Free Plains of Passage by Jean M. Auel Page A

me. I wish I could have met your Iza,” he said, “and the rest of your Clan. But I had to meet you first or I would never have understood that they were people, and that I
could
meet them. The way you talk about the Clan, they must be good people. I’d like to meet one some time.”
    “Many people are good people. The Clan took me in after the earthquake, when I was little. After Broud drove me away from the Clan, I had no one. I was Ayla of No People until the Lion Camp accepted me, gave me a place to belong, made me Ayla of the Mamutoi.”
    “The Mamutoi and the Zelandonii are not so different. I think you will like my people, and they will like you.”
    “You haven’t always been so sure of that,” Ayla said. “I remember when you were afraid they would not want me, because I grew up with the Clan, and because of Durc.”
    Jondalar felt a flush of embarrassment.
    “They would call my son an abomination, a child born of mixed spirits, half-animal—you called him that, once—and because I birthed him, they would think even worse of me.”
    “Ayla, before we left the Summer Meeting, you made me promise to tell you the truth, and not to keep things to myself. The truth is that I was worried in the beginning. I wanted you to come with me, but I didn’t want you to tell people about yourself. I wanted you to hide your childhood, lie about it, even though I hate lies—and you never learned how. I was afraid they would reject you. I know how it feels, and I didn’t want you to be hurt that way. But I was afraid for myself, too. I was afraid they would reject me for bringing you, and I didn’t want to go through that kind of thing again. Yet I couldn’t bear to think of living without you. I didn’t know what to do.”
    Ayla remembered only too well her confusion and despair over his agony of indecision. As happy as she had been with the Mamutoi, she had also been miserably unhappy because of Jondalar.
    “Now I know, though it took almost losing you before I realized it,” Jondalar continued. “No one is more important to me than you, Ayla. I want you to be yourself, to say or do whatever you think you should, because that’s what I love about you, and I believe, now, that most people will welcome you. I’ve seen it happen. I learned something important from the Lion Camp and the Mamutoi. Not all people think alike and opinions can be changed. Some people will stand by you, sometimes those you least expect to, and some people have enough compassion to love and raise a child whom others call abomination.”
    “I didn’t like the way they treated Rydag at the Summer Meeting,” Ayla said. “Some of them didn’t even want to give him a proper burial.” Jondalar heard the anger in her voice, but he could see tears threatening behind the anger.
    “I didn’t like it either. Some people won’t change. They won’t open their eyes and look at what is plain to see. It took me a long time. I can’t promise you that the Zelandonii will accept you, Ayla, but if they don’t we’ll find some other place. Yes, I want to return. I want to go back to my people, I want to see my family, my friends. I want to tell my mother about Thonolan, and ask Zelandoni to look for his spirit in case he hasn’t found his way to the next world yet. I hope we will find a place there. But if not, it’s not so important to me any more. That’s the other thing I learned. That’s why I told you I would be willing to stay here with you, if you wanted me to. I meant it.”
    He was holding her with both his hands clasping her shoulders, looking into her eyes with fierce determination, wanting to be sure she understood him. She saw his conviction, and his love, but now she wondered if they should have left.
    “If your people don’t want us, where will we go?”
    He smiled at her. “We’ll find another place, Ayla, if we have to, but I don’t think we will. I told you, the Zelandonii are not so different from the Mamutoi. They