The Plains of Passage (Earth's Children 4)

The female mammoths had moved upstream and joined forces with a few males. Several females were working on a narrow, almost vertical, bank of ice that had built up along the river's edge. The bigger males, including one dignified elder with streaks of gray hair, whose impressive, if less useful, tusks had grown so long that they were crossed in front, were scraping and gouging out huge chunks of ice from the banks. Then, lifting them high with their trunks, the mammoths threw the ice down with a loud crash to shatter into more usable pieces, all accompanied by bellowings, snortings, stompings, and trumpetings. The huge woolly creatures seemed to be making a game of it.

The noisy business of breaking ice was a practice that all mammoths learned. Even young ones only two or three years old, who had barely lost their baby tushes, showed wear on the outside edges at the ends of their tiny two-inch tusks from scraping ice, and the tips of the twenty-inch prongs of ten-year-olds were worn smooth from moving their heads up and down against the vertical surfaces. By the time the young mammoths reached twenty-five, their tusks were beginning to grow forward, upward, and inward, and the way they used them changed. The lower surfaces began to show some of the wear of scraping ice and brushing aside what snow did fall on the dry grass and plants of the steppes. Ice breaking, though, could be a dangerous business, since tusks often broke along with the ice. But even broken ends were often worn smooth again by later scraping and gouging of ice.

Ayla noticed that other animals had gathered around. The herds of woolly animals, with their powerful tusks, broke up enough ice for themselves, including their young and old, and for a community of followers as well. Many animals benefited by trailing close on the heels of migrating mammoths. The big woollies not only created piles of loose chunks of ice in winter that were chewed for moisture by animals other than themselves, in summer they sometimes used their tusks and feet to dig holes in dry riverbeds, which would fill with water. The waterholes thus created were also used by other animals to slake their thirst.

As they followed the frozen waterway, the woman and man rode, and often walked, fairly close to the banks of the Great Mother River. With so little snow, there was no soft blanket of concealing white to cover the land, and the dormant vegetation exposed its drab winter face. The tall stalks of last summer's phragmite reeds and spikes of cattails rose valiantly from their frozen bed of marshland, while dead ferns and sedges lay prostrate near the ice heaped up along the edges. Lichens clung to rocks like the scabs of healing wounds, and mosses had shriveled into brittle dry mats.

The long, skeletal fingers of leafless limbs rattled in the sharp and piercing wind, though only a practiced eye could discern whether they were willow, birch, or alder brush. The deep green conifers—spruces, firs, and pines—were easier to distinguish, and though the larches had dropped their needles, their shape was revealing. When they climbed to higher elevations to hunt, they saw recumbent dwarf birch and knee pine clinging close to the ground.

Small game provided most of their meals; big game usually required more time to stalk and hunt than they wanted to spend, although they didn't hesitate to try for a deer when they saw one. The meat froze quickly, and even Wolf didn't have to hunt for a while. Rabbit, hare, and an occasional beaver, abundant in the mountainous region, were more usual fare, but the steppe animals of drier continental climates, marmots and giant hamsters, were also prevalent, and they were always glad to see ptarmigan, the fat white birds with the feathered feet.

Ayla's sling was often put to good use; they tended to save the spear-throwers for larger game. It was easier to find stones than to make new spears to replace missiles that were lost or broken. But some days hunting took more of their time than they wished, and anything that took time made Jondalar edgy.

They often supplemented their diet, which was heavily concentrated on lean meat, with the inner bark of conifers and other trees, usually cooked into a broth with meat, and they were delighted when they found berries, frozen but still clinging to the bush. Juniper berries, which were particularly good with meat if they didn't use too many, were prevalent; rose hips were more sporadic, but usually plentiful when found, and always sweeter after freezing; creeping crowberry, with a needlelike evergreen foliage, had small shiny black berries that often persisted through the winter, as did blue bearberries and red lingonberries.

Grains and seeds were also added to the meat soups, gathered painstakingly from dried grasses and herbs that still bore seed heads, though it took time to find them. Most of the foliage of seed-bearing herbs had long since disintegrated, the plants lying dormant until spring thaws would awaken them to new life. Ayla wished for the dried vegetables and fruits that had been destroyed by the wolves, though she didn't begrudge the supplies she had given to the S'Armunai.

Though Whinney and Racer were grass eaters almost exclusively in summer, Ayla noticed that their diet had extended to browsing on twig tips, chewing through to the inner bark of trees, and included a particular variety of lichen, the kind reindeer preferred. She collected some and tested small amounts on herself, then made some for both of them. They found the taste strong but tolerable, and she was experimenting with ways to cook it.

Another source of winter food was small rodents such as voles, mice, and lemmings; not the animals themselves—Ayla usually let Wolf have those as a reward for helping to sniff them out—but their nests. She looked for the subtle features that hinted at a burrow, then broke through the frozen ground with a digging stick to find the small animals surrounded by the seeds, nuts, and bulbs they had laid by.

And Ayla also had her medicine bag. When she thought of all the damage that had been done to the things they had cached, she shuddered to think about what would have happened if she had left her medicine bag. Not that she would have, but the thought of losing it made her stomach churn. It was so much a part of her that she would have felt lost without it. But even more, the materials in the otter-skin bag, and the long history of lore accumulated by trial and error that had been passed down to her, kept the travelers healthier than either of them fully realized.

