The Earth's Children Series 6-Book Bundle

by Jean M. Auel

  “Creb! Durc! Where are you?” Ayla called out, bolting up.

  “Ayla, you’re dreaming again,” Jondalar said, sitting up, too.

  “They’re gone. Why wouldn’t he let me go with them?” Ayla said, with tears in her eyes and a sob in her voice.

  “Who’s gone?” he said, taking her in his arms.

  “Durc is gone, and Creb wouldn’t let me go with him. He blocked the way. Why wouldn’t he let me go with him?” she said, crying in his arms.

  “It was a dream, Ayla. It was only a dream. Maybe it means something, but it was just a dream.”

  “You’re right. I know you’re right, but it felt so real,” Ayla said.

  “Have you been thinking about your son, Ayla?”

  “I guess I have,” she said. “I’ve been thinking I’ll never see him again.”

  “Maybe that’s why you dreamed about him. Zelandonii always said when you have a dream like that, you should try to remember everything about it, and that someday you might understand it,” Jondalar said, trying to see her face in the dark. “Go back to sleep now.”

  They both lay awake for some time, but finally they dozed off again. When they woke up the next morning, the sky was overcast and Jondalar was anxious to be on their way, but Wolf had still not returned. Ayla whistled for him periodically as they struck their tent and repacked their gear, but he still did not appear.

  “Ayla, we need to go. He’ll catch up with us, just like he always does,” Jondalar said.

  “I’m not going until I know where he is,” she said. “You can go or wait here. I’m going to look for him.”

  “How can you look for him? That animal could be anywhere.”

  “Maybe he went back down. He did like Shamio,” Ayla said. “Maybe we should go back to look for him.”

  “We’re not going back! Not after we’ve come this far.”

  “I will if I have to. I’m not going until I find Wolf,” she said.

  Jondalar shook his head as Ayla started backtracking. It was obvious she was adamant. They could have been well on their way by now if it wasn’t for that animal. As far as he was concerned, the Sharamudoi could have him!

  Ayla kept whistling for him as she went along, and suddenly, just as she was starting back into the woods, he appeared on the other side of the clearing and raced toward her. He jumped up on her, almost knocking her over, put his paws on her shoulder, and licked her mouth, gently biting her jaw.

  “Wolf! Wolf, there you are! Where have you been?” Ayla said, grabbing his ruff, rubbing her face next to his, and putting her teeth on his jaw to greet him in return. “I was so worried about you. You shouldn’t run off like that.”

  “Do you think we can get started now?” Jondalar said. “The morning is half-gone.”

  “At least he did come, and we didn’t have to go all the way back,” Ayla said, leaping up on Whinney’s back. “Which way do you want to go? I’m ready.”

  They rode across the pasture without speaking, irritated with each other, until they came to a ridge. Riding alongside, they looked for a way over it and finally came to a steep grade with sliding gravel and boulders. It appeared very unstable, and Jondalar continued trying to find another way. If it had been just them, they might have been able to climb over at several places, but the only way that seemed at all passable for the horses was the slope of sliding rock.

  “Ayla, do you think the horses can climb that? I don’t think there’s any other way, except going down and trying to find some way around,” Jondalar said.

  “You said you didn’t want to go back,” she said, “especially for an animal.”

  “I don’t, but if we have to, we have to. If you think it’s too dangerous for the horses, we won’t try it.”

  “What if I thought it was too dangerous for Wolf? Would we leave him behind then?” Ayla said.

  To Jondalar, the horses were useful, and though he liked the wolf, the man simply did not think it was necessary to delay their passage for him. But it was obvious that Ayla did not agree, and he had sensed an undercurrent of division between them, a feeling of strain probably because she wanted to stay with the Sharamudoi. He thought that once they put some distance between them, she would look forward to reaching their destination, but he didn’t want to make her more unhappy than she was.

  “It’s not that I wanted to leave Wolf behind. I just thought he would catch up with us, like he has before,” Jondalar said, although he had been nearly ready to leave him.

