But he was blinded by his love for her. He didn’t allow himself to imagine she could be hunting, he was far too aware of the consequences. It caused the old magician to question his own integrity, his ability to perform his function. He had let his feeling for the girl come before the spiritual safekeeping of the clan. Did he still merit their trust? Was he still worthy of Ursus? Could he still justifiably continue as Mog-ur?
Creb took the blame for her actions on himself. He should have questioned her; he should not have let her roam so freely; he should have disciplined her more severely. But all his anguish over what he should have done didn’t change in the least what he still had to do. The decision was Brun’s, but it was his function to carry it out, his duty to kill the child he loved.
“It’s only a guess that she’s the one who has been killing the animals,” Brun said. “We need to question her, but she did kill the hyena and she had a sling. She had to practice on something, there’s no other way she could have gained such skill. She’s better than Zoug with that weapon, Mog-ur, and she’s female! How did she ever learn? I’ve wondered before if there isn’t some male in her, and I’m not the only one. She’s as tall as a man and not even a woman yet. Do you think there’s any truth in the idea that she may never become one?”
“Ayla’s a girl, Brun, and someday she’ll become a woman, just like any other girl—or she would have. She’s a female who used a weapon.” The magician’s jaw was set; he would not allow himself to grasp at false illusions.
“Well, I still want to know how long she’s been hunting. But it can wait until morning. We’re all tired now; it was a long journey. Tell Ayla we’ll question her tomorrow.”
Creb limped back to the cave, but stopped at his hearth only long enough to signal Iza to tell the girl she would be questioned in the morning, before continuing on to his small annex. He did not return to his hearth all night.
The women stared silently after the men who were walking into the woods with Ayla trailing behind. They were at a loss, filled with mixed emotions. Ayla was confused herself. She had always known it was wrong to hunt, if not how serious the crime was. I wonder if it would have made any difference if I had known? she asked herself. No. I wanted to hunt. I would have hunted anyway. But I don’t want the evil ones to chase me all the way to the spirit world. She shuddered at the thought.
The girl feared the invisible, malign entities as much as she believed in the power of protective totems. Not even the Spirit of the Cave Lion could protect her from them, could he? I must have been wrong, she thought. My totem wouldn’t have given me a sign to let me hunt knowing I’d die for it. He probably left me the first time I picked up a sling. She didn’t like thinking about it.
The men came to a clearing and arranged themselves on logs and boulders on either side of Brun, while Ayla slumped to the ground at his feet. Brun tapped her shoulder to allow her to look up at him and began without preliminaries.
“Were you the one who killed the meat eaters the hunters kept finding, Ayla?”
“Yes,” she nodded. There was no point in trying to hide anything now. Her secret was out and they would have known if she tried to evade their questions. She could no more lie than any other member of the clan could.
“How did you learn to use a sling?”
“I learned from Zoug,” she replied.
“Zoug!” Brun echoed. All heads turned accusingly toward the old man.
“I never taught the girl to use a sling,” he gestured defensively.
“Zoug didn’t know I was learning from him.” Ayla motioned quickly, springing to the old sling-hunter’s defense. “I watched him when he was teaching Vorn.”
“How long have you been hunting?” Brun asked next.
“Two summers, now. And the summer before that I just practiced, but I didn’t hunt.”
“That’s as long as Vorn has been training,” Zoug commented.
“I know,” Ayla said. “I started the same day he did.”
“How do you know exactly when Vorn started, Ayla?” Brun asked, curious how she could be so sure.
“I was there, I watched him.”
“What do you mean, you were there? Where?”
“At the practice field. Iza sent me to get some wild cherry bark, but when I got there, you were all there,” she explained. “Iza needed the cherry bark, and I didn’t know how long you were going to stay, so I waited and watched. Zoug was giving Vorn his first lesson.”
“You watched Zoug give Vorn his first lesson?” Broud cut in. “Are you sure it was his first?” Broud remembered that day only too well. It still brought a blush of shame to his face.
“Yes, Broud. I’m sure,” she replied.
“What else did you see?” Broud’s eyes were narrowed and his gesture clipped. Brun, too, suddenly remembered what had happened in the practice field the day Zoug began Vorn’s training, and he wasn’t happy at the thought of a female witnessing the incident.
Ayla hesitated. “I saw the other men practicing, too,” she answered, trying to evade the issue, then she saw Brun’s eyes become stern. “And I saw Broud push Zoug down, and you got very mad at him, Brun.”
“You saw that! You saw the whole thing?” Broud demanded. He was livid with anger and embarrassment. Of all people, of all the people in the clan, why was she the one who had to see it? The more he thought about it, the more mortified he became, and the more furious. She was witness to Brun’s harshest denunciation of him. Broud even remembered how badly he missed his shots and suddenly recalled that he had missed the hyena, too. The hyena she killed. A female, that female, had shown him up.
Every kind thought, every bit of gratitude he had so recently felt toward her vanished. I’ll be so glad when she’s dead, he thought. She deserves it. He couldn’t bear the idea of her continuing to live with her knowledge of his supreme moment of shame.
Brun watched the son of his mate and could almost read his thoughts from the expressions on his face. Too bad, he thought, just when there was some chance of ending the animosity between them, not that it matters anymore. He continued the questioning.
“You said you began to practice the same day as Vorn, tell me about it.”
“After you left, I walked across the field and saw the sling Broud threw on the ground. Everyone forgot about it after you got mad at Broud. I don’t know why, but I just wondered if I could do it. I remembered Zoug’s lesson and tried. It wasn’t easy, but I kept trying all afternoon. I forgot how late it was getting. I hit the post once, I think it was just an accident, but it made me think I could do it again if I worked at it, so I kept the sling.”
“I suppose you learned how to make one from Zoug, too.”
“Yes.”
“And you practiced that summer?”
“Yes.”
“Then you decided to hunt with it, but why did you hunt meat eaters? They’re more difficult, more dangerous, too. We’ve found dead wolves, even dead lynxes. Zoug always said they could be killed with a sling, you proved he was right, but why those?”
“I knew I could never bring anything back for the clan, I knew I wasn’t supposed to touch a weapon, but I wanted to hunt, I wanted to try, anyway. Meat eaters are always stealing food from us; I thought if I killed them, I would be helping. And it wouldn’t be such a waste, we don’t eat them. So I decided to hunt them.”
It satisfied Brun’s curiosity about why she chose predators, but not why she wanted to hunt in the first place. She was female; no woman ever wanted to hunt.
“You know it was dangerous to try for the hyena from so far away; you might have hit Brac instead.” Brun was probing. He had been ready to try his bola, though the chance of killing the boy with one of the large stones was more than a possibility. But instant death from a cracked skull was preferable to the one the child faced, and at least they would have had the boy’s body to bury, so he could be sent on his way to the spirit world with proper rituals. They would have been lucky to find scattered bones if
the hyena had had his way.
“I knew I could hit it,” Ayla answered simply.
“How could you be sure? The hyena was out of range.”
“He wasn’t out of my range. I’ve hit animals before from that distance. I don’t miss often.”
“I thought I saw the marks of two stones,” Brun motioned.
“I threw two stones,” Ayla confirmed. “I taught myself after the lynx attacked me.”