"This feels so good, so refreshing," Ayla said, ducking down, then standing up again.

Jondalar ducked down, too. They swam across the pool, then back again. When they started out, he reached for her. "You feel good, too," he said, "and I think you might taste good, too." He picked her up and carried her out of the water and put her down on the hide. "Yesterday was too busy, today we have time," he said, looking down at her with his amazing blue eyes. Then he bent down to kiss her, slowly, sweetly, pressing close to her, feeling their skin cool from the water and the body heat from within.

He nibbled on her ear, kissed her throat, then reached for her breast and found her nipple. It was what he wanted, what she wanted.

He spent time, touching, squeezing, rubbing one between his fingers, sucking and nibbling on the other, and felt himself fill and get ready. To her, his touching and caressing gave her feelings through her body that felt like lightning, reaching into her parts of Pleasure. He rubbed her rounded bellytasted like her. This was his Ayla.

She held herself still, let him explore, find all the warm places, then he found the knob again and with his tongue began to play with it, moving it, rubbing it, sucking it. She began to moan, her mind in some other place, a place where Jondalar knew how to put her. She pushed up against him as he moved faster, and the moans escaping from her increased in pitch and intensity.

He could feel himself growing so full, and he ached to feel her envelop him, but first, he needed to feel her peak. It kept getting closer, the feeling that was ready to overcome her, and then, suddenly, it was there, bursting over the crest in rising and rising waves of Pleasure. And then she wanted to feel him inside her.

She pulled him up and helped him enter, and waited for the first satisfy- ing push. He pulled back and pushed in again, and filled her again. He felt her warm folds embrace him as he plunged in deeply, completely. They fit together so well. This was the woman he wanted. She could hold all of him, he didn't have to worry about his size. He pulled out almost all the way, then plunged in again, and then again, and each time she felt him, the sen-They went swimming again, but this time when they got out, Ayla took their soft drying skins out of her pack. They whistled for the horses and rode back to their campsite. Wolf was there, pacing around their tent, growling at something, and the horses seemed nervous.

"There's something out there," Ayla said. "Wolf doesn't like it, and it's making the horses nervous. Those wolves we heard last night, do you think it could be them?"

"I don't know, but after we eat, why don't we pack up the tent and go for a long ride," Jondalar said. "Maybe spend tonight some other place."

"That's a good idea," Ayla said. "We can stop by the lodge and leave our mating outfits, get the rest of our traveling things, and explore the area around here. When we come back, we can set up our tent near the pool.

Hardly anyone goes there. And let's take Wolf with us. Some pack might think he's in their territory, and wolves will fight to defend their territory against other wolves."

33.Ayla relaxed. There was no ill will. It was their trial period and they weren't supposed to talk to anyone but each other, but she noticed several others glancing in their direction and trying not to smile at them. It was obvious that everybody was very much aware of their presence. They went into the lodge just as Marthona was coming out. They sidestepped each other as they passed by without saying a word, but the older woman looked directly at them and smiled. She didn't think it was necessary to go through all the elaborate avoidance schemes, neither speaking to them nor encouraging them to talk was enough.

They put their mating outfits on the grass-stuffed underpads of their bare sleeping place and packed some additional traveling gear, then they walked to Marthona and Willamar's place. She had placed the rawhide packet with Ayla's amulet in it on her bed, and put some food she had packed up for them beside it. Ayla almost thanked her out loud, but caught herself, then with a quick smile she made the Clan hand signs for "I am grateful for your kindness, mother of my mate."

Marthona didn't understand the signs, but she guessed it was a gesture of appreciation of some kind and smiled at the young woman who was now the mate of her son. It might be valuable to learn some of those signs, shesion, just as Marthona hoped it would. It had already caused some people to reconsider the status they were willing to grant her. Marthona had invited some people over for a taste of some bilberry wine, which she had recently started serving-it had been stored for two years in a dark, dry corner of her dwelling in the well-washed and securely stoppered stomach of an elk.

She decided she would place a few lamps around the inside of the lodge so they could see better in the dim interior space. She bent over and straight- ened the tunic and leggings, rearranging them slightly to show off a par- ticular area of intricate beadwork that had been covered by a fold.

