Prologue

Posted on Monday, 14 June 1999

Not part of the story: This will be a cross between several of Jean Auel's Earth's Children's books and Pride and Prejudice. For now, Elizabeth will be called Ayla. Thank you Spring for your naming idea, it will show up in a few chapters. And I promise- nothing too racy and no P&P characters masquerading as animals.

She was alone. Again. The young woman remembered the first time she was alone. She had been swimming in the river and the earthquake came and swallowed the tent, her parents, everyone she knew. She had begun to wander and nearly died. She drank water, but she ate nothing, because she didn't know what to eat, being only five. Exposure was beginning to take its toll on her ... and then she had been attacked by a cave lion. In fact, she had finally passed out and would have died if they hadn't found her.

They weren't like her. Not at all. But she had been too cold and hungry and scared to notice or care. The woman had held her and fed her and dressed her festering wound. The horribly scarred man had looked at her with such sympathy, even if he had only one eye, that she had become attached to him immediately.

The man was named Creb, the woman named Iza. They were siblings. They became her family. They couldn't pronounce her name so they called her Ayla.

She was adopted by these strange people and learned to live like them. It became the only way she knew. She learned to speak their way, with hand gestures punctuated by a few grunt-like syllables. She forgot how to speak her own way, stringing melodic sounds together. She forgot how to say her own name.

By the time she was 10, she was taller than anyone else in the Clan that was what they called themselves. She was part of the Clan, they had adopted her seven days after Iza found her nearly dead. And now she was dead, or was she?

They had tried to kill her before, after they discovered she could hunt. She had been cursed with death for a month then - she had broken the clan's most sacred rule: the division of labor among the sexes. But that selfsame defiant act had kept her alive. She was able to kill for food and she was able to cook it to eat. She lived. They had accepted her back then, after the curse had ended.

And now she was cursed again, but this curse had no end. She would never see her family again. Even if she went back, they would not see her. They would look through her as if she were a spirit. They would think she was a spirit, but Ayla wasn't so sure. Of course even if she did go back Iza was dead and now Creb was dead too. But Uba, her dear sister whom Iza had borne not long after finding and adopting Ayla, and her own sweet son Durc.

She tripped on a branch and fell to the ground. Her eyes began to water. Why was she the only one whose eyes did that. Did all the Others do that? On her deathbed, Iza had told Ayla to find the others, Find your own people, and find your own mate

But how was she to find them? All she knew was that she had to head north. North. She picked herself up off the ground and renewed her trek northward. She could not let him get the best of her.

She had been trained by Iza to be a medicine woman, and before he had cursed her she had had more status than any other woman in their Clan. Of course that still put her behind all of the men, but she even out-ranked the mate of the leader.

Brun had been a good leader, but his son Wick had been horrible and proud. He had hated her, why she never knew. Everyone in the Clan had thought her ugly, but Wick hated her. Yet Wick was the only man who had ever shown an interest in her after she became a woman.

He had hurt her and beat her, and she knew there was no interest there. He wanted to humiliate her. In front of everybody. It would not have been a humiliation for anyone else in the Clan, yet it had been a humiliation for her.

And now Wick was leader and had cursed her, tearing her away from the only life she knew and her only son. The son she somehow knew he was responsible for.

Well Ayla would live if only to prove to herself that Wick could not win.

Chapter 1 ~ Whinney, part A

Posted on Thursday, 17 June 1999

Ayla's journeys over the past several weeks had led her to realize that winter was approaching fast. She was going to need shelter, and there was no guarantee she would find the others in time. She looked around the valley below her. She was sitting on the ledge outside a small cave, about halfway up the valley's wall. It was accessible by a narrow, but not too steep, path. This cave here is large enough for me to stay, she thought, but I also will need food. And skins for clothing and other things.

Basically, she would need to kill a large animal -- but how?

She could hunt, yes. But only with a sling, strap of leather designed to propel stones further and with more distance than one could throw by hand. She was proficient with the sling, indeed she was better than anyone in the Clan. But a sling would not bring down a deer or a horse, and that is the kind of animal she would need to kill.

