Jean M. Auel - 3 - The Mammoth Hunters

VIP免费

2024-11-29 0 0 1.06MB 430 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

Earth's Children #3 -- The Mammoth Hunters -- Jean M. Auel -- (1985)

(Version 2002.11.16 -- Done)

For MARSHALL,

who has become a man to be proud of,

and for BEVERLY,

who helped,

and for CHRISTOPHER, BRIAN, and MELLISSA,

with Love.

Lion Camp Earthlodge

ENTRY area -- storage of fuel, implements, outer clothes

FIRST hearth -- cooking hearth and space for gathering

SECOND -- Lion Hearth

Talut -- headman

Nezzie

Danug

Latie

Rugie

Rydag

THIRD -- Fox Hearth

Wymez

Ranec

FOURTH -- Mammoth Hearth -- space for ceremonies, gathering, projects,

visitors

Mamut -- shaman

Ayla

Jondalar

FIFTH -- Reindeer Hearth

Manuv

Tronie

Tornec

Nuvie

Hartal

SIXTH -- Crane Hearth

Crozie

Fralie

Frebec

Crisavec

Tasher

(Bectie)

SEVENTH -- Aurochs Hearth

Tulie -- headwoman

Barzec

Deegie

Druwez

Brinan

Tusie

(Tarneg)

Trembling with fear, Ayla clung to the tall man beside her as she

watched the strangers approach. Jondalar put his arm around her protectively,

but she still shook.

He's so big! Ayla thought, gaping at the man in the lead, the one with

hair and beard the color of fire. She had never seen anyone so big. He even

made Jondalar seem small, though the man who held her towered over most men.

The red-haired man coming toward them was more than tall; he was huge, a bear

of a man. His neck bulged, his chest could have filled out two ordinary men,

his massive biceps matched most men's thighs.

Ayla glanced at Jondalar and saw no fear in his face, but his smile was

guarded. They were strangers, and in his long travels he had learned to be

wary of strangers.

"I don't recall seeing you before," the big man said without preamble.

"What Camp are you from?" He did not speak Jondalar's language, Ayla noticed,

but one of the others he had been teaching her.

"No Camp," Jondalar said. "We are not Mamutoi." He unclasped Ayla and

took a step forward, holding out both hands, palms upward showing he was

hiding nothing, in the greeting of friendliness. "I am Jondalar of the

Zelandonii."

The hands were not accepted. "Zelandonii? That's a strange...Wait,

weren't there two foreign men staying with those river people that live to the

west? It seems to me the name I heard was something like that."

"Yes, my brother and I lived with them," Jondalar conceded.

The man with the flaming beard looked thoughtful for a while, then,

unexpectedly, he lunged for Jondalar and grabbed the tall blond man in a bone-

crunching bear hug.

"Then we are related!" he boomed, a broad smile warming his face.

"Tholie is the daughter of my cousin!"

Jondalar's smile returned, a little shaken. "Tholie! A Mamutoi woman

named Tholie was my brother's cross-mate! She taught me your language."

"Of course! I told you. We are related." He grasped the hands that

Jondalar had extended in friendship, which he had rejected before. "I am

Talut, headman of the Lion Camp."

Everyone was smiling, Ayla noticed. Talut beamed a grin at her, then

eyed her appreciatively. "I see you are not traveling with a brother now," he

said to Jondalar.

Jondalar put his arm around her again, and she noticed a fleeting look

of pain wrinkle his brow before he spoke. "This is Ayla."

"It's an unusual name. Is she of the river people?"

Jondalar was taken aback by the abruptness of his questioning, then,

remembering Tholie, he smiled inwardly. The short, stocky woman he knew bore

little resemblance to the great hulk of a man standing there on the riverbank,

but they were chipped from the same flint. They both had the same direct

approach, the same unselfconscious -- almost ingenuous -- candor. He didn't

know what to say. Ayla was not going to be easy to explain.

"No, she has been living in a valley some days' journey from here."

Talut looked puzzled. "I have not heard of a woman with her name living

nearby. Are you sure she is Mamutoi?"

"I'm sure she is not."

"Then who are her people? Only we who hunt mammoth live in this region."

"I have no people," Ayla said, lifting her chin with a touch of

defiance.

Talut appraised her shrewdly. She had spoken the words in his language,

but the quality of her voice and the way she made the sounds were...strange.

Not unpleasant, but unusual. Jondalar spoke with the accent of a language

foreign to him; the difference in the way she spoke went beyond accent.

Talut's interest was piqued.

"Well, this is no place to talk," Talut said, finally. "Nezzie will give

me the Mother's own wrath if I don't invite you to visit. Visitors always

bring a little excitement, and we haven't had visitors for a while. The Lion

Camp would welcome you, Jondalar of the Zelandonii, and Ayla of No People.

Will you come?"

