The tall pine that had been struck by lightning was burning, but the hot pitch that fed the fire had to contend with the dousing rain, and the sputtering flames shed little light. It was enough, though, to highlight the general contours of the nearby landscape. There was not much in the way of shelter on the open plains, except some low brush growing beside a nearly overflowing runoff ditch that was dry most of the year.
Ayla was staring down into the darkness of the valley, as if spellbound by the scene they had seen below. While she stood there, the rain began coming down harder again, sluicing over them, drenching their already soaked clothing, and finally winning out over the struggling fire in the tree.
“Ayla, come on,” Jondalar said. “We’ve got to find some shelter and get out of this rain. You’re cold. We’re both cold, and wet.”
She stared for a moment longer, then shuddered. “We were down there.” She looked up at him. “Jondalar, we would have died if we’d been caught in that.”
“But we got out in time. Now we need to find shelter. If we don’t find someplace to warm up, it won’t matter that we got out of the valley.”
He picked up Racer’s lead rope and started toward the brush. Ayla signaled Whinney and followed, with Wolf at her side. When they reached the ditch, they noticed that the low bushes led to a thicker stand of higher brush, almost low trees, farther back from the valley on the steppes, and they headed for that.
They pushed their way into the center of the dense growth of sallow. The ground around the slender, many-stemmed bases of the silvery green willow brush was wet, and rain still filtered in through the narrow leaves, but not quite as hard. They cleared woody stems out of a small pocket, then removed the pack baskets from the horses. Jondalar pulled out the heavy bundle of wet tent and shook it out. Ayla grabbed the poles and set them around the inside of the brush pocket, then helped spread the skins of the tent, still tied to the ground cover, over them. It was a haphazard construction, but for now they just wanted shelter from the rain.
They brought their pack baskets and other things into the makeshift shelter, tore leaves off the trees to line the wet ground, and spread out their damp sleeping furs. Then they took off their outer clothes, helped each other wring out the soaked leather, and draped them on branches. Finally, shivering hard, they huddled down and pulled their sleeping furs around them. Wolf came in and shook himself vigorously, spraying water, but everything was so wet that it hardly mattered. The steppe horses, with their thick shaggy coats, much preferred cold, dry winter to the drenching summer storm, but they were used to living outside. They stood close together beside the stand of brushy growth and let the rain pour over them.
Within the damp shelter, too wet to even consider a fire, Ayla and Jondalar, wrapped in heavy furs, cuddled close together. Wolf curled up on top of their sleeping furs, pressing close to them, and finally, their combined body heat warmed them. The woman and man dozed a bit, though neither of them slept much. Near dawn the rain slacked off, and their sleep deepened.
Ayla listened, smiling to herself, before opening her eyes. Within the medley of birdsong that had awakened her, she could distinguish the sharp elaborate call notes of a pipet. Then she heard a melodious warble that seemed to be getting louder, but when she tried to find the source of the trilling song, she had to look carefully to see the drab, brown, inconspicuous little skylark just landing. Ayla rolled on her side to watch him.
The skylark walked along the ground easily and quickly, well-balanced by its large hind claws, then bobbed its crested head and came up with a caterpillar in its beak. With quick, jerky steps, it rushed toward a bare scrape in the ground near the stems of a sallow bush, where a camouflaged cluster of newly hatched fluffy chicks suddenly sprang to life, each open mouth begging to be filled with the delectable morsel. Soon a second bird, similar in markings though slightly more drab, and nearly invisible against the dun earth of the steppes, appeared with a winged insect. While she stuffed it into an open mouth, the first bird leaped into the air and climbed in circles until he was almost lost from view. But his presence was not lost. He had disappeared into a spiral of incredibly glorious song.
Ayla softly whistled the musical call, replicating the sounds with such precision that the mother bird stopped pecking at the ground in search of food and turned in her direction. Ayla whistled again, wishing she had some grain to offer, as she had done when she lived in her valley and first began imitating bird calls. After she had gained skill, they came when she called, whether she offered grain or not, and became company for her during those lonely days. The mother skylark approached, looking for the bird that was invading the territory of her nest, but when she found no other skylarks, she went back to feeding her young.
Whistled repetitive phrases, more mellow and ending with a chuckling sound, perked Ayla’s interest even more. Sandgrouse were big enough to make a decent meal, and so were those cooing turtledoves, she thought, looking around to see if she could spot the buxom birds that resembled the brown sandgrouse in general size and shape. In the low branches, she saw a simple twig nest with three white eggs in it before she saw the plump pigeon with its small head and bill and short legs. Its soft, dense plumage was a pale brown, almost pinkish, and its strongly patterned back and wings, which somewhat resembled the shell of a turtle, glistened with iridescent patches.
Jondalar rolled over, and Ayla turned to watch the man lying beside her, breathing with the deep rhythms of sleep. Then she became aware of her need to get up and relieve herself. She was afraid that if she moved he would wake up, and she hated to disturb him, but the more she tried to forget about it, the more urgent her need became. Maybe if she moved slowly, she thought, trying to ease out of the warm, slightly damp furs wrapped around them. He snorted and snuffled and rolled over as she extricated herself, but it was when he reached for her and found her missing that he woke up.
“Ayla? Oh, there you are,” he mumbled.
“Go back to sleep, Jondalar. You don’t have to get up yet,” she said as she crawled out of their nest in the brush.
It was a bright, fresh morning, the sky a clear sparkling blue without a hint of a cloud in sight. Wolf was gone, probably hunting or exploring, Ayla thought. The horses had moved off, too; she saw them grazing near the edge of the valley. Though the sun was still low, steam was already rising from the wet ground, and Ayla felt the humidity as she hunkered down to pass her water. Then she noticed the red stains on the inside of her legs. Her moon time, she thought. She’d been expecting it; she’d have to wash herself and her undergarment, but first she needed the mouflon wool.