Ayla and Jondalar loved their days of nominal separation from the Zelandonii. It was like a return to their Journey, but without the pressure of having to keep traveling. They spent the long summer days hunting, fish- ing, and gathering just for their own needs, swimming and taking long rides on the horses, but with Wolf only a sometime companion, and Ayla missed him when he was gone. It was as though he couldn't quite make up his mind whether to stay with the humans he adored or return to whatever it was he found so fascinating in the wild. He always found them, no matter where they camped, and every time he made an appearance at the tent, Ayla was delighted. She paid attention to the animal, stroked and petted him, talked to him, hunted with him. Her attention usually encouraged himness of the region. Sometimes in herds, and sometimes in fleeting glimpses, they saw a tremendous number and remarkable variety of ani- mals that inhabited the land of the Zelandonii.

Most grazing and browsing creatures placidly shared the same fields, meadows, and open woodlands, and the two horses were usually ignored along with the humans who were riding them. As a result, they were able to get quite close. Ayla liked to sit quietly on Whinney's back while the mare grazed and study the other animals, and Jondalar often joined her, though he also spent time doing other things. He was working on spears and a spear-thrower for Lanidar more appropriate to his size, and with an adapta- tion he hoped would make it easier for him to use with one arm. Jondalar was with her when they came upon a herd of bison one afternoon.

Although many bison and aurochs had been hunted, it was hardly no- ticed; their numbers were insignificant in comparison with the vast numbers of animals that roamed the open landscape. But the two distinct bovines were never seen together. They avoided each other. Though Ayla and Jondalar had killed and helped to butcher their share of bison recently, observing them as they moved through their environment was enlightening.

The grazers had lost their thick, dark, woolly fur during the spring molt andmegaceros with their delicate sharp noses, and marveled at their fantastic antlers. They were shaped like a hand with outstretched fingers, and though they could span twelve feet and weigh one hundred sixty pounds or more, these were younger animals, slimmer, with smaller appendages.

They had not yet developed the huge muscular necks of the mature deer, though they all sported humps on their withers, where the tendons to sup- port their future massive antlers were attached.

Even young megaceros avoided woods where their antlers could get caught in tree branches. The spotted fallow deer was the woodland variety.

In a marshy area, they saw a single deer of another kind, tall and gangly, with smaller, though still quite substantial, palmate antlers, standing in the middle of the water, dipping his head under and pulling out a mouth full of dripping, green water plants, but this deer had a huge overhanging nose. It was called moose in some countries, but the name given to it in Jondalar's region was elk.

Far more prevalent were the variety of elk known in this land as red deer. They also grew large antlers, but of the branching variety.Red deer didn't like to run, but their long-legged walk or lively trot cov- ered ground with celerity, and if chased, they could run for miles, leap a forty-foot distance, and jump to a height of eight feet. They were also ex- cellent swimmers. Though they preferred to eat grass, they could feed on leaves, buds, berries, mushrooms, herbs, heathers, bark, acorns, nuts, and beechnut mast. Red deer congregated in small herds at this time of year, and in a meadow beside a stream, Ayla and Jondalar saw several of the deer and stopped to observe them. The grass was just turning from green to gold, and a few fully leafed-out, luxuriant beech trees lined the bank, but on the other side was a substantial gallery forest.

It was a male herd of various ages, and their antlers were in full velvet.

Antlers began when the males were about a year old with single spikes.

They were cast off in early spring, but they started to grow new ones al- most immediately. Each year a new tine was added, and by early summer even the biggest were fully grown, encased in velvet, a soft skin full of blood vessels, which carried the nutrients that allowed their antlers to grow so quickly. By mid- to late summer, the velvet dried and became very itchy, causing the deer to scratch against trees and rocks to rub it off, but the bloody skin often hung in tatters until it was gone."That big one is in his prime," he said. "I'd like to come back and watch him later, they often come back to the same places. In his season of Pleasures, he'll fight for as many females as he can, though many times just displaying that rack is enough to discourage competitors. But they fight hard and will go at it all day. It makes so much noise when they run into each other with those antlers, you can hear them from very far away, and they will even get up on their hind legs and fight with their front legs. As big as he is, he must be a very good, aggressive fighter."

