The Earth's Children Series 6-Book Bundle

by Jean M. Auel

  “But you set his leg and fixed it so he could get back.”

  “He would have gotten back; I wasn’t worried about that. I was afraid his leg wouldn’t heal right. Then he wouldn’t be able to hunt.”

  “Is it so bad not to hunt? Couldn’t he do something else? Like those S’Armunai boys?”

  “The status of a Clan man depends on his ability to hunt, and his status means more to him than his life. Guban has responsibilities. He has two women at his hearth. His first woman has two daughters, and Yorga is pregnant. He promised to care for all of them.”

  “What if he can’t?” Jondalar asked. “What will happen to them?”

  “They wouldn’t starve, his clan would take care of them, but their status—the way they live, their food and clothes, the respect they are shown—depends on his status. And he would lose Yorga. She’s young and beautiful, another man would be glad to take her, but if she has the son Guban has always wanted, she would take him with her.”

  “What happens when he gets too old to hunt?”

  “An old man can give up hunting slowly, gracefully. He would go to live with the sons of his mate, or the daughters if they were still living with the same clan, and he wouldn’t be a burden on the whole clan. Zoug developed his skill with a sling so he could still contribute, and even Dorv’s advice was still valued, though he could hardly see. But Guban is a man in his prime, and a leader. To lose it all at once would take the heart out of him.”

  Jondalar nodded. “I think I understand. Not hunting wouldn’t bother me so much. I would hate it, though, if something happened to me so that I couldn’t work the flint anymore.” He paused to reflect, then said, “You did a lot for him, Ayla. Even if Clan women are different, shouldn’t that count for something? Couldn’t he at least acknowledge it?”

  “Guban expressed his gratitude to me, Jondalar, but it was subtle, as it had to be.”

  “It must have been subtle. I didn’t see it,” Jondalar said, looking surprised.

  “He communicated directly to me, not through you, and he paid attention to my opinions. He allowed his woman to speak to you, which acknowledged me as her equal, and since he has a very high status, so was hers. He thought very highly of you, you know. Paid you a compliment.”

  “He did?”

  “He thought your tools were well made and he admired your workmanship. If he hadn’t, he would not have accepted the walking sticks, or your token,” Ayla explained.

  “What would he have done? I accepted his tooth. I thought it was a strange gift, but I understood his meaning. I would have accepted his token, no matter what it was.”

  “If he had felt it was not appropriate, he would have refused it, but that token was more than a gift. He accepted a serious obligation. If he did not respect you, he would not have accepted your spirit piece in exchange for his; he values his too much. He would rather have an emptiness, a hole, than accept a piece of an unworthy spirit.”

  “You’re right. There are many subtleties to those Clan people, shades of meaning within shades of meaning. I don’t know if I’d ever be able to sort it all out,” Jondalar said.

  “Do you think the Others are any different? I still have trouble understanding all the shades within shades,” Ayla said, “but your people are more tolerant. Your people do more visiting, more traveling than the Clan, and they are more used to strangers. I’m sure I’ve made mistakes, but I think your people have overlooked them because I’m a visitor and they realize the customs of my people may be different.”

  “Ayla, my people are your people, too,” Jondalar said, gently.

  She looked at him as if she didn’t quite understand him at first. Then she said, “I hope so, Jondalar. I hope so.”

  The spruce and fir trees were thinning out and becoming stunted as the travelers climbed, but even though they could see past the vegetation, their route along the river took them beside outcrops and through deep valleys that blocked their view of the heights around them. At a bend in the river, an upland stream fell into the Middle Mother, which itself came from higher ground. The marrow-chilling air had caught and stilled the waters in the act of falling, and the strong dry winds had sculpted them into strange and grotesque shapes. Caricatures of living creatures captured by frost, poised to begin a headlong flight down the course of the long river, seemed to be waiting impatiently, as if knowing the turning of the season, and their release, was not far off.

