Breakfast Patties

Makes 6

1 pound potatoes

3 carrots

1 zucchini

1 onion, finely diced

1 egg

½ bunch of parsley, finely chopped

3 tablespoons bread crumbs

1 teaspoon fresh mint, finely chopped

Salt

Pepper

Vegetable Oil

I. Peel the potatoes and carrots, wash them, and dry them off. Cut into rough pieces.

II. Wash the zucchini, take off the ends, and cut into rough pieces. Put them and the potatoes and carrots in the bowl of a food processor and grate them coarsely. (Alternately, grate them by hand.) Drain well in a colander.

III. Pour the grated vegetables into a bowl and add the onion, egg, parsley, bread crumbs, and mint. Season with salt and pepper, and mix well. Form into patties about 1 inch thick.

IV. In a nonstick skillet, heat 3 tablespoons of the vegetable oil on medium heat. Depending on the size of the skillet, add some of the patties and fry them to a golden brown colour on each side (about 5 minutes). Place them on a plate covered with a sheet of paper towel to absorb excess grease.

V. Serve with cucumber raita

A great wall of ice stretched up and over their heads, its massive shadow blanketing the ground below. It was white, and then blue, and then sometimes all the colours of the Rainbow if Ayla squinted at it in the right light. For months it had been a blip on the horizon, the ever nearing danger of what they would have to pass if they ever hoped to reach Jondalar's homeland.

It had been worse standing before it, a terrible block of snow and ice and all the coldest things in the world. They had finally reached its base too late yesterday to start their climb, and so they had been forced to make camp in front of it. That had made everything seem even worse than it was. It was better to actually start the climb. Things were never as terrible Ayla found in reality as her mind could conceive them

Ayla's foot slipped and she almost toppled to the ground, almost fell and smashed her head on the hard rocks below. Almost ended her journey here, after everything. After a son left behind in the arms of a sister, after raising a cave lion, a horse, and wolf from babyhood. After finding Jondalar, mauled by said cave lion, now adult and with a mate of his own. After healing him back to health, after discovering he was like her, he was Other…Other.

He was the first of the Others she had ever, properly, met. The first person in the world that looked like her. At least that she could remember. She had only been a small child when the Clan…when the Family had picked her up. She remembered talk, tales of that great earthquake, the one that must have killed her first people. The Others she was born to, but could not have remembered even if she had the inclination to try.

As far as young Ayla was concerned she was of the Family. She spoke their words, both the out loud ones and the silent travelling language. She knew their stories and their gods, still chanted their words under her breath when the trail became hard and her legs began to ache. She had been trained in the trade of the Medicine Woman by her primary mother, Iza. That was the way of the Family, every woman in your clan was a Mother, and every Man was a Father. But you always had a primary parent, either the mother who had carried you or the Father who had made you with his spirit.

Iza had been neither of course, because Ayla had been adopted - and thus should not have had a primary parent at all. Tradition dictated that she should have been a child of the whole Family. But Iza was first of the Medicine Women, and Creb, the Father of Ayla's Heart and Iza's brother, was Morgu. The First of those that walked and dealt with the Spirit Lands. A Speaker to the Gods. No one had bothered arguing, they knew they could not win. Ayla was Iza's daughter, as much as Uba had been, and that was that.

Thoughts of Uba, her sister in every way that truly counted, lead her to thoughts of Durc. Her baby, her son, her child. She normally wouldn't let her mind dwell there, for the memories, the picture of him inside her head was too painful. But if she was to die, then she did not want to look at the sky growing farther and farther away from her , she wanted to close her eyes and see him. See his face again, one last time.

But the most important thing that had been said here today was 'almost'.

Jondalar's hand was in hers before her foot could truly crash through the ice, and he was pulling her up with the strength of a single arm. And then she was up and past the ice, and sitting there, clutching him as they both stared at the world beyond the ice wall.

Whinney and Racer had not had as much trouble as the two Others climbing up the steps of the ice glacier. They had practically skipped up it, with their light hooves dancing on each terrifying ridge of the thing. Wolf too had hardly seemed to register the sheer drop and potential death that awaited him should one of his paws scrape in the wrong direction. He had scampered up the treacherous climb, tail wagging and tongue lolling out of his mouth in contentment. Just the way Ayla had seen all the Family's tamed Wolf-Dogs behave when they sensed no danger.

It was strange, Jondalar had always acted like Ayla's Animals, her ability to raise them from infancy, and 'tame them' was an ability that she had invented whole cloth from nothing. She had told him time and time again, that that was not so. That all she had done was apply the Family's tenets of taming wolves and wolf-dogs to them. True, the Family did not do so with lions or horses but Ayla had been so lonely, and Baby and Whinney had needed her. It had just happened accidentally. And her friendship with Wolf was not even unique in that way.