The runoff ditch was only half-full, but the streamlet flowing through it was clear. She leaned over and rinsed her hands, drank several cupped handfuls of the cool running liquid, and then hurried back to their sleeping place. Jondalar was up, and he smiled when she made her way into their shelter within the sallow brush to get one of her pack baskets. She pulled it out in the open and began rummaging through it. Jondalar brought both of his baskets out with him, then went back for the rest of their things. He wanted to see how much damage had been done by the soaking rains. Wolf came loping back just then and went straight to Ayla.
“You’re looking satisfied with yourself,” she said, roughing up his neck fur, so thick and full it was almost a mane. When she stopped, he jumped up on her, putting his muddy paws on her chest, nearly at the level of her shoulders. He caught her by surprise, almost knocking her down, but she recovered her balance.
“Wolf! Look at all this mud,” she said, as he reached to lick her throat and face, and then, with a low rumbling growl, he opened his mouth and took her jaw in his teeth. But for all his impressive canine armaments, his action was as restrained and gentle as if he’d been handling a new puppy. No tooth broke skin; they hardly made an impression on it. She buried both her hands in his ruff again, pushed his head back, and looked at the devotion in his wolfish eyes with as much affection as he showed her. Then she grabbed his jaw with her teeth, and gave him the same kind of growling, gentle love-bite back.
“Now, get down, Wolf. Look at the mess you’ve made of me! I’m going to have to wash this, too.” She brushed off the loose, sleeveless leather tunic she wore over the short leggings that had been used as undergarments.
“If I didn’t know better, Ayla, I could almost be frightened for you when he does that,” Jondalar said. “He’s gotten so big, and he is a hunter. He could kill someone.”
“You don’t have to worry about Wolf when he does that. That’s the way wolves greet each other and show their love. I think he’s glad we woke up in time to get out of the valley, too.”
“Have you looked down there?”
“Not yet … Wolf, get away from there,” she said, pushing him away when he began to sniff between her legs. “It’s my moon time.” She looked aside and flushed slightly. “I came to get my wool, and I haven’t had the chance to look.”
While Ayla attended to her personal needs, washing herself and her clothes in the little stream, tying on the straps that held the wool in place, and getting something else to wear, Jondalar walked toward the edge of the valley to pass his water and looked down. There was no sign of a campsite, or of any place there could be one. The natural basin of the valley was partially filled with water, and the logs and trees and other floating debris were bobbing and dipping as the agitated water continued to rise. The small river that fed it was still blocked at the outlet, and still creating backwash, though it was not sloshing with the sweeping back-and-forth movement of the night before.
Ayla quietly moved beside Jondalar, who had been staring intently at the valley and thinking. He looked up when he felt her presence.
“This valley must get narrow downstream, and something must be blocking the river,” he said, “probably rocks or a mudslide. It’s holding the water in. Maybe that’s why it was so green down there, it may have done it before.”
“The flash flood alone would have washed us away if it had caught us,” Ayla said. “My valley used to flood every spring, and that was bad enough, but this …” She could find no words to express her thought, and she unconsciously finished her sentence with the motions of Clan sign language that to her conveyed more strongly and precisely her feelings of dismay and relief.
Jondalar understood. He, too, was at a loss for words and shared her feelings. They both stood silently watching the movement below; then Ayla noticed his forehead knotting with concentration and concern. Finally he spoke.
“If the mudslide, or whatever it is, gives away too quickly, that water washing downstream will be very dangerous. I hope there are no people that way,” he said.
“It won’t be anymore dangerous than it was last night,” Ayla said. “Will it?”
“Last night it was raining, so people might expect something like a flood, but if this breaks through, without the warning of a rainstorm, it would catch people by surprise, and that would be devastating,” he explained.
Ayla nodded, then said, “But if people are using this river, wouldn’t they notice that it had stopped flowing and try to find out why?”
He turned to face her. “But what about us, Ayla? We’re traveling, and we wouldn’t have any way of knowing that a river had stopped running. We could be downstream of something like this sometime, and we wouldn’t have any warning.”
Ayla turned back to look at the water in the valley and didn’t answer immediately. “You’re right, Jondalar,” she said then. “We could get caught in another flash flood without warning. Or the lightning could have hit us instead of that tree. Or an earthquake could open up a crack in the ground and take everyone except a little girl, leaving her alone in the world. Or someone could get sick, or be born with a weakness or a deformity. The Mamut said no one can know when the Mother will decide to call one of Her children back to Her. There’s nothing to be gained by worrying about things like that. We can’t do anything about them. That’s for Her to decide.”
Jondalar listened, still frowning with worry; then he relaxed and put his arms around her. “I worry too much. Thonolan used to tell me that. I just started thinking about what would happen if we were downstream of that valley, and remembered last night. And then I thought about losing you, and …” He tightened his arms around her. “Ayla, I don’t know what I would do if I ever lost you,” he said, with sudden fervor, holding her to him. “I’m not sure I’d want to go on living.”
She felt a tinge of worry at his strong reaction. “I hope you would go on living, Jondalar, and find someone else to love. If anything ever happened to you, a piece of me, of my spirit, would be gone with you, because I love you, but I would go on living, and a piece of your spirit would always be living with me.”
“It wouldn’t be easy to find someone else to love. I didn’t think I’d ever find you. I don’t know if I’d even want to look,” Jondalar said.
They started back, walking together. Ayla was quiet for a while, thinking, then said, “I wonder if that’s what happens when you love someone, and that person loves you back? I wonder if you exchange pieces of each other’s spirit. Maybe that’s why it hurts so much to lose someone you love.” She paused, then continued. “It’s like the men of the Clan. They are hunting brothers, and they exchange a piece of each other’s spirit, particularly when one saves the other’s life. It’s not easy to go on living when a piece of your spirit is missing, and each hunter knows a piece of himself will go to the next world if the other goes, so he will watch and protect his brother, do almost anything to save his life.” She stopped and looked up at him. “Do you think we have exchanged pieces of our spirits, Jondalar? We are hunting partners, aren’t we?”
