by Jean M. Auel
“Thonolan is my brother, Darvo …”
“And I’m nothing.”
“That’s not true. You must know how much I care about you. But Thonolan is so full of grief, he’s not reasonable. I fear for him. I can’t let him go alone, and if I don’t look after him, who will? Please try to understand, I don’t want to go farther east.”
“Will you come back?”
Jondalar paused. “I don’t know. I can’t promise. I don’t know where we’re going, how long we’ll travel.” He proffered the shirt, “That’s why I want to give you this, so you’ll have something to remember the ‘Zelandonii man.’ Darvo, listen to me. You will always be the first son of my hearth.”
The boy looked at the beaded tunic; then tears welled and threatened to break. “I’m not the son of your hearth!” he cried, then turned and ran from the dwelling.
Jondalar wanted to run after him. Instead, he placed the shirt on Darvo’s sleeping platform and walked slowly out.
Carlono frowned at the lowering clouds. “I think the weather will hold,” he said, “but if she really starts gusting, pull over to the shore, though you won’t find many places to land until you are through the gate. The Mother will split into channels when you reach the plain on the other side of the gate. Remember, keep to the left bank. She’ll swing north before you reach the sea, and then east. Soon after the turn, she is joined by a large river on the left, her last major tributary. A short distance beyond is the beginning of the delta—the outlet to the sea—but you still have a long way to go. The delta is huge, and dangerous; marsh and bogs and sandbars. The Mother separates again, usually into four, but sometimes more, main channels and many small ones. Keep to the left channel, the northern one. There’s a Mamutoi Camp on the north bank, close to the mouth.”
The experienced river man had gone over it before. He had even drawn a map in the dirt to help guide them to the end of the Great Mother River. But he believed repetition would reinforce their memory, especially if they had to make quick decisions. He wasn’t happy about the two young men traveling on the unfamiliar river without an experienced guide, but they insisted; or rather, Thonolan did, and Jondalar wouldn’t let him go alone. At least the tall man had gained some skill in handling boats.
They were standing on the wooden dock with their gear loaded in a small boat, but their departure lacked the usual excitement of such adventures. Thonolan was leaving only because he could not stay, and Jondalar would much rather have been setting out in the opposite direction.
The spark had gone out of Thonolan. His former outgoing friendliness was replaced by moodiness. His generally morose disposition was punctuated by a flaring temper—often leading to increased recklessness and careless disregard. The first real argument between the two brothers had not come to blows only because Jondalar had refused to fight. Thonolan had accused his brother of wet-nursing him like an infant, demanding the right to his own life without being followed around. When Thonolan heard of Serenio’s possible pregnancy, he was furious that Jondalar would consider leaving a woman who probably carried the child of his spirit, to follow a brother to some unknown destination. He insisted that Jondalar stay and provide for her as any decent man would.
In spite of Serenio’s refusal to mate, Jondalar couldn’t help feeling Thonolan was right. It had been drilled into him since birth that a man’s responsibility, his sole purpose, was to provide support for mothers and children, particularly a woman who had been blessed with a child that in some mysterious way might have absorbed his spirit. But Thonolan would not stay, and Jondalar, afraid his brother would do something irrational and dangerous, insisted upon accompanying him. The tension between them was still oppressive.
Jondalar didn’t quite know how to say good-bye to Serenio; he was almost afraid to look at her. But she had a smile on her face when he bent to kiss her, and though her eyes seemed a little swollen and red, she allowed no emotion to show in them. He searched for Darvo and was disappointed that the boy was not among those who had come down to the dock. Nearly everyone else was there. Thonolan was already in the small boat when Jondalar climbed in and settled himself in the rear seat. He took up his oar and, while Carlono untied the rope, he looked up one last time at the high terrace. A boy was standing near the edge. The shirt he was wearing would take a few years for him to fill out, but the pattern was distinctly Zelandonii. Jondalar smiled, then waved with his oar. Darvo waved back as the tall blond Zelandonii man dipped the double-ended paddle into the river.