Each time she said this he seemed like he was listening, but he never really heard her. Maybe he just chose for once not to believe the words that Ayla spoke.

Sometimes she thought the hatred between the Others and the Family, the contempt the people of her blood held for those that had taken her in, ran too deep. That maybe even in the man she loved, her mate in all the ways that really mattered, it was something that would never be overcome.

Jondalar might no longer call them animals, he did that for her at least. He may even no longer think of her son as a 'half-human abomination'. But to do this, to ascribe a skill that was beyond anything that his own people, his own race even had achieved, was perhaps forever beyond him. Jondalar could make himself see the Family as fellow men, for Ayla if for no other reason, but only if they were a step below him. Only if he could look down upon them as an older brother might a more stupider sibling.

They didn't know the stories his people sang, of great earth mothers and their moon lovers. They must be lesser, if not in blood, then certainly in intelligence and spirituality. They just didn't know. They spoke of bears, and mammoths as the old spirits that formed and shaped the earth. Cave bears and mammoths were creatures of the Earth Mother, certainly, but it was ridiculous to think they had power that she did not. But than again, if you had never heard of the Earth Mother than he supposed it was easy enough to attribute such things to her creatures. But it wasn't the truth.

Ayla had come so very close to hitting him when he had told her this, but he had still been recovering from Baby's attack. And Ayla was a Medicine Woman before anything, even a member of the Family. Of course she was no longer Family anymore, not with the Death Curse still hanging over her head.

She was no Family. She was no one. No…no…she couldn't let the curse slip in, had to focus on walking. Had to focus on the hand slipped into her own. The beautiful hand, the lovely hand - Jondalar. Yes, he might not be Family, might never understand them as she wished that he would but she supposed that was alright. It was not like he'd ever meet any of them.

It was best not to think of the Family on days like this, days of walking with no sign of shelter. Days of ice cold that their furs barely kept at bay. Nights when not even the crackle of the fire would offer a warm sleep. They shivered in their sleeping furs and pretended that it did not bother them. It was supposed to better once they had scaled that Great Wall of ice, that was what Jondalar had promised her.

But it was not. It was still a cold road, and a barren wasteland that lay before them. It was still filled with cold days and even colder nights and it wasn't really any closer to the people of his birth. That would take months of walking.

And now..now they were caught in a storm, a full on snow storm, so thick it almost rendered them blind. Ayla squinted through the mass of snowflakes swirling all round her and tried to see the path ahead, but she could barely see the dark blue of the night sky, let alone any kind of ground. The storm had taken them by surprise, it shouldn't have, they were both experienced travellers by now, but it had. A storm like this could kill them, could send them all too quickly to meet the Great Cave Bear on the other side. Yes, yes, Jondalar said it was the Earth Mother who was waiting for people like them but really…Ayla could never completely believe those stories. I mean the earth taking pleasure with the moon, it was ridiculous.

The Cave Bear on the other hand, that was very real, even now she could feel its pull, the light of its eye in the dark. Wait hold on a minute that wasn't somebody's eye…even a god's… that was the light of a fire in the distance.

There was a fire…and more importantly the person that had lit it. That had lit it in this storm… in this wind, well that could only mean one thing, and it wasn't that the Earth Mother had lit their way, or even that the great Earth Bear was watching them. Although of course she knew he was. No, it meant that that fire had been lit in a shelter.

It meant…oh Ursus in the stars above us…it meant there was a cave nearby.

It was a small cave, not something someone would choose to actually live in but for shelter in a storm it was…more than adequate.

If for no other reason than the warmth of the fire at the centre of it. A great fire which three small figures, all wrapped up in furs sat around in companionable silence. Three short figures, with long curly hair, sharp pointed ears and wide overly large, bare feet.

Ayla was the first into the cave, stepping silently up to the fire with the practiced grace of a woman of the Family. Jondalar followed her, Whinney and her son lingering in the entrance with the caution of strangers long trained into them from months on the road. Wolf's protective instincts would have overrode that lesson, but with a quick flick of her wrist behind her back Ayla was able to command him to stop. It was sweet how he sought to protect her and Jondalar, but his size alone would have scared the strangers and she did not need that this night.

The strangers smiled at them, and offered them warm words of welcome in a tongue that she well recognised. The tongue of the Mammoth Hunters, though spoken in a strange way that made the normally practical words sound far more musical than surely had been the intention. They were not afraid of her, or Jondalar, and could not have even seen the animals lurking at the mouth of the cave. And Ayla was certain of this, for surely other wise they would not have offered so freely the food from their plates.