"I've heard them fight, but I've never seen them," Ayla said.

"Once, when I was living with Dalanar, we saw a couple of them locked together with their antlers intertwined. They couldn't get apart no matter how they tried. We had to cut the antlers to separate them so we could use them. They were an easy kill, but Dalanar said we were doing them a favor, they would have died anyway of hunger and thirst."

"I think that big stag has had a brush with people before," Ayla said, sig- naling Whinney to move back. "The wind just shifted and must have givenwildcat, but the short-tailed feline with the tufted ears held on to the deer's shoulders and bit down, opening his veins. The other deer raced away, but the young cervid with the cat on his back ran in a large arc and circled around. As they watched the panicky animal heading back, both Ayla and Jondalar readied their spear-throwers for protection, just in case, but the lynx had been drinking his blood and the deer was showing signs of ex- haustion. He stumbled, the lynx took a new grip, and more blood spurted.

The deer took a few more steps, stumbled again, then dropped to the ground. The lynx bit open the head of the young animal and started feeding on the brains.

It was over quickly, but the horses were nervous and the humans were both ready to leave. "That's why he looked nervous," Ayla said. "It wasn't our scent at all."

"That deer was young," Jondalar said. "You could still see his spots. I wonder if his dam died early and left him alone a little too young. He found the male herd, but it didn't matter. Young animals are always vulnerable."

"When I was a little girl, I once tried to kill a lynx with my sling," Ayla said, urging Whinney to a walk."I know. He moved and the stone just bounced off. It just irritated him and he sprang at me. I managed to roll aside and found a piece of wood and hit him with it, and he went away," she said.

"Great Mother! That was a close call, Ayla," he said, leaning back on his horse, which caused Racer to slow down.

"I was afraid to go out alone for a while afterward, but that was when I got the idea to throw two stones. I thought if I had had another one ready, I could have hit him a second time before he came for me. I wasn't sure if it could be done, but I practiced and worked it out. Still, it wasn't until I killed a hyena that I felt confident to go hunting again," she said.

Jondalar just shook his head. When he thought about it, it was amazing that she was still alive. On the way back to their current camp, they saw a herd of animals that made Whinney and Racer pay attention: a horselike animal called an onager, which appeared to be a cross between a horse and donkey, but were a viable species of their own. Whinney stopped to smell their droppings, and Racer nickered at them. The whole herd stopped grazing and looked at the horses. The sound they returned was closer to a bray, but both animals seemed to be aware of their similarity.Ayla and Jondalar studied them and noticed some differences between the wild herd and the animals they had brought with them from the east.

Rather than Whinney's dun-yellow color, which was most common all over, or even the rare dark brown of Racer's coat, most of the horses in this herd were a bluish-gray color with a white belly. They all, their two included, had similar stand-up brushlike black manes and black tails, black stripes down their backbones, and black lower legs, with some suggestion of striping on their lower haunches. They were generally small horses, broad backed with rounded bellies, but the herd animals seemed to stand a fraction higher and had slightly shorter muzzles.

The herd was watching Whinney and Racer with as much intensity as the two were watching the herd, but this time Racer's nicker brought a ringing neigh of challenge in return. She and Jondalar looked at each other when they heard the call and saw a large stallion coming toward them from the back of the herd. By tacit agreement, Ayla and Jondalar rode their horses in another direction as fast as they could. Jondalar did not want Racer to be drawn into a fight with the herd stallion, and with Wolf being gone so much of the time, Ayla was afraid the horses, too, might be tempted to leave her and decide to live with their own kind.wild mountain goats, nimbly vault up the face of an almost perpendicular cliff.

Several female ibex and their young, their tight wool making them seem round and shapeless, with sticks for legs, had come down from the high- lands to fatten up on the rich lowland growth. They had long horns that curved over their backs, very wide-set eyes, a hump behind their heads, and hooves that were hard and strong around the edges, with soft, spongy, flexible soles that gripped the hard stone.

Jondalar saw Ayla close her eyes as though concentrating, turning her head back and forth to better hear something. "I think mammoths are com- ing this way," she said.

"How do you know? I can't see anything."

"I can hear them," she said, "especially the big male."