  She sensed there was something more to it than he said, but she didn’t like to have the distance of disagreement between them, and now that Wolf had come back, she was relieved. With her anxiety gone, her anger dissipated. She dismounted and started climbing up the slope to test it. She wasn’t altogether certain the horses could make it, but he’d said they would look for another way if they couldn’t.

  “I’m not sure, but I think we should try it, Jondalar. I don’t think it’s quite as bad as it seems. If they can’t make it, then we can go back and see if we can find some other way,” she said.

  It actually wasn’t quite as unstable as it appeared. Although there were a few bad moments, they were both surprised at how well the horses negotiated the slope. They were glad to put it behind them, but as they continued to climb, they encountered other difficult areas. In their mutual concern for each other and the horses, they were talking comfortably again.

  The slope was easy for Wolf. He had run up to the top and back down again while they were carefully leading the horses up. When they reached the top, Ayla whistled for him and waited. Jondalar watched her and it occurred to him that she seemed much more protective toward the animal. He wondered why, thought about asking her, changed his mind afraid she would get angry, then decided to bring it up anyway.

  “Ayla, am I wrong, or are you more concerned about Wolf than you were? You used to let him come and go. I wish you’d tell me what’s troubling you. You were the one who said we shouldn’t keep things from each other.”

  She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, her forehead wrinkled in a frown. Then she looked up at him. “You’re right. It’s not that I was keeping it from you. I’ve been trying to keep it from myself. Remember those deer down there, that were rubbing the velvet off their antlers?”

  “Yes.” Jondalar nodded.

  “I’m not sure, but it might be the season of Pleasures for wolves, too. I don’t even want to think about it, for fear that would make it happen, but Tholie brought it up when I was talking about Baby leaving to find his own mate. She asked me if I thought Wolf would leave someday, like Baby did. I don’t want Wolf to leave, Jondalar. He’s almost like a child to me, like a son.”

  “What makes you think he will?”

  “Before Baby left, he would go off for longer and longer times. First a day, then several days, and sometimes, when he came back, I could see he had been fighting. I knew he was looking for a mate. And he found one. Now, every time Wolf goes, I’m afraid he’s looking for a mate,” Ayla said.

  “So that’s it. I’m not sure we can do anything about it, but is it likely?” Jondalar asked. Unbidden came the thought that he wished it was. He didn’t want her to be unhappy, but more than once the wolf had delayed them or caused tension between them. He had to admit that if Wolf found a mate and went off with her, he would wish him well and be glad he was gone.

  “I don’t know,” Ayla said. “So far, he’s come back every time, and he seems happy to be traveling with us. He greets me like he thinks we are his pack, but you know how it is with Pleasures. It is a powerful Gift. The need can be very strong.”

  “That’s true. Well, I don’t know if there is anything you can do about it, but I’m glad you told me.”

  They rode together in silence for a while, up another high meadow, but it was a companionable silence. He was glad she had told him. At least he understood her strange behavior a little better. She had been acting like an overly concerned mother, though he was glad she d
idn’t normally. He’d always felt sorry for the boys whose mothers didn’t want them to do things that might be a little dangerous, like going deep in a cave, or climbing high places.

  “Look, Ayla. There’s an ibex,” Jondalar said, pointing to a nimble and beautiful goatlike animal with long, curved horns. It was perched on a precipitous ledge high up on the mountain. “I have hunted those before. And look over there. Those are chamois!”

  “Are those really the animal the Shamudoi hunt?” Ayla asked as she watched the antelope relative of the wild mountain goat, with smaller upright horns, gamboling across inaccessible peaks and scarp faces of rock.

  “Yes. I’ve gone with them.”

  “How can anybody hunt animals like that? How do you reach them?”

  “It’s a matter of climbing up behind them. They tend to look down all the time for danger, so if you can get above them, you can usually get close enough for a kill. You can see why the spear-thrower would be a great advantage,” Jondalar explained.

  “It makes me appreciate that outfit Roshario gave me even more,” Ayla said.

