by Jean M. Auel
Toward the mouth of The River, many small tributaries were adding to the size of the stream, and to the turbulence, but the water was never again as rough as it had been going through the whitewater rapids. They followed the left bank south until they came in sight of Big River; then as The River delta widened at the mouth, the Eleventh Cave river rafters kept the craft toward the middle of the waterway until it carried them into Big River. The conflicting currents of the two rivers had built up a bar, a ridge of sand and silt, that added another precarious aspect to their ride when they crossed over it. Then, suddenly they were in a much larger body of water, with a strong current carrying them toward the Great Waters. The pole was of little value now. The man using it picked up a second oar that had been tied down near the edge. The two men with oars of megaceros antlers and Shenora, the woman who controlled the rudder, had the job of getting them across the fast-flowing river. She pulled the rudder over as far as it would go to steer it toward the opposite shore, while the rowers worked to guide the lumbering craft. The second raft followed them.
The horses and wolf swam across somewhat more directly. They continued along the shore, keeping the raft in sight as it angled toward land. As they rode downstream, Jondalar remembered with fondness the boats used by the Sharamudoi who lived beside the Great Mother River. They lived so far downstream of the long and significant watercourse that it had become quite wide and swift, but the boats they used skimmed across the water. Small ones could be controlled by a single person using a double-ended paddle. Jondalar had learned to use one, though he’d had a mishap or two in the process. Large ones could be used to carry goods and people, though they also needed more than one person using oars to propel them, but they had much greater control.
He thought about how the boats were made. They started with a large log, dug out the center, using hot coals and stone knives, shaped both ends into a point, and stretched the log with steam to make it wider in the middle. Then planks, known as strakes, were added to the sides to enlarge the watercraft, attached with wooden pegs and leather ties. He had helped them build such a boat when he and Thonolan were living with them.
“Ayla, remember the boats of the Sharamudoi?” Jondalar said. “I think we could make one—at least I’d like to try—a small one, to show the Eleventh Cave. I have tried to explain the boats to them, but it’s hard to make it clear. I think if I made a small boat, they’d get the idea.”
“If you want me to help you, I’ll be happy to,” Ayla said. “We could also make one of those round bowl boats that the Mamutoi used to make. We made one on our Journey here. It held a lot of things when we attached it to Whinney’s pole-drag, especially when we had to cross rivers.” Then she frowned. “But sometimes Zelandoni might need me.”
“I know,” he said. “If you can help me, I’d appreciate it, but don’t worry about it. Maybe I can get my apprentices to help. The bowl boats can be useful, but I think I’ll try to make one of those small Sharamudoi boats first. It will take longer, but it’ll be easier to control, and it would give us an opportunity to develop effective knives to make those kinds of boats. If the Eleventh Cave likes it as well as I think they will, I’m sure I can trade the boat for a future use of their rafts, and if they decide to make more boats, they might want to use knives especially designed for carving out the inside of logs, and I could make future trades for many trips on the river.”
Ayla thought about the way Jondalar’s mind worked, the way he was always thinking ahead, especially to gain some benefit for the future. She knew he was very conscientious about taking care of her and Jonayla, and she knew the Zelandonii concept of status was also involved in some way. It was important to him and he was very aware of what needed to be done in any given situation to achieve it. His mother, Marthona, was like that too, and he had obviously learned from her. Ayla understood the notion of status; it had been perhaps of even greater consequence to the Clan, but to her it didn’t seem so crucial. Though she had gained status among various people, it always seemed to be something that came to her; she had never had to strive for it, and she wasn’t sure if she would know how to.
The current carried the rafts quite some distance downstream before they were able to reach the other side. By then the sun was getting low in the west, and everyone was relieved when both rafts reached the far shore. While camp was being set up, Willamar’s two young apprentice traders, along with Jondalar and Wolf, left to see if they could find anything to hunt. They still had some venison from the megaceros, but it wouldn’t last too much longer and they wanted to look for fresh meat.
Soon after they started out, they saw a lone bull bison, but it saw them first and ran off too quickly for them to follow. Wolf flushed out a couple of nesting ptarmigans, resplendent in summer plumage. Jondalar got one with his spear-thrower, Tivonan missed with his spear-thrower, and Palidar didn’t get his set up fast enough. One ptarmigan wasn’t going to feed many people, but Jondalar retrieved it. It was going to be dark soon; they didn’t have much time to look for anything else, so they headed back toward camp.
Then Jondalar heard a yelp and quickly turned to see Wolf trying to hold a young bull bison at bay. It was smaller than the one they had first seen, and it was likely that it had only recently left the maternal herd to roam with the bachelors, which grouped in looser, smaller herds at this time of year. Jondalar’s spear was in his thrower in an instant, and Palidar was more ready this time. As the men closed in for the kill, Tivonan managed to get his spear-thrower armed as well.