"I can't hear anything," Jondalar said.The herd was essentially female and their young, but since one of the young females was in heat, several males were crowding around the edges, always hopeful, though the dominant bull of the region was already in consort with her. She had refused the persistent advances of the lesser males until he arrived. Now he kept the others away, since none of them dared to challenge him, which allowed her to eat and nurse her first young calf in between mating sessions.

The thick coat of the woolly mammoth covered the huge animal com- pletely, from the toes to the end of its long nose, including the small ears.

As they came closer, the various shades of their fur became more appar- ent. The little ones had the lightest-colored hair, the females shaded from bright chestnut in the younger ones to the dark brown of the old matriarch.

The males became almost black as they aged. The coat had a very dense underfur out of which grew fairly long, straight hairs that kept them very warm even in the coldest of the winters, especially after consuming the sometimes icy water or eating snow or ice. That's when their bodies tended to become chilled.the Summer Meeting with all its people and social interactions, which put demands on their time and attention, but brought rewards, satisfaction, and pleasure as well. They had enjoyed the respite, but they were ready to return and looking forward to seeing the people they cared about. They had spent nearly a year with only each other and the animals for company and were familiar with both the joys and the sorrows of solitude.

They took food and water with them, but they were in no hurry and had no particular destination in mind. Wolf had left them two days before, which saddened Ayla. He had been eager to stay with them on their Journey, but he was little more than a puppy then. He was still young. Although it seemed much longer, they could count only one year and about two sea- sons since the winter they lived with the Mamutoi, when Ayla brought back a fuzzy little wolf who had been born no more than a moon before. For all of Wolf's great size, he was still a juvenile.

Ayla didn't know how long wolves lived, but she suspected that the length of their lives was far less than that of most humans, and she thought of Wolf as an adolescent-considered by most mothers and their mates as the most troubling years. Those were the years of exuberant energy and little experience when youngsters, full of life and convinced it would lastit and shared Pleasures in the shade of a weeping willow, extravagantly full of small lanceolate leaves on boughs that bent to the water's surface, then rested and talked before going for a swim.

After splashing into the water, Ayla shouted, "I'll race you across," and immediately reached out with long, sure strokes. Jondalar followed quickly, slowly gaining on her with his longer arms and powerful muscles, but it was an effort. She looked back, saw him drawing near, and renewed her efforts in a fresh burst of speed. They reached the other side in a dead heat.

"You had a head start, so I won," Jondalar said as they reached the op- posite shore of the small lake and flopped to the ground, breathing hard.

"You should have challenged me first," Ayla answered, laughing. "We both won."

They swam at a more leisurely pace back to the other side as the sun passed its zenith and was starting its descent, signaling the last half of the day. They were a little sad as they repacked their things, knowing their idyllic respite was nearly over. They mounted the horses and headed in theheld a spear, and they were spaced out in a rough circle, in the middle of which was a beast with a long shaggy coat and two huge horns protruding from his snout.

It was a woolly rhinoceros, a massive creature, eleven and a half feet in length and five feet high. He was a ponderous beast, with short, thick, stubby legs to support his immense bulk. He ate huge quantities of the grasses, herbs, and brush of the steppes, as well as the twigs and branches of evergreens and willows that lined the banks of the rivers. His nostrils were partitioned, and his eyes were on the sides of his head. He could not see well, especially in front, but his senses of smell and hearing were particularly acute and discerning to make up for his poor eyesight.

The front one of his two horns was more than a yard long, heavy and vi- cious looking as it swept the ground in an arc from side to side. In winter he could use it to sweep snow away and expose the dried, recumbent steppe grasses that lay underneath. A thick, woolly, light grayish-brown fleece covered his body, with longer outer hair hanging down, nearly brushing the ground. A wide distinctive band of fur around the middle of the rhino was a shade darker and looked, Ayla thought, as though someone had covered him with a saddle blanket, not that anyone would dream of riding such a"That looks dangerous," Ayla said as they pulled up the horses a safe distance away.

"That's why they're doing it," Jondalar said. "Woolly rhinos are difficult to hunt under any circumstances. They are mean tempered and unpredict- able."

"Like Broud," Ayla said. "The woolly rhino was his totem. The Clan men hunted them, but I never watched them. What are they do- ing?"