The two brothers pulled into midstream and looked back at the dockful of people—friends. As they headed downstream, Jondalar wondered if they would ever see the Sharamudoi again, or anyone he knew. The Journey that had begun as an adventure had lost its edge of excitement, yet he was being drawn, almost against his will, farther away from home. What could Thonolan hope to find going east? And what could there possibly be for him in that direction?
The great river gorge was foreboding under the gray overcast sky. Naked rock reared out of the water from deep roots and rose in towering bulwarks on both sides. On the left bank, a series of ramparts of sharp, angular rock climbed in rugged relief all the way to the distant glaciered peaks; on the right, weathered and eroded, the rounded mountaintops gave the illusion of mere hills, but their height was daunting from the small boat. Large boulders and pinnacles broke the surface, parting the current into curls of white water.
They were a part of the medium in which they traveled, propelled by it like the debris floating on its skin and the silt within its silent depths. They did not control their speed or direction; they only steered a course around obstructions. Where the river stretched out more than a mile in width, and swells lifted and dipped the small craft, it seemed more like a sea. When the sides drew together, they could feel the change in energy as the flow was resisted; the current was stronger when the same volume of water surged through the constricted gates.
They had traveled more than a quarter of the way through, perhaps twenty-five miles, when the threatened rain broke forth in a furious squall, whipping up waves they feared would swamp the little wooden boat. But there was no shore, only the steep wet rock.
“I can steer if you bail, Thonolan,” Jondalar said. They hadn’t talked much, but some of the tension between them had dissipated as they paddled in harmony to keep the craft on course.
Thonolan shipped his oar and, with a square wooden scooplike implement, tried to empty the small vessel. “It’s filling as fast as I can bail,” he called over his shoulder.
“I don’t think this will last long. If you can keep up with it, I think we’ll make it,” Jondalar replied, struggling through the choppy water.
The heavy weather lifted, and, though clouds still menaced, they made their way through the entire gorge without further incident.
Like the relaxation that comes with the removal of a tight belt, the swollen muddy river spread out when she reached the plains. Channels twined around islands of willow and reed; nesting grounds for cranes and herons, transitory geese and ducks, and innumerable other birds.
They camped the first night on the flat grassy prairie of the left bank. The foot of the alpine peaks was pulling back from the river’s edge, but the rounded mountains of the right bank held the Great Mother River to her eastward course.
Jondalar and Thonolan settled into a traveling routine so quickly that it seemed they had not stopped for those years while they were living with the Sharamudoi. Yet it wasn’t the same. Gone was the light-hearted sense of adventure, seeking whatever lay around the bend for the simple joy of discovery. Instead, Thonolan’s drive to keep moving was tainted with desperation.
Jondalar had attempted once more to talk his brother into turning back, but it led to a bitter argument. He didn’t bring it up again. They spoke mostly to exchange necessary information. Jondalar could only hope that time would assuage Thonolan’s grief, and that someday he would decide to return home and take up his life again. Until then, he was d
etermined to stay with him.
The two brothers traveled much faster on the river in the small dugout than they could have walked along the edge. Riding on the current, they sped along with ease. As Carlono had predicted, the river turned north when it reached a barrier of ancient mountain stumps, far older than the raw mountains around which the great river flowed. Though ground down with their hoary age, they intervened between the river and the inland sea she strove to reach.
Undeterred, she sought another way. Her northward strategy worked, but not until, when she made her final swing to the east, one more large river brought a contribution of water and silt to the overburdened Mother. With her way finally clear, she could not hold herself to one path. Though she had many miles to go, she split up once again into many channels in a fan-shaped delta.