For example, Ayla knew that various herbs, barks, and roots could be used to treat, and avoid getting, certain diseases. Though she didn't call them deficiency diseases, or have a name for the vitamins and trace minerals the herbs contained, or even know exactly how they worked, she carried many of them with her in her medicine bag, and she regularly ma

de them into the teas they drank.

She also used the vegetation that was readily available even in winter, such as the needles of evergreens, particularly the newest growth from the tips of branches, which were rich in the vitamins that prevented scurvy. She regularly added them to their daily teas, mostly because they liked the tangy, citruslike flavor, though she did know they were beneficial and had a good idea of when and how to use them. She had often made needle tea for people with soft bloody gums whose teeth became loose during long winters of subsisting essentially on dried meats, either by choice or necessity.

They developed a pattern of opportunistic foraging as they moved west that allowed them as much time as possible for traveling. Though an occasional meal was skimpy, they seldom missed one entirely, but with so little fat in their diet and the constant exercise every day, they did lose weight. They didn't talk about it often, but they were both getting weary of the traveling and longed to reach their destination. During the day, they didn't talk much at all.

Riding the horses, or walking and leading them, Ayla and Jondalar often went single-file, close enough to hear a comment if it was spoken in a loud voice, but not close enough for casual conversation. As a result, they both had long stretches of quiet time to think their own thoughts, which they sometimes talked about in the evening when they were eating or lying together side by side in their sleeping furs.

Ayla often thought about their recent experiences. She had been thinking about the Camp of the Three Sisters, comparing the S'Armunai and their cruel leaders, like Attaroa and Brugar, with their relatives, the Mamutoi, and their cooperative and friendly sister-brother coleaders. And she wondered about the Zelandonii, the people of the man she loved. Jondalar had so many good qualities, she felt sure they had to be basically good people, but considering their feelings toward the Clan, she still wondered how they would accept her. Even S'Armuna had made oblique references to their strong aversion to the ones they called flatheads, but she felt sure no Zelandonii would ever be as cruel as the woman who had been the leader of the S'Armunai.

"I don't know how Attaroa could do the things she did, Jondalar," Ayla remarked as they were finishing an evening meal. "It makes me wonder."

"What do you wonder about?"

"My kind of people, the Others. When I first met you, I was so grateful just to finally find someone like me. It was a relief to know I wasn't the only one in the world. Then, when you turned out to be so wonderful, so good and caring and loving, I thought all of my kind of people would be like you," she said, "and it made me feel good." She was going to add, until he reacted with such disgust when she told him about her life with the Clan, but she changed her mind when she saw Jondalar smiling, flushed with embarrassed delight, obviously pleased.

He had felt a rush of warmth at her words, thinking that she was pretty wonderful, too.

"Then, when we met the Mamutoi, Talut and the Lion Camp," Ayla continued, "I was sure the Others were all good people. They helped each other, and everyone had a voice in the decisions. They were friendly and laughed a lot, and they didn't reject an idea just because they hadn't heard about it before. There was Frebec, of course, but he turned out not to be so bad, either. Even those at the Summer Meeting who sided against me for a while because of the Clan, and even some of the Sharamudoi, did it out of misplaced fear, not evil intentions. But Attaroa was as vicious as a hyena."

"Attaroa was only one person," Jondalar reminded her.

"Yes, but look how many she influenced. S'Armuna used her sacred knowledge to help Attaroa kill and hurt people, even if she did feel sorry about it later, and Epadoa was willing to do anything Attaroa said," Ayla said.

"They had reasons for it. The women had been badly treated," Jondalar said.

"I know the reasons. S'Armuna thought she was doing the right thing, and I think Epadoa loved to hunt and loved Attaroa for letting her do it. I know that feeling. I love to hunt, too, and I went against the Clan and did things I wasn't supposed to so I could hunt."

"Well, Epadoa can hunt for the whole Camp now, and I don't think she was so bad," Jondalar said. "She seemed to be discovering the kind of love a mother feels. Doban told me she promised him she would never hurt him again and would never let anyone else hurt him," Jondalar said. "Her feelings for him may be even stronger because she hurt him so much and now she has a chance to make up for it."

"Epadoa didn't want to hurt those boys. She told S'Armuna that she was afraid if she didn't do what Attaroa wanted, she would kill them. Those were her reasons. Even Attaroa had reasons. There was so much in her life that was bad, she became an evil thing. She wasn't human any more, but no reasons are good enough to excuse her. How could she do the things she did? Even Broud, as bad as he was, was not as bad, and he hated me. He never purposely hurt children. I used to think my kind of people were so good, but I'm not so sure any more," she said, looking sad and distressed.

"There are good people and bad people, Ayla, and everyone has some good and some bad in them," Jondalar said, his wrinkled forehead showing his concern. He sensed that she was trying to fit the new sensibilities she had gathered from her latest unpleasant experience into her personal scheme of things, and he knew it was important. "But most people are decent and try to help each other. They know it's necessary—after all, you never know when you may need help—and most people would rather be friendly."