"They're baiting him, see? Each man tries to get his attention to make him charge, then they dodge away when he comes near. They are making a sport of wearing him down, trying to see who can let the rhino come clos- est before they jump aside. The bravest is the one who can feel the beast brush past as he charges. It's usually young men who like to hunt rhinoc- eros like that," Jondalar explained."The meat is not bad, and there's a lot of fat under that heavy coat,"

Ayla said. "It's rare to see one, though."

"Especially this time of year," Jondalar said. "Woolly rhinos are solitary animals most of the time, and usually scarce around here in summer. They like it colder, even though they shed the soft fur under the long outer hair every spring. It gets caught in bushes before they leaf out, and people like to go out and collect it, particularly weavers and basket-makers. I used to go with my mother. We did it several times a year. She knows when all the animals shed, ibex and mouflon, musk-ox, even horses and lions, and of course, mammoths and woolly rhinos."

"Have you ever baited a rhinoceros, Jondalar?"

The man laughed. "Yes, most men do, especially when they are young.

They bait lots of animals like that, aurochs bulls and bison, but they like to bait rhinos best. Some women do, too. Jetamio did, the time I showed them how to hunt a rhino. She was the Sharamudoi woman who became Thonolan's mate. She was good at it. They didn't usually hunt rhinos. They hunted the huge sturgeon of the Great Mother River from those boats theyOne man, standing out in the open shouting and waving his arms, was trying to make the rhino charge. The animal's usually keen sense of smell was confused by so many men arrayed around him. When he finally de- tected movement with his small, nearsighted eyes, he started in that direc- tion, gaining speed as he drew closer to his antagonist. For all his short legs, the animal could move remarkably fast. He lowered his head a bit as he neared, preparing to ram his massive horn into a resistive mass. It en- countered air instead as the man deftly spun around and moved aside. It took a moment for the beast to realize his charge had been in vain and slow to a halt.

The rhino was baffled and getting tired and angry. He pawed the ground as the men quickly deployed in a new circle around him. Another man stepped out, shouting and waving to draw the huge brute's attention. The rhino turned and charged again, and the man darted away. The next time it took longer to entice him to charge. They seemed to be succeeding in tiring the rhino. The exhausting, infuriating bursts of energy were taking their toll.

The great beast stood still, head drooping, breathing heavily. The men tightened the circle, closing in for the kill. The man whose turn it was to draw the beast out moved in cautiously, spear held in readiness. The rhinoshe urged her horse forward.

"Ayla! Wait! It's too dangerous!" Jondalar called after her, prodding his own mount as he readied his spear-thrower.

The other men were hurling their spears even as Jondalar spoke. When Ayla jumped off her still-moving horse and ran toward the wounded man, the huge beast lay crumpled in a heap; several spears, a couple from a spear-thrower, were sticking out of his body in every direction, like the quills of some enormous grotesque porcupine. But the kill was too late. The en- raged beast had had his satisfaction.

Several young men, looking scared and lost, were ranged around the fallen man, who was crumpled, unconscious where he dropped. As Ayla approached them with Jondalar close behind, they appeared surprised to see her, and it seemed for a moment that one was going to bar her way or ask who she was, but she ignored him. She turned him over and checked his breathing, and pulled out her knife to cut away blood-soaked leggings from his leg, her hands already colored from the task. There was a smear of red on her face where she had unconsciously pushed aside a strand ofShe looked up at Jondalar. "Help me straighten him out while he's un- conscious, it's going to hurt to move him when he wakes up. Then get me some soft hides, our toweling hides will work. I need to apply pressure to stop the bleeding, then I'll need help to splint the leg." The tall man hurried off, and she turned to one of the young men who were standing around, gaping.

"He'll need to be carried back. Do you know how to make a stretcher?"

He looked blank, as though he hadn't heard or understood her. "We need something for him to lie on while he's carried."

He nodded. "A stretcher," he said.

He was really only a boy, she realized. "Jondalar will help you," she said as the man returned with the hides.

