The Plains of Passage

  Within the damp shelter, too wet to even consider a fire, Ayla and Jondalar, wrapped in heavy furs, cuddled close together. Wolf curled up on top of their sleeping furs, pressing close to them, and finally, their combined body heat warmed them. The woman and man dozed a bit, though neither of them slept much. Near dawn the rain slacked off, and their sleep deepened.

  Ayla listened, smiling to herself, before opening her eyes. Within the medley of birdsong that had awakened her, she could distinguish the sharp elaborate call notes of a pipet. Then she heard a melodious warble that seemed to be getting louder, but when she tried to find the source of the trilling song, she had to look carefully to see the drab, brown, inconspicuous little skylark just landing. Ayla rolled on her side to watch him.

  The skylark walked along the ground easily and quickly, well-balanced by its large hind claws, then bobbed its crested head and came up with a caterpillar in its beak. With quick, jerky steps, it rushed toward a bare scrape in the ground near the stems of a sallow bush, where a camouflaged cluster of newly hatched fluffy chicks suddenly sprang to life, each open mouth begging to be filled with the delectable morsel. Soon a second bird, similar in markings though slightly more drab, and nearly invisible against the dun earth of the steppes, appeared with a winged insect. While she stuffed it into an open mouth, the first bird leaped into the air and climbed in circles until he was almost lost from view. But his presence was not lost. He had disappeared into a spiral of incredibly glorious song.

  Ayla softly whistled the musical call, replicating the sounds with such precision that the mother bird stopped pecking at the ground in search of food and turned in her direction. Ayla whistled again, wishing she had some grain to offer, as she had done when she lived in her valley and first began imitating bird calls. After she had gained skill, they came when she called, whether she offered grain or not, and became company for her during those lonely days. The mother skylark approached, looking for the bird that was invading the territory of her nest, but when she found no other skylarks, she went back to feeding her young.

  Whistled repetitive phrases, more mellow and ending with a chuckling sound, perked Ayla's interest even more. Sandgrouse were big enough to make a decent meal, and so were those cooing turtledoves, she thought, looking around to see if she could spot the buxom birds that resembled the brown sandgrouse in general size and shape. In the low branches, she saw a simple twig nest with three white eggs in it before she saw the plump pigeon with its small head and bill and short legs. Its soft, dense plumage was a pale brown, almost pinkish, and its strongly patterned back and wings, which somewhat resembled the shell of a turtle, glistened with iridescent patches.

  Jondalar rolled over, and Ayla turned to watch the man lying beside her, breathing with the deep rhythms of sleep. Then she became aware of her need to get up and relieve herself. She was afraid that if she moved he would wake up, and she hated to disturb him, but the more she tried to forget about it, the more urgent her need became. Maybe if she moved slowly, she thought, trying to ease out of the warm, slightly damp furs wrapped around them. He snorted and snuffled and rolled over as she extricated herself, but it was when he reached for her and found her missing that he woke up.

  "Ayla? Oh, there you are," he mumbled.

  "Go back to sleep, Jondalar. You don't have to get up yet," she said as she crawled out of their nest in the brush.

  It was a bright, fresh morning, the sky a clear sparkling blue without a hint of a cloud in sight. Wolf was gone, probably hunting or exploring, Ayla thought. The horses had moved off, too; she saw them grazing near the edge of the valley. Though the sun was still low, steam was already rising from the wet ground, and Ayla felt the humidity as she hunkered down to pass her water. Then she noticed the red stains on the inside of her legs. Her moon time, she thought. She'd been expecting it; she'd have to wash herself and her undergarment, but first she needed the mouflon wool.

  The runoff ditch was only half-full, but the streamlet flowing through it was clear. She leaned over and rinsed her hands, drank several cupped handfuls of the cool running liquid, and then hurried back to their sleeping place. Jondalar was up, and he smiled when she made her way into their shelter within the sallow brush to get one of her pack baskets. She pulled it out in the open and began rummaging through it. Jondalar brought both of his baskets out with him, then went back for the rest of their things. He wanted to see how much damage had been done by the soaking rains. Wolf came loping back just then and went straight to Ayla.

