“They’re back!” she heard Nezzie say. “I don’t know where they’ve been, but they’re back. And they’re cold! Bring furs, and something hot to drink.”
Deegie brought an armful of furs from her bed, and Jondalar got out of the way so she could tuck them around Ayla. Wolf came rushing over, jumping up and licking her face, then Ranec brought a cup of hot tea. Talut was helping her to sit up. Ranec held the hot drink to her lips, and she smiled, gratefully. Whinney neighed from the annex and Ayla recognized the sound of distress and fear. The woman sat up, feeling concern, and
nickered back to calm and reassure the mare. Then she asked for Mamut, and insisted on seeing him.
She was helped up, a fur was draped over her shoulders, and she was led to the old shaman. He was bundled in furs and holding a cup of hot tea, too. He smiled at her, but there was a hint of worry in his eyes. Not wanting to unduly upset the Camp, he had tried to make less of their perilous experiment, but he did not want Ayla to misunderstand how serious their danger had been. She, too, wanted to talk about it, but both of them avoided direct references to the experience. Nezzie quickly sensed their need to talk, and unobtrusively cleared everyone away and left them alone.
“Where were we, Mamut?” Ayla asked.
“I don’t know, Ayla. I have not been there before. It was another place, perhaps another time. Maybe it was not a real place,” he said, thoughtfully.
“It must have been,” she said. “Those things felt like real things, and some of it was familiar. That empty place, that darkness, I was there with Creb.”
“I believe you when you say your Creb was powerful. Perhaps even more than you realize, if he could direct and control that place.”
“Yes, he was, Mamut, but …” A thought occurred to Ayla, but she wasn’t sure if she could express it. “Creb controlled that place, he showed me his memories and our beginnings, but I don’t think Creb ever went where we went, Mamut. I don’t think he could. Maybe that’s what protected me. He had certain powers, and he could control them, but they were different. The place we went this time, that was a new place. He couldn’t go to a new place, he could only go where he had been. But maybe he saw that I could. I wonder if that’s what made him so sad?”
Mamut nodded. “Perhaps, but more important, that place was far more dangerous than I imagined it would be. I tried to make light of it for the sake of the Camp. If we had been gone much longer, we would not have been able to return at all. And we did not come back by ourselves. We were helped by … by someone who had such a strong … desire for us to return, it overcame all obstacles. When such single-minded strength of will is directed to achieve its purpose, no boundary can resist, except, perhaps, death itself.”
Ayla frowned, obviously troubled, and Mamut wondered if she knew who had brought them back, or understood why such single-minded purpose could be required for her protection. She would in time, but it was not for him to tell her. She had to find out for herself.
“I will never go to that place again,” he continued. “I am too old. I do not want my spirit lost in that void. Someday, when you have developed your powers, you may want to go again. I would not advise it, but if you go, make sure you have powerful protection. Make sure someone waits for you who can call you back.”
When Ayla walked back toward her bed, she looked for Jondalar, but he had backed off when Ranec brought the tea, and now he was staying out of the way. Though he hadn’t hesitated to go to her when he felt she was in danger, he was unsure now. She had just Promised to the Mamutoi carver. What right did he have to be holding her in his arms? And everyone seemed to know what to do, bringing her hot drinks and furs. He had felt that, because he wanted her so much, he might have helped in some strange way, but when he thought about it, he began to doubt it. She was probably coming back then, anyway, he told himself. It was coincidence. I just happened to be there. She won’t even remember.
Ranec went to Ayla when she was through talking to Mamut, and begged her to come to his bed, not to couple, just so he could hold her and keep her warm. But she insisted she would feel more comfortable in her own bed. He finally agreed, but lay awake in his furs for a long time, thinking. Though it had been apparent to everyone, he had been able to ignore Jondalar’s continued interest in Ayla, in spite of his leaving the Mammoth Hearth. After this night, however, Ranec could not deny the strong feelings that the tall man still had for her, not after watching him plead with the Mother for her life.
He had no doubt that Jondalar had been instrumental in bringing Ayla back, but he did not want to believe that she returned his feelings in kind. She had Promised herself to him that night. Ayla was going to be his woman and share his hearth. He had feared for her, too, and the thought of losing her, whether to some peril, or to another man, only made him want her more.
Jondalar saw Ranec go to her, and breathed easier when he saw the dark man return to his hearth alone, but then he rolled over and pulled the furs over his head. What difference did it make if she went with him this night or not? She would go to him eventually. She had Promised herself to him.
29
Ayla usually counted her years at the end of winter, beginning her new year with the season of new life, and the spring of her eighteenth year had been glorious with a profusion of meadow flowers and the fresh green of new growth. It was welcomed as it could be only in a place of frigid winter wastelands, but after the Spring Festival the season ripened quickly. As the bright flowers of the steppes faded, they were replaced by the fast-growing, lush crop of new grass—and the roaming grazers it brought. The seasonal migrations had begun.
Animals in great numbers and many different varieties were on the move across the open plains. Some converged until their numbers became uncountable, others assembled in smaller herds or family groups, but all derived their sustenance, their life, from the great, windswept, incredibly rich grasslands, and the glacier-fed river systems that cut through it.
