Her thoughts continued racing ahead. I'll need something that will make her sleep when the arm is rebroken, she was thinking. Iza would use datura. It's strong, but it would be best for the pain, and it would make her sleep. I have some dried, but fresh would be best… wait… didn't I see some recently? She closed her eyes trying to remember. Yes! I did!
"Jondalar, while you get my basket, I'm going to get some of that thorn-apple I saw on the way here," she said, reaching the entry in a few strides. "Wolf, come with me." She was halfway across the field before Jondalar caught up with her.
Dolando stood at the entrance to the dwelling watching Jondalar and the woman, and the wolf. Though he hadn't said anything, he had been very much aware of the animal. He noticed that Wolf stayed right beside the woman, matching her stride when she walked. He had observed the subtle hand signals Ayla made when she approached Roshario's bed, and he saw the wolf drop to his stomach, though his head was up and his ears alert, watching the woman's every movement. When she left, he was up at her command, eager to follow her again.
He watched until Ayla, and the wolf that she controlled with such absolute assurance, turned the corner around the end of the wall. Then he looked back at the woman on the bed. For the first time since that horrible moment when Roshario slipped and fell, Dolando dared to feel a glimmer of hope.
When Ayla returned, carrying a pack basket and the datura plants she had washed in the pool, she found a square wooden cooking box, which she decided to examine more closely later, another one filled with water, a hot fire burning in the fireplace with several smooth, rounded stones heating in it, and some small sections of plank. She nodded her approval to Dolando. She looked through the contents of the pack basket until she found several bowls and her old otter-skin medicine bag.
Using a small bowl, she measured a quantity of water into the cooking box, added several whole datura plants, including the roots, then splashed a few drops of water on the cooking stones. Leaving them in the fire to heat further, she emptied the contents of her medicine bag and selected a few packets. As she was putting the rest back, Jondalar came in.
"The horses are fine, Ayla, enjoying the grass in the field, but I've asked everyone to stay away from them for now." He turned to Dolando. "They can get skittish around strangers, and I don't want anyone accidentally harmed. Later we can get them used to everyone." The leader nodded. He didn't think there was much he could say, one way or another, right now. "Wolf doesn't look very happy outside, Ayla, and some people seem a little alarmed by him. I really think you should bring him in here."
"I would rather have him inside with me, but I thought Dolando and Roshario might want him to wait out there."
"Let me talk to Roshario first. Then I think she can bring the animal in," Dolando said, not waiting for a translation and speaking a mixture of Sharamudoi and Mamutoi that Ayla had no trouble grasping. Jondalar gave him a surprised look, but Ayla just continued the conversation.
"I need to measure these on her for splints, too," she said, holding out the small pieces of plank, "and then I want you to scrape these planks until there are no splinters, Dolando." She picked up a loose piece of rather crumbly stone that was near the fireplace. "And rub them with this sandstone until they are very smooth. Do you have some soft skins I can cut up?"
Dolando smiled, though it was a bit grim. "That's what we are known for, Ayla. We use the skin of the chamois, and no one makes softer leather than the Shamudoi."
Jondalar watched them talking to each other with perfect understanding, even though the language they used was not exactly perfect and shook his head in wonder. Ayla must have known Dolando could understand Mamutoi, and she was already using some Sharamudoi – when had she learned the words for "plank" and "sandstone"?
"I'll get some after I talk to Roshario," Dolando said.
They approached the woman on the bed. Dolando and Jondalar explained that Ayla traveled with a wolf as a companion – they didn't bother to mention the horses just yet – and that she wanted to bring him inside the dwelling.
"She has complete control over the animal," Dolando said. "He answers to her commands and will not harm anyone."
Jondalar shot him another look of surprise. Somehow, more had been communicated between Dolando and Ayla than he could account for.
Roshario quickly agreed. Although she was curious, it didn't seem at all surprising that this woman should be able to control a wolf. It only relieved her fears more. Jondalar had obviously brought a powerful Shamud who knew she needed help, just as their old Shamud had once known, many years before, that Jondalar's brother, who had been gored by a rhinoceros, needed help. She didn't understand how Those Who Served the Mother knew these things; they just did, and that was enough for her.
Ayla went to the entry and called Wolf in, then brought him to meet Roshario. "His name is Wolf," she said.
In some way, when she looked into the eyes of the handsome wild creature, he seemed to sense her anguish and her vulnerability. He lifted one paw to the edge of her bed. Then, putting his ears down, he maneuvered his head forward, without being threatening in any way, and licked her face, whining almost as though he felt her pain. Ayla was suddenly reminded of Rydag, and the close bond that had developed between the sickly child and the growing wolf cub. Had that experience taught him to comprehend human need and suffering?
They were all surprised at the gentle action of the wolf, but Roshario was overwhelmed. She felt that something miraculous had happened, that could only bode well. She reached over with her good arm to touch him. "Thank you, Wolf," she said.
Ayla laid the pieces of plank bedside Roshario's arm, then gave them to Dolando, indicating the size she wanted them to be. When Dolando went out, she led Wolf to a corner of the wooden dwelling, then checked the cooking stones again and decided they were ready. She started to take a stone out of the fire using two pieces of wood, but Jondalar appeared with a bent wood tool especially designed with enough spring to hold the hot cooking stones securely, and he showed her how to use it. As she put several stones into the cooking box to start the datura boiling, she looked at the unusual container a little more closely.
She had never seen anything like it. The square box had been made from a single plank, bent around kerfed grooves that had been cut not quite all the way through for three of the corners; it was fastened together with pegs at the fourth. As it was bent, the square bottom was eased into a groove cut the length of the plank. Designs had been carved around the outside, and the lid with a handle fit over the top.
These people had so many unusual things made out of wood. Ayla thought it would be interesting to see how they were made. Dolando returned then with some yellow-colored skins and gave them to her. "Will this be enough?" he asked.
"But these are too fine," she said. "We need soft, absorbent skins, but they don't have to be your best."
Jondalar and Dolando both smiled. "These are not our best," Dolando said. "We would never offer these in trade. There are too many imperfections in them. They are for everyday use."
Ayla knew something about working skins and making leather, and these were supple and smooth with an exquisitely soft feel and texture. She was very impressed and wanted to know more about them, but now was not the time. Using the knife that Jondalar had made for her, with a thin sharp flint blade mounted in an ivory handle made of mammoth tusk, she cut the chamois skin into wide strips.
Then she opened one of her packets and poured into a small bowl a coarse powder of pounded dried spikenard roots, whose leaves rather resembled foxglove, but with yellow dandelionlike flowers instead. She added a bit of hot water from the cooking box. Since she was making a poultice to help the bone fracture mend, a little addition of datura would not hurt, and its numbing quality might help. But she also added pulverized yarrow, for its external painkilling and quick-healing properties. She fished out the stones and added more hot ones to the cooking box, to keep the decoction simmering, smelling it to check for potency.