They were flat and disc shaped , were these strange food things, arranged prettily on a plate that seemed to have been carved from flint - which certainly intrigued her flint knapper mate - and when Ayla took a tentative bite, a wave of tastes she could not even begin to name hit her. So warm, and so rich was this strange crunchy, soft disc in her mouth that it made her legs wobble sufficiently enough for her to finally accept the seat that had been so kindly offered to her.

The strangers called them Breakfast Patties - although what a Pattie was Ayla could only really guess at. They then asked, once Ayla and Jondalar had taken their seats at the fire, for them to share their stories and well after food and shelter had been provided so readily it would be rude to deny such a simple request.

Jondalar shared his tale of meeting Ayla, it was the first time Ayla had heard the event from Jondalar's perspective. At least this version of it. No Thonolan and much less focus on her beauty and the wonder of the first foggy sight of her. Instead he played up the terror of the attack, the horror of the size of the beast that had attacked him.

Ayla's Baby.

He left that part out of the story. He even skipped mostly over his convalescence, summing it up with the throw away line - Ayla healed me. Gone was the revaluation of Ayla's past, although that was expected, he often left that part out of the story. For either the audience would react badly to Jondalar's words towards the Family, or far more likely and common, would react badly to the revelation of Ayla's past itself. It was both kinder and easier to leave it out.

Ayla understood that, she accepted it even - but it still left her feeling hollow. Left her feeling a nasty, dirty feeling like she had something to be ashamed about. Like the Family, being raised as one of them, was something to hide. Although she supposed it was in a way, at least amongst strangers. Maybe part of her had hoped it would not be this way with this meeting. For these people were not Others… she could not say exactly what they were, but she was almost certain that they were not Others, not 'Children of the Great Earth Mother'.

It was strange, with their small stature - almost mistaken for children by the travellers while they still stood in the heart of the storm - sharp leaf shaped ears, and wide elongated feet they almost looked like…but that was nonsensical. Those were just tales, just stories told to the babies of the Clans.

Small Ones weren't real, no one but the mad and the stubborn still believed in them. Although Ayla supposed at this point in her life, it was likely she was both.

While she had been trapped in those thoughts, Jondalar had been continuing with his when at last Ayla emerged from her suffocating inner monologue, he seemed to have reached the part where he beheld Ayla riding upon Baby's back.

He always told this part well, Ayla always enjoyed this part of his tale, even if he did continue to imply that this marvel was the result of some magic innate to Ayla's person rather than just the logical result of the Family's training techniques when applied to a Cave Lion. To be fair it would have been considered impressive even to the Trainers of the Family, Ayla had always succeeded at most trades she tried her hand at.

This part of the tale clearly impressed the tiny strangers. For all three of them watched Ayla now with wide wary eyes. The strange glittering colour of each of them, making the Medicine Woman squirm inside. There was something other worldly about those eyes, something that spoke to old stories the elders of her Clan would whisper round the fire at night.

Stories of the word that now lay beneath the ground, back in the time when their earth was nothing but the sky. And they called it "the Middle Earth", because what else were you supposed to call it. Tales of beautiful folk whose spirits never died, and other strange creatures. Folk that were neither Family or Other, but something else, something different. It was easy to believe those tales, the Family had traded with Mahal's Folk enough for Ayla to be more than certain that there were other people beside the races of men living in this world.

Yet…she had never thought to see…Small Ones in her life time. And as she looked at the tiny creatures before her now, with their round faces and their glittering golden eyes, she could not help but believe those old bedtime stories at last. She would like to have savoured the wonder of this revelation, the glory of the truth of this myth, but the Small Ones were talking now. And she couldn't well ignore myths when they chose to speak.

Jondalar and the Small Ones had contuined to speak to one another in the language of the Mammoth Hunters, and this was the tongue that the female Small One - older and more wizened looking than her male counterparts - chose to pose her question to Ayla now.

"You rode a Cave Lion?"

Ayla shrugged her shoulders in acknowledgement of the absurdity of the image. It was strange, she knew that, she was not stupid nor blind to her own…strangeness, but nor could she deny that she had done it as well. She had climbed onto that lion's back not because she was brave or even that special, but because he was her baby and he would never hurt her.

But she could not say this to the stranger, even a stranger of myth and legend. So instead she just smiled, and hoped that said enough.

"That seems a good way to court the Ganyman's staff."

Said the youngest of the Small Ones, a particularly small fellow all wrapped up in red and white furs, though what creatures they had once belonged to Ayla could not tell in the light of the fire. She did not know what those words meant, thus she could not offer a reply to them. At least nothing more in-depth than a shrug.

