by Jean M. Auel
19
Most of the people from neighboring Caves who had not gone to the Summer Meeting were at the Ninth Cave when the travelers arrived; word had been sent ahead by a runner and others had been watching out for them. A meal was ready and waiting. Hunters had gone out and brought down a megaceros, whose massive palmate antlers were still in velvet, bringing the blood supply that enabled them to grow to their magnificent and increasing size every year.
In mature males a set of antlers could span in excess of twelve feet, each one three feet in width, or more. The projecting tines were often cut off for other purposes, leaving a large, rather concave palm section of strong bone-like keratin material that was very serviceable. It could be used as a serving platter, or with a sharpened edge as a shovel, especially for moving soft material like ashes from a fireplace, or soft sand on the river’s edge, or snow. Shaped in a suitable way, it could also be used as an effective oar or rudder to help propel and steer rafts. The huge deer also supplied meat for a gathering of hungry travelers, as well as members of the Ninth Cave and their neighbors, with plenty left over for all.
The next morning the ones who were traveling with the First gathered their belongings, and some extra megaceros meat for the Journey, and walked the short distance to The Crossing. They waded across The River to the wooden dock in front of the shelter known as River Place, the Eleventh Cave of the Zelandonii. Several rafts made of small whole trees that were stripped into pliable logs, then lashed together, were tied up to the dock, a simple wooden structure that jutted out over the river. Some were being repaired; the rest were ready for use. One new one was being made. A series of logs laid out in a row on the beach showed the process of construction. They were aligned with the thicker end of the small trees at the back end, and the thinner, upper part of the trunks brought together into a kind of prow and pointing forward.
The horses had pulled the pole-drags to the Eleventh Cave with most of the gear of the travelers, but now everything had to be stowed on the rafts and tied down. Fortunately, the Zelandonii knew how to travel light. They brought only what they could carry themselves. The only extra weight was the poles and connecting pieces of the travoises. Except for Ayla and Jondalar, they hadn’t grown to depend on having the assistance of horses and pole-drags to help them carry their things.
The people of the Eleventh Cave, who would be guiding the rafts downstream, were directing the loading of the rafts, which had to be well balanced or they could be difficult to control. Jondalar and Ayla helped to load the long pole-drags onto the raft that would run first, the one that would carry the First, Willamar, and Jonokol. The heavier pole-drag, the one with the seat, had to be dismantled and was loaded on the second raft, which would float behind. It would take Amelana and Willamar’s two young apprentice traders, Tivonan and Palidar.
Ayla and Jondalar, with Jonayla of course, would ride the horses on the riverbank, if there was one, or they would wade or swim, or in some cases ride farther inland. There was one area of rapids in particular, places with high rock sides and rough water, that Kareja strongly suggested they ride around inland. She also pointed out that anyone who might be frightened by a difficult passage might want to walk the inland trail as well. A few years back they had lost a raft there and some people were injured, but none died.
While they were waiting, a woman came down from the rock shelter that was higher up and back from the water’s edge and went to talk with the First. She wanted the healer to look at her daughter, who was in great pain from her teeth. Ayla asked Jondalar to look after Jonayla; then she and the First followed the woman back up to the living shelter. It was smaller than the Ninth Cave’s shelter, but then most were. The people who lived there had made it comfortable. The woman took them to a small dwelling under the overhanging shelf. Inside, a young woman who could count perhaps sixteen years was tossing and turning on a sleeping roll, sweating profusely. One cheek was red and severely swollen. She was obviously suffering from a terrible toothache.
“I’ve had some experience with toothaches,” Ayla said to the young woman, recalling the time she helped Iza pull one of Creb’s teeth. “Would you let me look at it?”
The young woman sat up and shook her head, “No,” she said in a muffled voice. She stood up and went to the First, and touched the side of her face. “Just stop the pain.”
“Our Zelandoni gave us something for her pain before he left, but it seems so much worse now; the medicine doesn’t do much good,” the mother said.
Ayla watched Zelandoni. The big woman scowled and shook her head.
“I’ll give her some strong medicine that will put her to sleep,” the First said to the young woman’s mother. “And leave some with you to give her later.”
“Thank you. Thank you so much,” the mother said.
As Ayla and Zelandoni walked back down to the water’s edge, Ayla turned to her mentor with a questioning look. “Do you know what’s wrong with her tooth?”
“She’s had a problem since her teeth first started to grow in. She has too many, a double row,” the First said. Then seeing Ayla’s quizzical look, she explained. “She has two sets of teeth trying to grow into the same spaces at the same time, and they have grown in wrong, all crowded together. She had terrible teething pains when she was a baby, and again when her second teeth came in. After that she was fine for a while; the teeth didn’t hurt her for several years, but then the very back teeth started growing in and she started getting painful toothaches again.”
“Can’t some of the teeth be taken out?” Ayla said.
“Zelandoni of the Eleventh has tried, but they are packed so tightly together, he couldn’t get any out. The young woman tried herself a few moons ago, and ended up breaking some. Her toothaches have been worse since then. I think there may be suppuration and inflammation now, but she won’t let anyone look. I’m not sure her mouth will ever heal. She will probably die from those teeth. It might be kinder to give her too much of the pain medicine and let her go to the next world quietly,” the First said. “But that will be for her and her mother to decide.”
