At first, Ayla thought she was imagining that they were doing it on purpose, but as she continued to watch them, it soon became obvious that they were playing a game with each other, and enjoying it. Both young male animals, so full of life and energy, had discovered a way to run some of it off and have fun doing it. Ayla smiled and shook her head, wishing Jondalar were there to enjoy their antics with her, then went back to brushing the mare. Whinney, too, was beginning to show her pregnancy, but she appeared to be in good health.

When Ayla finished with her horse, she saw that Racer was grazing quietly and Wolf was nowhere in sight. Off exploring, she thought. She whistled the particular tones that Jondalar had developed to call his horse. He looked up and started toward her. He had nearly reached her when another whistle sounded, repeating the exact tones. They both looked for the whistler. Ayla thought it must be Jondalar, back for some reason, but when she looked up she saw a boy coming in her direction.

He was not familiar to her, and she wondered what he wanted and why he had imitated her particular whistle. When he neared, she thought he could count perhaps nine or ten years, then she noticed that one of his arms was somewhat stunted, shorter than the other, and hung a little awkwardly, as though he didn't have full control of it. The boy reminded her of Creb, whose arm had been amputated at the elbow when he was a boy, and she warmed to him immediately.

"Are you the one who whistled?"

"Yes."

"Why did you whistle like I did?" Ayla said.

"I never heard a whistle like that. I wanted to see if I could do it," he said.

"You did," she said. "Are you looking for someone?"

"No," he said.

"What are you doing here?" ,

"I'm just looking. Someone told me there were horses here, but I didn't know anyone had set up camp. He didn't tell me that. Everyone else is by Middle Creek," he said.

"We just recently arrived. How long have you been here?"

"I was born here."

"Oh, then you are of the Nineteenth Cave."

"Yes. Why do you talk funny?"

"I was not born here. I come from far away. I used to be Ayla of the Lion Camp of the Mamutoi, now I am Ayla of the Ninth Cave of the Zelandonii," she said, then stepped toward him, holding out both hands in the manner of a formal greeting.

He became a little flustered because he could not reach out well with his partially paralyzed arm. Ayla stretched a bit for his crippled limb and took both hands in hers as though it were perfectly normal, but she noted that his hand was smaller and misshapen, and the little finger was fused to the one next to it. She held his hands for a moment and smiled.

Then, as though he just remembered, the boy said, "I am Lanidar of the Nineteenth Cave of the Zelandonii." He was about to let go, but added, "The Nineteenth Cave welcomes you to the Summer Meeting, Ayla of the Ninth Cave of the Zelandonii."

"You whistle very well. Your whistle was a very good copy of mine. Do you like to whistle?" she asked when she let go.

"I guess so."

"Can I ask you not to make that whistle sound again?" she said.

"Why?" he asked.

"I use that sound to call the horse, this one, the stallion. If you whistle like that, I'm afraid he will think you are calling him and it will confuse him," Ayla explained. "If you like to whistle, I can teach you other sounds to whistle."

"Like what?"

Ayla looked around and noticed a chickadee perched on the limb of a nearby tree, singing thechick-a-dee-dee-dee sound that gave the bird its name. She listened for a moment, then repeated the sound. The boy looked startled, and the bird stopped singing for a moment, then started up again. Ayla repeated the sound. The black-capped bird sang again, looking around.

"How do you do that?" the boy said.

"I'll teach you if you like. You could learn, you're a good whistler," she said.

"Can you whistle like other birds, too?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Which ones?"

"Any one you want."

"How about a meadow lark?"

Ayla closed her eyes for a moment, then whistled a series of tones that sounded exactly like a lark that had soared high into the sky and swooped down, making its glorious melody.

"Can you really teach me to do that?" the boy asked, looking at her with wonder in his eyes.

"If you really want to learn," Ayla said. "How did you learn?"

"I practiced. If you have patience, sometimes the bird will come to you when you whistle its song," the woman replied. Ayla remembered when she lived alone in her valley and taught herself to whistle and imitate the sounds of birds. Once she started feeding them, there were several that always came at her call and ate out of her hand.

"Can you whistle other things?" Lanidar asked, completely intrigued by the strange woman who talked funny and whistled so well.

Ayla thought for a moment, then perhaps because the boy reminded her of Creb, she began to whistle an eerie melody that sounded like a flute playing. He had heard flutes many times, but he had never heard anything like it. The haunting music was totally unfamiliar to him. It was the sound of the flute played by the mog-ur at the Clan Gathering she had gone to with Brun's clan when she still lived with them. Lanidar listened until she stopped. "I never heard whistling like that," he said.

"Did you like it?" she asked.

"Yes, but it was a little scary, too. Like it came from a place far away," Lanidar said.

"It did," Ayla said, then she smiled and pierced the air with a sharp, commanding trill. Before long, Wolf came bounding out of the long grass of the field.

"It's a wolf!" the boy screamed with fear.

"It's all right," she said, holding Wolf close to her. "The wolf is my friend. I walked through the main camp with him yesterday. I thought you would know that he was here, along with the horses."

The boy calmed down, but still looked at Wolf with large round eyes full of apprehension.

"I went with my mother to pick raspberries yesterday. Nobody even told me you were here. They just said there were some horses in the Upper Meadow," Lanidar said. "Everybody was talking about some kind of spear-throwing thing some man wanted to show. I'm not good at throwing a spear, so I decided I'd look for the horses instead."

Ayla wondered if the omission was on purpose, if someone was trying to trick him the way Marona had tried to trick her. Then she realized that a boy of his age who went berry picking with his mother probably led a pretty lonely life. She got a sense that the boy with a crippled arm, who could not throw a spear, did not have many friends and that the other boys made fun of him and tried to trick him. But he did have one good arm. He could learn to throw a spear, especially using a spear-thrower.

"Why aren't you good at throwing a spear?" she asked.

"Can't you see?" he said, holding out his malformed arm and looking at it with loathing.

"But you have another arm that is perfectly good," she said.

"Everybody always holds their extra spears with their other arm. Besides, nobody wanted to teach me. They said I could never hit a target, anyway," the boy said.

"What about the man of your hearth?" Ayla asked.

"I live with my mother, and her mother. I guess there was a man of the hearth once, my mother pointed him out to me, but he left her a long time ago, and he doesn't want anything to do with me. He didn't like it when I tried to visit him. He seemed embarrassed. Sometimes a man will come and live with us for a while, but none of them bother with me much," the boy said.

"Would you like to see a spear-thrower? I have one with me," Ayla said.

"Where did you get one?" Lanidar asked.

"I know the man who made it. He's the man I'm going to mate. I'll be going to help him show his spear-thrower as soon as I finish with the horses."