  "You're looking satisfied with yourself," she said, roughing up his neck fur, so thick and full it was almost a mane. When she stopped, he jumped up on her, putting his muddy paws on her chest, nearly at the level of her shoulders. He caught her by surprise, almost knocking her down, but she recovered her balance.

  "Wolf! Look at all this mud," she said, as he reached to lick her throat and face, and then, with a low rumbling growl, he opened his mouth and took her jaw in his teeth. But for all his impressive canine armaments, his action was as restrained and gentle as if he'd been handling a new puppy. No tooth broke skin; they hardly made an impression on it. She buried both her hands in his ruff again, pushed his head back, and looked at the devotion in his wolfish eyes with as much affection as he showed her. Then she grabbed his jaw with her teeth, and gave him the same kind of growling, gentle love-bite back.

  "Now, get down, Wolf. Look at the mess you've made of me! I'm going to have to wash this, too." She brushed off the loose, sleeveless leather tunic she wore over the short leggings that had been used as undergarments.

  "If I didn't know better, Ayla, I could almost be frightened for you when he does that," Jondalar said. "He's gotten so big, and he is a hunter. He could kill someone."

  "You don't have to worry about Wolf when he does that. That's the way wolves greet each other and show their love. I think he's glad we woke up in time to get out of the valley, too."

  "Have you looked down there?"

  "Not yet ... Wolf, get away from there," she said, pushing him away when he began to sniff between her legs. "It's my moon time." She looked aside and flushed slightly. "I came to get my wool, and I haven't had the chance to look."

  While Ayla attended to her personal needs, washing herself and her clothes in the little stream, tying on the straps that held the wool in place, and getting something else to wear, Jondalar walked toward the edge of the valley to pass his water and looked down. There was no sign of a campsite, or of any place there could be one. The natural basin of the valley was partially filled with water, and the logs and trees and other floating debris were bobbing and dipping as the agitated water continued to rise. The small river that fed it was still blocked at the outlet, and still creating backwash, though it was not sloshing with the sweeping back-and-forth movement of the night before.

  Ayla quietly moved beside Jondalar, who had been staring intently at the valley and thinking. He looked up when he felt her presence.

  "This valley must get narrow downstream, and something must be blocking the river," he said, "probably rocks or a mudslide. It's holding the water in. Maybe that's why it was so green down there, it may have done it before."

  "The flash flood alone would have washed us away if it had caught us," Ayla said. "My valley used to flood every spring, and that was bad enough, but this..." She could find no words to express her thought, and she unconsciously finished her sentence with the motions of Clan sign language that to her conveyed more strongly and precisely her feelings of dismay and relief.

  Jondalar understood. He, too, was at a loss for words and shared her feelings. They both stood silently watching the movement below; then Ayla noticed his forehead knotting with concentration and concern. Finally he spoke.

  "If the mudslide, or whatever it is, gives away too quickly, that water washing downstream will be very dangerous. I hope there are no people that way," he said.

  "It won't be any more dangerous than it was last night," Ayla said. "Will it?"


  "Last night it was raining, so people might expect something like a flood, but if this breaks through, without the warning of a rainstorm, it would catch people by surprise, and that would be devastating," he explained.

  Ayla nodded, then said, "But if people are using this river, wouldn't they notice that it had stopped flowing and try to find out why?"

  He turned to face her. "But what about us, Ayla? We're traveling, and we wouldn't have any way of knowing that a river had stopped running. We could be downstream of something like this sometime, and we wouldn't have any warning."

  Ayla turned back to look at the water in the valley and didn't answer immediately. "You're right, Jondalar," she said then. "We could get caught in another flash flood without warning. Or the lightning could have hit us instead of that tree. Or an earthquake could open up a crack in the ground and take everyone except a little girl, leaving her alone in the world. Or someone could get sick, or be born with a weakness or a deformity. The Mamut said no one can know when the Mother will decide to call one of Her children back to Her. There's nothing to be gained by worrying about things like that. We can't do anything about them. That's for Her to decide."