“But she’s so young, and she looks like a strong, healthy woman,” Ayla said.
“Yes, and it’s a shame she has to suffer so, but I’m afraid it won’t stop now until the Mother takes her,” the Donier said, “especially if she won’t let anyone help her.”
By the time they got back down to The River, the rafts were almost loaded. Two rafts were being used to hold the six travelers who would be floating downriver and some of the gear from the pole-drags. Ayla and Jondalar on horseback would wear their backframes and carry their own personal things. Of course, Wolf would manage quite well on his own. Kareja told them that they considered taking three rafts, but there were only enough people to handle two at the moment. They would have had to send for more people and wait until they arrived, so they decided two would be enough. They never took such long and possibly dangerous trips with fewer than two rafts.
The floating craft were pushed upstream by using one or more long poles to thrust against the bottom of the river, and were carried downstream by the current. Since that was their direction, once the rope that held a raft to the dock was released, the river made the work easy. The pole was used mainly to help steer the craft and to avoid jutting rocks. They used another steering mechanism as well: an antler of a megaceros with the tines removed and the central palm shaped into a rudder and attached to a handle. It was mounted in the center of the stern of the craft in such a way that it could be pivoted left or right to change direction. In addition, long oars were also shaped out of the palmate antlers of moose or megaceros and attached to poles to help propel and maneuver the floating wooden platforms. But it took skill and experience to keep the unwieldy, clumsy craft on course, and usually three people working closely together.
Ayla put the riding blankets on the backs of Whinney, Racer, and Gray, then attached a lead rope to the young mare, but put Jonayla in front of her on Whinney for no
w. There would be time enough to let Jonayla ride by herself when they weren’t riding in and out of a river. As soon as the first raft was pushed off from the dock, Ayla looked around for Wolf, then whistled for him. He came bounding up, shaking with excitement. He knew something was happening. Ayla and Jondalar directed the horses into the river and when they reached the deepest part near the middle, the animals swam, following the rafts for a while before striking out for the opposite shore.
The rafts made good speed heading south, and the horses following along managed not to fall too far behind the rafts as long as they were swimming or there was land on the edge of the river. When the walls of the cliffs closed in, they turned back into the river and let the horses swim in the deep, swift water. The second raft used the oars to slow down so the horses could catch up. When they did, Shenora, the woman who was steering the rudder of the first raft, called out, “Just beyond the next turn, there’s a low bank. You should get out there and go around the next series of cliffs. We’ll be running into some whitewater beyond that turnoff. It’s very rough and I don’t think it’s safe for you or the horses to stay in the water.”
“What about you and the people on the raft? Will you be safe?” Jondalar called back.
“We’ve done it before,” the woman said. “With a poler, a paddler, and me steering, we should be all right.”
Jondalar, guiding Gray by her lead, directed Racer toward the left with the rope attached to his halter, so that it would be easier to go ashore when they reached the place to get out. Ayla, with her arm around Jonayla, followed after. Wolf was swimming behind them.
Amelana and Willamar’s two apprentices, Tivonan and Palidar, were in the last raft, the one closest to them. Amelana seemed concerned, but she showed no inclination to get out and walk. The two young men were hovering around her; an attractive young woman was always appealing to young men, especially if she was pregnant. Zelandoni, Jonokol, and Willamar in the front raft were beyond the range of Jondalar’s voice now, and they were the ones he was most concerned about. But if the First decided not to get off the raft here, he supposed she must have thought it was safe enough.
As the horses walked out of the river, both animals and humans dripping water, the people on the rafts watched them go. Zelandoni observed the horses with the humans on their backs scrambling out of the water and up onto the riverbank, and was having second thoughts about her decision to stay on the platform of logs tied together with leather thongs, sinew, and fiber cordage. Suddenly she was longing for the feel of the earth beneath her feet. Although she had been poled upriver before, and had floated down calmer waters, she had never chosen to take the whitewater route to Big River before, but Jonokol and in particular Willamar had seemed so unconcerned, she couldn’t bring herself to admit her fears.
Before she knew it, a bend in the river and a cliff alongside it blocked her view of the last place to escape from the churning water. Zelandoni turned her head back around to the front and frantically searched for the rope handles extending from the ties that held the logs together, which she had been shown when she climbed aboard the floating structure. She was sitting on a heavy cushion made of leather somewhat waterproofed with grease that had been burnished into the hide, but a good soaking was expected when riding a raft.
Ahead, the river was a raging mass of foaming white water. It came up between the logs, and splashed over the sides and front. She noticed the roar of the roiling river growing louder as the powerful current carried them between cliffs rising high on both sides of the rushing waterway.
Then they were in the middle of the maelstrom, with water splashing over rocks and around boulders that had been eroded away from the cliffs and outcrops by the forces of extreme cold, fierce winds, and rough water. The First stifled a gasp when she felt a spray of cold water on her face as the front of the raft dove into the churning, racing whitewater.
