The Plains of Passage (Earth's Children 4)

"I was just getting out," the young woman said, "but she can stay in and play with him, if the others don't mind."

When no one made an objection, Ayla gave him a signal. "Go ahead, Wolf," she said. The wolf bounded into the water, making a big splash, straight to Shamio.

A woman who was coming out of the water alongside Tholie smiled, then said, "I wish my children would mind as well as that wolf does. How do you make him do what you want?"

"It takes time. You have to go over it a lot, make him repeat what you want many times, and it can be difficult to make him understand at first, but once he learns something, he doesn't forget. He's really very smart," Ayla said. "I've been teaching him every day while we were traveling."

"Sounds like teaching a child," Tholie said, "but why a wolf? I never knew you could teach them to do anything, but why do you do it?"

"I know he can be frightening to people who don't know him, and I didn't want him to scare anyone," Ayla said. Watching Tholie come out of the pool and dry herself, Ayla was suddenly aware she was pregnant. Not too far along yet, and her plumpness concealed it when she was dressed, but she was definitely pregnant. "I think I'd like to wash, too, but first I have to pass water."

"If you follow that path up the back, you'll find a trench. It's quite a ways up, over the far wall so it runs off the other side when it rains, but it's closer than going around," Tholie said.

Ayla started to call Wolf, then hesitated. As usual, he had lifted his leg in the bushes—she had taught him to go outside of dwellings, but not to use special places. She watched the children playing with him and knew he would rather stay, but she wasn't sure if she should leave him. She was sure everything would be fine, but she didn't know how the mothers would feel.

"I think you can leave him for a while, Ayla," Tholie said. "I've seen him around the children, and you were right. They'd all be disappointed if you called him away so soon."

Ayla smiled. "Thank you. I'll be right back."

She started up the path that traversed in a diagonal across the steepest incline to one wall and then switchbacked toward the other. When she reached the far wall she climbed over it on steps made out of short sections of logs. These were held in place with stakes pounded into the ground in front of them, so they would not roll, and filled in behind with stones and dirt.

The trench and a level area in front of it, lined with a low fence of smooth round logs to sit across, had been dug out of the sloping ground on the other side of the wall. The smell and the buzzing flies made its purpose obvious, but the sunlight shining through the trees, and the sound of birds made it a pleasant place to linger when she found herself moving her bowels, as well. She saw a pile of dried moss on the ground nearby and guessed its use. It was not at all scratchy and quite absorbent. When she was through, she noticed that fresh dirt had recently been scattered over the bottom of the trench.

The path continued downhill and Ayla decided to follow it a ways. As she walked along, the region felt so much like the area around the cave where she grew up that she had the haunting feeling she had been there before. She would come upon a rock formation that seemed familiar, or a space opening out at the crest of a ridge, or similar vegetation. She stopped to pick a few hazelnuts off a bush growing against a rock wall, and she could not resist pushing aside the low branches to see if there was a small cave hidden behind it.

She found another large mound of blackberry bushes with long thorny runners reaching out, heavy with clumps of sweet ripe fruit. She stuffed herself with them and wondered what had happened to the berries she had picked the day before. Then she remembered eating some at the welcoming feast. She decided she'd have to come back and get more for Roshario. Suddenly she realized that she had to return. The woman might be waking up and need some attention. The woods had felt so familiar that Ayla had forgotten where she was for a moment. Roaming the hillsides, she had felt like a girl again, using the excuse of looking for Iza's medicinal plants to explore.

Perhaps because it was second nature anyway, or because she had always looked harder for plants on her way back so she'd have something to show for her forays, Ayla paid close attention to the vegetation. She almost shouted with excitement, and relief, when she noticed the small yellow vines with tiny leaves and flowers twined around other plants that were dead and dried, strangled by the golden threadlike vines.

That's it! That's golden thread, Iza's magic plant, she thought. That's what I need for my morning tea, so I won't start a baby growing. And there's a lot of it. I was running so low that I didn't know if I'd have enough to last for the whole Journey. I wonder if there's antelope sage root around here, too? There ought to be. I'll have to come back and look.

She found a plant with large basal leaves and wove them together with twigs for a makeshift gathering container, then picked as many of the small plants as she could, without depleting the area entirely. Iza had taught her long ago always to leave some from which the next year's growth would start.

