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Updated: June 15, 2025
But A-ya was too absorbed. She would not let him touch it. "Go get another stick," she commanded impatiently; but quite forgot to see her command obeyed. As she was twanging the strange implement which had so happily fashioned itself under her hands, Grôm came up behind her. He stepped carefully over the sprawling brown baby.
At last the lithe lash, so enthusiastically wielded, stung too hard for even A-ya, with all her stoicism, to find it amusing. She snatched the toy away and began playing with it herself. The lash, at its free end, chanced to be slit almost to the tip, forming a loop. The butt of the handle was formed by a jagged knot, where it had been broken from the parent stem.
The flavor seemed to her as delightful as the smell. She cast about for a suitable morsel on which to experiment. Now it chanced that the elk's tongue, having lain in the heart of the fire, but enclosed within the half-open jaws, had been cooked to a turn. A-ya possessed herself of this ever-coveted delicacy.
Then, leaving him to ponder the miracle, and to experiment, he took A-ya to help him build other fires along the edge of the thickets in order to keep the monsters at bay. And all the while the tribe sat watching, huddled on their haunches, with mouths agape and eyes rolling in amazement.
She shook the wild mane of hair back from her face, silenced the boy's importunings with an imperative gesture, and gathered herself with her arms about both knees to watch what Grôm would do with the plaything. First he examined it minutely, and then he fastened the thong more securely at either end. He twanged it as A-ya had done.
But there were enough so headlong in their ferocity that both Grôm and Mô were kept busy beating them off with spears, while A-ya fed the fires; and the ground inside the circle was littered with the radiant bodies of the dying insects, which, even in dying, bit like bull-dogs if foot or leg came within reach. Grôm noticed that their supply of fuel was all but gone, and his heart sank.
"Yes, everything is dead but the red flowers," whispered A-ya, and clung to him, shuddering with awe. "Courage!" cried Grôm, lifting his head and dashing his great hand across his eyes. "We must get through. We must find air." Shaking off the deadly sloth, they ran on again at full speed, peering through the stems in every direction. The effort made their brains throb fiercely.
Bawr had accepted the excuse, though somewhat perplexed by it, and had accommodatingly taken the extra wives himself a solution which had seemed to meet with the unqualified approval of A-ya. The first winter in the Valley of Fire had been a wonderful one to the tribe, thanks to the fierce but beneficent element ever shining, dancing and whispering in its mysterious tongue before the cave doors.
With the fall of the dew the moon arose over the bay, honey-colored in a violet sky, and played fantastic tricks with the shifting light of the fires. And from within the cave came softly the voice of A-ya, soothing a restless child. The People of the Cave were running short of arrows. The supply of young hickory sprouts, on which they had depended for their shafts, was almost exhausted.
But at least the Mysterious Ones were not invincible, however much the bears feared them. Well, he did not fear them, he said proudly in his heart. Aloud he said to A-ya: "The Shining Dancers are our friends, but they do not like to be touched. If you touch them, they bite." His heart swelled with a vast, unformulated hope. Ideas, possibilities which he could not yet grasp, seethed in his brain.
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