"What do you say, Ayla? Would you like to visit?" Jondalar asked,

switching to Zelandonii so she could answer truthfully without fear of

offending. "Isn't it time you met your own kind? Isn't that what Iza told you

to do? Find your own people?" He didn't want to seem too eager, but after so

long without anyone else to talk to, he was anxious to visit.

"I don't know," she said, frowning with indecision. "What will they

think of me? He wanted to know who my people were. I don't have any people any

more. What if they don't like me?"

"They will like you, Ayla, believe me. I know they will. Talut invited

you, didn't he? It didn't matter to him that you have no people. Besides,

you'll never know if they will accept you -- or if you will like them -- if

you don't give them a chance. These are the kind of people you should have

grown up with, you know. We don't have to stay long. We can leave any time."

"We can leave any time?"

"Of course."

Ayla looked down at the ground, trying to make up her mind. She wanted

to go with them; she felt an attraction to these people, and a curiosity to

know more about them, but she felt a tight knot of fear in her stomach. She

glanced up and saw two shaggy steppe horses grazing on the rich grass of the

plain near the river, and her fear intensified.

"What about Whinney! What will we do with her? What if they want to kill

her? I can't let anyone hurt Whinney!"

Jondalar hadn't thought about Whinney. What would they think? he

wondered. "I don't know what they will do, Ayla, but I don't think they would

kill her if we tell them she is special and not meant for food." He remembered

his surprise, and his initial feeling of awe over Ayla's relationship with the

horse. It would be interesting to see their reaction. "I have an idea."

Talut did not understand what Ayla and Jondalar said to each other, but

he knew the woman was reluctant, and the man was trying to coax her. He also

noticed that she spoke with the same unusual accent, even in his language. His

language, the headman realized, but not hers.

He was pondering the enigma of the woman with a certain relish -- he

enjoyed the new and unusual; the inexplicable challenged him. But then the

mystery took on an entirely new dimension. Ayla whistled, loud and shrill.

Suddenly, a hay-colored mare and a colt of an unusually deep shade of brown

galloped into their midst, directly to the woman, and stood quietly while she

touched them! The big man suppressed a shudder of awe. This was beyond

anything he had ever known.

Was she Mamut? he wondered, with growing apprehension. One with special

powers? Many of Those Who Served the Mother claimed magic to call animals and

direct the hunt, but he had never seen anyone with such control over animals

that they would come at a signal. She had a unique talent. It was a little

frightening -- but think how much a Camp could benefit from such talent. Kills

could be so easy!

Just as Talut was getting over the shock, the young woman gave him

another. Holding onto the mare's stiff stand-up mane, she sprang up on the

back of the horse and sat astride her. The big man's mouth gaped open in

astonishment as the horse with Ayla on her back galloped along the edge of the

flyer. With the colt following behind, they raced up the slope to the steppes

beyond. The wonder in Talut's eyes was shared by the rest of the band,

particularly a young girl of twelve years. She edged toward the headman and

leaned against him as though for support.

"How did she do that, Talut?" the girl asked, in a small voice that held

surprise and awe, and a tinge of yearning. "That little horse, he was so

close, I could almost have touched him."

Talut's expression softened. "You'll have to ask her, Latie. Or,

perhaps, Jondalar," he said, turning to the tall stranger.

"I'm not sure myself," he replied. "Ayla has a special way with animals.

She raised Whinney from a foal."

"Whinney?"

"That's as close as I can say the name she has given the mare. When she

says it, you'd think she was a horse. The colt is Racer. I named him -- she

asked me to. That's Zelandonii for someone who runs fast. It also means

someone who tries hard to be best. The first time I saw Ayla, she was helping

the mare deliver the colt."

"That must have been a sight! I wouldn't think a mare would let anyone

get close to her at that time," one of the other men said.

The riding demonstration had the effect Jondalar had hoped for, and he

thought the time was right to bring up Ayla's concern. "I think she'd like to

come and visit your Camp, Talut, but she's afraid you may think the horses are

just any horses to be hunted, and since they are not afraid of people, they

would be too easy to kill."

"They would at that. You must have known what I was thinking, but who

could help it?"

Talut watched Ayla riding back into view, looking like some strange

animal, half-human and half-horse. He was glad he had not come upon them

unknowing. It would have been unnerving. He wondered for a moment what it

would be like to ride on the back of a horse, and if it would make him appear

so startling. And then, picturing himself sitting astride one of the rather

short, though sturdy, steppe horses like Whinney, he laughed out loud.

"I could carry that horse easier than she could carry me!" he said.

Jondalar chuckled. It hadn't been hard to follow Talut's line of

thought. Several people smiled, or chuckled, and Jondalar realized they must

all have been thinking about riding a horse. It was not so strange. It had

occurred to him when he first saw Ayla on Whinney's back.

