Lila’s Reviews > The Valley of Horses > Status Update

The Earth Mother was leaving her children, to find their own way, to carve out their own lives, to pay the consequences of their own actions - to come of age. Not in his lifetime, not in many lifetimes to come, but the first inexorable step had been taken. She had passed on Her parting Gift, Her Gift of Knowledge.

He sensed a divergence, a path splitting, a choice, and he had no one to guide him. A current of warm air raised hair on the back of his neck. He knew She was leaving him. He had never consciously felt her presence, but he knew when She was gone, and the void She left behind ached. It was the beginning of an ending: the ending of the ice, the end of an age, the end of the time when Her nourishment provided.

I love you, Jondalar. It won't be easy to get over you, but you gave me something. I was afraid to love. I lost so many loves that I pushed all feelings of love away. I knew I would lose you, Jondalar, but I loved you anyway. Now I know that I can love again, and if I lose it, it doesn't take away the love that was. You gave that to me. And maybe something more.

After a while, I'd dry up, be an empty shell, and find ways to make your life as miserable as mine. You'd go on being your wonderful, caring, generous self, because you'd know why I had become like that. But you'd hate yourself for it. And everyone would wonder how you could stand such a carping, bitter old woman. I won't do that to you, Jondalar. And I won't do it to me.

Because I would love you. I couldn't help it. I would love you and die a little every day knowing you didn't love me the same way. No woman can keep from loving you, Jondalar. And every time we would make love, like we did tonight, I would wither inside more. Wanting you so much, loving you so much, and knowing that as much as you might want to, you didn't love me back.

Only in the animal named human did the survival depend on more than strength and fitness. Already puny compared tot heir carnivorous competitors, mankind depended on cooperation and compassion to survive.

To her, laughter was charged with more meaning than a simple spontaneous response. It represented a unique bond she had with her son, the part of herself she could see in him, and it was an expression of her own identity. The laughter inspired by a cave lion cub which she loved strengthened that expression, and she would not give it up. It would not only have meant giving up memory sensations of her son, but giving-

Tears of grief welled in her eyes. It wasn't that she loved him, but she felt she had lost something beyond value before she ever had a chance to appreciate it. She was devastated that the first time she saw someone of her own kind, he was dead.

"If you want to fall in love, you can't hold everything in. You have to open up, take that risk. You'll be hurt sometimes, but if you don't, you'll never be happy. The one you find may not be the kind of woman you expected to fall in love with, but it won't matter, you'll love her for exactly what she is."

He didn't know that panic was a survival trait, in extreme circumstances. When all else fails, and all other rational means of finding a solution have been exhausted, panic takes over. And sometimes an irrational act becomes a solution that rational mind would never have thought of.