by Jean M. Auel
“You may have prepared a way, but I wasn’t prepared,” Ayla said, avoiding Vincavec’s gaze. She looked up when he laughed. His eyes were gray, not black.
“You’re good! You’re strong, Ayla. I’ve never met anyone like you. You are so right for the Mammoth Hearth, for the Mammoth Camp. Tell me you’ll share my hearth,” Vincavec said, with every bit of persuasion and feeling he could bring to bear.
“I have Promised Ranec,” she said.
“That doesn’t matter, Ayla. Bring him along, if you wish. I would not mind sharing the Mammoth Hearth with so gifted a carver. Take us both! Or I’ll take you both.” He laughed again. “It would not be the first time. A man has a certain appeal, too!”
“I … I don’t know,” she said, then looked up at the muffled pounding of hooves.
“Ayla, I’m going to take Racer into the river and brush down his legs. Mud is caked up and drying on them. Do you want me to take Whinney, too?” Jondalar said.
“I’ll take her myself,” Ayla said, glad for the excuse to get away. Vincavec was fascinating, but a little frightening.
“She’s over there, near Ranec,” Jondalar said, turning toward the river.
Vincavec’s eves followed after the tall blond man. I wonder what part he plays in all this, the Mamut-headman thought. They arrived together, and he understands her animals, perhaps as well as she does, but they don’t seem to be lovers, and it’s not because he has trouble with women. Avarie tells me they love him, but he never touches Ayla, never sleeps with her. It’s said he turned down the Womanhood ritual because his feelings were too brotherly. Is that how he feels toward Ayla? Brotherly? Is that why he interrupted us and directed her back to the carver? Vincavec frowned, then carefully pulled up several of the large mushrooms and, with a cord, tied them upside down to the branches of the “Old Mothers” to dry. He planned to get them on the way back.
After they crossed the tributary, they reached a dryer area, with open treeless bogs, farther apart. The honking, clacking, and squealing of waterfowl warned them of the large melt lake ahead. They set up camp not far from it and several people headed for the water to bring back supper. No fish were to be found in the temporary bodies of water, unless they happened to become part of a year-round river or stream, but amid the roots of tall phragmite reeds, bulrushes, sedges, and cattails swam the tadpoles of edible frogs and fire-bellied toads.
By some mysterious seasonal signal a vast array of birds, mostly waterfowl, came north to join the ptarmigan, the golden eagle, and the snowy owl. The spring thaw, that brought renewed plant growth and the great reedy marshes, invited the uncountable numbers of migrating fowl to stop, build nests, and proliferate. Many birds fed on the immature amphibians, and some on the adults, as well as newts and snakes, seeds and bulbs, on the inevitable insects, even on small mammals.
“Wolf would love this place,” Ayla said to Brecie as she watched a couple of circling birds, with sling in hand, hoping they would come in closer to the edge so she wouldn’t have to wade out too far to retrieve them. “He’s getting very good at going in after them for me.”
Brecie had promised to show Ayla her throwing stick, and wanted to see the young woman’s much-touted expertise with the sling. Both had been mutually impressed. Brecie’s weapon was an elongated, roughly diamond-shaped, crosswise section of leg bone, with the knobby epiphysis at the end removed and the edge sharpened. Its flight was circular, and thrown into a flock, several birds could be killed at one time. Ayla thought the throwing stick was much better for hunting birds than her sling, but the sling had more general application. She could also hunt animals with it.
“You brought the horses, why did you leave the wolf behind?” Brecie asked.
“Wolf is still so young I wasn’t sure how he’d behave on a mammoth hunt, and I didn’t want to take the chance that anything would go wrong on this one. The horses, though, can help bring meat back. Besides, I think Rydag would have been lonely without Wolf,” Ayla said. “I miss them both.”
Brecie was tempted to ask Ayla if she really did have a son like Rydag, then changed her mind. The subject was just too sensitive.