  Jondalar listened, still frowning with worry; then he relaxed and put his arms around her. "I worry too much. Thonolan used to tell me that. I just started thinking about what would happen if we were downstream of that valley, and remembered last night. And then I thought about losing you, and . . ." He tightened his arms around her. "Ayla, I don't know what I would do if I ever lost you," he said, with sudden fervor, holding her to him. "I'm not sure I'd want to go on living."

  She felt a tinge of worry at his strong reaction. "I hope you would go on living, Jondalar, and find someone else to love. If anything ever happened to you, a piece of me, of my spirit, would be gone with you, because I love you, but I would go on living, and a piece of your spirit would always be living with me."

  "It wouldn't be easy to find someone else to love. I didn't think I'd ever find you. I don't know if I'd even want to look," Jondalar said.

  They started back, walking together. Ayla was quiet for a while, thinking, then said, "I wonder if that's what happens when you love someone, and that person loves you back? I wonder if you exchange pieces of each other's spirit. Maybe that's why it hurts so much to lose someone you love." She paused, then continued. "It's like the men of the Clan. They are hunting brothers, and they exchange a piece of each other's spirit, particularly when one saves the other's life. It's not easy to go on living when a piece of your spirit is missing, and each hunter knows a piece of himself will go to the next world if the other goes, so he will watch and protect his brother, do almost anything to save his life." She stopped and looked up at him. "Do you think we have exchanged pieces of our spirits, Jondalar? We are hunting partners, aren't we?"

  "And you once saved my life, but you are much more than a hunting brother," he said, smiling at the idea. "I love you. I understand now why Thonolan didn't want to go on living when Jetamio died. Sometimes I think he was searching for a way into the next world, so he could find them, Jetamio and the baby who was never born."

  "But if anything ever happened to me, I wouldn't want you to follow me to any spirit world. I'd want you to stay right here, and find someone else," Ayla said, with conviction. She didn't like all his talk about next worlds. She wasn't sure what some other world after this one would be like, or even, deep in her heart, if one really existed. What she did know was that to get to any next world, you had to die in this one, and she didn't want to hear about Jondalar dying, either before or after she did.

  Thinking about worlds of the spirit led to other random thoughts. "Maybe that's what happens when you get old," she said. "If you exchange pieces of your spirit with people you love, after you've lost a lot of them, so many pieces of your spirit have gone with them to the next world that there's not enough left to keep you alive in this world. It's like a hole inside of you that keeps getting bigger, so you want to go to the next world where most of your spirit and your loved ones are."

  "How do you know so much?" Jondalar asked with a little smile. For all her lack of knowledge of the world of the spirits, her ingenuous and spontaneous observations made sense to him in a way, and displayed a genuine and thoughtful intelligence, though he had no way of knowing if there was any merit in the ideas. If Zelandoni were there, he could ask her, he thought. Then suddenly he realized they were going home and he would be able to ask her, some day soon.

  "I lost pieces of my spirit when I was a little girl and the people I was born to were taken by the earthquake. Then Iza took a piece when she died, and Creb, and so did Rydag. Even though he isn't dead, even Durc has a piece of me, of my spirit, that I will never see. Your brother took a piece of you with him, didn't he?"

  "Yes," Jondalar said, "he did. I will always miss him, and always hurt about it. Sometimes I still think it was my fault, and I would have done anything to save him."

  "I don't think there is anything you could have done, Jondalar. The Mother wanted him, and it is for Her to decide, not for someone to search for a way to the next world."

  When they got back to the tall sallow brush where they had spent the night, they began going through their belongings. Almost everything was at least damp, and many things were still very wet. They untied the swollen knots that still tied the ground cover to the upper shaped part of the tent and, each taking an end and twisting in opposite directions, tried to wring the pieces out. But too much twisting put a strain on the stitching. When they decided to erect the tent to begin letting it dry out, they discovered they had lost some of the tent poles.