“And you once saved my life, but you are much more than a hunting brother,” he said, smiling at the idea. “I love you. I understand now why Thonolan didn’t want to go on living when Jetamio died. Sometimes I think he was searching for a way into the next world, so he could find them, Jetamio and the baby who was never born.”
“But if anything ever happened to me, I wouldn’t want you to follow me to any spirit world. I’d want you to stay right here, and find someone else,” Ayla said, with conviction. She didn’t like all his talk about next worlds. She wasn’t sure what some other world after this one would be like, or even, deep in her heart, if one really existed. What she did know was that to get to any next world, you had to die in this one, and she didn’t want to hear about Jondalar dying, either before or after she did.
Thinking about worlds of the spirit led to other random thoughts. “Maybe that’s what happens when you get old,” she said. “If you exchange pieces of your spirit with people you love, after you’ve lost a lot of them, so many pieces of your spirit have gone with them to the next world that there’s not enough left to keep you alive in this world. It’s like a hole inside of you that keeps getting bigger, so you want to go to the next world where most of your spirit and your loved ones are.”
“How do you know so much?” Jondalar asked with a little smile. For all her lack of knowledge of the world of the spirits, her ingenuous and spontaneous observations made sense to him in a way, and displayed a genuine and thoughtful intelligence, though he had no way of knowing if there was any merit in the ideas. If Zelandoni were there, he could ask her, he thought. Then suddenly he realized they were going home, and he would be able to ask her, some day soon.
“I lost pieces of my spirit when I was a little girl and the people I was born to were taken by the earthquake. Then Iza took a piece when she died, and Creb, and so did Rydag. Even though he isn’t dead, even Durc has a piece of me, of my spirit, that I will never see. Your brother took a piece of you with him, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” Jondalar said, “he did. I will always miss him, and always hurt about it. Sometimes I still think it was my fault, and I would have done anything to save him.”
“I don’t think there is anything you could have done, Jondalar. The Mother wanted him, and it is for Her to decide, not for someone to search for a way to the next world.”
When they got back to the tall sallow brush where they had spent the night, they began going through their belongings. Almost everything was at least damp, and many things were still very wet. They untied the swollen knots that still tied the ground cover to the upper shaped part of the tent and, each taking an end and twisting in opposite directions, tried to wring the pieces out. But too much twisting put a strain on the stitching. When they decided to erect the tent to begin letting it dry out, they discovered they had lost some of the tent poles.
They spread the ground cover out over the brush, and then checked their outer clothes, which were also still quite wet. Objects that were in the pack baskets had fared a little better. Many things were damp, but would probably dry soon enough, if they had a warm, dry place to air them out. The open steppes would be fine during the day, but that’s when they needed to travel, and it could get damp and cool on the ground at night. They did not look forward to sleeping in a wet tent.
“I think it’s time for some hot tea,” Ayla said, feeling discouraged. It was already later than usual. She got a fire started and put heating stones in it, thinking about breakfast. That was when she realized they didn’t have the food left from their evening meal the night before.
“Oh, Jondalar, we don’t have anything to eat this morning,” she complained. “It’s still down in that valley. I left the grains in my good cooking basket near the hot coals in the fireplace. The cooking basket is gone, too. I have others, but it was a good one. At least I still have my medicine bag,” she said with obvious relief when she found it. “And the otter skin still resists water, even as old as it is. Everything inside is dry. At least I can make tea for us, I have some good-tasting herbs in it. I’ll get some water,” she said, then looked around. “Where’s my tea-making basket? Did I lose that, too? I thought I brought it into the tent when it began to rain. It must have dropped when we were hurrying to leave.”
“We left something else back there that isn’t going to make you very happy,” Jondalar said.
“What?” Ayla said, looking upset.
“Your parfleche, and the long poles.”
She shut her eyes and shook her head in dismay. “Oh, no. That was a good meat-keeper and it was full of roe deer meat. And those poles. They were just the right size. It’s going to be hard to replace them. I’d better see if anything else was lost and make sure the emergency food is all right.”
She reached for the pack basket where she kept the few personal things she was taking with her and the clothing and equipment that would be used later. Though all the baskets were wet, and sagging, the spare ropes and cords on the bottom had kept the contents of this one reasonably dry and undamaged. The food they were using along the way was near the top of the basket; below it the emergency traveling-food package was still securely wrapped and essentially dry. She decided this might be a good time to look over all their supplies just to be certain nothing was spoiled, and to judge how long the food they had with them would last.
She took out all the various kinds of dried preserved food she had brought with them and spread it out on top of their sleeping roll. There were berries—blackberries, raspberries, bilberries, elderberries, blueberries, strawberries, alone or mixed together—that had been mashed and dried into cakes. Other sweet varieties were cooked down, then dried to a leathery texture, sometimes with added pieces of small hard apples, tart but high in pectin. Whole berries and wild apples, along with other fruits such as wild pears and plums, were sliced or left whole, and sweetened a bit as they dried in the sun. Any of them could be eaten as they were, or soaked or cooked with water, and were often used to flavor soups or meats. There also were grains and seeds, some that had been partially cooked and then parched; some shelled and roasted hazelnuts; and the stone-pine cones full of rich nuts she had collected from the valley the day before.
Vegetables were also dried—stems, buds, and particularly starchy roots, such as cattail, thistle, licorish fern, and various lily corms. Some were steam-cooked in ground ovens before being dried, but others were dug, peeled, and strung immediately on cords made of the stringy bark of certain plants or sinew from the backbone or leg tendons of various animals. Mushrooms were also strung, and for flavor were often hung over smoky fires to dry, and certain edible lichens were steamed and dried into dense, nutritious loaves. Their provisions were rounded out by a large selection of dried smoked meat and fish, and in a special packet, put aside for emergencies, was a mixture of ground-up dried meat, clean rendered fat, and dried fruits, molded into small cakes.