As they continued to head north over the next few days, a distinctive change came over the landscape. The bogs disappeared and, once they left the noisy birds behind, the sound of wind filled the treeless open plains with an eerie, wailing silence and a sense of desolation. The skies became overcast with a dull gray, featureless cloud cover that obscured the sun and hid the stars at night, but it seldom rained. Instead, the air felt dryer, and colder, with a sharp wind that seemed to sap even the moisture from exhaled breath. But an occasional break in the clouds at evening vanquished the dull monotony of the heavens with a sunset so glowing, and so brilliant as it reflected off the moisture-laden upper skies, it left the travelers without words to describe it, daunted by its sheer beauty.
It was a land of far horizons. Low rolling hill followed low rolling hill, with no jagged peaks to lend distance and perspective, and no reed-green marshes to relieve the endless grays, browns, and dusty golds. The plains seemed to go on forever in all directions, except toward the north. There the vast sweep was swallowed by a dense misty fog that hid all signs of the world beyond, and deceived the eye about the distance to it.
The character of the land was neither grassy steppes nor frozen tundra, but a blend of both. Frost and drought-resistant tufted grasses, herbs with dense root systems, miniature woody shrubs of sagebrush and wormwood mingled with white arctic bell heather, miniature rhododendron, and pink crowberry flowers dominating the dainty purple blooms of alpine heath. Blueberry bushes no more than four inches high promised, nonetheless, a profusion of full-sized berries, and prostrate birch crawled along the ground like woody vines.
But even dwarfed trees were scarce with two sets of growing conditions opposing them. On true northern tundra, summer temperature is too low for germination and growth of tree seeds. On steppes, howling winds, that absorb moisture before it can accumulate, sweep across the landscape, and are as much a prohibiting factor as the cold. The combination left the land both frozen and dry.
Landscape even more bleak greeted the band of hunters as they pushed toward the thick white fog ahead. Bare rock and rubble was exposed, but it was covered with lichens; clinging scaly crusts of yellow, gray, brown, even bright orange that seemed more rock than plant. A few flowering herbs and miniature shrubs persisted, and the tough grasses and sedges covered sizable patches. Even in this wild, dreary place of cold dry winds that seemed incapable of supporting life, life went on.
Clues began to appear that hinted at the secret hidden within the mists. Scratches etched into large slabs of rock; long ridges of sand, stones, and gravel; large stones out of place, as though dropped from the sky by an invisible giant hand. Water washed across the stony ground, in thin streams and gushing cloudy torrents, with no discernible pattern, and as they drew closer cold moisture in the air could at last be felt. Dirty snow lingered in shaded nooks, and in a depression beside a large boulder, old snow surrounded a small pool. Deep within it were shelves of ice of a rich and vivid shade of blue.
The wind shifted in the afternoon, and by the time the travelers set up camp, it was snowing, a dry, blowing snow. Talut and the others were conferring, disturbed. Vincavec had Called to the Mammoth Spirit several times to no avail. They had expected to find the great beasts before this.
At night, lying quietly in her bed, Ayla became aware of mysterious sounds that seemed to be coming from deep within the earth: grindings, poppings, chortlings, gurglings. She couldn’t identify them, had no idea where they came from, and it made her nervous. She tried to sleep, but she kept waking up. Finally toward morning, exhaustion overcame her, and she gave in to slumber.
Ayla knew it was late when she woke up. It seemed unusually bright and everyone else was out of the tent. She grabbed her parka, but got only as far as the opening. When she looked out, she stopped and stared with her mouth hanging open. The shif
t in the wind had cleared away the summer mist of steaming ice temporarily. She bent her head back to look up at the wall of a glacier towering over her that was so incredibly massive the top was lost in clouds.
Its sheer size made it seem closer than it was, but some gigantic chunks that had once tumbled down the steep jagged wall were strewn together in a jumbled heap perhaps a quarter-mile away. Several people were standing around them. She realized they were the scale that had given her a proper sense of the true size of the immense barrier of ice. The glacier was an incredible spectacle, and incredibly beautiful. In the sunlight—Ayla suddenly noticed the sun was out—it sparkled with millions of shattered crystals of ice that glinted with tints of prismatic hues, but the deep underlying color had tones of the same startling blue that she had seen in the pool. There were no words adequate to describe it; overwhelming had no meaning beside its magnificence, its grandeur, its power.
