The Plains of Passage (Earth's Children 4)

At the foot of a glacier there was often a separation between the ice and the land, which created a cavelike space beneath the ice, or an overhanging ice shelf that extended out over the accumulated gravels of glacial till. At the place Jondalar chose to start, the overhang had collapsed, providing a gradual ascent. It was also mixed with gravel, giving them better footing. Starting from the collapsed edge a heavy accumulation of gravel—a moraine—led up the side of the ice like a well-defined trail and, except near the top, it did not appear too steep for them or the sure-footed horses. Getting over the top edge could be a problem, but he wouldn't know how much of one until he got there.

With Jondalar leading the way, they started up the slope. Racer balked for a moment. Although they had trimmed it down, his large load was still unwieldy and the shift in elevation from a moderate to a steeper grade unsettled him. A hoof slipped, then caught hold, and with some hesitation the young stallion started up. Then it was Ayla's turn, and Whinney dragging the travois. But the mare had hauled the pole drag for so long, across such varied terrain, that she was accustomed to it, and, unlike the large load Racer carried on his back, the wide-spaced poles helped to steady the mare.

Wolf brought up the rear. It was easier for him. He was lower to the ground and his callused paws provided friction against slipping. But he sensed the danger to his companions and followed behind as though guarding the rear, watchful for some unseen menace.

In the bright moonlight, reflections from jagged outcrops of bare ice shimmered, and the mirrorlike surfaces of sheer planes had a deep liquid quality, like still black pools. It was not difficult to see the moraine that was spilling down, like a river of sand and stones in slow motion, but the night lighting obscured the size and perspective of objects and hid small details.

Jondalar set a slow and cautious pace, carefully leading his horse around obstructions. Ayla was more concerned with finding the best path for the horse she was leading than she was for her own safety. As the slope became steeper, the horses, unbalanced by the sharper incline and their heavy loads, struggled for footing. When a hoof slipped as Jondalar tried to lead Racer up a precipitous rise near the top, the horse neighed and tried to rear.

"Come on, Racer," Jondalar urged, pulling his lead rope taut, as if he could pull him up by sheer brute strength. "We're almost there, you can do it."

The stallion made an effort, but his hooves slipped on treacherous ice below a thin layer of snow, and Jondalar felt himself pulled back by the lead rope. He eased up on the rope, giving Racer his head, and finally let go altogether. There were things in the pack he would hate to lose, and even more, it would pain him to lose the animal, but he feared the stallion could not make it.

But when his h

ooves found gravel. Racer's slide stopped, and with no restraint on him, he lifted his head and plunged forward. Suddenly the stallion was over the edge, adroitly stepping over a narrow crack at the end of a crevasse as the way leveled out. Jondalar noticed that the color of the sky had shifted from black to deep indigo blue, with a faint lightening of the shade on the eastern horizon, as he stroked the horse and praised him warmly.

Then he felt a tug on the rope over his shoulder. Ayla must have slipped back, he thought, as he gave her more slack. She must have reached the steep rise. Suddenly the rope was slipping through his hand, until he felt a strong tug at his waist. She must be holding on to Whinney's lead rope, he thought. She's got to let go.

He grabbed the rope with both hands and shouted, "Let go, Ayla! She'll pull you down with her!"

But Ayla didn't hear, or if she did, she didn't comprehend. Whinney had started up the incline, but her hooves could find no purchase and she kept slipping back. Ayla was holding on to the lead rope, as though she could keep the mare from falling, but she was sliding back, too. Jondalar felt himself being pulled dangerously close to the edge. Looking for something to hold on to, he grabbed Racer's lead rope. The stallion neighed.

But it was the travois that checked Whinney's descent. One of the poles caught in a crack and held long enough for the mare to get her balance. Then her hooves plunged through a snowdrift that held her steady, and she found gravel. As he felt the pull ease, he let go of Racer's lead. Bracing his foot against the crack in the ice, Jondalar pulled up on the rope around his waist.

"Give me a little slack," Ayla called out, as she held on to the lead rope while Whinney pushed forward.

Suddenly, miraculously, he saw Ayla over the edge, and he pulled her the rest of the way. Then Whinney appeared. With a forward vault, she scrambled up past the crack and her feet were on the level ice, the poles of the travois jutting out into the air and the bowl boat resting on the edge they had surmounted. A streak of pink appeared across the early morning sky, defining the edge of the earth, as Jondalar heaved a great sigh.

Wolf suddenly bounded up over the edge and raced over to Ayla. He started to jump up on her, but, feeling none too steady, she signaled him down. He backed off, looked at Jondalar and then the horses. Lifting his head and starting with a few preliminary yips, he howled his wolf song loud and long.

