The Shelters of Stone by Jean M. Auel Page B

powerful dream. Do you have any other dreams? About that rime in your life, I mean?”
    “One that’s more frightening, but hard to explain. I never quite remember it. It’s more a feeling, a feeling of an earthquake.” The young woman shuddered. “I hate earthquakes!”
    Zelandoni nodded knowingly. “Any others?”
    “No … yes, but only once, when Jondalar was still recovering, and was teaching me to speak.…”
    Zelandoni thought that was a peculiar way to phrase it and glanced at Marthona to see if she had noted the odd expression.
    “I understood some,” Ayla said. “I had learned many words, but I was having trouble putting all together, then I dreamed of my mother, my real mother. I saw her face, and she spoke to me. The learning was easier after that.”
    “Ahhh … That’s a very important dream,” the One Who Served commented. “It’s always important when the Mother comes to you in your dreams, whatever form She takes, but particularly when She takes the form of your own mother speaking to you from the next world.”
    Jondalar recalled a dream he had had of the Mother when they were still in Ayla’s valley. A very strange dream. I should tell Zelandoni about it sometime, he thought.
    “So, if you dreamed of the Mother, why didn’t you appeal to her to help Thonolan find his way in the next world? I don’t understand why you called upon the spirit of a cave bear and not the Great Earth Mother.”
    “I didn’t know about the Great Earth Mother until Jondalar told me, after I learned your language.”
    “You didn’t know about Doni, about the Great Earth Mother?” Folara asked with amazement. None of the Zelandonii had ever heard of anyone who did not recognize the Great Mother in some name or form. They were all mystified.
    “The Clan honors Ursus, the Great Cave Bear,” she said. “That’s why I called on Ursus to help guide the spirit of the dead man—I didn’t know his name then—even though he wasn’t Clan. I did ask the Spirit of the Cave Lion to help, too, since he was my totem.”
    “Well, if you didn’t know Her, then you did what you could, under the circumstances. I’m sure it helped,” Zelandoni said, but she was more concerned than she showed. How could any of Her children not know the Mother?
    “I have a totem, too,” Willamar said. “Mine is the Golden Eagle.” He sat up a little straighten “My mother told me that when I was an infant, an eagle picked me up and tried to carry me away, but she grabbed me and held on. I still show the scars. The zelandoni told her that the Golden Eagle spirit recognized me as one of his own kind. Not many people have personal totems, not among the Zelandonii, but if you have one, it is thought to be lucky.”
    “Well, you were lucky enough to get away,” Joharran said.
    “I guess I was lucky enough to get away from the cave lion that marked me,” Ayla said, “and so was Jondalar. I think his totem is the Cave Lion, too. What do you think, Zelandoni?”
    Ayla had been telling Jondalar that the Cave Lion spirit had chosen him ever since she could talk to him, but he had always avoided any comment about it. It seemed that individualtotems weren’t as important to his people as they were to the Clan, but it was important to her. She didn’t want to take any chances.
    The Clan believed that a man’s totem had to be stronger than a woman’s totem, for her to have children. That was why her strong male totem had upset Iza so. In spite of her powerful totem, Ayla did have a son, but there had been difficulties, beginning in pregnancy, during his birth and, many believed, afterward. They were sure he was unlucky—that his mother had no mate, no man to raise him properly, confirmed it. The difficulties and misfortune were blamed on the fact that she was a woman with a male totem. Now that she was pregnant again, she wanted no problems for this child that Jondalar had started, not for her or the baby. Though she had learned a