Ayla finished dressing hurriedly, feeling she had missed out on something. She poured herself a cup of what seemed to be leftover tea with a slight film of ice already forming on top, and discovered it was meat broth instead. She paused only a moment before deciding it was fine, and drank it down. Then she scooped out a ladleful of congealed cooked grains, wrapped them in a thick slice of cold roast meat, and headed toward the rest of the hunters at a fast pace.
“I wondered if you were ever going to wake up,” Talut said, when he saw her coming.
“Why didn’t you wake me?” Ayla asked, then took her last bite.
“It’s not wise to wake someone who is sleeping so soundly, unless it’s an emergency,” Talut answered.
“The spirit needs time for its night travels, so it can come back refreshed,” Vincavec added, coming around to greet her. He made a motion to take both her hands, but she evaded them, quickly brushed his cheek with hers, and was off to examine the ice.
The huge chunks had obviously fallen with some force. They were deeply imbedded, and the ground was churned up around them. That they had also been there for several years was soon apparent, as well. An accumulation of windblown grit, picked up from the rock that was ground to flour at the margins of the ice, coated the top surfaces with a thick layer of dark gray dirt, striated in some places with intervening white layers of compact snow. The surfaces themselves were pitted and rough from melting and refreezing unevenly over the years, and a few small tenacious plants had actually taken root on the ice.
“Come up here, Ayla,” Ranec called. She looked up and saw him standing on top of a high block, tilted slightly askew. She was surprised to see Jondalar beside him. “It’s easy if you come around the side.”
Ayla went around the jumbled pile of ice blocks and clambered up a series of broken shards and slabs. The gritty rock dust ground into the ice made the usually slick surface rough and footing reasonably secure. With a little care, it was easy to climb and move around. When she reached the highest place, Ayla stood up, then closed her eyes. The buffeting wind pushed against her, as though testing her resolve to withstand its force, and the voice of the great wall rumbled, moaned, and cracked nearby. She turned her head toward the intense light above, seen even through closed eyelids, and sensed with the skin of her face the cosmic struggle between the heat from the heavenly fireball, and the cold of the massive ice wall. The air itself tingled with indecision.
Then she opened her eyes. Ice commanded the view, filled her vision. The enormous, majestic, formidable expanse of ice that reached the sky marched across the entire breadth of the land as far as she could see. Mountains were insignificant beside it. The sight filled her with a humbling exultation, an awe-inspiring excitement. Her smile brought acknowledging smiles from Jondalar and Ranec.
“I’ve seen it before,” Ranec said, “but I could see it as many times as there are stars in the sky and never get tired of it.” Both Ayla and Jondalar nodded in agreement.
“It can be dangerous, though,” Jondalar added.
“How did this ice get here?” Ayla asked.
“The ice moves,” Ranec said. “Sometimes it grows, sometimes it shrinks back. This split off when the wall was here. This pile was much bigger then. It has been shrinking, like the wall.” Ranec studied the glacier. “I think it was farther away last time. The ice may be growing again.”
Ayla swept her gaze across the open landscape then, noticing how much farther she could see from her higher vantage point. “Oh, look!” she cried, pointing toward the southeast. “Mammoths! I see a herd of mammoths!”
“Where?” Ranec said, suddenly excited.
The excitement spread through the hunters like fire. Talut, who had started around the side at the sound of the word “mammoths,” was already halfway up the ice pile. He reached the top in a few strides, put his hand across his forehead as a sunshade, and looked where Ayla had pointed.
“She’s right! There they are! Mammoths!” he boomed, unable to restrain his emotion, or the volume of his voice.
Several others were climbing up the ice, each looking for a place to view the great tusked creatures. Ayla stepped down out of the way so Brecie could stand in her place.