  They continued their climb and by afternoon were just below the snow line. Sheer walls reared up on both sides of them with patches of ice and snow not far above. The top of the slope ahead was outlined with blue sky and seemed to lead to the very edge of the world. As they topped the rise, they halted and looked. The view was spectacular.

  Behind them was a clear vista of their climb up the mountain from the tree line. Below that the evergreen-carpeted slopes cushioned the hard rock and disguised the rough terrain they had struggled over. To the east they could even see the plain below with its braided ribbons of water flowing sluggishly across it, which surprised Ayla. The Great Mother River seemed hardly more than a few trickles from their vantage point on the frigid mountaintop, and she couldn’t quite believe that ages ago they had sweltered in the heat traveling beside her. In front of them was a view of the next mountain ridge somewhat below and the deep valley of feathery green spires that separated them. Looming close above were the glimmering icebound peaks.

  Ayla looked around in awe, her eyes glistening with wonder, moved by the grandeur and beauty of the sight. In the chill, sharp air, puffs of steam escaping her mouth made every excited breath perceptible.

  “Oh, Jondalar, we are higher than everything. I have never been so high. I feel like we’re on the very top of the world!” she said. “And it’s so … so beautiful, so exciting.”

  As the man watched her expressions of wonder, her sparkling eyes, her beautiful smile, his own enthusiasm for the dramatic panorama was fired by her sheer excitement, and he was moved with immediate desire for her.

  “Yes, so beautiful, so exciting,” he said. Something in his voice sent a shiver through her and made her turn away from the extraordinary view to look at him.

  His eyes were such an impossibly rich shade of blue, it seemed for a moment that he had stolen two small pieces of the deep, luminous blue sky, and filled them with his love and wanting. She was caught by them, captured by his ineffable charm, whose source was as unknowable to her as the magic of his love, but which she could not—and did not want to—deny. Just his desire for her had always been his “signal.” For Ayla, it was not an act of will but a physical reaction, a need as strong and driving as his own.

  Without being aware that she moved, Ayla was in his arms, feeling his strong embrace and his warm and eager mouth on hers. There was certainly no lack of Pleasures in her life; they shared that Gift of the Mother regularly, with great enjoyment, but this moment was exceptional. Perhaps it was the excitement of the setting, but she felt a heightened awareness of every sensation. Every place she felt the pressure of his body on hers, a tingling coursed through her; his hands on her back, his arms around her, his thighs against hers. The bulge in his groin, felt through the thicknesses of fur-lined winter parkas, seemed warm, and his lips on hers gave her an indescribable sense of wanting him never to stop.

  The instant he released her and stepped back enough to unfasten the closures of her outer garment, her body ached with the desire and expectation of his touch. She could hardly wait, yet she did not want him to hurry. When he reached under her tunic to cup her breast, she was glad his hands were cold for the contrasting shock to the heat she felt inside. She gasped when he squeezed a hard nipple, feeling fires that raised goosebumps as they raced through her to the place deep inside that burned with wanting more.

  Jondalar sensed her powerful reactions and felt a corresponding increase in his own heat. His member surged erect and pulsed with its fullness. He felt her smooth warm tongue reaching inside his mouth and suckled it. Then he released it to seek the soft warmth of hers, and he suddenly felt an overwhelming desire to taste the warm salt and feel the moist folds of her other opening, but he did not want to stop kissing her. He wished he could have all of her all at once. He took both breasts in his hands, played with both nipples, squeezing, rubbing, then lifted her tunic and took one in his mouth and suckled hard, feeling her push against him and hearing her moan with pleasure.

  He felt a throbbing and imagined his full manhood being inside her. They kissed again and she felt the strength of her need and her wanting grow. She was hungry for his touch, his hands, his body, his mouth, his manhood.

  He was pushing her parka off, and she shrugged out of it, delighting in the cold wind that felt hot with his mouth on hers and his hands on her body. He untied the drawstring of her leggings; she felt them being pulled down, and off. Then they were both down on her parka, and his hands were caressing her hips, and her stomach, and the inside of her thighs. She opened to his touch.

