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But she didn’t like sleeping out in the open without the security of a fire The extensive grassland supported an abundance of large grazing anied hunters Fire usually held the male to carry a coal when they traveled, to start the next fire, and it didn’t occur to Ayla to carry fire- materials with her at first Once it did, she wondered why she hadn’t done it sooner

The fire drill stick and flat wood hearth-platforh, if tinder or as too green or daht her problems were solved

The h another cycle of its phases, and the wet spring ar on the broad coastal plain that sloped gently toward the inland sea Silt carried down by the seasonal floods often for estuaries, partially closed by sandbars, or sealed off cooons or pools

Ayla hadThe water looked stagnant and not potable, but her waterbag was low She dipped in a hand to sample it, then spat out the brackish liquid and took a s to wash out her mouth

I wonder if that aurochs drank this water, she thought, noticing the bleached bones and skull with long tapering horns She turned away fronant pool with its specter of death, but the bones would not leave her thoughts She kept seeing the white skull and the long horns, the curved hollow horns

She stopped at a stream near noon and decided toin the warainst the wood platform, she wished Grod would appear with the coal he carried in…

She jumped up, piled the fire drill and hearth into her basket, put the rabbit on top, and hurried back the way she had come When she reached the pool, she looked for the skull Grod usually carried a live coal wrapped in driedhollow horn of an aurochs With one, she could carry fire

But while she was tugging at the horn, she felt a twinge of conscience Women of the Clan did not carry fire; it was not allowed Who will carry it forthe horn away She left quickly, as though thinking of the prohibited act alone had conjured up watchful, disapproving eyes

There had been a ti to a way of life foreign to her nature Now it depended on her ability to overco and think for herself The aurochs horn was a beginning, and it boded well for her chances

There wasfire than she realized, however In theshe looked for dry moss to wrap her coal in But ion near the cave, was not to be had on the dry open plains Finally she settled for grass To her disain Yet she knew it could be done, and she had often banked fires to last the night She had the necessary knowledge It took trial and error, and many dead coals, before she discovered a way to preserve a bit of the fire from one camp to the next She carried the aurochs horn tied to her waist thong, too

Ayla always found ways to cross the streae river, she knew another ould have to be found She had followed it upstream for several days It doubled back to the northeast, and did not decrease in size

Though she thought she was out of the territory that o east Going east o back, and she didn’t even want to head in that direction And she could not stay where she was camped in the open beside the river She had to cross; there was no other way to go

She thought she coulda basket with all her possessions over her head Her possessions were the problem

She was sitting beside a small fire in the lee of a fallen tree whose naked branches trailed the water The afternoon sun glinted in the constantcurrent Occasional debris floated past It brought tofor saleon where it e then, though it had worried Iza Ayla didn’t re how to swim; it just seemed she always knew

I wonder why no one else ever liked to swio so far out … until the time Ona almost drowned