Huge hordes of big-horned bison covered hills and dips with a living, bawling, restless, undulating mass that left raw, trampled earth behind. Wild cattle, aurochs, were strung out for miles in the open woodlands along the major river valleys as they traveled northward, sometimes commingled with herds of elk and massive-antlered giant deer. Shy roe deer traveled through riverine woodlands and boreal forests in small parties to spring and summer feeding grounds, along with unsociable moose who also frequented the bogs and melt lakes of the steppes. Wild goats and mouflon, usually mountain-dwelling, took to the open plains in the cold northern lands, and mingled at watering places with small family groups of saiga antelope, and larger herds of steppe horses.
The seasonal movement of woolly animals was more limited. With their thick layer of fat and heavy double coats of fur, they were adapted for life near the glacier and could not survive too much warmth. They lived year-round in the northern periglacial regions of the steppes, where the cold was deeper but dry, and snow was slight, feeding in winter on the coarse, dry standing hay. The sheeplike musk-oxen were permanent inhabitants of the frozen north, and moved in small herds within a limited territory. Woolly rhinoceroses, who usually gathered only in family groups, and the larger herds of woolly mammoths ranged farther, but in winter they stayed north. In the slightly warmer and wetter continental steppes to the south, deep snows buried feed and caused the heavy animals to flounder. They went south in spring to fatten on the tender new grass, but as soon as it warmed, they would move north again.
The Lion Camp rejoiced to see the plains teeming with life again, and remarked upon each species as it appeared, especially the animals who thrived in deep cold. Those were the ones who most helped them to survive. A sighting of the enormous, unpredictable rhinos, with two horns, the front one long and low-slung, and two coats of reddish fur, a soft downy underwool and an outer layer of long guard hair, always brought exclamations of wonder.
Nothing, however, created such sheer excitement among the Mamutoi as the sight of mammoths. When the usual time for them to pass by drew near, someone from the Lion Camp was always on the lookout. Except from a distance, Ayla hadn’t seen a mammoth since she lived with the Clan, and she was as excited as anyone when Danug came running down the slope one afternoon shouting, “Mammoths! Mammoths!”
She was among the first to rush out of the lodge to see them. Talut, who often carried Rydag perched up on his shoulders, had been on the steppes with Danug, and she noticed Nezzie, with the boy on her hip, was straggling behind. She started back to help, then saw Jondalar take him from the woman and hoist him up to his shoulders. He received warm smiles from both. Ayla smiled, too, though he didn’t see her. The expression was still on her face when she turned to Ranec who had jogged to catch up with her. Her tender, beautiful smile evoked in him an intense feeling of warmth and a fierce wish that she was already his. She couldn’t help but respond to the love in his dark, flashing eyes and the compelling grin. Her smile remained for him.
On the steppes, the Lion Camp watched the huge shaggy creatures with silent awe. They were the largest animals in their land—indeed, they would have been in almost any land. The herd, with several young in it, was passing close by, and the old matriarch eyed the people warily. She stood about ten feet high at the shoulders, and had a high domed head and a hump on the withers, used to store additional fat for winter. A short back that sloped down steeply to the pelvis completed the characteristic and immediately recognizable profile. Her skull was large in proportion to her size, more than half the length of her relatively short trunk, from the end of which two sensitive, mobile, finger projections extended, an upper and a lower one. Her tail was short, also, and her ears were small, to conserve heat.
Mammoths were eminently suited to their frigid domain. Their skin was very thick, insulated by three inches or more of subcutaneous fat, and closely covered with a soft, dense undercoat, about an inch long. The coarse long outer hair, up to twenty inches in length, was a dark reddish-brown, and hung in neat layers over the thick winter downy wool, as a warm, moisture-shedding cover and windbreak. With efficient rasplike grinders, they consumed a winter diet of coarse dry grass, plus twigs and bark of birches, willows, and larches with as much ease as they did their summer diet of green grasses, sedges, and herbs.
Most impressive of all, the mammoths’ immense tusks inspired amazement and awe. Originating close together out of the lower jaw, they first pointed steeply downward, then curved strongly outward, upward, and finally inward. In old males, a tusk could reach sixteen feet in length, but by then, they were crossed over in front. In young animals the tusks were effective weapons and built-in tools for uprooting trees and clearing snow from pasture and feed, but when the two points curved up and
overlapped, they got in the way, and were more hindrance than help.
The sight of the enormous animals brought a flood of memories to Ayla of the first time she had seen mammoths. She recalled wishing, then, that she could go hunting with the men of the Clan, and remembered that Talut had invited her to go on the first mammoth hunt with the Mamutoi. She did like to hunt, and the idea that she might actually join the hunters this time gave her a tingle of anticipation. She began to really look forward to the Summer Meeting.
The first hunt of the season had important symbolic meaning. As massive and majestic as woolly mammoths were, the Mamutoi feeling for them went beyond wonder at their size. They depended upon the animal for much more than food, and in their need and desire to assure the continuance of the great beasts, they conceived a special relationship with them. They held them in reverence because they based their own identity on them.