The dried food was compact and kept well; some of it was more than a year old and had come from the previous winter’s supplies, but the quantities of certain items were quite limited. Nezzie had collected it for them from friends and relatives who had brought it to the Summer Meeting. Ayla had drawn sparingly from their store of food; for the most part they were living off the land. It was the season for it. If they could not survive by harvesting the bounty of the Great Earth Mother when Her offerings were rich, they could never hope to survive traveling across country during leaner times.
Ayla packed everything back up. She had no intention of depending on their dried traveling food for their morning meal, though the steppes had fewer fat birds to feed after they ate. A pair of sandgrouse fell to her sling and were roasted on a spit; some pigeon eggs that would never hatch were lightly cracked and put directly in the fire in their shells. Contributing to a filling breakfast was the fortunate find of a marmot’s cache of spring beauty corms. The hole in the ground was under their sleeping furs and filled with the sweet and starchy vegetables, which had been gathered earlier by the small animal when the rootlike corms were at their peak. They were cooked with the rich pine nuts Ayla had gathered the day before, which were released from the pine cones by fire and cracked with a rock. Some fresh ripe dewberries rounded out the meal.
After they left the flooded valley, Ayla and Jondalar continued south, veering slightly toward the west, drawing imperceptibly closer to the mountain range. Though it was not an exceptionally high range, the taller peaks of the mountains were perpetually covered with snow, often shrouded with mists and clouds.
They were in the southern region of the cold continent and the character of the grassland had changed subtly. It was more than simply a profusion of grass and herbs that accounted for the diversity of animals that thrived on the cold plains. The animals themselves had evolved differences in diets and migratory patterns, spatial separations, and seasonal variations, which all contributed to the wealth of life. As in later times on the great equatorial plains far to the south—the only place that came close to matching the profound richness of the Ice Age steppes—the great abundance and variety of animals shared the productive land in complex and mutually sustaining ways.
Some specialized in eating particular plants, some in particular parts of plants; some grazed the same plants at slightly different stages of development; some fed in places that others did not go, or they followed later, or migrated differently. The diversity was maintained because eating and living habits of one species fit in between or around those of another in complementary niches.
Woolly mammoths needed great quantities of fibrous filler, rough grasses, stems, and sedges, and because they tended to bog down in deep snows, marshes or sphagnum meadows, they kept to the firm, windswept ground near the glaciers. They made long migrations along the wall of ice, moving south only in spring and summer.
Steppe horses also required bulk; like mammoths, they digested coarse stems and grasses quickly, but were somewhat more selective, preferring the mid-height varieties of grass. They could dig down through snow to find feed, but this used up more energy than they gained, and it was a struggle for them to travel when snow piled up. They could not subsist for long in deep snow and preferred the hard-surfaced, windy plains.
Unlike mammoths and horses, bison needed the leaves and sheaths of grass for the higher protein content and tended to select shortgrass, utilizing the areas of mid- and tallgrass only for new growth, usually in spring. In summer, however, an important, if inadvertent, cooperation was practiced. Horses used their teeth like clippers to bite through the tough stalks. After the horses had passed by, cutting down the stems, the densely rooted grass was stimulated to send out new leaves of regrowth. The migrations of horses were often followed, after an interval of a few days, by the gigantic bison, who welcomed the new shoots.
In winter, bison moved to southern ranges of variable weather and more snow, which kept low-growing grass leaves moist and fresher than in the dry northern plains. They were skilled at sweeping snow aside with their noses and cheeks to find their preferred close-to-the-ground feed, but the snowy steppes of the south were not without risk.
Though it kept them warm in the relatively dry cold, even of the south where more snow fell, the heavy, shaggy coats of bison and other warmly dressed animals that migrated south in winter could be hazardous or even fatal when the climate turned cold and wet, with frequent shifts between freezing and thawing. If their coats became soaking wet during a thaw, they could be vulnerable to a fatal chill during a subsequent freeze, especially if a cold snap caught them resting on the ground. Then, if their long hair froze fast, they would be unable to get up. Excessively deep snow, or icy crusts on top of snow, could also be fatal, as well as winter blizzards, or falling through the thin ice of oxbow lakes, or flooding river valleys.
Mouflon and saiga antelopes also thrived by selectively foraging on plants adapted to very dry conditions, small herbs and ground-hugging leafy shortgrass, but unlike bison, saiga did poorly on broken terrain or in deep snow, and they were not able to leap well. They were fast long-distance runners that could outdistance their predators only on the firm level surfaces of the windy steppes. Mouflon, the wild sheep, on the other hand, were expert climbers and used steep terrain to escape, but they could not dig through snow that piled up. They preferred the windblown rocky high ground.
The goatlike species related to mouflon, chamois and ibex, divided their range by altitude, or by differences of terrain and landscape, with the wild goat-antelope, ibex, taking the highest ground with the steepest crags, followed at slightly lower elevations by the smaller and very nimble chamois, with the mouflon below them. But they were all found in rough terrain of even the lowest levels of the arid steppes, since they were adapted to cold, so long as it was dry.
Musk-oxen were also goatlike animals, although larger, and their heavy double coats, which resembled the fur of mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses, made them seem bigger and more “oxlike.” They nibbled continuously on the low shrubs and sedges, and they were particularly adapted to the coldest regions, preferring the extremely cold, windy, open plains close to the glacier. Though their underwool was shed in summer, musk-oxen became stressed if the weather turned too warm.
