THE SHELTERS OF STONE

The last person who was with them was Echozar, Joplaya's Promised. He was as distinctive in his general shape and size as the tall men were, especially to Ayla. Joplaya and Echozar would be mated during the same Matrimonial as she and Jondalar, and couples who shared the same ceremony often developed strong friendships. She wished that could be true, but they lived far apart and it was not likely. As they got closer, Ayla noticed that Joplaya glanced at Jondalar now and then, and surprisingly, she didn't mind. She felt an empathetic sorrow for her. She understood Joplaya's melancholy. She, too, had once been Promised to the wrong man, but for Joplaya there would be no last-moment reprieve.

Close cousins were often raised together, or lived nearby and knew they were close kin and not available to be considered for mating. But when Jondalar went to live with the man of his hearth, after the fight in which he knocked out the two front teeth of the man now known as Madroman, he was already a teenager. The daughter of Dalanar's hearth, Joplaya, was a little younger, but neither had known each other while they were growing up.

Dalanar was delighted to have both his hearth children together and wanted them to get to know each other. He decided that one way was to train them both in the art of flint-knapping, which would give them something in common to talk about. It was, in fact, a very good idea, but he didn't know what effect the youngster who was so much like himself would have on Joplaya. She had always adored the man of her hearth, and when Jondalar came, it was all too easy to transfer that overpowering love to her close cousin. Jerika saw it, but both Dalanar and Jondalar were unaware of it. Joplaya always couched her feelings about him in terms of jokes, and they, knowing that close cousins couldn't mate, took it at face value and assumed that she was only teasing.

There were relatively few people in Dalanar's Cave of Lanzadonii, and none that offered much to a beautiful and intelligent young woman. After Jondalar left on his Journey, Jerika urged Dalanar to take the Lanzadonii Cave to Zelandonii Summer Meetings occasionally. They both hoped that Joplaya would find someone, and a great many young men were interested in her, but she felt different and self-conscious because people stared at her. And she could find no one with whom she was as comfortable as she had been with her cousin Jondalar.

She knew that occasionally some cousins did mate-far cousins, to be sure-but she chose to forget that and fantasized that on his Journey Jondalar would decide that he loved her as she loved him. She knew the dream was unlikely, but she passionately hoped that someday he would come home and claim her as his one true love. Instead, he returned with Ayla. She was devastated, but she saw the love he felt for the foreign woman and knew that her dream was shattered.

The one man with whom she had developed some affinity was a new member of Dalanar's Cave, a man who was also stared at wherever he went, Echozar, a man of mixed spirits. Joplaya was the one who helped him integrate into their Cave, made him understand that he was accepted by Dalanar and the Lanzadonii, and even helped him with his language skills. And she was the one who coaxed his story out of him.

His mother had been raped by a man of the Others, who also killed her mate. When she gave birth, she was cursed as a bad-luck woman because her mate had been killed and her son was deformed.

She left her clan, ready to die, but was rescued by Andovan, an older man who had run away from a vicious leader of the S’Armunai. He had lived for a while with a Zelandonii Cave, but was not comfortable with people whose customs were so different from his own. He moved away and lived by himself until he found the Clan woman and her son.

Together they raised him. Echozar learned the Clan language of signs from his mother, and spoken language from Andovan, though it was a mixture of his own language and the Zelandonii he had learned. But when he reached manhood, Andovan died. His mother couldn't stand to live alone and succumbed to the death curse that had been imposed on her. She died shortly after Andovan, leaving Echozar alone.

The young man didn't want to live alone. He tried to return to a clan, but they thought of him as deformed and refused to accept him. And though he could speak, he was rejected by the Caves as an abomination of mixed spirits. Out of desperation, he tried to kill himself, and woke up to Dalanar's smiling face, who found him injured, but not dead, and brought him back to his Cave. The Lanzadonii took him in, and he idolized the tall man, but it was Joplaya that he loved.