The Plains of Passage (Earth's Children 4)

"We'd better hurry if we're going to travel any distance today," Ayla said, eyes still flashing anger as she started to remount the mare.

"No," Jondalar said, holding her back. "We're not leaving until you change out of those wet clothes. And I think we should rub down the horses to dry them off, and maybe that wolf, too. We've traveled far enough today. We can camp here tonight. It took me four years to get here. I don't care if it takes four years to get back, just so I get you there safely, Ayla."

As she looked up at him, the look of concern and love in his rich blue eyes melted her last vestiges of anger. She reached for him as he bent his head to her, and she felt the same unbelievable wonder that she had felt the first time he put his lips on hers and showed her what a kiss was, and an inexpressible joy in knowing that she was actually traveling with him, going home with him. She loved him more than she knew how to express, even more now after the long winter when she had thought he didn't love her and would leave without her.

He had feared for her when she went back into the river and now he pressed her to him, holding her. He loved her more than he ever believed it was possible for him to love anyone. Until Ayla, he didn't know he could love so much. He nearly lost her once. He had been sure she was going to stay with the dark man with the laughing eyes, and he couldn't bear the thought that he might lose her again.

With two horses and a wolf for companions, in a world that had never before known they could be tamed, a man stood alone with the woman he loved in the middle of a vast, cold grassland, filled with a great abundance and diversity of animals, but few humans, and contemplated a Journey that would stretch across a continent. Yet there were times when the mere thought that any harm might come to her could overwhelm him with such fear, he almost couldn't breathe. At those moments, he wished he could hold her forever.

Jondalar felt the warmth of her body and her willing mouth on his, and he felt his need for her rise. But that would wait. She was cold and wet; she needed dry clothes and a fire. The edge of this river was as good a place as any to camp, and if it was a little too early to stop, well, it would give them time to dry out the clothes they were wearing, and they could start early tomorrow.

"Wolf! Put that down!" Ayla shouted, rushing to get the leather-wrapped package from the young animal. "I thought you had learned to stay away from leather." When she tried to take it away, he playfully hung on with his teeth, shaking his head back and forth and growling. She let go, stopping the game. "Put it down!" she said sharply. She brought her hand down as though she meant to strike his nose but Mopped short. At the signal and command, Wolf tucked his tail between his legs, abjectly scooted toward her, and dropped the package at her feet, whining in appeasement.

"That's the second time he's gotten into these things," Ayla said, picking up the package and some others he had been chewing on. "He knows better, but he just can't seem to stay away from leather."

Jondalar came to help her. "I don't know what to say. He drops it when you tell him, but you can't tell him if you're not there, and you can't watch him all the time ... What's this? I don't remember seeing this before," he said, looking quizzically at a bundle that was carefully wrapped in a soft skin and securely tied.

Flushing slightly, Ayla quickly took the package from him. "It's ... just something I brought with me ... something ... from Lion Camp," she said, and she put it on the bottom of one of her pack baskets.

Her actions puzzled Jondalar. They had both limited their possessions and traveling gear to the minimum, taking little that was not essential. The package wasn't large, but it wasn't small either. She could probably have added another outfit in the space it took. What could she be taking with her?

"Wolf! Stop that!"

Jondalar watched Ayla going after the young wolf again and had to smile. He wasn't sure, but it almost seemed that Wolf was purposely misbehaving, teasing Ayla to make her come after him, playing with her. He had found a camp shoe of hers, a soft moccasin-type of foot-covering that she sometimes wore for comfort after they made camp, particularly if the ground was frozen or damp and cold and she wanted to air out or dry her regular, sturdier footwear.

"I don't know what I'm going to do with him!" Ayla said, exasperated, as she came toward the man. She was holding the object of his latest escapade, and she looked sternly at the miscreant. Wolf was creeping toward her, seemingly contrite, whining in abject misery at her disapproval; but a hint of mischief lurked beneath his distress. He knew she loved him, and the moment she relented, he would be wriggling and yelping with delight and ready to play again.

Though he was adult size, except for some filling out, Wolf was hardly more than a puppy. He had been born in the winter, out of season, to a lone wolf whose mate had died. Wolf's coat was the usual gray-buff shade—the result of bands of white, red, brown, and black that colored each outer hair, creating the indistinct pattern that allowed wolves to fade invisibly into the natural wilderness landscape of brush, grass, earth, rock, and snow—but his mother had been black.

Her unusual coloring had incited the primary and other females of the pack into badgering her unmercifully, giving her the lowest status and eventually driving her away. She roamed alone, learning to survive in between pack territories for a season, until she finally found another loner, an old male who had left his pack because he couldn't keep up any more. They fared well together for a while. She was the stronger hunter, but he was experienced and they had even begun to define and defend a small piece of territory of their own. It might have been the better diet that two of them working together were able to secure, or the companionship and nearness of a friendly male, or her own genetic predisposition that brought her into heat out of season, but her elderly companion was not unhappy and, without competition, was both willing and able to respond.

Sadly, his stiff old bones w

ere not able to resist the ravages of another harsh winter on the periglacial steppes. He did not last long into the cold season. It was a devastating loss for the black female, who was left to give birth alone—in winter. The natural environment does not tolerate very well animals with much deviation from the norm, and seasonal cycles enforce themselves. A black hunter in a landscape of tawny grass, dun earth, and windblown or drifted snow is too easily seen by canny and winter-scarce prey. With no mate or friendly aunts, uncles, cousins, and older siblings to help feed and care for the nursing mother and the new pups, the black female weakened, and one after another her babies succumbed until there was only one left.