There was a certain relief in sighting the mammoths, as well as excitement. At least they were finally showing themselves. Whatever it was that the Spirit Mammoth had been waiting for, she had finally allowed her creatures of this world to present themselves to those who were chosen by Mut to hunt mammoths.
One of the women of Brecie’s Camp mentioned to one of the men that she had seen Ayla standing on the very top of the ice pile with her eyes closed, turning her head as though Seeking something, or perhaps Calling it, and when she opened her eyes, there were the mammoths. The man nodded in understanding.
Ayla was staring down at the shape of the pile of ice below, about ready to descend. Talut appeared beside her, smiling as big a grin as she had ever seen.
“Ayla, you have made this headman a very happy man,” the red-bearded giant said.
“I didn’t do anything,” Ayla said. “I just happened to see them.”
“That’s enough. Whoever happened to see them first would have made me a very happy man. But I’m glad it was you,” Talut said.
Ayla smiled at him. She really did love the big headman. She thought of him as an uncle, or a brother, or a friend, and she felt he cared about her the same way.
“What were you looking at down there, Ayla?” Talut said, starting to follow her down.
“Nothing in particular. I was just noticing that you can see the shape of this pile from here. See how it comes in on the side where we climbed up and then curves back around?”
Talut gave it a cursory look, then found himself looking closer. “Ayla! You’ve done it again!”
“Done what?”
“You have made this headman a very happy man!”
His smile was contagious. She smiled back. “What makes you happy this time, Talut?” she said.
“You made me notice the shape of this ice pile. It’s like a blind canyon. Not quite complete, but we can fix that. Now I know how we’re going to hunt those mammoths!”
No time was lost. The mammoths could decide to move away, or the weather could change again. The hunters had to take advantage of the opportunity immediately. The hunt leaders conferred, then quickly sent out several scouts to investigate the lay of the land and the size of the herd. While they were gone, a wall of rock and ice was built to block the open space in one side of the cold canyon, making the tumbled pile of ice into an enclosure with only one opening. When the scouts returned, the hunters gathered to devise a plan to drive the huge woolly animals into the trap.
Talut told how Ayla and Whinney had helped to drive bison into a trap. Many people were quite interested, but they all reached the conclusion that with the huge behemoths, a single rider on horseback would not be able to start a concerted drive, though she might be of some help. To get them started toward the trap, some other means would have to be found.
Fire was the answer. Late summer
lightning storms had set enough dry fields on fire that even massive mammoths, who feared little, had a healthy respect for it. At this season of the year, however, it might be difficult to get a grass fire going. The fire would have to be in the form of torches, held in the hands of the drivers.
“What’ll we use for torches?” someone asked.
“Dry grass and mammoth dung, bound together and dipped in fat,” Brecie said, “so they’ll catch fast and burn hot.”
“And we can use Ayla’s firestone to start them quickly,” Talut added. There were nods of agreement.
“We’re going to need fire in more than one place,” Brecie said, “and in the right sequence.”
“Ayla has given each of the hearths of Lion Camp a firestone. We have several with us. I have one, and so does Ranec. Jondalar has one, too,” Talut said, aware of the added prestige his announcement gave them. Too bad Tulie isn’t here, he thought. She would have appreciated the moment. Ayla’s firestones were priceless, particularly since they were apparently not too abundant.
“Once we get the mammoths moving, how do we make sure they head for the trap?” the woman from Brecie’s Camp asked. “This is open country.”
The plan they worked out was simple and direct. They constructed two rows of cairns out of broken chunks of ice and rock, fanning out from the opening of the ice canyon. Talut, with his massive axe, made short work of breaking the large glacier shards into pieces small enough to carry. Several torches were deposited behind each cairn in readiness. Of the fifty hunters, a few chose places within the canyon itself, behind protective blocks of ice, for the first frontal assault. Others ranged out behind the stone cairns. The rest, primarily the fastest, strongest runners—for all their great bulk, mammoths were capable of great bursts of speed for short distances—would split into two groups, to circle around both sides of the herd.