On the way back, she took a small detour through a thicker, more shaded patch of forest, to look for more of the waxy white plant that would soothe the horses' eyes, though they did seem to be improving. She scanned the ground under the trees carefully. With so much that was familiar, it shouldn't have come as a surprise, but when she saw the green leaves of one particular kind of plant, she gasped and felt a cold chill go through her.

18

Ayla dropped to the moist ground and sat staring at the plants, breathing the rich forest air, while memories came flooding back. Even in the Clan the secret of the root was little known. The knowledge had belonged to Iza's line, and only those descended from the same ancestors—or the one to whom she had taught it—knew the complicated processing required to produce the final result. Ayla remembered Iza explaining the unusual method of drying the plant so that its properties would concentrate in the roots, and she recalled that they actually got stronger with long storage, if kept out of the light.

Though Iza had told her, carefully and repeatedly, how to make the drink from the dry roots, she couldn't let Ayla practice preparing it before she went to the Clan Gathering; it could not be used without proper ritual and, Iza had stressed, it was too sacred to throw away. That was why Ayla had drunk the dregs she had found in the bottom of Iza's ancient bowl, after she made it for the mog-urs, even though it was forbidden to women, so it wouldn't have to be thrown out. She wasn't thinking straight by then. There was so much going on, other beverages that clouded her mind, and the root drink was so powerful that even the little she had swallowed while making it had a strong effect.

She had wandered along narrow passages through the deep honeycombed caves, and by the time she saw Creb and the other mog-urs, she couldn't have retreated even if she'd tried. That was when it happened. Somehow Creb had known she was there, and he had taken her with them, back into the memories. If he hadn't, she would have been lost in that black void forever, but something happened that night that changed him. He wasn't The Mog-ur afterward, he had no heart for it any more, until that last time.

She'd had some of the roots with her when she left the Clan. They were in her medicine bag in the sacred red-colored pouch, and Mamut had been very curious when she told him about them. But he didn't have the power of The Mog-ur, or perhaps t

he plant affected the Others differently. She and Mamut were both drawn into the black void and almost didn't return.

Sitting on the ground, staring at the seemingly innocuous plant that could be made into something so powerful, she recalled the experience. Suddenly she shivered with another chill and sensed a shadow of darkness, as though a cloud were passing overhead, and then she wasn't just remembering, she was reliving that strange Journey with Mamut. The green woods faded and dimmed as she felt herself drawn back into her memory of the darkened earthlodge. In the back of her throat she tasted the dark cool loam and growing fungus of ancient primeval forests. She sensed herself moving with great speed to the strange worlds she had traveled with Mamut, and she felt the terror of the black void.

Then faintly, from far away, she heard Jondalar's voice, full of agonized fear and love, calling to her, pulling her back and Mamut as well, by the sheer strength of his love and his need. In an instant she was back, feeling chilled to the bone in the warmth of late summer sunshine.

"Jondalar brought us back!" she said aloud. At the time she hadn't been aware of it. He was the one she had opened her eyes to, but then he was gone and Ranec was there instead bringing a hot drink to warm her. Mamut had told her that someone had helped them to return. She hadn't realized that it was Jondalar, but suddenly she knew, almost as though she was meant to know.

The old man had said he would never use the root again and warned her against it, but he also said that if she ever did, to make sure someone was there who could call her back. He'd told her the root was more than deadly. It could steal her spirit; she could be lost in the black void forever, and would never be able to return to the Great Earth Mother. It hadn't mattered then, anyway. She'd had no roots left. She had used the last of them with Mamut. But now, in front of her, there was the plant.

Just because it was there didn't mean she had to take it, she thought. If she left it, she would never have to worry that she might use it again and lose her spirit. She had been told the drink was forbidden to her, anyway. It was for mog-urs who dealt with the spirit world, not medicine women who were only supposed to make it for them, but she had already drunk it, twice. And besides, Broud had cursed her; as far as the Clan was concerned, she was dead. Who was there to forbid her now?

Ayla didn't even ask herself why she was doing it when she picked up the broken branch and used it as a digging stick to carefully extract several of the plants without damaging the roots. She was one of the few people on earth who knew their properties and how to prepare them. She could not leave them. It wasn't that she had any particular intention of using them, which in itself was not unusual. She had many preparations of plants that might never be used, but this was different. The others had potential medicinal uses. Even the golden thread, Iza's magic medicine to fight off impregnating essences, was good for stings and bites when applied externally, but, as far as she knew, this plant had no other use. The root was spirit magic.