  The man and woman led the horses carefully over the jumbled broken ice, and around to the higher ground of the frozen waterfall, then stopped, spellbound, as the massive plateau glacier loomed into view. They had caught glimpses of it before; now it seemed close enough to touch, but the stunning effect was misleading. The majestic, brooding ice with its nearly level top was farther away than it seemed.

  The frozen stream beside them was unmoving, but their eyes followed its tortuous route as it twisted and turned, then ducked out of sight. It reappeared higher up, along with several other narrow channels spaced at irregular intervals that leaked off the glacier like a handful of silvery ribbons trimming the massive cap of ice. Far mountains and nearer ridges framed the plateau with their rugged, sharp-edged, frozen tops, so starkly white their undertones of glacial blue seemed only to reflect the clear deep hue of the sky.

  The twin high peaks to the south, which for a while had accompanied their recent travels, had long since passed from view. A new high pinnacle that had appeared farther west was receding to the east, and the summits of the southern range that had traced their path still showed their glistening crowns.

  To the north were dual ridges of more ancient rock, but the massif that had formed the northern edge of the river valley had been left behind at the bend where the river turned back from its most northern point, before the place where they had met the people of the Clan. The river was closer to the new highland of limestone that had taken over as the northern boundary as they climbed southwest, toward the river’s source.

  The vegetation continued to change as they ascended. Spruce and silver fir gave ground to larch and pine on the acid soils that thinly covered the impervious bedrock, but these were not the stately sentinels of lower elevations. They had reached a patch of mountainous taiga, stunted evergreens whose crowns held a covering of hard-packed snow and ice that was cemented to the branches for most of the year. Though quite dense in places, any shoot brave enough to project above the others was quickly pruned by wind and frost, which reduced the tops of all the trees to a common level.

  Small animals moved freely along beaten tracks they had made beneath the trees, but large game forged trails by main force. Jondalar decided to veer away from the unnamed small stream they had been following, one of many that would eventually form the beginning of a great river, and take a game trail through the thick fringe of dwarfed conifers.

  As they approached the timberline, the trees thinned out and they could see the region beyond that was completely bereft of upright woody growths. But life is tenacious. Low-growing shrubs and herbs, and extensive fields of grassy turf, partly buried under a blanket of snow, still flourished.

  Though much more expansive, similar regions existed in the low elevations of the northern continents. Relict areas of temperate deciduous trees were maintained in certain protected areas and at the lower latitudes, with hardier needled evergreens appearing in the boreal regions to the north of them. Farther north, where they existed at all, trees were usually dwarfed and stunted. Because of the extensive glaciers, the counterparts of the high meadows that surrounded the perpetual ice of the mountains were the vast steppes and tundras, where only those plants that could complete their life cycles quickly survived.

  Above the timberline many hardy plants adapted to the harshness of the environment. Ayla, leading her mare, noticed the changes with interest, and she wished she had more time to examine the differences. The mountains in the region where she had grown up were much farther south, and because of the warming influence of the inland
sea, the vegetation was primarily of the cold temperate variety. The plants that existed in the higher elevations of the bitterly cold arid regions were fascinating to her.

  Stately willows, which graced nearly every river, stream, or brook that sustained even a trace of moisture, grew as low shrubs, and tall sturdy birches and pines became prostrate woody growths that crawled along the ground. Blueberries and bilberries spread out as thick carpets, only four inches high. She wondered if, like the berries that grew near the northern glacier, they bore full-size but sweeter and wilder fruits. Though the bare skeletons of withered branches gave evidence of many plants, she didn’t always know what variety they were, or how familiar plants might be different, and she wondered how the high meadows would look in warmer seasons.

