Ranec knew they were not sharing Pleasures. He was excruciatingly conscious of Ayla every moment, though he tried not to make it obvious. He knew when she went to bed and when she woke, what she ate and with whom she spoke, and he spent as much time as he could at the Hearth of the Mammoth. Among those who gathered there, Ranec's wit, sometimes directed at one member or another of the Lion Camp, was often the cause of raucous laughter. He was scrupulously careful, however, never to denigrate Jondalar, whether Ayla was nearby or not. The visitor was aware of Ranec's way with words, but such cleverness had never been Jondalar's strong point. Ranec's compact muscularity and insouciant self-confidence had the effect of making the tall, dramatically handsome man feel like a big oaf.
As the winter progressed, Jondalar and Ayla's unresolved misunderstanding kept getting worse. Jondalar was becoming afraid that he would lose her entirely to the dark, exotic, and engaging man. He kept trying to convince himself that he should be fair, and let her make the choice, that he didn't have any right to make demands on her. But he stayed away because he didn't want to present her with a choice which would give her the opportunity to reject him.
The Mamutoi did not seem disturbed by the harsh weather. They had plenty of food stored, and busied themselves with their usual winter diversions, snug and secure inside their semisubterranean longhouse. The older-members of the Camp tended to gather around the cooking hearth, sipping hot tea, telling stories, reminiscing, gossiping, and playing games of chance with pieces of carved ivory or bone, when they were not busy on some project. The younger people congregated around the Mammoth Hearth, laughing and joking, singing songs and practicing musical instruments, though there was a great deal of intermixing among everyone, and the children were welcome everywhere. This was the time of leisure; the time to make and mend tools and weapons, utensils and jewelry; the time to weave baskets and mats, to carve ivory, bone, and antler; to make thongs, ropes, cords, and nets; and the time to make and decorate clothing.
Ayla was interested in how the Mamutoi processed their leather and, especially, how they colored it. She was also intrigued with the colored embroidery, quill and beadwork. Decorated and sewn clothing was new and unusual to her.
"You said you would show me how to make leather red after I make skin ready. I think bison skin I am working on is ready," Ayla said.
"All right, I'll show you," Deegie said. "Let's see how it looks."
Ayla went to the storage platform near the head of her bed and unfolded a complete hide, and spread it out. It was incredibly soft to the touch, pliable, and nearly white. Deegie examined it critically. She had watched Ayla's process without comment, but with great interest.
First Ayla had cut off the heavy mane close to the skin with a sharp knife, then she beamed it; draped it over a large smooth mammoth leg bone and scraped it, using the slightly dulled edge of a flint flake. She scraped the inside to remove clinging bits of fat and blood vessels, and the outside, against the lay of the hair, taking off the outer layer of skin, which included the grain of the leather, as well. Deegie would have rolled it up and left it near the fire for a few days, allowing it to begin to decay, to loosen the hair. When she was ready, the hair would come out, leaving behind the outer layer of skin, which would become the grain of the leather. To make the softer buckskin, as Ayla had done, she would have tied it to a frame to scrape off the hair and the grain.
Ayla's next step incorporated a suggestion from Deegie. After soaking and washing, Ayla had planned to rub fat into the hide to soften it, as she was accustomed to doing. But Deegie showed Ayla how to make a thin gruel of the putrefying brains of the animal to soak the hide in instead. Ayla was both surprised and pleased at the results. She could feel the change in the hide, the softening and elasticity which the brain tissue imparted, even while she was rubbing it in. But it was after thoroughly wringing out the hide that the work began. It had to be pulled and stretched constantly while it was drying, and the quality of the finished leather depended upon how well the hide was worked at this stage.
"You do have a good hand for leather, Ayla. Bison hide is heavy, and this is so soft. It feels wonderful. Have you decided what you want to make out of it?"
"No." Ayla shook her head. "But I want to make leather red. What do you think? Footwear?"
"It's heavy enough for it, but soft enough for a tunic. Let's go ahead and color it. You can think about what to make with it later," Deegie said, and as they walked toward the last hearth together, she asked, "What would you do with that hide now? If you were not going to color it?"
"I would put over very smoky fire, so leather will not get stiff again, if it gets wet, from rain, or even from swimming," Ayla said.
Deegie nodded. "That's what I would do, too. But what we are going to do to the hide will make the rain slide off."
They passed by Crozie when they walked through the Crane Hearth, which reminded Ayla of something she had been meaning to ask about. "Deegie, do you know how to make leather white, too? Like tunic Crozie wear? I like red, but after that, I would like to learn white. I think I know someone who would like white."
"White is hard to do, hard to get leather really snowy white. I think Crozie could show you better than I could. You would need chalk… Wymez might have some. Flint is found in chalk, and usually the pieces he gets from the mine up north have a covering of chalk on the outside," Deegie said.
The young women walked back to the Mammoth Hearth with some small mortars and pestles, and several lumps of red ochre coloring material in various shades. Deegie set some fat to melting over the fire, then arrayed the colored bits of material around Ayla. There were bits of charcoal for black, manganese for a blue-black, and a bright sulphurous yellow, in addition to ochres of many colors; browns, reds, maroons, yellows. The mortars were the natural bowl shapes of certain bones, such as the frontal bone of a deer, or pecked out of granite or basalt, just as the stone lamps were. Pestles were shaped out of hard ivory or bone, except one, which was an elongated natural stone.
"What shade of red do you want, Ayla? Deep red, blood red, earth red, yellow red; that's sort of a sun color."
Ayla didn't know she would have so many choices. "I don't know… red red," she replied.
Deegie studied the colors. "I think if we take this one," she said, picking up a piece that was a rather bright earth red, "and add a little yellow to it, to bring out the red more, it might be a color you would like."
She put the small lump of red ochre in the stone mortar and showed Ayla how to grind it very fine, then had her grind up the yellow color in a separate bowl. In a third bowl, Deegie mixed the two colors until she was satisfied with the shade. Then she added the hot fat, which changed the color, and brightened it to a shade that made Ayla smile.
"Yes. That is red. That is nice red," she said.
Next Deegie picked up a long deer rib, which had been split lengthwise so that the porous inner bone was exposed at the convex end. Using the rib burnisher with the spongy side down, she picked up a dab of the cooled red fat, and rubbed the mixture into the prepared bison skin, pressing hard as she held the hide in her hand. As she worked the mineral coloring into the pores of the material, the leather acquired a smooth sheen. On leather with grain, the burnishing tool and coloring agents would have given it a hard shiny finish.
After watching awhile, Ayla picked up another rib bone and copied Deegie's technique. Deegie watched her, offered a few corrections. When a corner of the hide was finished, she stopped Ayla for a moment.
"Look," she said, sprinkling a few drops of water on the hide as she held up the corner. "It runs off, see?" The water beaded up and ran down, leaving no mark on the impervious finish.