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"I’m glad you share Ona’s spirit, Ayla. I’m glad she is still here to share it with you. If I am ever fortunate enough to have another child, and if it is a girl, Droog has promised to name her Ayla." Ayla was stunned. She didn’t know how to respond. "Aga, that is too great an honor. Ayla is not a Clan name." "It is now," Aga said. The Clan of the Cave Bear, Chap 13 "Your gift, your talent, may be as good as memories, maybe better, I don’t know. But a good medicine woman is a good medicine woman. That’s what is important. You will be of my line because you are going to be a good medicine woman, Ayla. You will be worthy of the status, you will be one of the best." The Clan of the Cave Bear, Chap 13 The Mog-ur was looking at her, and she saw in his deep brown eye the sorrow she had felt. He had forged indelible new paths in her brain, paths that let her glimpse ahead, but he could not forge new paths in his own. While she looked beyond, he caught a glimpse, not of the future, but of a sense of future. A future that was hers, but not his. He grasped the concept imperfectly, but he understood the potential of it, and quailed before it. The Clan of the Cave Bear, Chap 24 It’s strange that Ura was allowed to live, almost as if she was meant to be Durc’s mate. Men of the Others, Oda said. Who are they? Iza said I was born to them; why don’t I remember? What happened to my real mother? To her mate? Did I have any siblings? Ayla felt a faint queasiness in the pit of her stomach - not nausea, exactly, just a sense of unease. Then suddenly her scalp crawled when she remembered something Iza had told her the night she died. Ayla had pushed it out of her mind; it was too painful to think about Iza’s death. Iza told me to leave! She said I wasn’t Clan, she said I was born to the Others. The Clan of the Cave Bear, Chap 27 Suddenly Creb felt the blood drain from his face and goose flesh rise. Part Ayla and part Clan! is that why she was brought to us? For Durc? For her son? The Clan is doomed, it will be no more, only her kind will go on. I know it, I felt it. But what about Durc? He’s part of the Others, he will go on, but he’s part Clan, too. And Ura, she looks like Durc, and she was born not long after that incident with the men of the Others. Are their totems so strong they can overcome a woman’s in so short a time? It may be; if their women can have Cave Lion totems, they may have to be. Is Ura a mixture, too? And if there is a Durc and a Ura, there must be others, too. Children of mixed spirits, children that will go on, children that will carry the Clan on. Not many, perhaps, but enough. Perhaps the Clan was
doomed before Ayla saw the sacred ceremony, and she was led there
only to show me. We will be no more, but as long as there are
Durcs and Uras, we will not die. I wonder if Durc has the
memories? If only he were older, old enough for a ceremony. It
doesn’t matter; Durc has more than the memories, he has the
Clan. Ayla, my child, the child of my heart, you do carry luck
and you brought it to us. Now I know why you came - not to bring
us our death, but to give us our one chance for life. It will
never be the same, but it is something. "You know, Creb," she said thoughtfully. "Sometimes I think Durc isn’t just my son. Ever since I lost my milk, and he got used to going from hearth to hearth to nurse, he eats at every hearth. Everyone feeds him. He reminds me of a cave bear cub, it’s like he’s the son of the whole clan." Ayla felt a great outpouring of sadness from Creb’s one dark, liquid eye. "Durc is the son of the whole clan, Ayla. He’s the only son of the Clan." The Clan of the Cave Bear, Chap 28 "I am the mog-ur. You are the leader. You have ordered Ayla cursed with death. It is done," Goov motioned, then turned his back on the leader of the clan. The Clan of the Cave Bear, Chap 28
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