  They spread the ground cover out over the brush, and then checked their outer clothes, which were also still quite wet. Objects that were in the pack baskets had fared a little better. Many things were damp, but would probably dry soon enough, if they had a warm, dry place to air them out. The open steppes would be fine during the day, but that's when they needed to travel, and it could get damp and cool on the ground at night. They did not look forward to sleeping in a wet tent.

  "I think it's time for some hot tea," Ayla said, feeling discouraged. It was already later than usual. She got a fire started and put heating stones in it, thinking about breakfast. That was when she realized they didn't have the food left from their evening meal the night before.

  "Oh, Jondalar, we don't have anything to eat this morning," she complained. "It's still down in that valley. I left the grains in my good cooking basket near the hot coals in the fireplace. The cooking basket is gone, too. I have others, but it was a good one. At least I still have my medicine bag," she said with obvious relief when she found it. "And the otter skin still resists water, even as old as it is. Everything inside is dry. At least I can make tea for us, I have some good-tasting herbs in it. I'll get some water," she said, then looked around. "Where's my tea-making basket? Did I lose that, too? I thought I brought it into the tent when it began to rain. It must have dropped when we were hurrying to leave."

  "We left something else back there that isn't going to make you very happy," Jondalar said.

  "What?" Ayla said, looking upset.

  "Your parfleche, and the long poles."

  She shut her eyes and shook her head in dismay. "Oh, no. That was a good meat-keeper and it was full of roe deer meat. And those poles. They were just the right size. It's going to be hard to replace them. I'd better see if anything else was lost and make sure the emergency food is all right."

  She reached for the pack basket where she kept the few personal things she was taking with her and the clothing and equipment that would be used later. Though all the baskets were wet, and sagging, the spare ropes and cords on the bottom had kept the contents of this one reasonably dry and undamaged. The food they were using along the way was near the top of the basket; below it the emergency traveling-food package was still securely wrapped and essentially dry. She decided this might be a good time to look over all their supplies just to be certain
nothing was spoiled, and to judge how long the food they had with them would last.

  She took out all the various kinds of dried preserved food she had brought with them and spread it out on top of their sleeping roll. There were berries—blackberries, raspberries, bilberries, elderberries, blueberries, strawberries, alone or mixed together—that had been mashed and dried into cakes. Other sweet varieties were cooked down, then dried to a leathery texture, sometimes with added pieces of small hard apples, tart but high in pectin. Whole berries and wild apples, along with other fruits such as wild pears and plums, were sliced or left whole, and sweetened a bit as they dried in the sun. Any of them could be eaten as they were, or soaked or cooked with water, and were often used to flavor soups or meats. There also were grains and seeds, some that had been partially cooked and then parched; some shelled and roasted hazelnuts; and the stone-pine cones full of rich nuts she had collected from the valley the day before.

  Vegetables were also dried—stems, buds, and particularly starchy roots, such as cattail, thistle, licorish fern, and various lily corms. Some were steam-cooked in ground ovens before being dried, but others were dug, peeled, and strung immediately on cords made of the stringy bark of certain plants or sinew from the backbone or leg tendons of various animals. Mushrooms were also strung, and for flavor were often hung over smoky fires to dry, and certain edible lichens were steamed and dried into dense, nutritious loaves. Their provisions were rounded out by a large selection of dried smoked meat and fish, and in a special packet, put aside for emergencies, was a mixture of ground-up dried meat, clean rendered fat, and dried fruits, molded into small cakes.

  The dried food was compact and kept well; some of it was more than a year old and had come from the previous winter's supplies, but the quantities of certain items were quite limited. Nezzie had collected it for them from friends and relatives who had brought it to the Summer Meeting. Ayla had drawn sparingly from their store of food; for the most part they were living off the land. It was the season for it. If they could not survive by harvesting the bounty of the Great Earth Mother when Her offerings were rich, they could never hope to survive traveling across country during leaner times.