"Are you a death seeker then?" Said the older male Small One. She would have guessed he was the other male's father, their faces looked so similar. And they shared the same black hair, and yellow-golden eyes. Like twin pairs of stars, staring down at her in judgement from the sky above. She understood his words at least, death seeker. Was she really a death seeker? Many who fell under the curse became so, so perhaps she was.

However Jondalar spoke up, before Ayla had so much as a chance either to deny or confirm these words as truth.

"Oh Ayla has a rare magic with animals, she raised that lion from cubhood you see. She has done the same with the horses at the entrance of the cave, and that wolf sitting behind you."

The youngest of the Small Ones wiped his head round to look down at Wolf who had gradually crept closer to the fire while no one had been looking at him. The boy showed no sign of fear at the giant wolf lying on his belly behind him. Instead he smiled wide and reached his hand out to the wolf's nose, allowing the great beast to smell it, and then lick it.

Then that hand was on the wolf's head, scratching him between his two oversized ears. Wolf's tail thudded happily against the floor of the cave, he rolled to his side and his leg began to make jerking motions as the Small One scratched.

"Impressive." Said the female Small One. "But hardly magic, that's Wose craft."

"Wose?' Said Ayla her voice feeling small and half broken in her throat.

"You know, the people of the great Cave bear…oh what do your kind call them? Something horrible I bet…it's always faintly horrible with you…Earth Children. Shovel Head…no, you don't have shovels. Hammer head…no, you don't have those either."

"Flatheads?" Said Jondalar in deep discomfort.

"Yes! That's the word. Flathead, really stretching the creativity with that one weren't you. I think I will stick to our word if you don't mind. Woses, Woses of the Woods, Woses of the Wild Places. Those of the Red Eyes."

And Ayla…couldn't stop herself from crying then. She let out a huge gulping sob and tried to hide her face from the three strangers with the flat of her hand, but it was too late. They were already looking at her with rounded concerned eyes.

"Are you alright, dear?"

Said the female Small One, her voice soft and almost comforting. Which just made Ayla want to cry all the more, but she could not let herself, she had to know the truth of this.

"You know…you know the Family?"

The Small One's brows rose in surprise.

" I do, though it has been many a decade since I've met one of them in the flesh. They are people of the forest and the cave, and know well how to hide themselves from us."

"But that is not true…it is you, who hide yourselves from us."

"Us?" Said the Small One, her face twisted into a look of confusion.

And so it was Ayla's turn to tell her story.

She spoke long into the night, and as her past unfolded before the three strangers she found herself at ease for the first time since they had left the Mammoth Hunters behind. For now out in the open, her life with the Family was no terrible secret at all. It was just part of her.

And as she finished her tale, where Jondalar's had begun, Ayla could no longer suppress the great feeling of warmth that telling that story…telling her story gave her. Even if it was just to three strangers whose names she now realised she still did not know.

They made no move to enlighten her as they clapped at the completion of her story; and the youngest of their trio finally pulled himself away from Wolf, to ready the three Small Ones sleeping furs for the night. But she didn't mind so much, for now was the time to close her eyes and try to rest. And you never knew, she might even get a peaceful sleep this night.

She didn't, but truthfully no part of her had really thought she would.

Iza was screaming in Ayla's dream tonight.

Usually in dreams like this it was Durc who was screaming, or Uba and Creb. But no tonight it was Iza, it was Ayla's mother. The only mother she had really known, the only mother that had really mattered. She knew it was Iza's voice and yet she could not understand the words. Not…anymore. For in the dream she could not understand the language of the Family. She could not understand any language.

She did not see Iza, her mother was not there in face and body. Just voice, only spirit. Instead before her eyes Ayla saw two young men, one she knew was her son. Her Durc, a man of the Family in all the ways that really mattered. Though he was a bit taller than they usually ever grew to be. And his forehead was a tad too high and rounded to be considered normal for a man of the Family. But the eyes, the eyes were the Family, for they grew red in his rage.

The other man she knew from her vision with Old Mamut, was also her son. Oh, the old Spirit Man had tried to explain to her that the sight, that the vision was more likely a metaphor for the coming conflict between the Others and the Family, but Ayla was not stupid. She had been raised by the most powerful Morgur in the Family, she knew the difference between metaphor and truth. She knew this man was, would be, her son. Her son with Jondalar. She knew she would love him just as strongly as she loved Durc and she knew, knew in her very soul that one of them would kill the other one.

This was the truth her totem, the Cave Lion, whispered to her in nights when Jondalar was too deep within his own nightmares to clutch her tight to his chest. This was the future she must accept, for nothing she did would change it. And she knew if she even tried to, it would just make it come all the quicker.