The Clan would hunt large animals in groups with spears. These spears were long, heavy, wooden things. She knew from the hunters' stories that they would use the spears to stab the beasts in vulnerable places to kill them. But first, they would bait and run with the animals until the animals were tired enough to let the people close enough to kill them.

Even if she could make a spear, and that would be wrong as she was only permitted to use a sling, how would she get close enough to stab a large animal?

Again, she looked around the valley, this time her attention was drawn to the herd of horses that obviously called the valley home. Suddenly, there was a commotion among the horses and the herd began to move, in chaos.

Ayla soon saw a pack of wolves racing through the valley as well. It was unusual for wolves to frighten horses so. There must be a larger predator about, Ayla thought. She hurried into her cave and stoked the fire for the protection it offered. She gathered her sling into her hand with stones at the ready, in case she needed to frighten an animal away.

She waited for several hours, and nothing happened. Then she heard a familiar sound. Hyenas, she thought, disgusted. She hated hyenas, but she knew her sling would keep them at bay, and she ventured back out onto the ledge.

The hyenas were going after a fallen horse. Two? Ayla realized there was a young foal lying near the fallen dun-colored horse? The young one was crying out in fear.

NO!! Ayla screamed, stones flying rapidly from her sling. Each stone hit its mark, and the pair of hyenas fell down, dead.

Ayla always thought of hyenas as the worst of all scavengers. She had killed a hyena the day she had revealed her secret to the Clan. She saved a baby's life, but nearly lost her own in the bargain. The baby was the son of Wick's mate, destined to be leader of the Clan, but that hadn't softened the horrid man's opinion of Ayla.

She was no more willing to sacrifice this baby horse to a hyena than she had been that boy. She began to move with an urgency. Other scavengers would come soon, and her sling could not keep them all away indefinitely. She had to get the foal up to the cave.

She ran to the foal. She was frightened of Ayla, but not frightened enough to run away. Ayla surmised that she was but a few weeks old. Ayla inspected the foal's legs, and ascertained no breaks. There was a variety of cuts and bruises, perhaps a cracked rib, but with Ayla to help, she was sure the foal would be like new. If only she could convince the foal to get up, walk and follow her to the cave.

Avoiding as many tender, bruised areas as she could, Ayla began lifting the foal to her feet. The horse seemed to be more astonished than Ayla when she realized she was standing. Kneeling beside her, Ayla brushed the foal's mane and face and coaxed her to take a few tentative steps. The horse complied.

Ayla then went to the larger horse, obviously the foal's mother. This animal was beyond Ayla's help, she was nearly dead. Both her forelegs were broken. Ayla felt sorry for the horse, it was obvious that she suffered. But practical Ayla also realized that this horse's accident just might solve her problem.

If she could butcher this animal before the hyenas came back, she would have what she needed to survive the winter. She set to work.

Chapter 1 ~ Whinney, part B

Posted on Thursday, 17 June 1999

After she was finished, the reality of the situation hit Ayla. The foal was hungry and its mother was dead. Ayla had no milk to give the horse. She had saved her from certain death on the plains, but was the horse now to die of starvation here, with her?

A memory from the past stirred. A baby can eat the same food as its mother, it just needs to be softer and easier to chew, Iza had said to her once.

That's it! Ayla thought. Horses eat grains, I will cook up some grains for the foal into a gruel. She will be able to eat that

But, when Ayla put the bowl of gruel before her, the horse did not know what to do with it. Ayla placed the foal's nuzzle in the bowl, but still, nothing. The horse only knew how to suckle, not how to eat or drink.

So, Ayla used her fingers as a medium. She scooped up some of the gruel on two fingers and placed her fingers in the horse's mouth. The horse did the only thing she knew how: She sucked. Finally, the horse was eating.

And, Ayla realized, she wasn't alone any more. A foal was an unconventional friend, to say the least, but she was a friend none the less.

Before much time passed, the foal learned to eat the soft food on her own and Ayla happily regarded her as the first member of her new family. But she needed a name. Ayla liked to mimic the horse's sounds and decided she would call the foal Whinney.