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various colors including many shades of red, were cut into pieces and nearby, partially assembled articles of clothing were hanging.
    She recognized most of the crafts, but near the clothing was an activity that was entirely unfamiliar. A frame held many strands of thin cord vertically, with a design partially formed from the material woven horizontally across them. She wanted to go over and look closer, and promised herself she would, later. Pieces of wood, stone, bone, antler, and mammoth ivory were in other places, carved into implements—ladles, spoons, bowls, tongs, weapons—most of them with carved and sometimes painted decorations. There were also small sculptures and carvings that were not implements or tools. They seemed to be made for themselves or some purpose of which she wasn’t aware.
    She saw vegetables and herbs hanging high from large frames with many crosspieces, and lower to the ground, meat drying on racks. Somewhat away from other activities was an area scattered with sharp stone chips; for people like Jondalar she thought, flint-knappers who made tools, knives, and spear points.
    And everywhere she looked, she saw people. The community that lived under the spacious rock shelter was of a size to match the space. Ayla had grown up in a clan of less than thirty people; at the Clan Gathering, which occurred once every seven years, two hundred people came together for a short period, a huge assembly to her then. Though the Mamutoi Summer Meeting drew a much greater number, the Ninth Cave of the Zelandonii, alone, comprised of over two hundred individuals living together at this one place, was larger than the entire Clan Gathering!
    Ayla didn’t know how many people were standingaround watching them, but she was reminded of the time she had walked with Brun’s clan into that congregation of clans and felt all of them looking at her. They had tried to be unobtrusive, but the people who were staring as Marthona led Jondalar, Ayla, and a wolf to her living place weren’t even polite about it. They didn’t try to look down or glance away. She wondered if she would ever get used to living with so many people living close by all the time; she wondered if she wanted to.

2

    T he huge woman glanced up at the movement of the leather drape stretched across the entrance, then quickly looked down as the young blond stranger emerged from Marthona’s dwelling. She was sitting in her accustomed place, a seat carved out of a solid block of limestone, strong enough to support her massive bulk. The leather-padded stone seat had been made especially for her, and was located exactly where she wanted it: toward the back of the large open area under the enormous overhanging cliff that protected the settlement, but within sight of almost the entire communal living space.
    The woman appeared to be meditating, but it wasn’t the first time she had used the place to quietly observe some person or activity. The people had learned not to intrude upon her meditations, unless it was an emergency, especially when she wore her ivory chest plaque with the plain, undecorated side facing out. When the side that was carved with symbols and animals was showing, anyone was free to approach her, but when she reversed the plaque to the blank side, it became a symbol of silence and meant that she did not wish to speak and did not want to be disturbed.
    The Cave had grown so accustomed to her being there, they almost didn’t see her, for all her usually commanding presence. She had cultivated that effect carefully and had nocompunctions about it. As spiritual leader of the Ninth Cave of the Zelandonii, she considered the welfare of the people her responsibility and used every means her fertile brain could devise to carry out her duty.
    She watched the younger woman leave the rock shelter and head toward the path that led to the valley, and noticed the unmistakably foreign look of her leather tunic. The old donier was also aware that she