Giant deer and reindeer kept to open ground in herds, but most other deer were browsers of tree leaves. The solitary woodland moose were rare. They loved the summer leaves of deciduous trees, and the succulent pondweeds and water plants of marshes and lakes, and with broad hooves and long legs, they could negotiate marshy, boggy bottomlands. In winter they survived on the more indigestible grass, or high willow twigs of trees that grew on the low ground of river valleys, their splay-footed long legs easily carrying them through the windblown snow that drifted and piled up there.
Reindeer were winter-loving’ animals, feeding on lichens that grew on barren soil and rocks. They could smell the favored plants, even through snow, from a long distance, and their hooves were adapted to digging down through deep snows if they needed to. In summer they ate both grass and leafy shrubs.
Elk and reindeer both preferred alpine meadows or herbaceous highlands during spring and summer, but below the elevation of the ranging sheep, and the elk tended to eat grasses more than shrubs. Asses and onagers invariably preferred the arid higher hills, while bison ranged a bit lower, though they generally climbed higher than horses, which had a broader choice of terrain than mammoths or rhinoceroses.
Those primal plains with their complex and diverse grasslands sustained in great multitudes a fantastic mixture of animals. No single place on a later earth did more than approximate parts of it. The dry, cold environment of high mountains could not compare, though there were similarities. Mountain-dwelling sheep, goats, and antelopes extended their range to the lower ground then, but large herds of plains animals could not exist in the steep, rocky terrain of high mountains when the climate of the lowlands changed.
The soggy and fragile northern bogs were not the same. They were too wet for much grass to grow, and their stinting, acid soils caused plants to develop toxins to avoid being grazed by the great multitudes, which would destroy such delicate slow-growing flora. The varieties were limited and offered poor nutrients for the diversity of large herding animals; there was not sufficient feed. And only those with wide splaying hooves, like reindeer, could live there. Huge creatures of great weight with large stumpy legs, or fast runners with narrow dainty hooves became mired in the soft, wet land. They needed firm, dry, solid ground.
Later, the grassy plains of warmer, more temperate regions developed distinct bands of more limited vegetation controlled by temperature and climate. They offered too little diversity in summer, and too much snow in winter. Snow also bogged down animals that required firm ground, and it was difficult for many to push aside to reach food. Deer could live in woods where the snow was deep, but only because they browsed leaves and twig tips from trees that grew above the snow; reindeer could dig through snow to reach the lichen on which they fed in winter. Bison and aurochs subsisted, but they were reduced in size, no longer reaching their full potential. Other animals, such as horses, decreased in number as their preferred environment shrunk.
It was the unique combination of all the many elements of the Ice Age steppes that fostered the magnificent multitudes, and each was essential, including the bitter cold, the withering winds, and the ice itself. And when the vast glaciers shrank back to polar regions and disappeared from the lower latitudes, so, too, did the great herds and gigantic animals become dwarfed or disappear entirely from a land that had changed, a land that could no longer sustain them.
While they traveled, the missing parfleche and long poles preyed on Ayla’s mind. They were more than useful, they might be necessary during the long trip ahead. She wanted to replace them, but it would take more than an overnight stop, and she knew Jondalar was anxious to keep moving.
Jondalar, however, was not happy about the wet tent, nor the thought of depending on it for shelter. Besides, it wasn’t good for wet skins to be folded up and packed together so tight; it could make them rot. They needed to be spread out to dry, and the hides would probably need to be worked as they were drying to keep them pliable, in spite of the smoking they had received when the leather was made. That would take more than a day, he was sure.
In the afternoon they approached the deep trench of another large river, which separated the plain from the mountains. From their vantage point on the plateau of the open steppes, above the broad valley with its wide, swiftly flowing waterway, they could see the terrain on the other side. The foothills across the river were fractured with many dry ravines and gullies, the ravages of flooding, as well as many more running tributaries. It was a major river, channeling a good proportion of the runoff, which drained the eastern face of the mountains into the inland sea.
As they rounded the shoulder of the steppe plateau and rode down the slope, Ayla was reminded of the territory around the Lion Camp, though the more broken landscape across the river was different. But on this side she saw the same kind of deep-cut gullies carved out of the loess soil by rain and melting snow, and high grass drying into standing hay. On the floodplain below, isolated larch and pine trees were scattered among leafy shrubs, and stands of cattails, tall phragmite reeds, and bulrushes marked the river’s edge.
When they reached the river, they stopped. This was a major watercourse, wide and deep, and swollen from the recent rains. They were not at all sure how they were going to get across. It was going to take some planning.
“It’s too bad we don’t have a bowl boat,” Ayla said, thinking of the skin-covered round boats the Lion Camp had used to cross the river near their lodge.
“You’re right. I think we are going to need some kind of a boat to get across this without getting everything all wet. I’m not sure why, but I don’t remember having so much trouble crossing rivers when Thonolan and I were traveling. We just piled our gear on a couple of logs and swam across,” Jondalar said. “But I guess we didn’t have as much, only a backframe for each of us. That’s all we could carry. With the horses, we can take more with us, but then, we have more to worry about.”
As they rode downstream, looking over the situation, Ayla noticed a stand of tall, slender birches growing near the water. The place had such a familiar feeling that she half expected to see the long, semisubterranean earthlodge of the Lion Camp tucked into the side of the slope at the back of a river terrace, with grass growing out of the sides, a rounded top, and the perfectly symmetrical arched entrance that had so surprised her when she first saw it. But when she actually saw such an arch, it gave her an eerie, spine-tingling shock.
“Jondalar! Look!”
He looked up the slope where she was pointing. There he saw not just one, but several, perfectly symmetrical archways, each an entrance to a circular, dome-shaped structure. They both dismounted and, finding the path up from the river, climbed to the Camp.
Ayla was surprised at how eager she was to meet the people who lived there, and realized how long it had been since they had seen or spoken to anyone besides each other. But the place was empty, and planted in the ground between the two curved mammoth tusks whose tips were joined together at the top, forming the arched entrance to one of the dwellings, was a small carved ivory figure of a female with ample breasts and hips.
