It wasn't the first time Ayla had refrained from hunting in order to observe foxes and other carnivorous animals. She had often spent long days watching the prey her totem allowed her to hunt, to learn their habits and habitats, and she had discovered they were interesting fellow creatures. The men of the clan beamed hunting by practicing on herbivorous animals, food animals, and though they could track and hunt them when a warm fur was wanted, carnivores were never their favorite prey. They did not develop the special bond with them that Ayla had.
They still fascinated her, though she knew them well, but the rapidly pumping fox and the screaming vixen set her to wondering about more than hunting. Every year in late winter they come together like that. In spring, when her coat is turning brown, that vixen will have a litter. I wonder if she'll stay here under the bones and driftwood, or dig a burrow someplace else. I hope she stays. She'll nurse them, then give them baby food partly chewed from her own mouth. After that she'll bring dead prey, mice and moles and birds. Sometimes a rabbit. When her babies are bigger, she'll bring them animals still alive and teach them to hunt. By next fall, they'll be almost grown, and next winter the vixens will screech like that when the males mount.
Why do they do it? Come together like that? I think he's starting her babies. If all she has to do to have them is swallow a spirit, like Creb always told me, why do they couple like that? No one thought I'd have a baby. They said the spirit of my totem was too strong. But I did. If Durc was started when Broud did that to me, it wouldn't matter if my totem was strong.
People are not like foxes, though. They don't have babies only in spring, women can have them anytime. And women and men don't couple just in winter, they do it all the time. A woman doesn't have a baby every time, though. Maybe Creb was right, too. Maybe the spirit of a man's totem has to get inside a woman, but she doesn't swallow it. I think he puts it inside her when they come together, with his organ. Sometimes her totem fights it, and sometimes it starts a new life.
I don't think I want a white fox fur. If I kill one, the rest will leave, and I want to see how many kits she'll have. I'll get that ermine I saw downstream before she turns brown. Her fur is white, and softer, and I like the black tip on her tail.
But that little weasel is so small, her pelt is hardly big enough to make one hand covering, and she'll have babies in spring too. Next winter there will probably be more ermines. Maybe I won't go hunting today. I think I'll finish that bowl instead.
It didn't occur to Ayla to wonder why she was thinking about the creatures who might be in her valley next winter, when she had planned to leave in spring. She was growing accustomed to her solitude, except in the evening when she added a new notch to a smooth stick and put it on the growing pile of them…
Ayla tried to push the stringy, oily lock of hair out of her face with the back of her hand. She was splitting a feeder root of a tree in preparation for making a large mesh basket, and couldn't let go. She had been experimenting with new weaving techniques, using various materials and combinations of them to produce different textures and meshes. The whole process of weaving, tying, knotting and the making of webbing, strands, and cords had captured her interest to the exclusion of almost everything else. Though occasionally the end products were unworkable, and sometimes laughable, she had made some startling innovations, encouraging her to try more. She found herself twining or plaiting nearly everything that came to hand.
She had been working since early morning on a particularly intricate weaving process, and it wasn't until Whinney entered, nosing aside the hide windbreak, that Ayla noticed it was evening.
"How did it get so late, Whinney? You don't even have water in your bowl," she said, getting up and stretching, stiff from sitting in one place for so long. "I should get something to eat for us, and I was going to change my bedding."
The young woman bustled about, getting fresh hay for the horse, and more for the shallow trench under her bed, dumping the old grass off the ledge. She chopped through the coating of ice to get at the snow inside the mound piled near the cave mouth, grateful again she had it there. She noticed there was not much left and wondered how long it would last before she'd have to get water below. She debated with herself about bringing in enough to wash, then, thinking she might not have the opportunity again until spring, brought in enough to wash her hair as well.
Ice melted in bowls near the fire while she prepared and cooked a meal. As she worked, her thoughts kept turning back to the processes of working with fibers that she was finding so engrossing. After she had eaten and washed, she was pulling tangles out of her wet hair with a twig and her fingers when she saw the dried teasel she had been using to comb and untangle some shaggy bark for twining. Combing Whinney regularly had given her the idea to use the teasel on the fibers, and it was a natural step to try it on her own hair.
She was delighted with the results. Her thick golden tresses felt soft and smooth. She had not paid particular attention to her hair before, aside from an occasional washing, and she usually wore it pushed out of the way behind her ears with a haphazard part down the middle. Iza had often told her it was her best feature, she remembered, after she had brushed it forward to examine by firelight. The color was rather nice, she thought, but even more appealing was the texture, the smooth long strands. Almost before she realized it, she was plaiting a section into a long braided cord.
She tied a piece of sinew to the end, then started on another section. She had a passing thought of how odd it would seem if anyone saw her making cords of her own hair, but it didn't deter her and before long her entire head was covered with many long braids. Swinging her head from side to side, she smiled at the novelty of them. She liked the braids, but she couldn't tuck them behind her ears to keep them off her face. After some experimenting, she discovered a way to coil and tie them down on her head in front, but she liked to swing them and left the sides and back hanging down.
It was the novelty that appealed to her in the beginning, but it was the convenience that persuaded her to keep her hair in braids. It stayed in place; she wasn't always tucking loose tendrils out of the way. And what did it matter if someone might think her strange? She could make cords of her hair if she wished – she had only herself to please.
She used up the snow on her ledge not long after, but it wasn't necessary to chip ice for water anymore. Enough snow had accumulated in drifts. The first time she went down for it, though, she noticed that the snow below her cave had a sifting of soot and ash from her fire. She walked upstream on the frozen surface to find a cleaner location to collect it, but when she entered the narrow gorge, curiosity kept her going.
She had never swum as far upstream as she could have. The current was strong, and it hadn't seemed necessary. But walking was no effort, except for watching her footing. Along the gorge, where falling temperatures caught sprays of water or pressures built up ridges, fantasies in ice created a magical dreamland. She smiled with pleasure at the wondrous formations, but she was unprepared for the sight ahead.
She had been walking for some time and was thinking of turning back. It was cold in the bottom of the shaded gorge, and the ice added its measure to the chill. She decided to go only as far as the next bend in the river. When she reached it, she stopped and stared in awe. Beyond the turn, the gorge walls came together forming a stone wall that reached to the steppes high above, and cascading down it were the glittering stalactite icicles of a frozen waterfall. Hard as stone but cold and white, it seemed a spectacular inversion, like a cave turned inside out.