The Plains of Passage (Earth's Children 4)

Later, the grassy plains of warmer, more temperate regions developed distinct bands of more limited vegetation controlled by temperature and climate. They offered too little diversity in summer, and too much snow in winter. Snow also bogged down animals that required firm ground, and it was difficult for many to push aside to reach food. Deer could live in woods where the snow was deep, but only because they browsed leaves and twig tips from trees that grew above the snow; reindeer could dig through snow to reach the lichen on which they fed in winter. Bison and aurochs subsisted, but they were reduced in size, no longer reaching their full potential. Other animals, such as horses, decreased in number as their preferred environment shrunk.

It was the unique combination of all the many elements of the Ice Age steppes that fostered the magnificent multitudes, and each was essential, including the bitter cold, the withering winds, and the ice itself. And when the vast glaciers shrank back to polar regions and disappeared from the lower latitudes, so, too, did the great herds and gigantic animals become dwarfed or disappear entirely from a land that had changed, a land that could no longer sustain them.

While they traveled, the missing parfleche and long poles preyed on Ayla's mind. They were more than useful, they might be necessary during the long trip ahead. She wanted to replace them, but it would take more than an overnight stop, and she knew Jondalar was anxious to keep moving.

Jondalar, however, was not happy about the wet tent, nor the thought of depending on it for shelter. Besides, it wasn't good for wet skins to be folded up and packed together so tight; it could make them rot. They needed to be spread out to dry, and the hides would probably need to be worked as they were drying to keep them pliable, in spite of the smoking they had received when the leather was made. That would take more than a day, he was sure.

In the afternoon they approached the deep trench of another large river, which separated the plain from the mountains. From their vantage point on the plateau of the open steppes, above the broad valley with its wide, swiftly flowing waterway, they could see the terrain on the other side. The foothills across the river were fractured with many dry ravines and gullies, the ravages of flooding, as well as many more running tributaries. It was a major river, channeling a good proportion of the runoff, which drained the eastern face of the mountains into the inland sea.

As they rounded the shoulder of the steppe plateau and rode down the slope, Ayla was reminded of the territory around the Lion Camp, though the more broken landscape across the river was different. But on this side she saw the same kind of deep-cut gullies carved out of the loess soil by rain and melting snow, and high grass drying into standing hay. On the floodplain below, isolated larch and pine trees were scattered among leafy shrubs, and stands of cattails, tall phragmite reeds, and bulrushes marked the river's edge.

When they reached the river, they stopped. This was a major watercourse, wide and deep, and swollen from the recent rains. They were not at all sure how they were going to get across. It was going to take some planning.

"It's too bad we don't have a bowl boat," Ayla said, thinking of the skin-covered round boats the Lion Camp had used to cross the river near their lodge.

"You're right. I think we are going to need some kind of a boat to get across this without getting everything all wet. I'm not sure why, but I don't remember having so much trouble crossing rivers when Thonolan and I were traveling. We just piled our gear on a couple of logs and swam across," Jondalar said. "But I guess we didn't have as much, only a back frame for each of us. That's all we could carry. With the horses, we can take more with us, but then, we have more to worry about."

As they rode downstream, looking over the situation, Ayla noticed a stand of tall, slender birches growing near the water. The place had such a familiar feeling that she half expected to see the long, semisubterranean earthlodge of the Lion Camp tucked into the side of the slope at the back of a river terrace, with grass growing out of the sides, a rounded top, and the perfectly symmetrical arched entrance that had so surprised her when she first saw it. But when she actually saw such an arch, it gave her an eerie, spine-tingling shock.

"Jondalar! Look!"

He looked up the slope where she was pointing. There he saw not just one, but several, perfectly symmetrical archways, each an entrance to a circular, dome-shaped structure. They both dismounted and, finding the path up from the river, climbed to the Camp.

Ayla was surprised at how eager she was to meet the people who lived there, and realized how long it had been since they had seen or spoken to anyone besides each other. But the place was empty, and planted in the ground between the two curved mammoth tusks whose tips were joined together at the top, forming the arched entrance to one of the dwellings, was a small carved ivory figure of a female with ample breasts and hips.

"They must be gone," Jondalar said. "They left a donii to guard each lodge."

"They're probably hunting, or at a Summer Meeting, or visiting," Ayla said, feeling real disappointment that there were no people. "That's too bad. I was looking forward to seeing someone." She turned to go.

"Wait, Ayla. Where are you going?"

"Back to the river." She looked puzzled.

"But this is perfect," he said. "We can stay here."

"They left a mutoi—a donii—to guard their lodges. The spirit of the Mother is protecting them. We can't stay here and disturb Her spirit. It will bring us bad luck," she said, knowing full well that he knew it.

"We can stay, if we need to. We just can't take anything we don't need. That's always understood. Ayla, we need shelter. Our tent is soaked. We have to give it a chance to dry out. While we're waiting, we can go hunting. If we get the right kind of animal, we can use the hide to make a bowl boat to cross the river."

Ayla's frown slowly changed to an enlightened smile, as she grasped his meaning and realized the implications. They did need a few days to recover from their near disaster and replace some of their losses. "Maybe we can get enough hide to make a new parfleche, too," she said. "Once it's cleaned and dehaired, rawhide doesn't take that long to set up, not any longer than it takes to dry meat. It just has to be stretched and left to get hard." She glanced down toward the river. "And look at those birches down there. I think I could make good poles out of some of those. Jondalar, you're right. We need to stay here for a few days. The Mother will understand. And we could leave some dry meat for the people who live here, to thank them for the use of their Camp ... if we're lucky with our hunting. Which lodge should we stay in?"

"The Mammoth Hearth. That's where visitors usually stay."

"Do you think there is a Mammoth Hearth? I mean, do you think this is a Mamutoi Camp?" Ayla asked.

"I don't know. It's not one big earthlodge that everyone lives in like Lion Camp," Jondalar said, looking at the group of seven round dwellings covered with a smooth layer of hardened earth and river clay. Rather than a single, large, multifamily longhouse, like the one they had lived in during the winter, this place had several smaller dwellings clustered together, but the purpose was the same. It was a settlement, a community of more-or-less related families.

"No, it's like Wolf Camp, where the Summer Meeting was," Ayla said, stopping in front of the entrance of one of the small dwellings, still a bit reluctant to push the heavy drape aside and enter the home of strangers without being invited, in spite of generally understood customs that had developed out of a mutual necessity for the sake of survival in time of need.

"Some of the younger people at the Summer Meeting thought the big lodges were old-fashioned," Jondalar said. "They liked the idea of an individual lodge for just one or two families."

"You mean they wanted to live by themselves? Just one lodge with one or two families? For a winter Camp?" Ayla asked.

"No," he said. "No one wanted to live alone all winter. You never see just one of these small lodges by itself; there are always at least five or six, sometimes more. That was the idea. The people I talked to thought

it was easier to build a smaller lodge for a new family or two, than to crowd into one big lodge until they had to build another. But they wanted to build near their families, and stay with their Camps, and share in the activities and the food that everyone worked together to collect and store for winter."

He pushed aside the heavy skin hanging from the joined tusks that formed the entrance, ducked under it and stepped inside. Ayla stood back, holding up the drape to shed some light.