They laid him out on his back. He moaned from the movement, but did- n't wake up. She checked him again; he might have sustained a head injury from the fall, but she didn't see anything obvious. Then, leaning hard on his leg above the knee, she tried to slow the bleeding. She thought about acut strips out of one of the hides, and other pieces to wrap around the splints for padding, to get them ready. Then, grasping the foot of the broken leg by holding the toes with one hand and his heel with her other hand, she gently pulled it straight, feeling where it resisted and easing it through. He spasmed a few times, and noises escaped his mouth; he'd been close to waking. She reached into the bleeding gash and tried to feel if the bones were aligned.

"Jondalar, hold his thigh for me," she said. "I need to set this leg before he wakes up, and while he's still bleeding. The blood will help keep the wound clean." Then she looked up at the young men-boys-who were standing around watching with looks of horror and amazement on their faces. "You, and you," she said, looking directly at two of them. "I'm going to lift his leg and pull to align the bones so they will heal straight. If I don't, he'll never walk on that leg again. I want you to get those splints and put them underneath his leg, so when I lower it, the leg will be right between them. Can you do that?"

They nodded and hurried to get the wrapped spears. When everybody was ready, Ayla grasped the foot by the toes and heel again with both hands and gently but firmly lifted his leg. With Jondalar holding the thigh,She signaled that he could let go and turned her attention to the bleed- ing wound. Pressing it together as best she could, with Jondalar's help to lift it, she wrapped it up, splints and all, then tied everything together with the strips of leather she had cut. Then she sat back on her heels.

It was then that Jondalar noticed the blood. It was everywhere, the wrappings, the splints, Ayla, himself, the young men who had helped. The young man on the ground had lost a lot of blood. "I think we have to get him back soon," Jondalar said.

A fleeting thought passed through his mind. The prohibition against talking was not quite over, and the ritual releasing the newly mated couple from it had not been performed, but Ayla hadn't even considered it, and Jondalar dismissed it as soon as he thought about it. This was an emer- gency, and there was no Zelandoni around to ask.

"You will need to make the stretcher," she said to the young men standing around, seeming to be in more shock than the one on the ground.the beast. They all knew that they should have brought in some experi- enced older hunters before they attempted to bring down the huge animal, but they could only think of the glory of doing it themselves, the envy of the other bachelor fa'lodges, and the admiration of the whole Summer Meeting when it was brought in. Now one of them was badly hurt.

Jondalar quickly assessed the situation. "What Cave does he belong to?" he asked.

"The Fifth," came the reply.

"You run ahead and tell them what happened," Jondalar said. The young man to whom he had spoken sprinted off. He thought that he could have ridden in to tell them on Racer faster than a boy could run, but some- one needed to supervise the construction of the stretcher. The boys were still scared and in shock, and having a grown man around to direct them right now was exactly what they needed. "We'll need three or four of you to help carry him in. The rest of you should stay here and gut that animal. It could bloat up fast. I'll send some people back to help you. There's no point in wasting the meat, the cost was too high.""I know you must care about Matagan, and this has been very hard on you," Jondalar said. "He was very seriously hurt, but I will tell you the truth, he is very lucky that Ayla happened to be here. I can't promise, but I think he will be all right, and may even walk again. Ayla is a very good healer. I know. I was mauled by a cave lion, and would have died on the steppes far to the east, but Ayla found me, treated my wounds, and saved my life. If anybody can save Matagan, Ayla will."

The young man let out a sob of relief and then tried to control himself again.

"Now, get me some spears so we can carry your cousin home," Jonda- lar said. "We'll need at least four, two for each side." Under his guidance, they soon had the spears tied together with thongs to make two sturdy supports, and spare pieces of clothing laced between them. Ayla checked the wounded young man, then several of them lifted him onto the makeshift stretcher.

They were not too far from the camp. Ayla and Jondalar signaled Whin- ney and Racer to follow, and they walked beside the wounded young man.the two who were bearing the litter were relieved of their place, and the pace back to the large Meeting place quickened.

"Marthona went to tell someone to get Zelandoni, and Zelandoni of the Fifth," Joharran said. "They were at the other end of the camp at some Zelandonia meeting. Should we take him to our camp, or to his own?" he asked Ayla.

"I want to change those wrappings, and get a poultice on that wound, I don't want it to fester," Ayla said. She thought for a moment. "I haven't had much time to replenish all my medicines, but I'm sure Zelandoni has enough, and I want her to look at him. Let's take him to the zelandonia lodge."