The inexperienced young bison had been concentrating on the wolf, whom he instinctively feared, and wasn’t paying much attention to the bipedal predators, for whom he had no instinctive sense, and no familiarity, but with three of them closing in, he had little chance. Jondalar, who was the most proficient spear-thrower, cast his spear the instant after it was mounted on the thrower. The other two men took a little more time to aim. Palidar cast the lightweight spear with the thrower next, quickly followed by Tivonan. All three spears hit their mark and brought the animal down. The young men let out a whoop; then each of the young traders grabbed a front leg by the hoof, and began skidding the bison toward camp. He would supply enough meat for several meals for all fourteen adults, plus the wolf, who certainly deserved a share for his part in hunting the animal.
“That wolf can be a real help sometimes,” Palidar said, smiling at the wolf with the ear that was cocked at an odd angle. It made Wolf recognizable, distinguished him from any wild canines that happened to be in his area, but Palidar knew why it was that way and it hadn’t been an occasion to smile. He was the one who had come upon the site of the wolf fight, which included a lot of blood, a badly torn-up dead female, and the body of one animal that Wolf had managed to kill. Palidar skinned it, thinking he could use the fur to decorate a carrying pouch or spear quiver, but when he went to visit his friend Tivonan to show him his find, Wolf picked up the scent of the wolf and attacked the young man. Even Ayla had trouble getting the four-legged hunter away from Palidar; the fact that Wolf was still weak from his injuries helped.
The Ninth Cave had never seen Wolf attack a person, and it came as a surprise to them, but Ayla noticed the piece of wolf fur sewn onto Palidar’s spear-holder, and when he told her where he obtained it, she put the story together. She asked him for the piece of fur and gave it to Wolf, who bit and tore and shook the thing until it was shredded to bits. It was almost funny to watch him, but not to Palidar, who was glad he hadn’t come upon Wolf when he was alone. He took Ayla to the place where he found the fur, which was much farther than she had imagined. She was surprised at the distance Wolf had dragged himself to reach her, but she was grateful that he had.
She told Palidar what she thought had happened. She knew Wolf had found a lone female wolf companion and guessed they were trying to cut out a piece of territory for themselves, but obviously the local pack was too big and too well entrenched, and Wolf and his she-wolf too young. Wolf had another disadvantage. H
e had never play-fought with litter mates and, beyond instinct, he didn’t know how to fight wolves.
Wolf’s mother was a female who had come into heat at the wrong time of year and was driven out of her pack by the alpha female. She happened to meet an elderly male who had left his pack, not able to keep up anymore. He felt invigorated for a while, having a young female to himself, but he died before the winter was out, leaving her to raise her litter alone when most mother wolves would have had the help of a whole pack.
When Ayla had rescued him, Wolf was barely four weeks old and the last survivor of her litter, but that was the age when a mother wolf would normally have brought her cubs out of their birthing den to imprint on the wolf pack. Instead Wolf imprinted on the human pack of Mamutoi, with Ayla as his alpha mother. He didn’t know his canine siblings—he wasn’t raised with other wolf cubs. He was raised by Ayla along with the children of the Lion Camp. Since a wolf pack and a human family group have many characteristics in common, he adapted to living with people.
After the fight, Wolf managed to drag himself close enough to the Camp of the Ninth Cave for Ayla to find him. Almost everyone at the Summer Meeting rooted for his recovery. The First even helped Ayla treat his wounds. His ear had been nearly torn off, and though Ayla stitched it back together, it healed with a cocky turn that many thought gave him a raffish air, a look of free-spirited charm, which made people smile when they saw him.
The incident had made her understand that he not only had to heal from his physical wounds, he had to heal from the stressful ones that had caused him to attack the young man who carried the skin of the wolf he had killed, and reminded him of the fight. The young canine had never been in a fight with wolves before. It made him much more wary of the scent that he recognized at a deep level as his own kind.
The Sacred Site that the First wanted to visit was a painted cave that was several days’ walk to the east and south. And the Eleventh Cave had to negotiate the same swift current getting back across the major waterway they had just crossed. They needed to put in to the large river some distance upstream if they wanted to reach the other side anywhere near the mouth of The River, which would take them back home. They were both heading for a particular Cave that was, Ayla was told, near the place where a small stream joined Big River. The smaller waterway began in a highland to the south that was near the Sacred Site the First wanted Ayla to see next. They started east, back upstream along Big River, the next morning.
The Eleventh was not the only Cave of Zelandonii that used rafts to navigate the rivers of their territory. Many generations before some descendants of the same ancestors of river runners who had settled the Eleventh Cave decided to start a new Cave on the other side of Big River close to the place where they usually started back. They had camped in the area many times, often searching for caves and sheltering abris when the weather turned bad, and they explored the area while they hunted and gathered food. They came to know the region quite well.
Later, for the usual reasons—their home became too crowded, or someone had a disagreement with her brother’s mate or his uncle—a small group broke off and formed a new Cave. There was still far more uninhabited land than people to fill it. For the original Cave, it was a definite advantage to have a place to go that had friends, food, and a place to sleep. The two closely related Caves worked out ways to exchange services and goods, and the new Cave thrived. They became known as the First Cave of Zelandonii in the land south of Big River, which was shortened over time to the First Cave of the South Land Zelandonii.
