Jean Auel - The Clan of the Cave Bear

It was still dark, though dawn was approaching, when the child’s fever finally broke in a drenching sweat. Iza cuddled her close, adding her warmth and making sure she was well covered. The girl woke shortly afterward and wondered where she was, but it was too dark to see. She felt the reassurance of the woman’s body next to her and closed her eyes again, drifting into a more restful sleep.

As the sky lightened, silhouetting the trees against its faint glow, Iza crept quietly out of the warm fur. She stoked the fire, added more wood, then went to the small creek to fill her bowl and peel bark off a willow tree. She paused for a moment, clutched her amulet, and thanked the spirits for willow. She always thanked the spirits for willow, for its ubiquitous presence as well as for its painkilling bark. She couldn’t remember how many times she had peeled willow bark for a tea to relieve aches and pains. She knew of stronger painkillers, but they also dulled the senses. The analgesic properties of willow just dulled the pain and reduced fever.

A few other people were beginning to stir as Iza sat hunched over the fire adding small hot stones to the bowl of water and willow bark. When it was ready, she carried it back to the fur, carefully rested the bowl in a small depression scooped out of the ground, then slid in beside the child. Iza watched the sleeping girl, noting that her breathing was normal, intrigued by her unusual face. The sunburn had faded to tan except for a little peeling skin across the bridge of her small nose.

Iza had seen her kind once, but only from a distance. Women of the Clan always ran and hid from them. Unpleasant incidents had been told at Clan Gatherings of chance encounters between the Clan and the Others, and Clan people avoided them. Women, especially, were allowed little contact But the experience of their clan had not been bad. Iza remembered talking with Creb about the man who had stumbled into their cave long before, nearly out of his head with pain, his arm badly broken.

He had learned a little of their language, but his ways were strange. He liked to talk to women as well as men and treated the medicine woman with great respect, almost reverence. It hadn’t kept him from gaining the respect of the men. Iza wondered about the Others, lying awake watching the child as the sky grew lighter.

While Iza was looking at her, a shaft of sunlight fell on the child’s face from the bright ball of flame just edging over the horizon. The girl’s eyelids fluttered. She opened her eyes and looked into a pair of large brown eyes, deep set below heavy brow ridges in a face that protruded somewhat, like a muzzle.

The girl screamed and squeezed her eyes shut again. Iza drew the child close to her, feeling her scrawny body shaking with fear, and murmured soothing sounds. The sounds were somehow familiar to the child, but more familiar was the warm comforting body. Slowly, her shaking stilled. She opened her eyes a tiny crack and looked at Iza again. This time she didn’t scream. Then she opened her eyes wide and stared at the frightening, totally unfamiliar face of the woman.

Iza stared too, in wonder. She had never seen eyes the color of the sky before. For a moment she wondered if the child was blind. Eyes of older Clan people sometimes grew a film over them, and as the film clouded the eyes to a lighter shade, sight grew dimmer. But the pupils of the child’s eyes dilated normally and there could be no doubt she had seen Iza. That light blue-gray color must be normal for her, Iza thought.

The little girl lay perfectly still, afraid to move a muscle, her eyes wide open. When the child sat up with Iza’s help, she winced in pain from the movement, and her memories came flooding back. She recalled the monstrous lion with a shudder, visualizing the sharp claw raking her leg. She remembered struggling to the stream, thirst overcoming her fear and the pain in her leg, but she remembered nothing before. Her mind had blocked out all memory of her ordeal wandering alone, hungry and afraid, the terrifying earthquake, and the loved ones she had lost.

Iza held the cup of liquid to the child’s mouth. She was thirsty and took a drink, and made a face at the bitter taste. But when the woman put the cup back to her lips, she swallowed again, too frightened to resist. Iza nodded approval, then left to help the women prepare the morning meal. The little girl’s eyes followed Iza, and she opened them wider when she saw for the first time a camp full of people who looked like the woman.

The smell of cooking food brought pangs of hunger, and when the woman returned with a small bowl of meaty broth thickened with grain into a gruel, the child gulped it down ravenously. The medicine woman didn’t think she was ready for solid food yet. It didn’t take much to fill her shrunken stomach, and Iza put the remainder in a water skin for the child to drink while they traveled. When the girl was through, Iza laid her down and removed the poultice. The wounds were draining and the swelling was down.

“Good,” Iza said aloud.

The child jumped at the harsh guttural sound of the word, the first she had heard the woman speak. It didn’t sound like a word at all, more like a growl or grunt of some animal to the girl’s untutored ears. But Iza’s actions were not animallike, they were very human, very humane. The medicine woman had another mashed root ready and while she was applying the new dressing, a misshapen, lopsided man hobbled toward them.

He was the most fearsomely repulsive man the girl had ever seen. One side of his face was scarred and a flap of skin covered the place where one of his eyes should have been. But all of these people were so alien and ugly to her, his forbidding disfiguration was only a matter of degree. She didn’t know who they were or how she happened to be among them, but she knew the woman was taking care of her. She had been given food, the dressing cooled and soothed her leg, and most of all, from the depths of her unconscious mind, she felt a relief from the anxiety that had filled her with aching fear. Strange as these people were, with them she was, at least, no longer alone.

The crippled man eased himself down and observed the child. She returned his look with a frank curiosity that surprised him. The children of his clan were always a little afraid of him. They learned quickly that even their elders held him in awe, and his aloof manner didn’t encourage familiarity. The gulf widened when mothers threatened to call Mog-ur if they misbehaved. By the time children were nearly adults, most of them, especially girls, really feared him. It wasn’t until they gained the maturity of middle years that members of the clan came to temper their fear with respect. Creb’s good right eye sparkled with interest at this strange child’s fearless appraisal of him.

“The child is better, Iza,” he indicated. His voice was lower pitched than the woman’s, but the sounds he made were more like grunts than words to the girl. She didn’t notice the accompanying hand signals. The language was totally alien to her; she only knew the man had communicated something to the woman.

“She is still weak from hunger,” Iza said, “but the wound is better. The gashes were deep, but not enough to seriously damage her leg, and the infection is draining. She was clawed by a cave lion, Creb. Have you ever known a cave lion to stop with a few scratches once it decided to attack? I’m surprised she’s alive. She must have a strong spirit protecting her. But,” Iza added, “what do I know of spirits?” It was certainly not a woman’s place, not even his sibling’s, to tell Mog-ur about spirits. She made a deprecating gesture that also begged his forgiveness for her presumption. He didn’t acknowledge her-she hadn’t expected him to-but he looked at the child with greater interest as a result of her comment about a strong protecting spirit. He had been thinking much the same thing himself, and though he would never admit it, his sibling’s opinion carried weight with him, and confirmed his own thoughts.