THE PLAINS OF PASSAGE ec-4

by Jean M. Auel

  Ayla was awakened in the morning by the delightful sound of children laughing and playing, and Wolf's wet nose. When she opened her eyes, Wolf looked toward the entrance, where the sounds were coming from. Then he looked back at her and whined.

  "You want to go out there and play with those children, don't you?" she said. He whined again.

  She lifted off her covers and sat up, noticing that Jondalar was sprawled out in sound sleep beside her. She stretched, rubbed her eyes, and glanced toward Roshario. The woman was still sleeping; she had many wakeful nights to make up for. Dolando, wrapped in a fur cover, was sleeping on the ground beside her bed. He, too, had spent many sleepless nights.

  When Ayla got up, Wolf dashed to the entrance and stood there waiting for her, his whole body wriggling with anticipation. She pushed back the flap and quickly stepped outside, but told Wolf to stay. She did not want him scaring anyone by dashing into the middle of something without warning. She looked across and saw several children of various ages in the pool made by the waterfall along with several women, all taking a morning bath. She walked toward them with Wolf close to her side. Shamio squealed when she saw him.

  "C'mon, Wuffie. You should take a bath, too," the girl said. Wolf whined, looking up at Ayla.

  "Would anyone mind if Wolf got in the pool, Tholie? Shamio seems to want him to come in and play."

  "I was just getting out," the young woman said, "but she can stay in and play with him, if the others don't mind."

  When no one made an objection, Ayla gave him a signal. "Go ahead, Wolf," she said. The wolf bounded into the water, making a big splash, straight to Shamio.

  A woman who was coming out of the water alongside Tholie smiled, then said, "I wish my children would mind as well as that wolf does. How do you make him do what you want?"

  "It takes time. You have to go over it a lot, make him repeat what you want many times, and it can be difficult to make him understand at first, but once he learns something, he doesn't forget. He's really very smart," Ayla said. "I've been teaching him every day while we were traveling."

  "Sounds like teaching a child," Tholie said, "but why a wolf? I never knew you could teach them to do anything, but why do you do it?"

  "I know he can be frightening to people who don't know him, and I didn't want him to scare anyone," Ayla said. Watching Tholie come out of the pool and dry herself, Ayla was suddenly aware she was pregnant. Not too far along yet, and her plumpness concealed it when she was dressed, but she was definitely pregnant. "I think I'd like to wash, too, but first I have to pass water."

  "If you follow that path up the back, you'll find a trench. It's quite a ways up, over the far wall so it runs off the other side when it rains, but it's closer than going around," Tholie said.

  Ayla started to call Wolf, then hesitated. As usual, he had lifted his leg in the bushes – she had taught him to go outside of dwellings, but not to use special places. She watched the children playing with him and knew he would rather stay, but she wasn't sure if she should leave him. She was sure everything would be fine, but she didn't know how the mothers would feel.

  "I think you can leave him for a while, Ayla," Tholie said. "I've seen him around the children, and you were right. They'd all be disappointed if you called him away so soon."

  Ayla smiled. "Thank you. I'll be right back."

  She started up the path that traversed in a diagonal across the steepest incline to one wall and then switchbacked toward the other. When she reached the far wall she climbed over it on steps made out of short sections of logs. These were held in place with stakes pounded into the ground in front of them, so they would not roll, and filled in behind with stones and dirt.

  The trench and a level area in front of it, lined with a low fence of smooth round logs to sit across, had been dug out of the sloping ground on the other side of the wall. The smell and the buzzing flies made its purpose obvious, but the sunlight shining through the trees, and the sound of birds made it a pleasant place to linger when she found herself moving her bowels, as well. She saw a pile of dried moss on the ground nearby and guessed its use. It was not at all scratchy and quite absorbent. When she was through, she noticed that fresh dirt had recently been scattered over the bottom of the trench.

