by Jean M. Auel
When the woman and man started out again, they expected to see the great river spread out; so they were surprised when she remained within a single wide channel. A few brush-covered islands formed within the broad stream, but she didn’t split into separate waterways. They were so used to seeing her meandering across the level grasslands in a wide unruly path that it seemed strange to see the enormous flood contained for any distance. But the Great Mother invariably took the lowest path as she wound her way around and between high mountains across the continent. The river flowed east through the southernmost plains of her long passage. The low ground was at the foot of the eroded mountains, which constrained and defined her right bank.
On her left bank, between the river and the sharply folded glistening crests of granite and slate to the north, lay a platform, a foreland of limestone, primarily, covered with a mantle of loess. It was a rough and rugged land subject to violent extremes. Harsh black winds from the south desiccated the land in summer; high pressure over the northern glacier hurled frigid blasts of freezing air across the open space in winter; fierce gale storms rising in the sea frequently bore down from the east. The occasional soaking rains and the fast-drying winds, along with the temperature extremes, caused the limestone underlying the porous loess soil to fracture, which created steeply scarped faces on flat open plateaus.
Tough grasses survived on the dry, windy landscape, but trees were almost entirely absent. The only woody vegetation were certain kinds of brush that could withstand both arid heat and searing cold. An occasional thin-branched tamarisk bush, with its feathery foliage and spikes of tiny pink flowers, or a buckthorn, with black round berries and sharp thorns, dotted the landscape, and even a few small, bushy, black currant shrubs could be seen. Most prevalent were several varieties of artemisia, including a wormwood unknown to Ayla.
Its black stalks looked bare and dead, but when she picked some, thinking it would make fuel for a fire, she discovered it was not dry and brittle but green and living. After a brief wet squall, loose-toothed leaves with a silvery down on the underside uncurled and grew out from the stalks and numerous small yellowish flowers, like tightly cupped centers of daisies, appeared on branching spikes. Except for its darker stems, it resembled the more familiar, lighter-colored species that often grew alongside fescue and crested hair grass, until the wind and sun dried the plains. Then it once again appeared lifeless and dead.
With its variety of grasses and brush, the southern plains supported hosts of animals. None they hadn’t seen on the steppes farther north, but in different proportions, and some of the more cold-loving species, such as the musk-ox, never ventured so far south. On the other hand, Ayla had never seen so many saiga antelope in one place before. They were a widespread animal, seen almost everywhere on the open plains, but were not usually very numerous.
Ayla stopped and was watching a herd of the strange, clumsy-looking animals. Jondalar had gone to investigate an inlet in the river with some slender tree trunks stuck into the bank that looked out of place. There were no trees on this side of the river, and the arrangement seemed purposeful. When he caught up, she seemed to be looking off in the distance.
“I couldn’t tell for sure,” he said. “Those logs might have been put there by some River People; someone could tie a boat there. But it could be driftwood from upstream, too.”
Ayla nodded, then pointed toward the dry steppes. “Look at all those saigas.”
Jondalar didn’t see them at first. They were the color of the dust. Then he saw the outline of their straight horns with coiled ridges, tipped slightly forward at the ends.
“They remind me of Iza. The spirit of the Saiga was her totem,” the woman said, smiling.
The saiga antelopes always made Ayla smile, with their long overhanging noses and peculiar gait, which did not hinder their speed, she noted. Wolf liked to chase them, but they were so fast that he seldom got very close to them, at least not for long.
These saiga seemed to favor the black-stemmed wormwood in particular, and they banded together in much larger than usual herds. A small herd of ten or fifteen animals was common, usually females, with one and often two young; some mothers were not much more than a year old themselves. But in this region the herds were numbering more than fifty. Ayla wondered about the males. The only time she saw them in any abundance was during their rutting season, when each tried to Pleasure as many females as he could, as many times as he could. Afterward there were always carcasses of male saigas to be found. It was almost as though the males wore themselves out with Pleasures, and for the rest of the year left the sparse feed they commonly ate for the females and the young.
