The Valley of Horses (Earth's Children 2)

They started for the water, then Thonolan stopped. “Why don’t we tie our clothes to a log, the way we used to. Then we won’t have to dry clothes.”

“I don’t know,” Jondalar said. Clothes, even wet, would keep them warmer, but Thonolan had been trying to be reasonable, though his voice betrayed frustration and exasperation. “But, if you want …” Jondalar shrugged acquiescence.

It was chilly standing naked in the cool damp air. Jondalar was tempted to retie his tool pouch around his bare waist, but Thonolan had already wrapped it in his tunic and was tying everything to a log he had found. On his bare skin, the water felt colder than he remembered, and he had to grit his teeth to keep from crying out when he plunged in and tried to swim, but water numbed the pain of his wound somewhat. He favored his side while swimming and lagged behind his brother, though Thonolan was pulling the log.

When they crawled out of the water and stood on a sandbar, their original destination—the end of the Great Mother River—was in sight. They could see the water of the inland sea. But the excitement of the moment was lost. The journey had lost its purpose, and the end of the river was no longer their goal. Nor were they yet on solid ground. They were not quite across the delta. The sandbar where they stood had once been in midchannel, but the channel had shifted. An empty riverbed still had to be crossed.

A high wooded bank, with exposed roots dangling from the underside where a swift current had once undercut, beckoned from the other side of the vacated channel. It had not been vacated long. Water still puddled in the middle, and vegetation had barely taken root. But insects had already discovered the stagnant pools, and a swarm of mosquitoes had discovered the two men.

Thonolan untied the clothes from the log. “We still have to get through those puddles down there, and the bank looks muddy. Let’s wait until we get across before we put these back on.”

Jondalar nodded agreement, in too much pain to argue. He thought he’d strained something while swimming, and he was having trouble standing up straight.

Thonolan slapped a mosquito as he started down the gentle gradient which had once been the slope leading from the bank into the river channel.

They’d been told often enough. Never turn your back on the river; never underestimate the Great Mother River. Though she had left it for a time, the channel was still hers, and, even in her absence, she left a surprise or two behind. Millions of tons of silt were brought down to the sea and spread over the thousand or more square miles of her delta every year. The vacated channel, subject to tidal inundation from the sea, was a soggy salt marsh with poor drainage. The new green grass and reeds had set roots in wet silty clay.

The two men slid and slipped down the slope on the finegrained sticky mud, and, when they reached level ground, it sucked at their bare feet. Thonolan hurried ahead, forgetting that Jondalar was not quite up to his usual long-strided pace. He could walk, but the slippery descent had hurt. He was picking his way carefully, feeling a bit foolish to be wandering through the marsh naked, making an offering of his tender skin to the hungry insects.

Thonolan had gotten so far ahead that Jondalar was about to call out to him. But he looked up just as he heard his brother’s cry for help and saw him go down. Pain forgotten, Jondalar ran toward him. Fear clutched when he saw Thonolan floundering in quicksand.

“Thonolan! Great Mother!” Jondalar cried, rushing to him.

“Stay back! You’ll get caught too!” Thonolan, struggling to free himself from the mire, was sinking deeper instead.

Jondalar looked around frantically for something to help Thonolan out. His shirt! He could throw him an end, he thought, then remembered that was impossible. The bundle of clothes was gone. He shook his head, then saw the dead stump of an old tree half buried in the muck and ran to see if he could break off one of the roots, but any roots that might have come free had long since been torn off in the violent journey downstream.

“Thonolan, where is the clothes bundle? I need something to pull you out!”

The desperation in Jondalar’s voice had an unwanted effect. It filtered through Thonolan’s panic to remind him of his grief. A calm acceptance came over him. “Jondalar, if the Mother wants to take me, let Her take me.”

“No! Thonolan, no! You can’t give up like that. You can’t just die. O Mother, Great Mother, don’t let him die like that!” Jondalar sank to his knees and, stretching out full, reached out his hand. “Take my hand, Thonolan, please, take my hand,” he begged.