Really, it was best not to think on the vision at all. Which would have been a lot easier to do. If she didn't keep revisiting it in her nightly terrors. Every night the same scene, the same two men facing one another readying themselves for the kill.

But wait…no, that was not so. Not this night. This night there was a third figure in this terrible scene. This one was not her child. This creature was older. It had come from the ground, clawed its way up from the centre of the old earth. From the Middle Earth. And it came for them, it came for her boys. With teeth and claws and vengeance it would kill them.

But she did not see that part of the dream, for it had already begun to fade until all she could see was the blackness of night before her eyes. And all she could hear was Mamut's words in her ears. It is not what it seems, it is not what it seems.

And then Ayla woke up.

To a quiet cave and the slowly dying embers of the fire.

And she tried to tell herself that it was only a dream. That it was always only ever a dream.

She didn't believe herself anymore than she did last night.

It was a little different this night at least. Ayla was not the only one awake this night. The oldest of the Small Ones, the old female all dressed in black furs, was awake and staring at Ayla.

Ayla returned that stare with a glare of her own, and shrugged of her sleeping furs to tend the fire.

"Bad dream?" The old Small One asked.

Ayla should ignore her, should focus instead on the fire, on poking its embers into baking life once again. And yet, the desire to share, to be no longer alone in her terror made Ayla weak in her resolve. And before she knew it she found herself relaying the dream in all its terrible entirety to the waiting ears of the old one.

She stopped herself just before she could describe Mamut's words, and what they meant to her.

"It sounds like you have the gift, dear." Said the old Small One, desperately Ayla tried to scrape a name out of the fog and laughter of last night's conversation. She wasn't sure there was one, not really, but she remembered the other Small Ones using the word 'Cala' to refer to the old creature. It may have been her name, or equally it could just be a word, or even an insult so Ayla did not use it out loud. Instead she merely smiled at the old one, and shrugged her shoulders as if to say - 'I've heard that before'.

This lack of a reply didn't seem to hinder 'Cala' in the least. She talked on, filling the silence of Ayla's voice with talking of tapping. Tapping from the ground, and the creature…that lay below the earth and made that sound. Of the legends of her own people of the gem, that ever returning Jewel that was made by the creature in the ground. And Ayla couldn't help but be drawn into that.

It lined up with so many of her dreams, for this was not the first time she had dreamed of the man, the old thing clawing his way out of the ground.

Creb had called him the Fire One and asked her not to discuss it with the other children of the Family. He had taught her dreaming techniques to save off the call of the Fire One, and Iza had taught her teas and herbal remedies. This person gave him another name, Feanor. She had never heard it before. Even the sounds of it echoed with power and the fear of those old dreams.

And so the two of them stayed up talking all night long, till sunrise and the end of the snow.

Jondalar awoke with a jolt, the air of the cave had suddenly become so much colder. Clearly, he thought irritably, the fire had been allowed to go out. He didn't want to move from the somewhat warm cocoon of his sleeping furs and yet, he would only get colder if he stayed where he was.

He struggled to sit up while still wrapped in his cocoon. He looked around himself and saw the cave they slept in clearer now in the bright light of day. Nothing much as caves went just a shallow cavern in the rock behind. If it hadn't been for the fire, Jondalar might have even suggested they move on beyond it during the storm. It was a wonder a cave this shallow had kept anything out at all.

He also saw now in the bright light of the morning sun that leaked through the open entrance of the cave, that not only was the fire no longer going, all remains of it had been cleared away. It was as if there had never been a fire there at all. And of course the three strangers were gone, as if they too had only been a dream.

He looked to Ayla then, standing at the mouth of the cave with her back to him. She was looking at something he couldn't see, sometimes it felt like that was all she ever did. And then she turned, and the warmth of her smile banished those maudlin thoughts entirely.

"Was your sleep good, Jondalar?" She asked with hope in her voice. He smiled back and said yes, was hers?

"Good enough," she replied. "They had to leave, but they've left us something to break our fast for the day. Leftovers from last night."

Jondalar shrugged off his furs and joined her at the entrance of the cave, where upon she handed him a now slightly hard, and fairly cold 'Breakfast Pattie', and the two of them ate together in complete silence. Finally once the food had gone down as well as it might, Jondalar turned to his love and asked in a concerned voice.

"Ayla, are you okay?"

Ayla frowned at that.

"No," she said finally. "But I think I can be."

The silence for a beat and then…

"The snow has stopped finally, we should pack and get moving before it starts up again."

And so that is what they did.

The End.