  The path continued downhill and Ayla decided to follow it a ways. As she walked along, the region felt so much like the area around the cave where she grew up that she had the haunting feeling she had been there before. She would come upon a rock formation that seemed familiar, or a space opening out at the crest of a ridge, or similar vegetation. She stopped to pick a few hazelnuts off a bush growing against a rock wall, and she could not resist pushing aside the low branches to see if there was a small cave hidden behind it.

  She found another large mound of blackberry bushes with long thorny runners reaching out, heavy with clumps of sweet ripe fruit. She stuffed herself with them and wondered what had happened to the berries she had picked the day before. Then she remembered eating some at the welcoming feast. She decided she'd have to come back and get more for Roshario. Suddenly she realized that she had to return. The woman might be waking up and need some attention. The woods had felt so familiar that Ayla had forgotten where she was for a moment. Roaming the hillsides, she had felt like a girl again, using the excuse of looking for Iza's medicinal plants to explore.

  Perhaps because it was second nature anyway, or because she had always looked harder for plants on her way back so she'd have something to show for her forays, Ayla paid close attention to the vegetation. She almost shouted with excitement, and relief, when she noticed the small yellow vines with tiny leaves and flowers twined around other plants that were dead and dried, strangled by the golden threadlike vines.

  That's it! That's golden thread, Iza's magic plant, she thought. That's what I need for my morning tea, so I won't start a baby growing. And there's a lot of it. I was running so low that I didn't know if I'd have enough to last for the whole Journey. I wonder if there's antelope sage root around here, too? There ought to be. I'll have to come back and look.

  She found a plant with large basal leaves and wove them together with twigs for a makeshift gathering container, then picked as many of the small plants as she could, without depleting the area entirely. Iza had taught her long ago always to leave some from which the next year's growth would start.

  On the way back, she took a small detour through a thicker, more shaded patch of forest, to look for more of the waxy white plant that would soothe the horses' eyes, though they did seem to be improving. She scanned the ground under the trees carefully. With so much that was familiar, it shouldn't have come as a surprise, but when she saw the green leaves of one particular kind of plant, she gasped and felt a cold chill go through her.

  18

  Ayla dropped to the moist ground and sat staring at the plants, breathing the rich forest air, while memories came flooding back. Even in the Clan the secret of the root was little known. The knowledge had belonged to Iza's line, and only those descended from the same ancestors – or the one to whom she had taught it – knew the complicated processing required to produce the final result. Ayla remembered Iza explaining the unusual method of drying the plant so that its properties would concentrate in the roots, and she recalled that they actually got stronger with long storage, if kept out of the light.

  Though Iza had told her, carefully and repeatedly, how to make the drink from the dry roots, she couldn't let Ayla practice preparing it before she went to the Clan Gathering; it could not be used without proper ritual and, Iza had stressed, it was too sacred to throw away. That was why Ayla had drunk the dregs she had found in the bottom of Iza's ancient bowl, after she made it for the mog-urs, even though it was forbidden to women, so it wouldn't have to be thrown out. She wasn't thinking straight by then. There was so much going on, other beverages that clouded her mind, and the root drink was so powerful that even the little she had swallowed while making it had a strong effect.

  She
had wandered along narrow passages through the deep honeycombed caves, and by the time she saw Creb and the other mog-urs, she couldn't have retreated even if she'd tried. That was when it happened. Somehow Creb had known she was there, and he had taken her with them, back into the memories. If he hadn't, she would have been lost in that black void forever, but something happened that night that changed him. He wasn't The Mog-ur afterward, he had no heart for it any more, until that last time.

  She'd had some of the roots with her when she left the Clan. They were in her medicine bag in the sacred red-colored pouch, and Mamut had been very curious when she told him about them. But he didn't have the power of The Mog-ur, or perhaps the plant affected the Others differently. She and Mamut were both drawn into the black void and almost didn't return.