"That's a good idea. It would take her a while to get here, we can proba- bly get there faster. Zelandoni doesn't run the way she used to," Joharran said, somewhat diplomatically referring to her great size. "The Fifth's Zelandoni will probably want to see him, but healing was never his greatest talent, I'm told.""Put him down over there," the First said, showing them one of the raised beds at the far side, opposite the entrance. The men carried him there, then moved him to the bed. Most of the men left, but Joharran and Jondalar stayed.

Ayla made sure the leg was straight, then started to remove the wrap- pings. "It needs a poultice so it won't fester," she said.

"He will keep for a moment. Tell me what happened," the First said.

Both Ayla and Jondalar quickly explained the circumstances, then Ayla finished, "Both lower legbones in that leg are broken, the calf was bent backward at the break. I knew if they weren't set straight, he would never walk on that leg again, and he's a young man. I decided to set the leg right there, while he was unconscious and before it started to swell up, and make it harder to work with the bones. I had to feel around inside, and pull hard to get the bones aligned again, but I think they are. He was making some noises on the way here, he may wake up soon. I'm sure he will be in pain."fully. I watched Ayla rebreak it and set it right. I also watched her set a badly broken leg of a man of the Clan. He had jumped off a very high rock to protect his mate from some young Losadunai men who had been at- tacking Clan women. If there is one thing Ayla knows about, it's broken bones and open wounds."

"Where did you learn, Ayla?" she asked.

"Clan people have very sturdy bones, but the men of the Clan often break them when they are hunting. They don't usually throw spears, they chase after an animal to stab him with a spear or sometimes jump on him.

Or they do what those boys were doing, get an animal to chase several of them until the beast is so tired, they can get close enough to spear him. It's very strenuous. Women break bones, too, but mostly it's the men. I first learned about broken bones from Iza. The people of Brun's clan would break a bone sometimes, but it was the summer that we went to the Clan Gathering that I really learned, from the other Clan medicine women, how to set broken bones and treat wounds," Ayla said.

"I think this young man is very lucky that you happened to be there, Ayla," the One Who Was First said. "Not every Zelandoni would havenow that the blood is drying, I was going to mash the root and boil it to make a wash to clean the wound, and then add some fresh to the mash and use it with some other roots in a poultice. In my medicine bag, I have some powdered geranium root, to clot the blood, and spores of club moss to absorb fluid, and then I was going to ask if you had certain things or knew where they grow."

"All right, ask me."

"There is a root, when I described it to Jondalar he thought you might call it comfrey. It is very good for healing, inside and out. It's good for bruises, in a salve made with fat, but it's very good on fresh wounds and cuts. A fresh poultice can keep the swelling down when a bone is broken, and it helps broken bones to grow back together," Ayla said.

"Yes, I have some powdered, and I know a place nearby where it grows, and I would describe its properties the same way," the First said.

"I would also use the bright pretty flowers that I think are calledm ari- golds. They are especially good for open wounds, also for wounds and sores that won't heal. I like to squeeze the juice out of fresh flowers, or boilFor an instant, Ayla had a fleeting image of Iza testing her knowledge.

"Crushed juniper berries for a bleeding wound, or the mushroom that is round, puffball. That can stop bleeding of wounds. A dry powder of golden- seal is also good, and..."

"That's enough. I'm convinced that you know what to do. The treatment you suggest is very appropriate," the First said, "but right now, Jondalar, I want you to take her someplace where she can clean up, both of you, in fact. That boy's blood is all over you, and that will upset his mother more than anything. Leave the anemone roots with me, I will send someone to get fresh comfrey. We'll take care of him for now. You can come back when you are clean and rested. Why don't you go to your camp the back way, so you don't have to walk through the whole Summer Meeting camp again. I'm sure there is a crowd waiting outside. Use the other entrance, it'll be faster, and you may avoid those who'll want to detain you. Before you go, though, I think you need to be released from your ban against talking. It seems your isolation ended a day early."

"Oh! I forgot," Ayla said. "I didn't even think about that!"The two looked at her, then looked at each other, and then a grin stole over Jondalar's face that transferred to a smile from Ayla.