"How did you learn to do this?"
"Creb showed me. Long ago. When I was a little girl."
"Creb – the man whose hearth you lived at? He knew what they meant? He wasn't just making marks?"
"Creb was… Mog-ur… holy man. The clan looked to him to know the proper time for certain ceremonies, like naming days or Clan Gatherings. This was how he knew. I don't think he believed I would understand – it is difficult even for mog-urs. He did it so I wouldn't ask so many questions. Afterward, he told me not to mention it again. He caught me once, when I was older, marking the days of the moon's cycle and was very angry."
"This… Mog-ur." Jondalar had difficulty with the pronunciation. "He was someone holy, sacred, like a zelandoni?"
"I don't know. You say zelandoni when you mean healer. Mog-ur was not a healer. Iza knew the plants and herbs – she was medicine woman. Mog-ur knew spirits. He helped her by talking to them."
"A zelandoni can be a healer, or can have other Gifts. A zelandoni is someone who has answered the call to Serve the Mother. Some have no special Gifts, just a desire to Serve. They can talk to the Mother."
"Creb had other gifts. He was most high, most powerful. He could… he did… I don't know how to explain."
Jondalar nodded. It was not always easy to explain a zelandoni's Gifts either, but they were also the keepers of special knowledge. He looked back at the sticks. "What does this mean?" he asked, pointing to the extra marks.
Ayla blushed. "It's… it is my… my womanhood," she answered, groping for a way to explain.
Women of the Clan were supposed to avoid men during their menses, and men totally ignored them. Women suffered the partial ostracism – the woman's curse – because men feared the mysterious life force that enabled a woman to bring forth life. It imbued the spirit of her totem with extraordinary strength which fought off the impregnating essences of the spirits of men's totems. When a woman bled, it meant her totem had won and had wounded the essence of the male totem – had cast it out. No man wanted his totem spirit to be drawn into the battle at that time.
But Ayla had been faced with a dilemma shortly after she brought the man to the cave. She could not keep herself in strict isolation when her bleeding started, not when he was barely clinging to life and needed close attention. She had to ignore the stricture. Later, she tried to make her contact with him during those times as brief as possible, but she couldn't avoid him when just two of them shared the cave. Nor could she attend only to women's tasks then, as was the Clan practice. There were no other women to take her place. She had to hunt for the man, and cook for the man, and he wanted her to share meals with him.
All she could do to maintain some semblance of womanly decorum was to avoid any reference to the subject, and take care of herself in private to keep the fact as inconspicuous as possible. How then could she answer his question?
But he accepted her statement with no apparent qualms or misgivings. She could detect no sign that he was disturbed at all.
"Most women keep some kind of record. Did Creb or Iza teach you to do that?" he asked.
Ayla bowed her head to hide her discomfiture. "No, I did it so I would know. I didn't want to be away from the cave unprepared."
His nod of understanding surprised her. "Women tell a story about the counting words," he continued. "They say the moon, Lumi, is the lover of the Great Earth Mother. On the days when Doni bleeds, She will not share Pleasures with him. That makes him angry and hurts his pride. He turns away from Her and hides his light. But he cannot stay away for long. He gets lonely, misses Her warm full body, and peeks back to see Her. By then, Doni is upset, and will not look on him. But as he turns around and shines for Her in all his splendor, She cannot resist him. She opens Herself to him once more, and they are both happy.
"That is why many of Her festivals are held when the moon is full. Women say their phases match the Mother's – they call their time of bleeding the moon time, and they can tell when to expect it by watching Lumi. They say Doni gave them the counting words so they would know even when the moon is hidden by clouds, but they are used in many important ways now."
Though she was disconcerted to hear a man talk so casually about intimate female matters, Ayla was fascinated by the story. "Sometimes I watch the moon," she said, "but I mark the stick, too. What are counting words?"
"They are… names for the marks on your sticks, for one thing, for other things too. They are used to say the number of… anything. They can say how many deer a scout has seen, or how many days away they are. If it is a large herd, such as bison in the fall, then a zelandoni must scout the herd, one who knows the special ways to use counting words."
An undercurrent of anticipation stirred through the woman; she could almost understand what he meant. She felt on the edge of resolving questions whose answers had eluded her.
The tall blond man spied the pile of round cooking stones and scooped them up in both hands. "Let me show you," he said. He lined them up in a row, and, pointing to each in turn, began to count, "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven…"
Ayla watched with rising excitement.
When he finished, he looked around for something else to count, and he picked up a few of Ayla's marked sticks. "One," he said, putting down the first, "two," laying the next down beside it, "three, four, five…"
Ayla had a vivid recollection of Creb telling her, "Birth year, walking year, weaning year…" as he pointed to her outstretched fingers. She held up her hand, and, looking at Jondalar, she pointed to each finger. "One, two, three, four, five," she said.
"That's it! I knew you were close when I saw your sticks."
Her smile was gloriously triumphant. She picked up one of the sticks and began counting the marks. Jondalar continued with the counting words beyond the ones she knew, but even he had to stop a few marks beyond the second extra mark. His brow knotted in concentration. "Is this how long you've been here?" he asked, indicating the few sticks she had brought out.
"No," she said, and got the rest. Untying the bundles, she spread out all the sticks.
Jondalar looked closer, and paled. His stomach turned. Years! The marks represented years! He lined them up so he could see all the marks, then studied them for a while. Though Zelandoni had explained some ways to tally larger numbers, he had to think.
Then he smiled. Rather than try to count the days, he would count the extra marks, the ones that represented a complete cycle of the moon's phases as well as the beginning of her moon times. Pointing to each mark, he made a mark in the dirt floor as he said the counting word aloud. After thirteen marks, he started another row, but skipped the first, as Zelandoni had explained, and made only twelve marks. Moon cycles did not match the seasons or the years exactly. He came to the end of her marks at the end of the third row, then looked at her with awe.
"Three years! You've been here three years! That's how long I've been on my Journey. Have you been alone all that time?"
"I've had Whinney, and up until…"
"But you haven't seen any people?"
"No, not since I left the Clan."
She thought of the years the way she had tallied them. The beginning, when she left the Clan, found the valley, and adopted the little filly, she called Whinney's year. The next spring – the beginning of the cycle of regrowth – she found the lion cub, and thought of that as Baby's year. From Whinney's year to Baby's year was Jondalar's one. Next was the stallion's year, two. And three was the year of Jondalar and the colt. She remembered the years better her way, but she liked the counting words. The man had made her marks tell him how long she had been in the valley, and she wanted to learn to do it.