  Sitting on the ground, staring at the seemingly innocuous plant that could be made into something so powerful, she recalled the experience. Suddenly she shivered with another chill and sensed a shadow of darkness, as though a cloud were passing overhead, and then she wasn't just remembering, she was reliving that strange Journey with Mamut. The green woods faded and dimmed as she felt herself drawn back into her memory of the darkened earthlodge. In the back of her throat she tasted the dark cool loam and growing fungus of ancient primeval forests. She sensed herself moving with great speed to the strange worlds she had traveled with Mamut, and she felt the terror of the black void.

  Then faintly, from far away, she heard Jondalar's voice, full of agonized fear and love, calling to her, pulling her back and Mamut as well, by the sheer strength of his love and his need. In an instant she was back, feeling chilled to the bone in the warmth of late summer sunshine.

  "Jondalar brought us back!" she said aloud. At the time she hadn't been aware of it. He was the one she had opened her eyes to, but then he was gone and Ranec was there instead bringing a hot drink to warm her. Mamut had told her that someone had helped them to return. She hadn't realized that it was Jondalar, but suddenly she knew, almost as though she was meant to know.

  The old man had said he would never use the root again and warned her against it, but he also said that if she ever did, to make sure someone was there who could call her back. He'd told her the root was more than deadly. It could steal her spirit; she could be lost in the black void forever, and would never be able to return to the Great Earth Mother. It hadn't mattered then, anyway. She'd had no roots left. She had used the last of them with Mamut. But now, in front of her, there was the plant.

  Just because it was there didn't mean she had to take it, she thought. If she left it, she would never have to worry that she might use it again and lose her spirit. She had been told the drink was forbidden to her, anyway. It was for mog-urs who dealt with the spirit world, not medicine women who were only supposed to make it for them, but she had already drunk it, twice. And besides, Broud had cursed her; as far as the Clan was concerned, she was dead. Who was there to forbid her now?

  Ayla didn't even ask herself why she was doing it when she picked up the broken branch and used it as a digging stick to carefully extract several of the plants without damaging the roots. She was one of the few people on earth who knew their properties and how to prepare them. She could not leave them. It wasn't that she had any particular intention of using them, which in itself was not unusual. She had many preparations of plants that might never be used, but this was different. The others had potential medicinal uses. Even the golden thread, Iza's magic medicine to fight off impregnating essences, was good for stings and bites when applied externally, but, as far as she knew, this plant had no other use. The root was spirit magic.

  "There you are! We were beginning to worry," Tholie called out when she saw Ayla coming down the path. "Jondalar said if you didn't get back soon, he'd send Wolf after you."

  "Ayla, what took you so long?" Jondalar said, before she could answer. "Tholie said you were coming right back." He had unthinkingly spoken Zelandonii, which let her know just how worried he had been.

  "The path kept on going, and I decided to follow it a little farther. Then I found some plants I wanted," Ayla said, holding up the material she had collected. "This area is so much like the place I grew up. I haven't seen some of these since I left."

  "What was so important about those plants that you had to collect them now? What is that one for?" Jondalar said, pointing to the golden thread.

  Ayla understood him well enough, now, to know that the angry tone was the result of his concern, but his question caught her by surprise. "That's… that's for bites… and stings," she said, flustered, and embarrassed. It felt like a lie; even though her answer was perfectly true, it was not complete.

  Ayla had been raised as a woman of the Clan, and Clan women could not refuse to answer a direct question, especially when posed by a man, but Iza had stressed very strongly never to tell anyone, particularly a man, what power the tiny golden threads held. Iza herself would not have been able to resist answering Jondalar's question fully, but she would never have had to. No man of the Clan would consider questioning a medicine woman about her plants or practices. Iza had meant that Ayla should never volunteer the information.

  It was acceptable to refrain from mentioning, but Ayla knew that the allowance was meant for courtesy and to permit some measure of privacy, and she had gone beyond that. She was deliberately withholding information. She could administer the medicine, if she felt it was appropriate, but Iza had told her that it could be dangerous if people, especially men, realized that she knew how to defeat the strongest of spirits and prevent pregnancy. It was secret knowledge meant only for medicine women.