“They must be gone,” Jondalar said. “They left a donii to guard each lodge.”
“They’re probably hunting, or at a Summer Meeting, or visiting,” Ayla said, feeling real disappointment that there were no people. “That’s too bad. I was looking forward to seeing someone.” She turned to go.
“Wait, Ayla. Where are you going?”
“Back to the river.” She looked puzzled.
“But this is perfect,” he said. “We can stay here.”
“They left a mutoi—a donii—to guard their lodges. The spirit of the Mother is protecting them. We can’t stay here and disturb Her spirit. It will bring us bad luck,” she said, knowing full well that he knew it.
“We can stay, if we need to. We just can’t take anything we don’t need. That’s always understood. Ayla, we need shelter. Our tent is soaked. We have to give it a chance to dry out. While we’re waiting, we can go hunting. If we get the right kind of animal, we can use the hide to make a bowl boat to cross the river.”
Ayla’s frown slowly changed to an enlightened smile, as she grasped his meaning and realized the implications. They did need a few days to recover from their near disaster and replace some of their losses. “Maybe we can get enough hide to make a new parfleche, too,” she said. “Once it’s cleaned and dehaired, rawhide doesn’t take that long to set up, not any longer than it takes to dry meat. It just has to be stretched and left to get hard.” She glanced down toward the river. “And look at those birches down there. I think I could make good poles out of some of those. Jondalar, you’re right. We need to stay here for a few days. The Mother will understand. And we could leave some dry meat for the people who live here, to thank them for the use of their Camp … if we’re lucky with our hunting. Which lodge should we stay in?”
“The Mammoth Hearth. That’s where visitors usually stay.”
“Do you think there is a Mammoth Hearth? I mean, do you think this is a Mamutoi Camp?” Ayla asked.
“I don’t know. It’s not one big earthlodge that everyone lives in like Lion Camp,” Jondalar said, looking at the group of seven round dwellings covered with a smooth layer of hardened earth and river clay. Rather than a single, large, multifamily longhouse, like the one they had lived in during the winter, this place had several smaller dwellings clustered together, but the purpose was the same. It was a settlement, a community of more-or-less related families.
“No, it’s like Wolf Camp, where the Summer Meeting was,” Ayla said, stopping in front of the entrance of one of the small dwellings, still a bit reluctant to push the heavy drape aside and enter the home of strangers without being invited, in spite of generally understood customs that had developed out of a mutual necessity for the sake of survival in time of need.
“Some of the younger people at the Summer Meeting thought the big lodges were old-fashioned,” Jondalar said. “They liked the idea of an individual lodge for just one or two families.”
“You mean they wanted to live by themselves? Just one lodge with one or two families? For a winter Camp?” Ayla asked.
“No,” he said. “No one wanted to live alone all winter. You never see just one of these small lodges by itself; there are always at least five or six, sometimes more. That was the idea. The people I talked to thought it was easier to build a smaller lodge for a new family or two, than to crowd into one big lodge until they had to build another. But they wanted to build near their families, and stay with their Camps, and share in the activities and the food that everyone worked together to collect and store for winter.”
He pushed aside the heavy skin hanging from the joined tusks that formed the entrance, ducked under it and stepped inside. Ayla stood back, holding up the drape to shed some light.
“What do you think, Ayla? Does it look like a Mamutoi lodge?”
“It could be. It’s hard to tell. Remember that Sungaea Camp we stopped at on the way to the Summer Meeting? It wasn’t very different from a Mamutoi Camp. Their customs may have been a little different, but they were like the Mammoth Hunters in many ways. Mamut said even the funeral ceremony was very similar. He thought they were once related to Mamutoi. I did notice the patterns of their decorations were not the same, though.” She paused, trying to think of other differences. “And some of their clothes—like that beautiful shoulder blanket made out of mammoth and other wools on the girl who had died. But even Mamutoi Camps have different patterns. Nezzie always knew what Camp someone was from just by the small changes in the style and shape of the patterns on their tunics, even when I couldn’t see very much difference at all.”
With the light coming in from the entrance, the main supporting construction was plain to see. The lodge was not framed with wood, although a few of the birch poles were strategically placed; it had been built out of mammoth bones. The large sturdy bones of the huge beasts were the most abundant and accessible building material available on the essentially treeless steppes.
Most of the mammoth bones used for building material did not come from animals that had been hunted and killed for that purpose. They were from animals that had died of natural causes, gathered from wherever they happened to fall on the steppes or, most often, from accumulated piles that had been swept up by flooding rivers and deposited at certain bends or barriers in the river, like driftwood. Permanent winter shelters were often built on river terraces near such piles, because mammoth bones and tusks were heavy.
It usually took several individuals to lift a single bone and no one wanted to carry them very far; the total weight of the mammoth bones that were used to construct one small dwelling was two or three thousand pounds or more. Building such shelters was not the activity of a single family, but a community effort, directed by someone with knowledge and experience, and organized by someone with the ability to persuade others to help.
The place they called a Camp was a settled village, and the people who lived there were not nomadic followers of the itinerant game, but essentially sedentary hunters and gatherers. The Camp might be left vacant for a while in the summer, when the inhabitants went to hunt or gather produce, which was brought back and kept in nearby storage pits, or to visit family and friends from other villages to trade gossip and goods, but it was a permanent home site.
“I don’t think this one is the Mammoth Hearth, or whatever that hearth is called here,” Jondalar said, letting the drape fall behind him. It raised a cloud of dust.
Ayla straightened the small female figure, whose feet were purposely only a suggestion, leaving the legs in a peglike shape that had been pushed into the ground to stand guard in front of the entrance, then followed Jondalar to the next lodge.
“This one is probably either the leader’s lodge or the mamut’s, maybe both,” Jondalar said.
