Free The Land of Painted Caves by Jean M. Auel Page A

who took me in and raised me when I was a little girl was a medicine woman of her people, a healer. She was training me to be a medicine woman, too. Men of the Clan use a different kind of spear than Zelandonii men when they hunt. It’s longer and thicker and they don’t usually throw it; they jab with it, so they have to get close. It’s more dangerous and they were often hurt. Sometimes the hunters of the Clan traveled quite a long distance. If someone broke a bone, they weren’t always able to return right away and the bone would start to heal before it could be set. I assisted Iza a few times when she had to rebreak and reset bones, and I also helped the medicine women at the Clan Gathering do the same.”
    “These people you call the Clan, are they really the same as Flatheads?” the young man asked.
    She had been asked that question before, and she thought by the same young man. “That is your word for them,” Ayla said again.
    “It’s hard to believe they could do so much,” he said.
    “Not for me. I lived with them.”
    There was an uncomfortable silence for a few moments, then the First changed the subject. “I think this would be a good time for the acolytes to learn or, for some of you, to review counting words, some of their uses and meanings. You all know the counting words, but what can you do if there are large amounts to count? Zelandoni of the Second Cave, would you explain?”
    Ayla’s interest was quickened. Suddenly fascinated, she leaned forward. She knew counting could be more complex and powerful than just the simple counting words, if one understood how to do it. The First noted her attention with satisfaction. She was sure that Ayla had a particular curiosity about the concept of counting.
    “You can use your hands,” the Second said, and held up both hands. “With the right hand, you count on your fingers as each word is said up to five.” She made a fist, and lifted each finger in turn as she counted, beginning with the thumb. “You can count another five on your left hand until you get to ten, but that is as far as you can go with just counting. But instead of using the left hand to count the second five, you can bend down one finger, the thumb, to hold the first five,” she held up her left hand with the back facing out, “then count again on the right hand, and bend down the second counting finger of the left hand to hold it.” She bent her index finger on top of her thumb, so that she was holding open both hands, except for the index finger and thumb of her left hand. “That means ten,” she said. “If I hold down the next finger, that means fifteen. The next finger is twenty, and next one twenty-five.”
    Ayla was amazed. She comprehended the idea immediately, though it was more complex than the simple counting words Jondalar had taught her. She remembered the first time she learned the concept of calculating the number of things. It was Creb, the Mog-ur of the Clan, who had shown her, but essentially he could only count to ten. The first time he showed her his way of counting, when she was still a girl, he placed each finger of one hand on five different stones and then, since one arm had been amputated below the elbow, he did it a second time imagining that it was his other hand. With great difficulty, he could stretch his imagination to count to twenty, which was why it had shocked and upset him when she had counted to twenty-five with ease.
    She didn’t use words, the way Jondalar did. She did it with pebbles, showing Creb twenty-five by placing her five fingers on different stones five times. Creb had struggled to learn to count, but she understood the concept with ease. He told her never to tell anyone what she had done. He knew she was different from the Clan, but he hadn’t understood how different until then, and he knew it would distress them, especially Brun and the men, perhaps enough to drive her out.
    Most of the Clan could count only one, two, three, and