The delta was a morass of quicksand, salt marsh, and insecure little islands. Some of the silty islets stayed in place several years, long enough for small trees to send down tenuous roots, only to be washed away at the vicissitude of seasonal flood or eroding seepage. Four major channels—depending on season and happenstance—cut through to the sea, but their courses were inconstant. For no apparent reason, the water would suddenly switch from a deeply worn bed to a new path, tearing up brush and leaving a sinkhole of soft wet sand.
The Great Mother River—eighteen hundred miles and two glacier-covered mountain ranges of water—had nearly reached her destination. But the delta with its hundreds of square miles of mud, silt, sand, and water was the most dangerous section of the entire river.
By following the deepest of the left channels, the river had not been hard to navigate. The current had taken the small log boat around its sweeping northward turn, and even the final large tributary had only pushed them to midstream. But the brothers didn’t anticipate that she would break into channels so soon. Before they realized it, they were swept into a middle channel.
Jondalar had gained considerable skill in handling the small craft, and Thonolan could manage one, but they were far from being as capable as the expert boatmen of the Ramudoi. They tried to turn the dugout around, retreat back upstream, and reenter the proper channel. They would have done better to reverse the direction they were rowing—the shape of the stern was not so different from the shape of the prow—but they didn’t think of it.
They were crosswise against the current, Jondalar shouting instructions to Thonolan to get the front end turned around, and Thonolan becoming impatient. A large log with an extensive root system—heavy, water-soaked, and lying low in the water—was washing down the river, the sprawling roots raking along everything in their path. The two men saw it—too late.
With a splintering crash, the jagged end of the huge log, brittle and blacker where it had once been struck by lightning, rammed broadside into the thin-walled dugout. Water rushed in through a hole punched into the side and quickly swamped the small canoe. As the snag bore down on them, one long root finger just below the water’s surface jabbed Jondalar in the ribs and knocked him breathless. Another barely missed Thonolan’s eye, leaving a long scratch across his cheek.
Suddenly immersed in the cold water, Jondalar and Thonolan clung to the snag and watched with dismay as a few bubbles rose while the little craft, with all their possessions lashed firmly to it, sank to the bottom.
Thonolan had heard his brother’s grunt of pain. “Are you all right, Jondalar?”
“A root jabbed me in the ribs. Hurts a bit, but I don’t think it’s serious.”
With Jondalar following slowly, Thonolan started working his way around the snag, but the force of the current as they were swept along kept pushing them back into the log with the rest of the debris. Suddenly, the snag caught on a sandbar under the water. The river, flowing around and through the open network of roots, pushed out objects that had been held under by the force of the current, and a whole bloated reindeer carcass rose to the surface in front of Jondalar. He moved to get out of its way, feeling the pain in his side.
Free of the log, they swam to a narrow island in midchannel. It supported a few young willows, but it was not stable and would be washed away before long. The trees near the edge were already partly submerged, drowned, with no green buds of spring leaves on the branches, and, with roots losing their hold, some were leaning over the rushing flow. The ground was a spongy bog.
“I think we should keep on going and try to find a drier place,” Jondalar said.
“You are in a lot of pain—don’t tell me you aren’t.”
Jondalar admitted to some discomfort, “But we can’t stay here,” he added.
They slid into the cold water across the narrow island bar. The current was swifter than they expected, and they were swept much farther downstream before they reached dry land. They were tired, cold, and disappointed when they found themselves to be on still another narrow islet. It was wider, longer, and somewhat higher than the level of the river, but soggy with no dry wood to be found.
“We can’t make a fire here,” Thonolan said. “We’ll have to keep going. Where did Carlono say that Mamutoi Camp was?”
“At the north end of the delta, close to the sea,” Jondalar replied, and he looked with longing in that direction as he spoke. The pain in his side had become more intense and he wasn’t sure if he could swim across another channel. All he could see was surging water, tangled pockets of debris, and a few trees marking an occasional island. “No telling how far that is.”
They squished through the mud to the north side of the narrow strip of land and plunged into the cold water. Jondalar noted a stand of trees downstream and made for it. They staggered up a beach of gray sand at the far side of the channel, breathing heavily. Rivulets of water ran from their long hair and soaked leather clothing.