Ayla noticed that it was slightly larger, and the woman-figure in front was somewhat more elaborate, and she nodded agreement. “A mamut, I think, if they are Mamutoi, or people like them. Both the headwoman and the headman of the Lion Camp had hearths that were smaller than Mamut’s, but his was used for visitors, and by everyone for gathering.”
They both stood at the entrance, holding up the drape, waiting for their eyes to adjust to the dimmer light within. But two small lights continued to glow. Wolf growled, and Ayla’s nose detected a scent that made her nervous.
“Don’t go in, Jondalar! Wolf! Stay!” she commanded, making the sign with her hand as well.
“What is it, Ayla?” Jondalar said.
“Can’t you smell it? There’s an animal in there, something that can make a strong smell, a badger, I think, and if we scare it, it will make a terrible stink that lingers. We won’t be able to use this lodge, and the people who live here will have trouble getting rid of the smell. Maybe if you hold the drape back, Jondalar, it will come out by itself. They dig burrows and don’t like the light much, even if they do hunt in the day sometimes.”
Wolf started a low rumbling growl, and it was obvious he was straining to go in after the fascinating creature. But like most members of the weasel family, the badger could spray an attacker with the powerfully strong and acrid contents of its anal glands. The last thing Ayla wanted was to be around a wolf that stunk of that strong musky odor, and she wasn’t sure how long she could hold Wolf back. If the badger didn’t come out soon, she might have to use a more drastic way to rid the lodge of the animal.
The badger did not see well with its small and inconspicuous eyes, but they were watching the lighted opening with unwavering attention. When it seemed obvious the badger was not going to leave, she reached up for the sling that was wrapped around her head, and into the pouch hanging from her waist for stones. Ayla put a stone in the bulging pocket of the sling, took aim on the reflecting points of light, and with a quick and expert spin to gain momentum, hurled the stone. She heard a thud, and the two small lights went out.
“I think you got him, Ayla!” Jondalar said, but they waited a while to make sure there was no movement before entering the lodge.
When they did, they were aghast. The rather large animal, three feet from tip of nose to end of tail, was sprawled on the ground with a bloody wound on its head, but it had quite obviously spent some time within the dwelling, destructively exploring everything it could find. The place was a shambles! The hard-packed earthen floor was scratched up and pits had been dug in it, some containing the animal’s waste. The woven mats that had covered the floor were torn to shreds, along with various woven containers. Hides and furs on the raised bed-platforms were chewed and ripped apart, and the stuffing of feathers, wools, or grasses of bed padding were strewn over all. Even a portion of the densely compacted wall had been dug out; the badger had made its own entrance.
“Look at this! I would hate to return and find something like this,” Ayla said.
“That’s always a danger when you leave a place empty. The Mother doesn’t protect a lodge from Her other creatures. Her children must appeal to the spirit animal directly and deal with the animals of this world themselves,” Jondalar said. “Maybe we can clean this lodge up a little for them, even if we can’t repair all the damage.”
“I’m going to skin that badger and leave it for them, so they know what caused all this. They should be able to use the hide, anyway,” Ayla said, picking the animal up by the tail to take it outside.
In better light, she noted the gray back with its stiff guard hairs, the darker underparts, and the distinctive black-and-white striped face, verifying that it was, indeed, a badger. She slit its throat with a sharp flint knife and left it to bleed out. Then she went back to the earth-lodge, pausing for a moment before she went in to look around at the rest of the domed dwellings nearby. She tried to visualize what it would be like with people, and she felt a strong pang of regret that they were gone. It could be very lonely without other people. She suddenly felt very grateful for Jondalar, and for a moment she was almost overwhelmed by the love she felt for him.
She reached for the amulet around her neck, felt the comforting objects inside the decorated leather bag, and thought of her totem. She didn’t think of her Cave Lion protecting spirit as much as she once had. It was a Clan spirit, though Mamut had said her totem would always be with her. Jondalar always referred to the Great Earth Mother when he talked about the spirit world, and she thought of the Mother more now, since the training she had been receiving from Mamut, but she always felt it was her Cave Lion who had brought Jondalar to her, and she felt moved to communicate with her totem spirit.
Using the ancient sacred language of silent hand signs that was used to address the spirit world, and to communicate with other clans whose few spoken everyday words and more common hand signs were different, Ayla closed her eyes and directed her thoughts to her totem.
“Great Spirit of Cave Lion,” she gestured, “this woman is grateful to be found worthy; grateful to be chosen by the powerful Cave Lion. The Mog-ur always told this woman that a powerful spirit was difficult to live with, but it was always worth it. The Mog-ur was right. Though the tests and trials have sometimes been difficult, the gifts have matched the difficulty. This woman is most grateful for the gifts inside, the gifts of learning and understanding. This woman is also grateful for the man her great totem Spirit guided to her, who is taking this woman back with him to his home. The man does not know the Clan Spirits, and does not fully understand that he was also chosen by the Spirit of the Great Cave Lion, but this woman is grateful he was also found worthy.”
She was about to open her eyes, then had another thought. “Great Cave Lion Spirit,” she continued, in her mind and with her silent language, “The Mog-ur told this woman that totem spirits always want a home, a place to return where they are welcome and want to stay. This traveling will end, but the people of the man do not know the spirits of Clan totems. The new home of this woman will not be the same, but the man honors the spirit animal of each, and the people of the man must know and honor the Cave Lion Spirit. This woman would say the Great Spirit of the Cave Lion will always be welcome and will always have a place wherever this woman is welcome.”
When Ayla opened her eyes, she saw Jondalar watching her. “You seemed … occupied,” he said. “I didn’t want to disturb you.”
“I was … thinking about my totem, my Cave Lion,” she said, “and your home. I hope he will be … comfortable there.”
“The spirit animals are all comfortable near Doni. The Great Earth Mother created and gave birth to all of them. The legends tell about it,” he said.
“Legends? Stories about the times before?”
“I guess you could say they were stories, but they are told in a certain way.”