The Donier wanted to make arrangements with them to cross the river on their way back, and to give them advance warning that another group that the travelers were planning to meet later would be coming across Big River. She also wanted to speak with their Zelandoni, a woman she had known since before she became an acolyte. Then the group would split. The Eleventh Cave raft runners would start back across Big River; from the same place, the Donier Tour travelers would follow the small river upstream to reach the painted cave.
Running rivers required that sometimes they had to carry the raft, to portage around obstacles or extremely rough water or waterfalls, or areas so shallow that the craft scraped the bottom. For that reason, the rafts were built with slender logs anchored to supports that ran across them, so that the people who controlled each raft could carry it. This time the travelers helped, which made the job easier. The oars, rudders, and poles were loaded on the pole-drags pulled by the horses, along with the traveling tents and some extra belongings of the hikers. As they trudged upriver, they all carried their own backframes with their personal gear, and traded off carrying the rafts.
As they continued east, upstream, along the left bank, the south side of the large, west-flowing river, they knew they were near the mouth of The River when they came to the first of two large meandering loops of Big River. When they reached the bottom end of the first loop, the travelers didn’t walk beside the river. It would have meant a great deal of extra walking to follow the loop when they could just hike across the land a short distance, until they met up with the bottom end of the second loop of Big River again. They were following a path that had begun as an animal trail and had been enlarged by human traffic. Where it forked, with one path heading north alongside the river and the other going east cross-country, it was the eastern track that was more heavily traveled.
They reached the lower end of the second loop, then followed the river only until it headed north again. The forking paths at the bottom of this loop, one toward the east and the other heading north, were more equally worn; it was the north end of the second loop that was opposite the mouth of The River, the place where it flowed into Big River, and that northern path was used as often as the other. Going east across the land, they reached the river again, then followed the trail beside it in a southeast direction. The volume of water in Big River was considerably less before the place where the water of The River entered the larger stream. It was there that they decided to camp for the night.
Everyone had finished their evening meal and most were sitting around the fire relaxing before settling down in their tents and sleeping rolls. Ayla was giving Jonayla a second helping, listening to some young people from the Eleventh talk about starting a new Cave farther downstream, near the place where the rafts had landed when they first crossed Big River. They planned to provide places to sleep and to have food available for travelers who crossed Big River either to continue south or to travel west farther downstream. For a previously agreed-upon exchange, tired raft runners and their passengers would have a place to rest without having to set up camp first. Ayla began to understand how communities of people spread out and grew, and why people might want to start a new Cave. Suddenly it seemed entirely reasonable.
It took a another day to reach the settlement of the First Cave of the South Land Zelandonii. They arrived late in the afternoon, and Ayla thought it definitely was more convenient to have a place to spread out their sleeping rolls without having to set up their tents, and to have cooked food available. The people of this Cave also traveled and hunted in the warm season just as all the other Caves did, and therefore had fewer people in residence, but they were not as few in relation to their number as most of the other Caves. The ones who stayed behind were not just those who could not travel, but also those who made themselves available to provide their services to others.
The travelers were encouraged to spend an extra few days with the South Land Zelandonii, who had heard about a wolf and horses that did the bidding of a foreign woman and a Zelandonii man who had returned from a long Journey. They were surprised to learn that so much of what they thought was exaggeration was actually true. They also felt honored to have the First Among Those Who Served The Great Earth Mother in their midst. All the Zelandonii, even those who seldom saw her, acknowledged her as First, but someone from the South Land Cave did mention another woman who lived near a Cave much farther south who was also very respected and honored.
The First smiled; the woman was a person she knew of, and she hoped to see her.
The ones whom the South Land Cave knew best were the raft runners from the Eleventh and the Trading Master of the Ninth Cave. Willamar had come their way many times on his journeys. The two Caves of Zelandonii who built, propelled, and controlled rafts had stories to tell, talents to share, and skills to show each other, as well to any of the others who were interested. They explained some of the techniques they used to construct their crafts. Jondalar listened with great attention.
He talked about the Sharamudoi boats, but didn’t go into great detail since he had decided to build one to show them rather than try to tell anyone about them again. His reputation as a flint-knapper was very well known and when they asked him, he was happy to demonstrate some of his techniques. He also talked about how he developed the spear-thrower, whose usage had spread rapidly, and with Ayla showed some of the finer points of controlling the effective hunting weapon. Ayla also demonstrated her skill with the sling.
Willamar told stories of some of his adventures while traveling as the Master Trader, and he was a good storyteller who enthralled his audience. Zelandoni used the opportunity to instruct, and recited or sang with her impressive voice some of the Zelandonii Histories and Elder Legends. One evening she persuaded Ayla to display her virtuosity in imitating animal voices and whistling birdsong. After telling a story about the Clan, Ayla showed them some ways to communicate in the Clan sign language, in case they happened to meet a band of Clan hunters or travelers. Before long, the whole group was having simple conversations without making a sound. It was like a secret language, used with a sense of fun.