Usually, if there were no storms or tributaries adding more to the volume, the quantity of water in The River stayed about the same, but a change in the riverbed and channel changed the condition of the flow. At a crossing place, where the river widened out and became more shallow, the water rippled and bubbled easily around the rocks in the middle of the stream, but as the cliff walls drew closer together, and the slope of the riverbed dropped more steeply, the same amount of water confined to the narrower space surged through with more force. That force was taking the raft made of wooden logs with it.
Zelandoni was frightened, but excited, too, and her estimation of the expertise of the rafters of the Eleventh Cave rose immensely after watching them control the craft that was being so rapidly propelled down the lower reaches of The River. The man with the pole was now using it to push them away from boulders that emerged in the middle of the river, and to keep them away from the cliff walls that rose up at the water’s edge. The rower sometimes did the same, and at other times tried to help steer the way through channels that had no obstructions, along with the woman who controlled the rudder and guided the cumbersome craft. They had to work together as a team, yet think independently.
They turned around a bend and the raft suddenly slowed, though the river spilled just as rapidly down around them, as the bottom of the watercraft scraped along a section of the river that flowed downhill across the smooth stone of barely submerged solid rock. This was the most difficult part of the river to navigate on their return, having to pole up the shallow, steep riverbed. Sometimes they got out of the river and carried the raft around the place. Coming off the rock, they skidded down through a small waterfall at the side and ended up in a notch in the rock wall to the left, a backflowing eddy holding them in place. They were floating but they were trapped, unable to continue downstream.
“This happens sometimes, though it hasn’t for a while,” said the woman controlling the rudder. Shenora was holding it up out of the water now, and had been since they started round the bend. “We have to push away from the wall, but it can be difficult. It’s hard to swim out of here, too. If you got off the raft now, the water could grab you and pull you down. We need to get out of this back eddy. The second raft will be here soon, and they could help us, but they might run into us and get caught, too.”
The man with the pole put his bare feet into the cracks between the logs of the raft for traction, to keep them from slipping, then pushed at the cliff wall with his pole, straining to make the raft move. The one with the oar was also trying to help push against the wall, although the handles of the paddles were shorter and not as strong. They could bend or break at the connection between the antler paddle and the wood handle.
“I think you need another pole or two,” Willamar said, moving toward the poler with a long, thin log from one of Ayla’s pole-drags. Jonokol was behind him with another.
Even with three men pushing, it took some effort to get them away from the back-eddy trap, but eventually they were into the current again. Once they were floating freely, the poler guided them to a jutting rock, and with him using his pole and the others using the paddle and rudder, they held the raft in place. “I think we should wait here and see how the second raft comes through,” he said. This is more treacherous than usual.”
“Good idea,” Willamar said. “I’ve got a couple of young traders on that raft, whom I’d rather not lose.”
As they spoke, the second raft appeared around the bend, and was slowed down by the submerged rock riverbed as the first raft had been, but the current had pushed them a little farther out from the wall and they managed to avoid getting caught in the back eddy. Once they saw that the second raft was clear, the first raft started out again. There was still some rough water ahead, and in one place the raft behind them bumped into a jutting rock and started into a spin, but they managed to get out of it.
Zelandoni held on to her rope handles again as she felt the raft lift on a surging wave and then dive down into rushing water. It happened a few more times before they came to another bend in the river. Beyond that, suddenly, T
he River was calm, and on the left bank was a nice sandy level beach and a small dock of sorts. The raft headed toward it, and when they got close, one of the paddlers threw a loop of rope that was attached to the raft around a pole anchored sturdily into the ground at the edge of the river. The second paddler threw another rope, and between them they pulled the raft up close to the small dock at the shore.
“We should get off here and wait for the others. Besides, I need a rest,” the man with the pole said.
“Yes, you do, we all do,” the First said.
The second raft appeared as the ones who arrived first got off. The people from the first raft helped to tie the second log platform to the small dock and its passengers gladly got off to take a rest. A little later, Ayla and Jondalar and their menagerie came around the back edge of the cliff they had just passed. Getting caught in the backwater eddy had slowed the rafts down, giving the horses time to catch up.
They all greeted each other enthusiastically, glad to see that everyone was safe. Then a man of the Eleventh Cave started a fire in a pit that had obviously been used before. Rocks that were smooth and rounded from being tumbled around by The River had been collected earlier and piled near the edge of the stream to dry out. Dry rocks heated faster when put in the fire, and were less dangerous. Moisture trapped within rocks could cause them to explode when exposed to the heat of a fire. Water was drawn from The River and put in two cooking bowls and a kerfed box. When the hot cobbles were added to the water they produced a cloud of steam amid a welling up of bubbles. Additional rocks brought the water to cooking temperature.
Traveling by water was much faster, but they weren’t able to forage for food along the way when they were on The River, so they used the food they brought with them. Various leaves for tea went into the kerfed box; dried meat made a flavorful base for soup and it went into one large bowl, along with dried vegetables and some of the roasted megaceros from the night before. In the second bowl, dried fruits were added to the hot water to soften them. It was a quick lunch so they could get back on the rafts and finish their water journey before it got dark.