“There were Clan legends, too. I used to love it when Dorv told them. Mog-ur named my son after one of my favorites, ‘The Legend of Durc,’ ” Ayla said.
Jondalar felt a moment of surprise and a twinge of disbelief at the thought that the people of the Clan, the flatheads, could have legends and stories. It was still difficult for him to overcome certain ingrained ideas he had grown up with, but he had already been made aware that they were much more complex than he would have thought possible; why couldn’t they have had legends and stories, too?
“Do you know any Earth Mother legends?” Ayla asked.
“Well, I think I remember part of one. They are told in a way to make them easier to remember, but only special zelandonia know them all.” He paused to remember, then began in a chanting singsong:
“Her birth waters gushed, filling rivers and seas,
Then flooded the land and gave rise to the trees.
From each drop that spilled, new grass and leaves grew
Till sprouting green plants filled all the earth’s view.”
Ayla smiled. “That’s wonderful, Jondalar! It tells the story with a nice feeling, and a nice sound, something like the rhythms of the Mamutoi songs. It would be very easy to remember that.”
“It is often sung. Different people sometimes make different songs for it, but the words mostly stay the same. Some people can sing the whole story, with all the legends.”
“Do you know anymore?”
“A little. I’ve heard it all, and generally know the story, but the verses are long, a lot to remember. The first part is about Doni being lonely and giving birth to the sun, Bali, ‘the Mother’s great joy, a bright shining boy,’ then they tell how She loses him and becomes lonely again. The moon is Her lover, Lumi, but She created him, too. That story is more of a woman’s legend; it’s about moon times, and becoming a woman. There are other legends about Her giving birth to all the spirit animals, and to the spirit woman and man, to all of Earth’s Children.”
Wolf barked then, an attention-getting puppy bark that he found did accomplish his aim, encouraging him to keep it beyond the puppy stage. They both looked in his direction and then saw the cause of his excitement. Below, on the sparsely wooded, grassy floodplain of the large river, a small herd of aurochs were straggling by. The wild cattle were huge, with massive horns and shaggy coats, mostly of a solid reddish color so deep it was almost black. But among the herd were a couple of animals that sported large white spots, primarily around the face and forequarters, mild genetic aberrations that showed up occasionally, particularly among aurochs.
At almost the same moment, Ayla and Jondalar looked at each other, gave each other a knowing nod, then called their horses. Quickly removing the pack baskets, which they took inside the dwelling, and taking their spear-throwers and spears, they mounted and headed toward the river. As they neared the grazing herd, Jondalar stopped to study the situation and decide upon the best approach. Ayla halted as well, following his lead. She knew carnivorous animals, particularly the smaller ones, although animals as large as lynx and the massively powerful cave hyena had been among her prey, and a lion had once lived with her, and now a wolf, but she was not as familiar with the grazers and browsers that were normally hunted for food. Though she had found her own ways to hunt them when she lived alone, Jondalar had grown up hunting them and had much more experience.
Perhaps because she had been in a mood to communicate with her totem, and the world of the spirits, Ayla was in a strange state of mind as she watched the herd. It seemed almost too coincidental that, just when they had decided that the Mother would not object if they stayed a few days to replenish their losses and hunt for an animal with a sturdy hide and plenty of meat, suddenly a herd of aurochs should appear. Ayla wondered if it was a sign, from the Mother or, maybe, from her totem, that they had been guided there.
It was not so unusual, however. All through the year, especially during the warmer seasons, various animals, in herds or singly, migrated through the gallery forests and lush grasslands of large river valleys. At any particular site along a major river, it was usual to see some type of animal wander along at least every few days, and in certain seasons whole processions passed by daily. This time it happened to be a herd of wild cattle, exactly the right kind of animal for their needs, though several other species would also have served.
“Ayla, do you see that big cow over there?” Jondalar asked. “The one with the white on its face and across the left shoulder?”
“Yes,” she said.
“I think we should try for her,” Jondalar said. “She’s full grown, but from the size of her horns, she doesn’t look too old, and she’s off by herself.”
Ayla felt a chill of recognition. Now she was convinced it was a sign. Jondalar had chosen the unusual animal! The one with the white spots. Whenever she had been faced with difficult choices in her life, and after much thought had finally reasoned, or rationalized, her way to a decision, her totem had confirmed that it was the correct one by showing her a sign, an unusual object of some sort. When she was a girl, Creb had explained such signs to her and told her to keep them for good luck. Most of the small objects that she carried in the decorated pouch around her neck were signs from her totem. The sudden appearance of the aurochs herd, after they had made their decision to stay, and Jondalar’s decision to hunt the unusual one, seemed strangely akin to signs from a totem.
Though their decision to stay at this Camp had not been an agonizingly personal one, it was an important one that had required serious thought. This was the permanent winter home of a group of people who had invoked the power of the Mother to guard it in their absence. While the needs of survival did allow a passing stranger to use it in case of necessity, it had to be with legitimate reason. One did not incur the possible wrath of the Mother lightly.
The earth was richly populated with living creatures. In their travels they had seen uncounted numbers of a great variety of animals, but few people. In a world so empty of human life, there was comfort in the thought that an invisible realm of spirits was aware of their existence, cared about their actions, and perhaps directed their steps. Even a stern or inimical spirit who cared enough to demand certain actions of appeasement was better than the heartless disregard of a harsh and indifferent world, in which their lives were entirely in their own hands, with no one else to turn to in time of need, not even in their thoughts.
Ayla had come to the conclusion that if their hunt was successful, it would mean that it was all right for them to use the Camp, but if they failed, they would have to go. They had been shown the sign, the unusual animal, and to gain good luck they must keep a part of it. If they could not, if their hunt was unsuccessful, it would mean bad luck, a sign that the Mother did not want them to stay, and that they should leave immediately. The young woman wondered what the outcome would be.