The late afternoon sun broke through a rift in the overcast sky with a wash of golden brilliance but little warmth. A sudden gust from the north brought a chill that quickly penetrated wet clothes. They had been warm enough while they were active, but the effort had sapped their reserves. They shivered in the wind, then plodded toward the scant shelter of a sparse stand of alder.
“Let’s make camp here,” Jondalar said.
“It’s still light. I’d rather keep going.”
“It will be dark by the time we make a shelter and try to get a fire started.”
“If we keep going, we could probably find the Mamutoi Camp before dark.”
“Thonolan, I don’t think I can.”
“How bad is it?” Thonolan asked. Jondalar lifted his tunic. A wound on his rib was discoloring around a gash that had no doubt bled, but had been closed off by water-swelled tissue. He noticed the hole punctured in the leather then, wondering if his rib was broken.
“I wouldn’t mind a rest and a fire.”
They looked around them at the wild expanse of swirling muddy water, shifting sandbars, and an unkempt profusion of vegetation. Tangled tree limbs attached to dead trunks were pulled by the current unwillingly toward the sea, digging in wherever they could find purchase in the fluctuating bottom. In the distance a few stands of greening brush and trees were anchored to some of the more stable islands.
Reeds and marsh grasses took hold anywhere they could root. Nearby, three-foot tussocks of sedge, whose clumps of sprawling grassy leaves looked sturdier than they were, matched in height by the straight sword-shaped leaves of sweetflag, grew between mats of spike rush that was barely an inch tall. In the marsh near the water’s edge, ten-foot-tall scouring rushes, cattails, and bulrushes dwarfed the men. Soaring over all, stiff-leafed phragmite reeds with tops of purple plumes reached thirteen feet or more.
The men had only the clothes on their backs. They had lost everything when the boat went down, even the backframes they had traveled with from the beginning. Thonolan had adopted the dress of the Shamudoi, and Jondalar wore the Ramudoi variation, but after his dunking in the river when he met the flatheads, he had kept a pouch of tools tied to his belt. He was grateful for it now.
&nbs
p; “I’m going to see if there are some old stalks on those Cattails that are dry enough for a fire drill,” Jondalar said, trying to ignore the pain in his side. “See if you can find some dry wood.”
The cattails provided more than an old-growth woody stalk for a fire drill. The long leaves woven around an alder-wood frame made a lean-to, which helped contain the heat from the fire. The green tops and young roots, baked in the coals along with the sweet rhizomes of the sweetflag and the underwater base of the bulrushes, supplied the beginning of a meal. A slender alder sapling, sharpened to a point and hurled with the accuracy of hunger, brought a couple of ducks to the fire as well. The men made flexible mats of the large, soft-stemmed bulrushes, then used them to extend the lean-to and to wrap around themselves while they dried their wet clothes. Later, they slept on the mats.
Jondalar did not sleep well. His side was sore and tender, and he knew there was something wrong inside, but he couldn’t think of stopping now. They had to find their way to solid ground first.
In the morning, they seined fish out of the river with wide mesh baskets made of cattail leaves and alder branches and cords made of stringy bark. They rolled the fire-making materials and flexible baskets inside the sleeping mats, tied them with the cord, and slung them over their backs. Taking their spears, they started out. The spears were only pointed sticks, but they had provided one meal—and the fish baskets had supplied another. Survival depended not so much on equipment as knowledge.
The two brothers had a small difference of opinion over which direction to go in. Thonolan thought they were across the delta and wanted to go east, toward the sea. Jondalar wanted to go north, sure there was yet another channel of the river to cross. They compromised and headed northeast. Jondalar was proved right, though he would have been much happier if he had been wrong. Near noon they reached the northernmost channel of the great river.
“Time to go swimming again,” Thonolan said. “Are you able?”
“Do I have any choice?”