There were also a few ibex and mouflon on the plains, often preferring to stay near the steep scarped faces, which the wild goats and sheep could climb with ease. Huge herds of aurochs were scattered over the land, most of them with solid-color coats of a deep reddish black, but a surprising number of individuals had white spots, some quite large. They saw faintly spotted fallow deer, red deer, and bison, and many onagers. Whinney and Racer were aware of most of the four-legged grazers, but the onagers, in particular, caught their attention. They watched the herds of horselike asses and sniffed long at their similar piles of dung.
There was the usual complement of small grassland animals: susliks, marmots, jerboas, hamsters, hares, and a crested porcupine species that was new to the woman. Keeping their numbers in check were the animals that preyed on the rest. They saw small wildcats, larger lynxes, and huge cave lions, and they heard the laughing cackle of hyenas.
In the days that followed, the great river changed her course and direction often. While the landscape on the left bank, through which they were traveling, remained much the same—grassy low rolling hills and flat plains with sharp-edged scarp faces and jagged mountains behind—they noticed that the opposite bank became more rugged and diverse. Tributary rivers cut deep valleys, and trees climbed the eroded mountains, occasionally covering an entire slope right down to the water’s edge. The indented foothills and rough terrain, which defined the south bank, contributed to the broad curves swinging in every direction, even back on itself, but overall her course was eastward toward the sea.
Within the mighty turns and twists, the great body of water flowing toward them did spread out and break up into separate channels, but it did not develop into a marshland like the delta again. It was simply a huge river or, over more level ground, a meandering series of large parallel streams with richer brush and greener grass nearer the water.
Though it had sometimes seemed annoying, Ayla missed the chorus of marsh frogs, though the flutey trill of variegated toads was still a refrain in the aleatoric medley of night music. Lizards and steppe vipers took their place and along with them the distinctively beautiful demoiselle cranes, who thrived on the reptiles, as well as insects and snails. Ayla enjoyed watching a pair of the long-legged birds, bluish-gray with black heads and white tufts of feathers behind each eye, feeding their young.
She did not, however, miss the mosquitoes. Without their marshy breeding ground, those bothersome biting insects had largely disappeared. That was not true of the gnats. Clouds of them still plagued the wayfarers, particularly the furry ones.
“Ayla! Look!” Jondalar said, pointing out a simple construction of logs and planks at the edge of the river. “This is a boat landing. This was made by River People.”
Though she did not know what a boat landing was, it was obviously not an accidental arrangement of materials. It had been purposely constructed for some human use. The woman felt a surge of excitement. “Does that mean there are people around here?”
“Probably not right now—there’s no boat at the landing—but not far. This must be a place that is used frequently. They wouldn’t go to the trouble of making a landing if they didn’t use it a lot, and they wouldn’t use a place that was far away very often.”
Jondalar studied the landing for a moment, then looked upstream and across the river. “I�
��m not certain, but I’d say whoever built this lives on the other side of the river, and they land here when they cross. Maybe they come over to hunt, or collect roots, or something.”
Proceeding upriver, they both kept looking across the wide stream. Except in general, they hadn’t paid much attention to the territory on the other side until now, and it occurred to Ayla that there may have been people over there that they hadn’t noticed before. They had not gone far when Jondalar caught a movement on the water, some distance upstream. He stopped to verify his sighting.
“Ayla, look over there,” he said when she stopped beside him. “That could be a Ramudoi boat.”
She looked and saw something, but she wasn’t sure what she was seeing. They urged the horses on. When they got closer, Ayla saw a boat unlike anything she had ever seen before. She was only familiar with boats made in the Mamutoi style, hide-covered frames made in the shape of a bowl like the one that was mounted on the travois. The one she saw on the river was made of wood and came to a point in front. It held several people in a row. As they drew abreast, Ayla noticed more people on the opposite shore.