Although they had climbed up a steep incline and the ice had leveled out, they were not quite on the top surface of the glacier. There were cracks near the edge, and broken blocks of expanded ice that had surged up. Jondalar crossed a mound of snow that covered a jagged, splintered pile behind the edge, and finally he set his feet on a level surface of the ice plateau. Racer followed him, sending broken chunks bouncing and rolling in a clattering fall over the edge. The man kept the rope attached to his waist taut as Ayla traced over his last steps. Wolf raced ahead while Whinney followed behind.

The sky had become a fleeting and unique shade of dawn blue, while coruscating rays of light radiated from just behind the edge of the earth. Ayla looked back over the steep incline and wondered how they had made it up the slope. From their vantage point at the top, it didn't look possible. Then she turned to go on, and she caught her breath.

The rising sun had peeked over the eastern edge with a blinding burst of light that illuminated an incredible scene. To the west, a flat, utterly featureless, dazzling white plain stretched out before them. Above it the sky was a shade of blue she had never seen in her life. It had somehow absorbed the reflection of the red dawn, and the blue-green undertone of glacial ice, and yet remained blue. But it was a blue so stunningly brilliant that it seemed to glow with its own light in a color beyond description. It shaded to a hazy blue-black on the distant horizon in the southwest.

As the sun rose in the east, the faded image of a slightly less than perfect circle that had glowed with such brilliant reflection in the black sky of their predawn awakening hovered over the far western edge; a dim memory of its earlier glory. But nothing interrupted the unearthly splendor of the vast desert of frozen water; no tree, no rock, no movement of any kind marred the majesty of the seemingly unbroken surface.

Ayla expelled her breath explosively. She hadn't known she was holding it. "Jondalar! It's magnificent! Why didn't you tell me? I would have journeyed twice the distance just to see this," she said in an awed voice.

"It is spectacular," he said, smiling at her reaction, but just as overwhelmed. "But I couldn't tell you. I've never seen it like this before. It's not often this still. The blizzards up here can be spectacular, too. Let's move while we can see the way. It's not as solid as it seems, and with this clear sky and the bright sun, a crevasse could open up or an overhanging cornice give way."

They started across the plain of ice, preceded by their long shadows. Before the sun was very high, they were sweating in their heavy clothes. Ayla started to remove her hooded outer fur parka.

"Take it off, if you want," Jondalar said, "but keep yourself covered. You can get a bad sunburn up here, and not just from above. When the sun shines on it, the ice can burn you, too."

Small cumulus clouds began to form during the morning. By noon they had drawn together into large cumulus clouds. The wind started picking up in the afternoon. About the time Ayla and Jondalar decided to stop to melt snow and ice for water, she was more than happy to put her warm outer fur back on. The sun was hidden by moisture-laden cumulonimbus that sprinkled a light dusting of dry powder snow on the travelers. The glacier was growing.

The plateau glacier they were crossing had been spawned in the peaks of the craggy mountains far to the south. Moist air, rising as it swept up the tall barriers, condensed into misty droplets, but temperature decided whether it would fall as cold rain or, with just a slight drop, as snow. It was not perpetual freezing that made glaciers; rather, an accumulation of snow from one year to the next gave rise to glaciers that, in time, became sheets of ice that eventually spanned continents. In spite of a few hot days, solid cold winters in combination with cool cloudy summers that don't quite melt the leftover snow and ice at winter's end—a lower yearly average temperature—will swing the balance toward a glacial epoch.

Just below the soaring spires of the southern mountains, too steep themselves for snow to rest upon, small basins formed, cirques that nestled against the sides of the pinnacles; and these cirques were the birthplaces of glaciers. As the light, dry, lacy snowflakes drifted into the depressions high in the mountains, created by minute amounts of water freezing in cracks and then expanding to loosen tons of rock, they piled up. Eventually the weight of the mass of frozen water broke the delicate flakes into pieces that coalesced into small round balls of ice: firn, corn snow.

Firn did not form at the surface, but deep in the cirque, and when more snow fell, the heavier compact spheres were pushed up and over the edge of the nest. As more of them accumulated, the nearly circular balls of ice were pressed together so hard by the sheer weight above that a fraction of the energy was released as heat. For just an instant, they melted at the many points of contact and immediately refroze, welding the balls together. As the layers of ice deepened, the greater pressure rearranged the structure of the molecules into solid, crystalline ice, but with a subtle difference: the ice flowed.

Glacier ice, formed under tremendous pressure, was more dense; yet at the lower levels the great mass of solid ice flowed as smoothly as any liquid. Separating around obstructions, such as the soaring tops of mountains, and rejoining on the other side—often taking a large part of the rock with it and leaving behind sharp-peaked islands—a glacier followed the contours of the land, grinding and reshaping it as it went.

The river of solid ice had currents and eddies, stagnant pools and rushing centers, but it moved to a different time, as ponderously slow as it was massively huge. It could take years to move inches. But time didn't matter. It had all the time in the world. As long as the average temperature stayed below the critical line, the glacier fed and grew.