Jean Auel - The Clan of the Cave Bear

Oga kept Durc at Broud's hearth until late, returning the sleeping child long after the sun had set. Uba laid him on Ayla's furs that she had spread out. The girl was frightened and lost. She had no one to turn to. She was afraid to interrupt Ayla in her efforts to save Iza, and afraid to disturb her mother. Creb had returned only long enough to paint symbols on Iza's body with a paste of red ochre and bear fat, while he made his gestures over her. He returned to the small cave immediately afterward and didn't return.

Uba had unpacked everything and set the hearth in order, made an evening meal that no one ate, and cleared it away. Then she sat quietly beside the sleeping baby, wishing she could think of something to do, anything to keep busy. Though it didn't still the terror in her heart, activity at least kept her occupied. It was better than just sitting there watching her mother die. Finally she lay down on Ayla's bed, curling herself around the baby, cuddling close to him in a forlorn attempt to draw warmth and security from someone.

Ayla worked constantly over Iza, trying every medicine and treatment she could think of. She hovered over her, afraid to leave her side, afraid the woman would slip away while she was gone. She was not the only one who maintained a vigil that night.

Only the young children slept. At every hearth in the darkened cave, men and women stared at the red coals of banked fires, or lay on furs with open eyes.

The sky outside was overcast, blotting out the stars. The darkness inside the cave faded into a deeper black at the wide entrance, shrouding any hint of life beyond the dying embers of the cave fire. In the still of early morning, when the night was full into its somber depths, Ayla jerked her head up from a momentary doze.

«Ayla,» Iza said again in a hoarse whisper.

«What is it, Iza?» she motioned. The medicine woman's eyes reflected the dim light of the ruddy charcoal in the fireplace.

«I want to say something before I go,» Iza gestured, then dropped her hands. It was an effort for her to move them.

«Don't try to talk, mother. Just rest. You'll be stronger in the morning.»

«No, child, I must say it now. I won't last until morning.»

«Yes, you will. You have to. You can't go,» Ayla signaled.

«Ayla, I'm going, you have to accept it. Let me finish, I don't have much longer.»

Iza rested again, while Ayla waited in mute hopelessness.

«Ayla, I always loved you best. I don't know why, but it's true. I wanted to keep you with me, wanted you to stay with the clan. But soon I'll be gone. Creb will find his way to the spirit world before long, and Brun is getting old, too. Then Broud will be leader. Ayla, you cannot stay here when Broud is the leader. He will find a way to hurt you.» Iza rested again, closing her eyes and fighting for breath and strength to continue.

«Ayla, my daughter, my strange willful child who always tried so hard, I trained you to be a medicine woman so you would have enough status to stay with the clan, even if you never found a mate. But you are a woman, you need a mate, a man of your own.

You are not Clan, Ayla. You were born to the Others, you belong with them. You must leave, child, find your own kind.»

«Leave?» she motioned, confused. «Where would I go, Iza? I don't know any Others, I wouldn't even know where to look for them.»

«There are many to the north of here, Ayla, on the mainland beyond the peninsula.

My mother told me the man her mother healed came from the north.» Iza stopped again, then forced herself to go on. «You cannot stay here, Ayla. Go and find them, my child.

Find your own people, find your own mate.»

Iza's hands dropped suddenly and her eyes closed. Her breathing was shallow.

She strained to take a deep breath and opened her eyes again.

«Tell Uba I love her, Ayla. But you were my first child, the daughter of my heart.

Always loved you…loved you best…» Iza's breath expired with a bubbling sigh. She did not take another.

«Iza! Iza!» Ayla screamed. «Mother, don't go, don't leave me! Oh, mother, don't go.»

Uba woke at Ayla's wail and ran to them. «Mother! Oh, no! My mother is gone! My mother is gone.»

The girl and the young woman stared at each other.

«She told me to tell you she loved you, Uba,» Ayla said. Her eyes were dry, the shock still hadn't fully registered in her brain. Creb shuffled toward them. He was already out of his cave before Ayla screamed. With a heaving sob, Ayla groped for them both, and they all found themselves clasped in a grieving embrace of mutual despair. Ayla's tears wet them all. Uba and Creb had no tears, but their pain was not less.

«Oga, will you feed Durc again?»

The one-armed man's gesture was plain to the young woman despite the squirming baby he held. Ayla should feed him, she thought. It's not good for her to go so long without nursing him. The tragedy of Iza's death and his confusion over Ayla's reaction were both apparent in Mog-ur's expression. She could not refuse the pleading magician.

«Of course I will,» Oga said, and took Durc in her arms. Creb hobbled back to his hearth. He saw Ayla still had not moved, though Ebra and Uka had taken Iza's body away to prepare it for burial. Her hair was disheveled and her face still smudged with travel grime and tears. She wore the same stained and dirty wrap she had worn during their long trek back from the Clan Gathering. Creb had put her son in her lap when he cried to be fed, but she was blind and deaf to his needs. Another woman would have understood that even deep grief could, eventually, be penetrated by a baby's cries. But Creb had little experience with mothers and babies. He knew women often fed each other's children, and he couldn't let the baby go hungry as long as there were other women who could nurse him. He had taken Durc to Aga and Ika, but their youngest were close to being weaned and they had only a limited supply of milk. Grev was only a little more than a year old and Oga always seemed to have plenty, so Creb had brought Durc to her several times.

Ayla didn't feel the ache of her hard and caking unsuckled breasts; the ache in her heart was greater.

Mog-ur picked up his staff and limped toward the back of the cave. Rocks had been brought in and piled in a heap in an unused corner of the large cavern, and a shallow trench scooped out of the dirt floor. Iza had been a first-ranked medicine woman. Not only her position in the clan hierarchy, but her intimacy with the spirits dictated a burial place within the cave. It guaranteed that the protective spirits that watched over her would linger near her clan, and she herself could look in on them from her home in the next world. And it assured that no scavenger would scatter her bones.

The magician sprinkled red ochre dust inside the oval of the trench, then made his one-handed gestures. After he consecrated the ground where Iza would be buried, he hobbled over to a lumpy shape draped loosely with a soft leather hide. He pulled the cover back to reveal the gray naked body of the medicine woman. Her arms and legs had been flexed and tied into a fetal position with red-dyed sinew. The magician made a protective gesture, then lowered himself down and began to rub the cold flesh with a salve of red ochre and cave bear fat. Bent into a fetal position and covered with the red that resembled the blood of birth, Iza would be delivered into the next world the same way she had arrived in this one.

Never had it been more difficult for him to perform this task. Iza had been more than sibling to Creb. She knew him better than anyone. She knew the pain he had endured without complaint, the shame he had suffered because of his affliction. She understood his gentleness, his sensitivity, and she rejoiced for his greatness, his power, and his will to overcome. She had cooked for him, cared for him, soothed his aches. With her he had known the joys of family life almost like an ordinary man. Though he had never touched her as intimately as he did then, rubbing her cold body with salve, she had been more «mate» to him than many men had. Her death devastated him.