  Traveling in the dead of winter, Ayla and Jondalar did not see the spring and summer beauty of the highlands. No wild roses or rhododendrons colored the landscape with blooms of pink; no crocuses or anemones, or beautiful blue gentians, or yellow narcissus were tempted to brave the harsh wind; and no primroses or violets would burst with polychrome splendor until the first warmth of spring. There were no bellflowers, rampions, worts, groundsels, daisies, lilies, saxifrages, pinks, monkshoods, or beautiful little edelweiss to ease the bitter cold monotony of the freezing fields of winter.

  But another, more awesome sight filled their view. A dazzling fortress of gleaming ice lay athwart their path. It blazed in the sun like a magnificent, many-faceted diamond. Its sheer crystalline white glowed with luminous blue shadows that hid its flaws: the crevasses, tunnels, caves, and pockets that riddled the gigantic gem.

  They had reached the glacier.

  As the travelers neared the crest of the worn stump of the primordial mountain that bore the flat-topped crown of ice, they weren’t even sure if the narrow mountain stream beside them was still the same river that had been their companion for so long. The diminutive trail of ice was indistinguishable from the many frozen little waterways waiting for spring to release their cascading flows to race down the crystalline rocks of the high plateau.

  The Great Mother River they had followed all the way from her broad delta where she had emptied into the inland sea, the great waterway that had guided their steps over so much of their arduous Journey, was gone. Even the ice-locked hint of a wild little stream would soon be left behind. The travelers would no longer have the comforting security of the river to show them the way. They would have to continue their Journey west by dead reckoning, with only the sun and stars to act as guides, and landmarks that Jondalar hoped he would remember.

  Above the high meadow, the vegetation was more intermittent. Only algae, lichens, and mosses that were typical of rocks and scree could derive a struggling existence beyond the cushion plants and a few other rare species. Ayla had begun to feed the horses some of the grass they carried for them. Without their heavy, shaggy coats and thick undercoat, neither horses nor wolf would have survived, but nature had adapted them to the cold. Lacking fur of their own, the humans had made their own adaptations. They took the furs of the animals they hunted; without them they would not have survived. But then, without the protection of furs and fire, their ancestors would never have come north in the first place.

  Ibex, chamois, and mouflon were at home in mountain meadows, including those in more precipitous rugged regions, and frequented higher ground, though usually not so late in the season, but horses were an anomaly at this high elevation. Even the gentler slopes of the massif did not usually encourage their kind to climb so high, but Whinney and Racer were sure-footed.

  The horses, with their heads bent low, plodded up the incline at the base of the ice hauling supplies and brownish-black burning stones that would mean the difference between life and death for all of them. The humans, who led the horses to places they would not ordinarily go, were looking for a level spot to set up a tent and make camp.

  They were all weary of fighting the intense cold and sharp wind, of climbing the steep terrain. It was exhausting work. Even the wolf was content to stay close rather than to run off and explore.

  “I’m so tired,” Ayla said as they were trying to set up camp with gusty winds blowing. “Tired of the wind, and tired of the cold. I don’t think it’ll ever get warm again. I didn’t know it could be so cold.”

  Jondalar nodded, acknowledging the cold, but he knew the cold they had yet to face would be worse. He saw her glance at the great mass of ice, then look away as though she didn’t want to see it, and he suspected she was concerned with more than cold.

  “Are we really going to go across all that ice?” she asked, finally acknowledging her fears. “Is it possible? I don’t even know how we’re going to get up to the top.”

  “It’s not easy, but it’s possible,” Jondalar said. “Thonolan and I did it. While there is still light, I’d like to look for the best way to get the horses up there.”

  “It feels like we’ve been traveling forever. How much farther do we have to go, Jondalar?”

  “It’s still a way to the Ninth Cave, but not too far, not near as far as we have come, and once we get across the ice, it’s only a short distance to Dalanar’s Cave. We’ll stop there for a while; it will give you a chance to meet him, and Jerika and everyone—I can hardly wait to show Dalanar and Joplaya some of the flint-knapping techniques I learned from Wymez—but even if we stay and visit, we should be home before summer.”