Ayla had seen the shocked surprise on the faces of the small band of

people and, if Jondalar had not been waiting for her, she would have kept on

going right back to her valley. She'd had enough of disapproval during her

younger years for actions that were not acceptable. And enough freedom since,

while she was living alone, not to want to subject herself to criticism for

following her own inclinations. She was ready to tell Jondalar he could visit

these people if he wanted; she was going back.

But when she returned, and saw Talut still chuckling over his mental

picture of himself riding the horse, she reconsidered. Laughter had become

precious to her. She had not been allowed to laugh when she lived with the

Clan; it made them nervous and uncomfortable. Only with Durc, in secret, had

she laughed out loud. It was Baby, and Whinney, who had taught her to enjoy

the feeling of laughter, but Jondalar was the first person to share it openly

with her.

She watched the man laughing easily with Talut. He looked up and smiled,

and the magic of his impossibly vivid blue eyes touched a place deep inside

that resonated with a warm, tingling glow, and she felt a great welling up of

love for him. She couldn't go back to the valley, not without him. Just the

thought of living without him brought a strangling constriction to her throat,

and the burning ache of tears held back.

As she rode toward them, she noticed that, though Jondalar wasn't as big

as the red-haired man in size, he was nearly as tall, and bigger than the

other three men. No, one was a boy, she realized. And was that a girl with

them? She found herself observing the group of people surreptitiously, not

wanting to stare.

Her body movements signaled Whinney to a stop, then, swinging her leg

over, she slid off. Both horses seemed nervous as Talut approached, and she

stroked Whinney and put an arm around Racer's neck. She was as much in need of

the familiar reassurance of their presence as they were of hers.

"Ayla, of No People," he said, not sure if it was a proper way to

address her, though for this woman of uncanny talent, it well might be,

"Jondalar says you fear harm will come to these horses if you visit with us. I

say here, as long as Talut is headman of the Lion Camp, no harm will come to

that mare or her young one. I would like you to visit, and bring the horses."

His smile broadened with a chuckle. "No one will believe us otherwise!"

She was feeling more relaxed about it now, and she knew Jondalar wanted

to visit. She had no real reason to refuse, and she was drawn to the easy,

friendly laughter of the huge red-haired man.

"Yes, I come," she said. Talut nodded, smiling, and wondered about her,

her intriguing accent, her awesome way with horses. Who was Ayla of No People?

Ayla and Jondalar had camped beside the rushing river and had decided

that morning, before they met the band from the Lion Camp, that it was time to

turn back. The waterway was too large to cross without difficulty, and not

worth the effort if they were going to turn around and retrace their route.

The steppeland east of the valley where Ayla had lived alone for three years

had been more accessible, and the young woman hadn't bothered to take the

difficult roundabout way to the west out of the valley very often, and was

largely unfamiliar with that area. Though they had started out toward the

west, they had no particular destination in mind, and ended up traveling

north, and then east instead, but much farther than Ayla had ever traveled on

her hunting forays.

Jondalar had convinced her to make the exploratory trip to get her used

to traveling. He wanted to take her home with him, but his home was far to the

west. She had been reluctant, and scared, to leave her secure valley to live

with unknown people in an unknown place. Though he was eager to return after

traveling for many years, he had reconciled himself to spending the winter

with her in the valley. It would be a long trek back -- likely to take a full

year -- and it would be better to start in late spring, anyway. By then, he

was sure he could convince her to come with him. He didn't even want to

consider any other alternative.

Ayla had found him, badly mauled and nearly dead, at the beginning of

the warm season that was now seeing its last days, and she knew the tragedy he

had suffered. They fell in love while she was nursing him back to health,

though they were long in overcoming the barriers of their vastly different

backgrounds. They were still learning each other's ways and moods.

Ayla and Jondalar finished breaking camp and much to the surprise -- and

interest -- of the waiting people, packed their supplies and equipment on the

horse, rather than in backframes or haversacks which they would have carried

themselves. Though they had sometimes ridden double on the sturdy horse, Ayla

thought Whinney and her colt would be less nervous if they saw her. The two of

them walked behind the band of people, Jondalar leading Racer by a long rope

attached to a halter, which he had devised. Whinney followed Ayla with no

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

Earth'sChildren#3--TheMammothHunters--JeanM.Auel--(1985)(Version2002.11.16--Done)ForMARSHALL,whohasbecomeamantobeproudof,andforBEVERLY,whohelped,andforCHRISTOPHER,BRIAN,andMELLISSA,withLove.LionCampEarthlodgeENTRYarea--storageoffuel,implements,outerclothesFIRSThearth--cookinghearthandspaceforgatheri...

展开>> 收起<<

Jean M. Auel - 3 - The Mammoth Hunters.pdf

共430页,预览5页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

Jean M. Auel - 3 - The Mammoth Hunters

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: