The Plains of Passage (Earth's Children 4)

ly opaque.

No fish lived in such a place, she was sure, just as no vegetation grew along the edge; it was too new for life, too raw. There was only water and stone, and a quality of time before time, of ancient beginnings before life began. Ayla shivered and felt a stark taste of Her terrible loneliness before the Great Mother Earth gave birth to all living things.

She stopped to pass her water, then hurried across the sharp-edged gravel shore, waded in, then ducked down. It was icy cold and gritty with silt. She wanted to bathe—it hadn't been possible while they were crossing the ice—but not in this water. She didn't mind the cold so much, but she wanted clear, fresh water.

She started back to the tent to dress and help Jondalar pack up. On the way, she looked through the mist across the lifeless landscape to a hint of trees below. Suddenly she smiled.

"There you are!" she said, sounding a loud whistle.

Jondalar was out of the tent in an instant. He smiled as broadly as Ayla to see the two horses galloping toward them. Wolf followed along behind, and Ayla thought he looked pleased with himself. He hadn't been around that morning, and she wondered if he had played any part in the horses' return. She shook her head, realizing she would probably never know.

They greeted each horse with hugs, caressing strokes, friendly scratches, and words of affection. Ayla checked them over carefully at the same time, wanting to be sure they had not injured themselves. The horse boot on Whinney's right rear foot was missing and the mare seemed to flinch when Ayla examined her leg. Could she have broken through the ice at the edge of the glacier and, in pulling free, torn off the boot and bruised her leg? It was the only thing she could think of.

Ayla removed the rest of the mare's boots, lifting each leg to untie them while Jondalar stood close to steady the animal. Racer still had all his horse boots, although Jondalar noticed they were wearing thin over the sharp hooves; even mammoth hide would not last long worn over hooves.

When they had gathered all their things together and gone to drag the bowl boat closer, they discovered the bottom was wet and soggy. It had developed a leak.

"I don't think I'd want to try getting across a river in this, any more," Jondalar said. "Do you think we should leave it?"

"We have to, unless we want to drag it ourselves. We don't have the poles for the travois. We left them behind when we came flying down that ice, and there are no trees around here for new ones," Ayla said.

"Well, that settles it!" Jondalar said. "It's a good thing we don't need to haul rocks any more, and we've lightened our load so much that I think we could carry everything ourselves, even without the horses."

"If they hadn't come back, that's what we'd be doing while we were looking for them," Ayla said, "but I am so glad they found us."

"I was worried about them, too," Jondalar said.

As they descended the steep southwestern face of the ancient massif that supported the harrowing ice field on its worn summit, a light rain fell, flushing out pockets of dirty snow that filled shaded hollows in the open spruce forest they passed through. But a watercolor wash of green tinged the brown earth of a sloping meadow and brushed the tips of shrubs nearby. Below, through openings in the misty fog, they caught glimpses of a river curling from west to north, forced by the surrounding highlands to follow a deep rift valley. Across the river to the south, the rugged alpine foreland faded into a purple haze, but rising wraith-like out of the haze was the high mountain range with ice halfway down its slopes.

"You're going to like Dalanar," Jondalar was saying as they rode comfortably side by side. "You'll like all the Lanzadonii. Most of them used to be Zelandonii, like me."

"What made him decide to start a new Cave?"

"I'm not sure. I was so young when he and my mother parted, I didn't really get to know him until I went to live with him, and he taught Joplaya and me how to work the stone. I don't think he decided to settle and start a new Cave until he met Jerika, but he chose this place because he found the Hint mine. People were already talking about Lanzadonii stone when I was a boy," Jondalar explained.

"Jerika is his mate, and ... Joplaya ... is your cousin, right?"

"Yes. Close-cousin. Jerika's daughter, born to Dalanar's hearth. She's a good flint knapper, too, but don't ever tell her I said so. She's a great tease, always joking. I wonder if she's found a mate. Great Mother! It's been so long. They are going to be so surprised to see us!"

"Jondalar!" Ayla said in a loud, urgent whisper. He pulled up short. "Look over there, near those trees. There's a deer!"

The man smiled. "Let's get it!" he said, reaching for a spear as he pulled out his spear-thrower and signaled Racer with his knees. Although his method of guiding his mount was not quite the same as hers, after nearly a year of traveling, he was as good a rider as Ayla.

She turned Whinney almost in tandem—she enjoyed being free and unencumbered by the travois for a change—and set her spear in her spear-thrower. Startled by the quick movement, the deer bounded off with high leaps, but they raced after it, coming up on either side and, with the help of the spear-throwers, dispatched the young, inexperienced buck easily. They butchered out their favorite parts and selected other choice cuts to bring as a gift to Dalanar's people, then let Wolf have his pick of what was left.

Toward evening, they found a racing, bubbling, healthy-looking stream and followed it until they came to a large open field with a few trees and some brush beside the water. They decided to make camp early and cook some of their deer meat. The rain had let up and there wasn't any hurry any more, though they had to keep reminding themselves of that.

The following morning, when Ayla stepped out of the tent, she stopped and gaped in amazement, stunned by the sight. The landscape seemed unreal, with the quality of an especially vivid dream. It seemed impossible that they could have endured the most harshly bitter intensity of extreme winter conditions only days ago and, suddenly, it was spring!

"Jondalar! Oh, Jondalar. Come and see!"

The man put his sleepy head out of the opening, and she watched his smile grow.

They were at a lower elevation, and the rainy drizzle and fog of the day before had given way to a bright new sun. The sky was a rich azure blue decorated with mounds of white. Trees and brush were flocked with the fresh bright green of new leaves and the grass in the field looked good enough to eat. Flowers—jonquils, lilies, columbines, irises, and more—bloomed in profusion. Birds of every color and many varieties darted and wheeled through the air, chirping and singing.

Ayla recognized most of them—thrushes, nightingales, bluethroats, nutcrackers, black-headed woodpeckers, and river warblers—and whistled their song back to them. Jondalar got up and came out of the tent in time to watch with admiration while she patiently coaxed a gray shrike to her hand.

"I don't know how you do that," he said, as the bird flew away.