  Ayla felt distressed. Summer! But this is winter, she thought. If she had really understood how long the Journey would be, she wondered if she would have been so eager to go with Jondalar all the way back to his home. She might have tried harder to persuade him to stay with the Mamutoi.

  “Let’s go take a closer look at that glacier,” Jondalar said, “and plan the best way to get up on it. Then we should make sure we have everything and are ready to cross the ice.”

  “We’ll have to use some of the burning stones to make a fire tonight,” Ayla said. “There’s nothing to burn around here. And we’ll have to melt ice for water … we shouldn’t have any trouble finding enough of that.”

  Except for a few shaded pockets of negligible accumulation, there was no snow in the area where they camped, and there had been very little for most of their trek up the slope. Jondalar had only been that way once before, but the whole area seemed much drier than he remembered. He was right. They were in the rain shadow of the highland, the back side; the sparse snows that did fall in the region usually arrived a little later, after the season had begun to turn. He and Thonolan had run into a snowstorm on their way down.

  During the winter, the warmer, water-laden air, riding the prevailing winds coming from the western ocean, rose up the slopes until it reached the large level area of cold ice with high pressure centered over it. Having the effect of a giant funnel that was aimed at the high massif, the moist air cooled, condensed, and turned to snow, which fell only on the ice below, feeding the hungry maw of the demanding glacier.

  The ice covering the entire worn and rounded top of the ancient massif spread the precipitation over the whole area, creating a nearly level surface, except at the periphery. The cooled air, milked dry of liquid, dropped low and raced down the sides, bringing no snow beyond the edges of the ice.

  As Jondalar and Ayla hiked around the base of the ice looking for the easiest way up, they noticed areas that seemed newly disturbed, with dirt and rocks gouged up by prongs of advancing ice. The glacier was growing.

  In many areas, the ancient rock of the highland was exposed at the foot of the glacier. The massif, folded and uplifted by the immense pressures that had created the mountains to the south, had once been a solid block of crystalline granite that incorporated a similar highland to the west. The forces that pushed against the immovable old mountain, the most ancient rock on earth, left evidence in the form of a great rift, a fault that had cleaved the block asunder.

  Directly across toward the west, on the opposite side of the glacier, the massif’s western slope was s
teep, and matched by an east-facing parallel edge across the rift valley. A river flowed along the middle of the broad valley floor of the fault trough protected by the high parallel sides of the cracked massif. But Jondalar planned to head southwest, to cross the glacier diagonally and come down a more gradual grade. He wanted to cross the river nearer its source high in the southern mountains, before it flowed around the glaciered massif and through the rift valley.

  “Where did this come from?” Ayla asked, holding up the object in question. It consisted of two oval wooden disks mounted in a frame that held them rigid and fastened fairly close together, with leather thongs attached to the outside edges. A thin slit was cut the long way down the middle of the wooden ovals for almost the full length, nearly dividing them in half.

  “I made it before we left. I have one for you, too. It’s for your eyes. Sometimes the glare of the ice on the glacier is so bright that you can’t see anything but white—people call it snow-blind. The blindness usually goes away after a while, but your eyes can get awfully red and sore. This will protect your eyes. Go ahead, put it on,” Jondalar said. Then, seeing her fumble with them, he added, “Here, I’ll show you.” He put the unusual sunshields on and tied the thongs behind his head.

  “How can you see?” Ayla asked. She could just barely make out his eyes behind the long horizontal slits, but she put on the pair he gave her. “You can see almost everything! You just have to turn your head to see to the side.” She was surprised; then she smiled. “You look so funny with your big blank eyes, like some kind of strange spirit … or a bug. Maybe the spirit of a bug.”

  “You look funny, too,” he said, smiling back, “but those bug eyes could save your life. You need to see where you are going up on the ice.”

  “These mouflon-wool boot liners from Madenia’s mother have been so nice to have,” Ayla commented as she put them in a handy place to get at them easily. “Even when they’re wet, they keep your feet warm.”