The Ugly Little Boy by Isaac Asimov, Robert Silverberg

Goddess Woman was strong and healthy; she expected to live another ten years, perhaps fifteen, maybe as many as twenty if she was lucky. Her mother had lived to a great old age, even beyond her sixtieth year, and her grandmother as well. Long life was a characteristic of her family.
    "Will we do the full rite this morning?" the youngest Goddess Woman asked her, as they moved the stones about, assembling the shrine.
    Goddess Woman gave her an irritated glance. "Of course we will. Why shouldn't we?"
    "Because Silver Cloud wants us to leave here right after morning meal. He says we have to travel farther today than we've been doing the last three."
    "Silver Cloud! Silver Cloud! He says this, he says that, and we hop like frogs to his commands. Maybe he's in a hurry, but the Goddess isn't. We do the full rite."
    She lit the Goddess-fire. The second Goddess Woman produced her little wolfskin packet of aromatic herbs and sprinkled them on the blaze. Colored flames flared high. The youngest Goddess Woman brought the stone bowl of blood from yesterday's kill and poured a little onto the offering-altar.
    From the furry bear-skin in which they were stored, Goddess Woman brought forth the three holy bear-skulls that were the tribe's most sacred possession, and put them out on three flat stones to shield them from contact with the ground.
    The skulls had been in the tribe's possession for more generations than even Keeps The Past could say. Great heroes of long ago had slain those bears in single combat, and they had been handed down in the tribe from one Goddess Woman to the next. The bear was the Father-animal, the great kindling force that brought forth life from the Great Mother. That was why Goddess Woman had to take care not to allow the skulls to touch bare soil, for then they would fructify the Mother, and this was not the season for doing that. Any children who were kindled into life now, in mid-summer, would be born in the dark days of late winter, when food was at its scarcest. The rime to kindle young ones was in autumn, so that they would come forth in the spring.
    Goddess Woman laid her hands on each of the skulls in turn, lovingly stroking its upper vault, polished smooth and ice-bright by the hands of many Goddess Women of years gone by. She felt shivers running through her hands and arms and shoulders as the power of the elemental Father-force tingled upward out of the skulls and into her body.
    She caressed the shining fangs. She fingered the dark eye-sockets.
    The Father-force opened the way for her, admitting the Mother-force to her soul. One force necessarily led to the other; one could not invoke one without feeling the presence of the other.
    "Goddess, we thank Thee," murmured Goddess Woman. "We thank Thee for the fruit of the earth and for the flesh of the beasts and most deeply do we thank Thee for the fruit of our wombs." Briefly she touched her breasts, her belly, her loins. She crouched and dug her fingertips into the hard frosty soil. Cold as it might be today, it was still the breast of the Mother, and she fondled it with love. Beside her, the other two Goddess Women were doing the same.
    She closed her eyes. She saw the great arc of the Mother's breast stretching out before her to the horizon. She filled her soul with awareness of Goddess-presence, of Mother-force.
    Bless us, Goddess Woman prayed. Preserve us. Give us the grace of Thy love.
    She was pulled harshly from her meditations by the sound of raucous screeching laughter somewhere behind her. The boys of the tribe, playing their rough games. She forced herself to ignore them. They were of the Goddess too, however crude and cruel and foolish they might be.
    The Goddess had created women for bearing children and giving nurture and love, and men for hunting and providing and fighting, and each had a role to play ftiat the other could not venture to perform. That was the meaning of the Summer Festival, the coming together of man and woman in the service