Ayla knew wolves. She had observed and studied them from the time she first started hunting, but she had no way of knowing the black wolf who tried to steal the ermine she had killed with her sling was a starving, lactating female; it was the wrong season for pups. When she tried to retrieve her pelt and the wolf uncharacteristically attacked, she killed it in self-defense. Then she saw the animal's condition and realized she must have been a loner. Feeling a strange kinship with a wolf she knew had been driven from its pack, Ayla was determined to find the motherless pups, who would have no family to adopt them. Following the wolf's trail back, she found the den, crawled in, and found the last pup, unweaned, eyes barely open. She took it with her to Lion Camp. It had been a surprise to everyone when Ayla showed them the tiny wolf pup, but she had arrived with horses who answered to her. They had grown used to them and the woman who had an affinity for animals, and they were curious about the wolf and what she would do with it. That she was able to raise it and train it was a wonder to many.

Jondalar was still surprised at the intelligence the animal displayed; intelligence that seemed almost human. I think he's playing with you, Ayla," the man said. She looked at Wolf and couldn't resist a smile, which brought his head up and caused his tail to start thumping the ground in anticipation. "I think you're right, but that isn't going to help me keep him from chewing on everything," she said, looking at the shredded camp shoe. "I might as well let him have this. He's ruined it already, and maybe he won't be so interested in the rest of our things for a while." She threw it at him, and he leaped up and caught it in the air with, Jondalar was almost sure, a wolfish grin.

"We'd better get packed up," he said, recalling that they hadn't traveled very far south the day before.

Ayla looked around, screening her eyes from the bright sun just beginning to climb the sky toward the east. Seeing Whinney and Racer in the grassy meadow beyond the brushy wooded lobe of land that the river curved around, she whistled a distinctive call, similar to the whistle she used to signal Wolf, but not the same. The dark yellow mare raised her head, whinnied, then galloped toward the woman. The young stallion followed her.

They broke camp, packed the horses, and were nearly ready to start out when Jondalar decided to rearrange the tent poles in one basket and his spears in another to balance out his load. Ayla was leaning against Whinney while she waited. It was a comfortable and familiar posture for both of them, a way of touching that had developed when the young filly was her only companion in the rich but lonely valley.

She had killed Whinney's mother, too. By then she had been hunting for years, but only with her sling. Ayla had taught herself to use the easily concealed hunting weapon, and she rationalized her breaking of Clan taboos by hunting primarily predators, who competed for the same food and sometimes stole meat from them. But the horse was the first large, meat-providing animal she had killed, and the first time she had used a spear to accomplish the deed.

In the Clan, it would have been counted as her first kill, if she had been a boy and allowed to hunt with a spear; as a female, if she used a spear, she would not have been allowed to live. But killing the horse had been necessary for her survival, though she did not select a nursing dam to be the one to fall into her pit-trap. When she first noticed the foal, she felt sorry for it, knowing it would die without its mother, yet the thought of raising it herself didn't occur to her. There was no reason why it should; no one had done it before.

But when hyenas went after the frightened baby horse, she remembered the hyena that had tried to drag off Oga's baby son. Ayla hated hyenas, perhaps because of the ordeal she'd had to face when she killed that one and exposed her secret. They were no worse than any other natural predator and scavenger, but to Ayla they had come to represent everything that was cruel, vicious, or wrong. Her reaction then was just as spontaneous as it had been the other time, and the swift stones hurled with a sling were just as effective. She killed one, drove the others off, and rescued the helpless young animal, but this time, instead of an ordeal, she found company to relieve her loneliness, and joy in the extraordinary relationship that developed.

Ayla loved the young wolf as she would a bright and delightful child, but her feeling for the horse was of a different nature. Whinney had shared her isolation; they had grown as close as any two such dissimilar creatures could. They knew each other, understood each other, trusted each other. The yellow mare was not merely a helpful animal companion, or a pet, or even a well-loved child. Whinney had been her only companion for several years and was her friend.

But it had been a spontaneous, even irrational, act the first time Ayla climbed on her back and rode like the wind. The sheer excitement of it brought her back. In the beginning she did not purposely try to direct the horse, but they were so close that their understanding of each other grew with each ride.

While she waited for Jondalar to finish, Ayla watched Wolf playfully chewing on her camp shoe and wished she could think of a way to control his destructive habit. Her eye casually noted the vegetation on the spit of land where they had camped. Caught between the high banks on the other side of the river as it curved around the sharp bend, the low land on this side flooded every year, leaving fertile loam to nourish a rich variety of brush, herbs, even small trees, and the rich pasture beyond. She always noticed the plants in her vicinity. It was second nature for her to be aware of everything that grew and, with a knowledge that was so ingrained it was almost instinctive, to catalogue and interpret it.

She saw a bearberry shrub, a dwarf evergreen heath plant with small, dark green, leathery leaves, and an abundance of small, round, pink-tinged white flowers that promised a rich crop of red berries. Though sour and rather astringent, they tasted fine when they were cooked with other food, but more than food, Ayla knew the juice of the berry was good for relieving the burning sensation that could occur when passing water, especially if it was pinkish with blood.