan way of making tools, and she was not representing them well, and then was angry that she should even care. The second time she tried, she broke it, too. Her frustration brought angry tears, which she kept trying to wipe away. Suddenly, Jondalar was kneeling in front of her.