  A thought suddenly occurred to Ayla. If it could prevent Her from blessing a woman, could Iza's magic medicine be stronger than the Mother? How could that be? But if She did create all the plants in the first place, She must have made it on purpose! She must have meant for it to be used to help women when it would be dangerous or difficult for them to become pregnant. But then why didn't more women know about it? Maybe they did. Since it grew so close, maybe these Sharamudoi women were familiar with it. She could ask, but would they tell her? And if they didn't know, how could she ask without telling them? But if the Mother meant it for women, wouldn't it be right to tell them? Ayla's mind raced with questions, but she had no answers.

  "Why did you need to get plants for bites and stings now?" Jondalar said, his concern still showing in his eyes.

  "I didn't meant to worry you," Ayla said, then smiled, "it's just that this area feels so much like home, I wanted to explore it."

  Suddenly he had to smile, too. "And you found some blackberries for breakfast, didn't you? Now I know what took you so long. I never met anyone who loved blackberries more than you do." He had noticed her discomfiture, but he was delighted when he thought he had discovered why she seemed so reluctant to talk about her little side trip.

  "Well, yes, I did have a few. Maybe we can go back later and pick some for everyone. They are so ripe and good now. There are some other things I want to look for, too."

  "I have a feeling we're going to have all the blackberries we could want, with you around, Ayla," Jondalar said, kissing her purple-stained mouth.

  He was so relieved that she was safe, and so pleased with himself to think that he had found her out and discovered her weakness for sweet berries, that she just smiled and let him think what he wanted. She did like blackberries, but her real weakness was him, and she suddenly felt such an overwhelming warmth of love for him that she wished they were alone. She wanted to hold him, and touch him, and Pleasure him, and feel him Pleasuring her the way he did so well. Her eyes showed her feelings, and his wonderful, exceptionally blue eyes returned them with added measure. She felt a tingling deep inside and had to turn away to settle herself.

  "How is Roshario?" she said. "Is she awake yet?"

  "Yes, and she says she's hungry. Carolio came up from the dock and is fixing something for us, but we thought we should wait until you came before she ate."

/>   "I'll go and see how she is, and then I'd like to take a morning swim," Ayla said.

  As she headed for the dwelling, Dolando pulled back the flap to come outside, and Wolf came bounding out. He jumped up on her, put his paws on her shoulders, and licked her jaw.

  "Wolf, get down! My hands are full," she said.

  "He seems glad to see you," Dolando said. He hesitated, then added, "I am, too, Ayla. Roshario needs you."

  It was an acknowledgment of sorts, at least an admission that he did not want her to keep away from his mate, for all his raving the night before. She had known it when he allowed her into his dwelling, but he hadn't said it.

  "Is there anything you need? Anything I can get for you?" the man asked. He had noticed her hands were full.

  "I'd like to dry these plants and need a rack," she said. "I can make one, but for that I need some wood, and thongs or sinew for lashings."

  "I may have something better. Shamud used to dry plants for his uses, and I think I know where his racks are. Would you like to use one?"

  "I think that would be perfect, Dolando," she said. He nodded and strode away as she went inside. She smiled when she saw Roshario sitting up on her bed. Putting the plants down, she went to see her.

  "I didn't know Wolf had come back in here," Ayla said. "I hope he didn't bother you."

  "No. He was watching out for me, I'm sure. When he first came in – he knows how to get around the flap – he came straight back here. After I patted him, he went and settled down in that corner and just looked this way. That's his place now, you know," Roshario said.

  "Did you sleep well?" Ayla asked the woman, straightening her bed and propping her up with pads and furs to make her more comfortable.

  "Better than I have since I fell. Especially after Dolando and I had a long talk," she said. She looked at the tall blond woman, the stranger that Jondalar had brought with him, who had stirred up their life and precipitated so much change in such a short time. "He really didn't mean what he said about you, Ayla, but he is upset. He has lived with Doraldo's death for years, never able to really put it away. He didn't know the full circumstances until last night. Now he's trying to reconcile years of hatred, and violence, toward what he was convinced were vicious animals, with all that came out about them, including you."