“Hola!” Jondalar called out, waving his arm in greeting. He shouted some other words in a language that was unfamiliar to her, though there seemed to be a vague similiarity to Mamutoi.
The people in the boat did not respond, and Jondalar wondered if he had not been heard, though he thought they had seen him. He called out again, and this time he was sure they had heard him, but they did not wave back. Instead they began paddling for the other side as fast as they could.
Ayla noticed that one of the people on the opposite shore had seen them, too. He ran toward some other people and pointed across the river at them, then he and some of the others left in a hurry. A couple of people stayed until the boat reached shore; then they left.
“It’s the horses, again, isn’t it?” she said.
Jondalar thought he saw a tear glisten. “It wouldn’t have been a good idea to cross the river here, anyway. The Cave of Sharamudoi that I know live on this side.”
“I suppose so,” she said, signaling Whinney to move on. “But they could have crossed in their boat. They could at least have answered your greeting.”
“Ayla, think how strange we must look, sitting on these horses. We must seem like something from some spirit world with four legs, and two heads,” he said. “You can’t blame people for being afraid of something they don’t know.”
Ahead, across the water, they could see a spacious valley that dropped down from the mountains nearly to the level of the mighty stream beside them. A sizable river rushed through the middle of it and entered the Great Mother with a turbulence that sent eddies in both directions and broadened her width. Adding to the play of countercurrents, just beyond the tributary the southern range that bounded the river’s right bank curved back around.
In the valley, near the confluence of the two rivers, but up on a slope, they saw several dwellings made of wood, obviously a settlement. Standing around them were the people who lived there, gaping at the travelers passing by across the river.
“Jondalar,” Ayla said. “Let’s get off the horses.”
“Why?”
“So those people will at least see that we look like people, and the horses are just horses, not some two-headed creatures with four legs,” she said. Ayla dismounted and began walking in front of the mare.
Jondalar nodded, threw his leg over, and leaped down. Taking hold of the lead rope, he followed her. But the woman had just started out when the wolf ran up to her and greeted her in his customary way. He jumped up, put his paws on her shoulders, licked her, and nuzzled her jaw, gently, with his teeth. When he got down, something, perhaps a scent wafting across the wide river, made him conscious of the people who were watching. He went to the edge of the bank and, lifting his head, began a series of yips that led into a heart-stopping ululation of wolf song.
“Why is he doing that?” Jondalar said.
“I don’t know. He hasn’t seen anyone else for a long time, either. Maybe he’s glad to see them and wants to greet them,” Ayla said. “I would, too, but we can’t cross over to their side very easily, and they won’t come over here.”
Ever since leaving behind the deep curve of the river that had changed their direction toward the setting sun, the travelers had been bearing slightly south in their generally westward advance. But beyond the valley, where the mountains angled back, they began heading due west. They were as far south as they would go on their Journey, and it was the hottest season of the year.
During the highest days of summer, with an incandescent sun scourging the shadeless plains, even when ice as thick as mountains covered a quarter of the earth, the heat could be oppressive in the southern stretches of the continent. A strong, hot, unceasing wind that wore on their nerves made it worse. The man and woman, riding side by side, or walking the scorching steppes to let the horses rest, fell into a routine that made traveling, if not easy, at least possible.
They awakened with the first glimmer of dawn glistening off the highest peaks to the north and, after a light breakfast of a hot tea and cold food, were on their way before the day was fully light. As the sun rose higher, it struck the open steppes with such intensity that shimmering heat waves issued from the earth. A patina of dehydrating sweat gleamed the deeply tanned skin of the humans and soaked the fur of Wolf and the horses. The wolf’s tongue lolled out of his mouth as he panted with the heat. He had no urge to run off on his own to explore or hunt but kept pace with Whinney and Racer, who plodded along, their heads hanging low. Their passengers drooped listlessly, allowing the horses to proceed at their own speed, talking little during the suffocating heat of midday.