  He moved down between her legs, and the warmth of his tongue as he tasted her shot spikes of excitement through her. She was so sensitive, her reactions so powerful, it was almost unbearable, unbearably stimulating.

  He sensed her strong and immediate response to his light touch. Jondalar had been trained as a flint knapper, a maker of stone tools and hunting weapons, and was among the most skilled because he was sensitive to the stone with its fine and subtle variations. Women responded to his perception and sensitive handling the way a fine piece of flint did, and both brought out the best in him. He sincerely loved to see a fine tool emerge from a good piece of flint under his deft touch, or to feel a woman aroused to her full potential, and he had spent a great deal of time practicing both.

  With his natural inclination and genuine desire to be aware of a woman’s feelings, particularly Ayla’s, at that most intimate of moments, he knew that a featherlight touch would arouse her more, at that moment, though a different technique might be suitable later.

  He kissed the inside of her thigh, then ran his tongue up and noticed that chill bumps appeared. In the cold wind, he felt her shiver, and though she had her eyes closed and did not object, he could see she was covered with gooseflesh. He got up and took off his own parka to cover her but left her bare below the waist.

  Although she hadn’t minded, his fur-lined outer garment, still warm from his body and filled with his masculine scent, felt wonderful. The contrast of the cold wind blowing across the skin of her thighs, wet from his tongue, made her shiver with delight. She felt the warm wetness moisten her folds, and the instant shiver from the cold filled her with a fierce heat. With a moan, she arched up to him.

  With both hands, he held her folds apart, admired the beautiful pink flower of her feminine self and, unable to restrain himself, warmed the cooling petals with his wet tongue, savoring the taste of her. She felt the warmth, then the cold, and quivered in response. This was a new feeling, not something he had done before. He was using the very air of the mountaintop as a means to bring her Pleasure, and at some inner level she marveled.

  But as he continued, the air was forgotten. With stronger pressure and the familiar provocation of his mouth and hands, stimulating, encouraging, inciting her senses to respond, she lost all sense of where she was. She felt only his mouth sucking, his tongue licking and pro
dding her place of Pleasure, his knowing fingers reaching inside, and then only the rising tide within her reaching a crest, and washing over her, while she reached for his manhood and guided it to her well. She pushed up as he filled it.

  He sunk his shaft deeply, closing his eyes as he felt her warm, moist embrace. He waited a moment, then pulled back and felt the caress of her deep tunnel, and pushed in again. He plunged in, retracted, each stroke bringing him closer, the pressure inside him building. He heard her moan, felt her rise to him, and then he was there, and he exploded with the release of wave after wave of Pleasure.

  In the silence, only the wind spoke. The horses had waited patiently; the wolf had watched with interest, but had learned to contain his more active curiosity. Finally Jondalar lifted himself, rested on his arms, and looked down at the woman he loved.

  “Ayla, what if we started a baby?” he asked.

  “Don’t worry, Jondalar. I don’t think we did.” She was grateful she had found more of her contraceptive plants, and she was tempted to tell him, as she had told Tholie. But Tholie had been so shocked at first, even though she was a woman, that Ayla didn’t dare mention it. “I’m not certain, but I don’t think this would be a time when I could get pregnant,” she said, and it was true she wasn’t absolutely certain.

  Iza did have a daughter, eventually, even though she had taken the contraceptive tea for years. Perhaps the special plants lost their effectiveness after long use, Ayla thought, or maybe Iza forgot to take it, though that was unlikely. Ayla wondered what would happen if she stopped drinking her morning tea.

  Jondalar hoped she was right, although a small part of him wished she wasn’t. He wondered if there would ever be a child at his hearth, a child born of his spirit, or perhaps, of his own essence.

  It was a few days before they reached the next ridge, which was lower, not much above the timberline, but from it they had their first sight of the broad western steppes. It was a crisp clear day, though it had snowed earlier, and in the far distance they glimpsed another, higher range of ice-encrusted mountains. On the plains below they saw a river flowing south into what appeared to be a great swollen lake.