Thonolan was surprised at the grief and pain on his brother’s face, and something more that he’d seen before only in infrequent passing glances. In that instant, he knew. His brother loved him, loved him as much as he had loved Jetamio. It was not the same, but as strong. He understood at an instinctive level, by intuition, and he knew as he reached for the hand stretching toward him that, even if he couldn’t get out of the mire, he had to clasp his brother’s hand.

Thonolan didn’t know it, but when he ceased struggling, he didn’t sink as fast. When he stretched out to reach for his brother’s hand, he spread out into a more horizontal position, displacing his weight over the water-filled, loose, silty sand, almost as though floating on water. He reached until they touched fingers. Jondalar inched forward until he had a firm grasp.

“That’s the way! Hold on to him! We’re coming!” said a voice speaking Mamutoi.

Jondalar’s breath exploded, his tension punctured. He discovered he was shaking but held Thonolan’s hand firmly. In a few moments, a rope was passed to Jondalar to tie around his brother’s hands.

“Relax now,” Thonolan was instructed. “Stretch out, like swimming. You know how to swim?”

“Yes.”

“Good! Good! You relax, we will pull.”

Hands pulled Jondalar back from the edge of the quicksand and soon had Thonolan out as well. Then they all followed a woman who prodded the ground with a long pole to avoid other sinkholes. Only after they reached solid ground did anyone seem to notice that the two men were entirely naked.

The woman who had directed the rescue stood back and scrutinized them. She was a big woman, not so much tall or fat as burly, and she had a bearing that commanded respect. “Why do you have nothing on?” she asked finally. “Why are two men traveling naked?”

Jondalar and Thonolan looked down at their nude, mud-caked bodies.

“We got in the wrong channel; then a log hit our boat,” Jondalar began. He was feeling uncomfortable, unable to stand straight.

“After we had to dry our clothes, I thought we might as well take them off to swim the channel, and then to cross the mud. I was carrying them, ahead because Jondalar was hurt, and …”

“Hurt? One of you is hurt?” the woman asked.

“My brother,” Thonolan said. At the mention of it, Jondalar became acutely aware of the aching, throbbing pain.

The woman saw him blanch. “Mamut must see to him,” she said to one of the others. “You are not Mamutoi. Where did you learn to speak?”

“From a Mamutoi woman living with the Sharamudoi, my kin,” Thonolan said.

“Tholie?”

“Yes, you know her?”

“She is my kin, too. The daughter of a cousin. If you are her kin, you are my kin,” the woman said. “I am Brecie, of the Mamutoi, leader of the Willow Camp. You are both welcome.”

“I am Thonolan, of the Sharamudoi. This is my brother, Jondalar, of the Zelandonii.”

“Zel-an-don-yee?” Brecie said the unfamiliar word. “I have not heard of those people. If you are brothers, why are you Sharamudoi, and he this … Zelandonii? He does not look well,” she said, briskly dismissing further discussion until a more appropriate time. Then she said to one of the others, “Help him. I’m not sure he can walk.”

“I think I can walk,” Jondalar said, suddenly dizzy with pain, “if it’s not too far.”

Jondalar was grateful when one of the Mamutoi men took an arm while Thonolan supported the other.

• ?

? •

“Jondalar, I would have gone long ago if you hadn’t made me promise to wait until you were well enough to travel. I’m leaving. I think you should go home, but I won’t argue with you.”

“Why do you want to go east, Thonolan? You’ve reached the end of the Great Mother River. Beran Sea, it’s right there. Why not go home now?”

“I’m not going east, I’m going north, more or less. Brecie said they will all be going north to hunt mammoth soon. I’m going ahead, to another Mamutoi Camp. I’m not going home, Jondalar. I’m going to travel until the Mother takes me.

“Don’t talk like that! You sound like you want to die!” Jondalar shouted, sorry the instant he said it for fear the mere suggestion would make it true.