The Shelters of Stone Read Online Free PDF Page A

glad to have her son back. Ayla was relieved and touched by Marthona’s welcome. “I have looked forward to meeting you since Jondalar first spoke of you … but I have been a little afraid, too,” she replied with a similar directness and honesty.
    “I don’t blame you. I would have found it very difficult in your place. Come, let me show you where you can put your things. You must be tired and would like to rest before the welcoming celebration tonight,” Marthona said, starting to lead them toward the area under the overhang. Suddenly Wolf started whining, yelped a little “puppy bark,” and stretched his front paws out with his back end and tail up in a playful posture.
    Jondalar was startled. “What is he doing?”
    Ayla looked at Wolf, rather surprised as well. The animal repeated his gestures, and suddenly she smiled. “I think he’s trying to get Marthona’s attention,” she said. “He thinks she didn’t notice him, and I think he wants to be introduced.”
    “And I want to meet him, too,” Marthona said.
    “You don’t fear him!” Ayla said. “And he knows it!”
    “I watched. I didn’t see anything to fear,” she said, extending her hand toward the wolf. He sniffed her hand, licked it, and whined again.
    “I think Wolf wants you to touch him; he does love attention from people he likes,” Ayla said.
    “You do like that, don’t you?” the older woman said as she stroked him. “Wolf? Is that what you called him?”
    “Yes. It’s just the Mamutoi word for ‘wolf.’ It seemed like the right name for him,” Ayla explained.
    “But, I’ve never seen him take to anyone so fast,” Jondalar said, looking at his mother with awe.
    “Nor have I,” Ayla said, watching Marthona with the wolf. “Maybe he’s just happy to meet someone who’s not afraid of him.”
    As they walked into the shade of the overhanging stone, Ayla felt an immediate cooling of temperature. For a heartbeat, she shivered with a chill of fear, and glanced up at the huge shelf of stone jutting out of the cliff wall, wondering if it could collapse. But when her eyes grew accustomed to the dimmer light, she was astonished by more than the physical formation of Jondalar’s home. The space under the rock shelter was huge, much larger than she had imagined.
    She had seen similar overhangs in the cliffs along this river on their way here, some obviously inhabited, though none seemed quite as sizable as this one. Everyone in the entire region knew of the immense rock shelter and the great number of people it housed. The Ninth Cave was the largest of all the communities that called themselves Zelandomi.
    Clustered together at the eastern end of the protected space, along the back wall and freestanding in the middle, were individual structures, many quite large, made partly of stone and partly of wooden frames covered with hides. The hides were decorated with beautifully rendered pictures of animals and various abstract symbols painted in black and many vivid shades of red, yellow, and brown. The structures were arranged in a west-facing curve around an open space near the center of the area covered by the overhanging stone shelf, which was filled with a confusion of objects and people.
    As Ayla looked more closely, what at first had struck her all at once as a mélange of rich clutter was resolving itself into areas dedicated to different tasks, often near to related tasks. It only seemed confusing initially because so many activities were going on.
    She saw hides being cured in frames, and long shafts of spears, apparently in the process of being straightened, leaningagainst a crosspiece supported by two posts. Baskets in different stages of completion were stacked in another place, and thongs were drying stretched between pairs of bone posts. Long skeins of cordage hung from pegs pounded into crossbeams above unfinished nets stretched across a frame, and loosely woven netting in bundles on the ground. Skins, some dyed