Earth's Children 1 - The Clan of the Cave Bear (v5.0) by Jean Auel

Author:Jean Auel
Language: eng
Format: epub

Earth's Children 1 - The Clan of the Cave Bear (v5.0)

15

The sea­sons changed in re­verse as the hunt­ing par­ty trav­eled south, from win­ter to fall. Threat­en­ing clouds and the smell of snow hur­ried their de­par­ture; they had no de­sire to be caught by the first re­al bliz­zard of the penin­su­la's north­ern win­ter. The warmer weath­er at the south­ern end gave a false feel­ing of ap­proach­ing spring, with an un­set­tling twist. Rather than new shoots and bud­ding wild flow­ers, tall grass swayed in gold­en waves on the steppes, and the bloom of the tem­per­ate trees at the pro­tect­ed tip was in shades of crim­son and am­ber patch­worked with ev­er­green. But the view from the dis­tance was de­ceiv­ing. Most de­cid­uous trees had dropped their leaves and the on­slaught of win­ter was close be­hind.

It took longer to re­turn than to reach the site of the mam­moth herd. The fast, dis­tance-​de­vour­ing pace was im­pos­si­ble with their heavy loads. But Ay­la was weighed down with more than mam­moth. Guilt, anx­iety, and de­pres­sion were far heav­ier bur­dens. No one spoke of the in­ci­dent, but it wasn't for­got­ten. Of­ten, her ca­su­al glance caught some­one star­ing at her be­fore they turned aside, quick­ly, and few spoke to her un­less it was nec­es­sary. She felt iso­lat­ed, lone­ly, and more than a lit­tle fright­ened. As lit­tle con­ver­sa­tion as she had, it was enough for her to learn the penal­ty for her crime.

The peo­ple left be­hind at the cave had been watch­ing for the re­turn of the hunters. From the time of their ear­li­est ex­pect­ed ar­rival, some­one was post­ed near the ridge where there was a good view of the steppes, most of­ten one of the chil­dren.

When Vorn first took his turn ear­ly in the day, he stared out at the dis­tant panora­ma con­sci­en­tious­ly, but then he got bored. He didn't like be­ing off by him­self with­out even Borg to play with. He de­vised imag­inary hunts and jabbed his not quite full-​sized spear in­to the ground so of­ten that the point be­came frayed de­spite fire hard­en­ing. It was on­ly by ac­ci­dent that he hap­pened to glance down the hill as the hunt­ing par­ty came in­to view.

“Tusks! Tusks!” Vorn shout­ed, rac­ing back to the cave.

“Tusks?” Aga asked. “What do you mean, 'tusks'?”

“They're back!” Vorn ges­tic­ulat­ed ex­cit­ed­ly. “Brun and Droog and the rest, and I saw them car­ry­ing tusks!”

Ev­ery­one ran halfway to the steppes to greet the vic­to­ri­ous hunters. But when they reached them, it was ap­par­ent some­thing was wrong. The hunt was suc­cess­ful, the hunters should have been ju­bi­lant. In­stead their step was heavy and their man­ner sub­dued. Brun was grim, and Iza need­ed on­ly one look at Ay­la to know some­thing ter­ri­ble had hap­pened that in­volved her daugh­ter.

While the hunt­ing par­ty un­load­ed some of their bur­den on those who had re­mained be­hind, the rea­son for the somber si­lence un­fold­ed. Ay­la trudged up the slope with bowed head, obliv­ious to the sur­rep­ti­tious glances cast in her di­rec­tion. Iza was dumb­found­ed. If she had ev­er wor­ried over the un­ortho­dox ac­tions of her adopt­ed daugh­ter be­fore, it was noth­ing to the icy shaft of fear she felt for her now.

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