When they could not take it any longer, they looked for a level beach, preferably near a clear backwater or slow-moving channel of the Great Mother. Even Wolf did not resist the slower currents, though he still hesitated a bit when a river ran fast. When the humans he was traveling with turned toward the river, dismounted, and began to unfasten the baskets, he raced ahead and bounded into the water first. If it was a tributary river, they usually plunged into the cool refreshing water, crossing before removing pack basket or travois harness.
After feeling revived by their swim, Ayla and Jondalar looked for what was available to eat, if they didn’t have enough left over or hadn’t found something along the way. Food was abundant, even on the hot, dusty steppes, and particularly in the cool watery element—if one knew where and how to get it.
They nearly always managed to catch fish when they wanted to, using Ayla’s or Jondalar’s methods or a combination of the two. If the situation called for it, they used Ayla’s long net, walking in the water and holding it between them. Jondalar had devised a handle for some of her netting, creating a kind of dip net. He wasn’t entirely happy with it yet, but it was useful in certain circumstances. He also fished with a line and gorge—a piece of bone he had sharpened to a keen tapered point on both ends and tied in the middle with a strong cord. Pieces of fish, meat, or earthworms were threaded onto it for bait. Once it was swallowed, a quick jerk usually caused the gorge to lodge sideways in the throat of the fish with a point sticking in each side.
Sometimes Jondalar caught rather large fish with the gorge, and after losing one of these he made a gaff to help bring others in. He started with the forking branch of a tree, cut off just below the joint. The longer arm of the fork was used as the handle; the shorter one was sharpened into a backward point and used as a hook to haul the fish in. There were some small trees and high brush near the river, and the first gaffs he made worked, but he never seemed to find a sturdy enough forking branch to last very long. The weight and struggles of a big fish often broke it, and he kept looking for stronger wood.
He passed by the antler the first time he saw it, registering its existence and that it had probably been shed by a three-year-old red deer, but not really paying attention to its shape. But the antler stayed on his mind, unt
il he suddenly remembered the backward-pointing brow tine, and then he went back to get it. Antlers were tough and hard, and very difficult to break, and it was just the right size and shape. With a little sharpening, it would make an excellent gaff.
Ayla still fished by hand on occasion, the way Iza had taught her. It amazed Jondalar to watch her. The process was simple, he kept telling himself, though he hadn’t been able to master it. It just took practice, and skill, and patience—infinite patience. Ayla looked for roots or driftwood or rocks that overhung the bank, and then for fish that liked to rest in those places. They always faced upstream, into the oncoming current, moving swim muscles and fins just enough to keep them in one place, so they would not be swept away by the current.
When she saw a trout or small salmon, she entered the water downstream, let her hand dangle in the river, then waded slowly upstream. She moved even more slowly when she got closer to the fish, trying not to stir the mud or disturb the water, which could cause the resting swimmer to dart away. Carefully, from the rear, she slipped her hand underneath it, touching lightly, or tickling, which the fish didn’t seem to notice. When she reached the gills, she grabbed hold swiftly and scooped the fish out of the water onto the bank. Jondalar usually ran to get it before it flopped back into the river.
Ayla also discovered freshwater mussels, similar to the ones that were in the sea near the cave of Brun’s clan. She looked for plants like pigweed, salt bush, and coltsfoot, high in natural salt, to restore their somewhat depleted reserves, along with other roots, leaves, and seeds that were beginning to ripen. Partridges were common on the open grassland and scrub near the water, with family coveys joining to form large flocks. The plump birds were good eating and not too hard to catch.
They rested during the worst heat of the day, after noon, while the food for their main meal cooked. With only stunted trees near the river, they set up their tent as a lean-to awning to provide a little shade from the searing heat of the open landscape. Late in the afternoon, when it started to cool down, they continued on their way. Riding into the setting sun, they used their conical woven hats to screen their eyes. They began looking for a likely place to stop for the night as the glowing orb dipped below the horizon, setting up their simple camp in twilight, and occasionally, when the moon was full and the steppes ablaze with its cool glow, they rode on into the night.