The Plains of Passage

  He held her so tight she could hardly breathe, but she didn't want him to let her go. He kissed her mouth, then her neck, and he began to explore her familiar body with his knowing hands.

  "Jondalar, I'm sure Epadoa is following us..."

  The man pulled back and caught his breath. "You're right, this is not the right time. We'd be too vulnerable if they came upon us." He should have known better. He felt a need to explain. "It's just that ... I thought I'd never see you again. It's like a Gift from the Mother to be here with you, and ... well ... the urge came over me to honor Her."

  Ayla held him, wanting to let him know that she felt the same. The thought occurred to her that she had never heard him try to explain why he wanted her before. She didn't need an explanation. It was all she could do to keep herself from forgetting the danger they were in and giving in to her own desire for him. Then, as she felt her warmth for the man growing, she reconsidered their situation.

  "Jondalar..." The tone of her voice caught his attention. "If you really think about it, we are probably so far ahead of Epadoa, it will take a while for her to track us here ... and Wolf would warn us..."

  As Jondalar looked at her and began to perceive her meaning, his frown of concern slowly eased into a smile, and his compelling blue eyes filled with his wanting and his love. "Ayla, my woman, my beautiful loving woman," he said, his voice husky with need.

  It had been a long time, and Jondalar was ready, but he took the time to kiss her slowly and fully. The feel of her lips parting to give access to her warm mouth encouraged thoughts of other parting lips and warm moist openings, and he felt the strivings of his manhood in anticipation. It was going to be difficult to hold back enough to Pleasure her.

  Ayla held him close, closing her eyes to think only of his mouth on hers, and his gently exploring tongue. She felt his turgid heat pressing against her, and her response was as immediate as his; an urge so strong that she didn't want to wait. She wanted to be closer to him, to be as close as only the feel of him within her could be. Keeping her lips on his, she slipped her arms down from around his neck to untie the waist closure of her fur leggings. She dropped them down, then reached for his ties.

  Jondalar felt her fumbling with the knots he had had to tie in the leather thongs that had been cut. He straightened up, breaking their contact, smiled into eyes that were the blue-gray color of a certain fine-quality flint, unsheathed his knife, and cut through his lacings again. They needed to be replaced anyway. She grinned, then held up her lower garment long enough to take a few steps to the sleeping rolls, then dropped down on top of them. He followed her while she unlaced her boots, then untied his own.

  Lying on their sides, they kissed again, as Jondalar reached beneath her fur parka and tunic for a firm breast. He felt her nipple harden in the middle of his palm, then pushed up her heavy garments to expose the tantalizing tip. It contracted with the cold, until he took it in his mouth. Then it warmed but did not relax. Not wanting to wait, she rolled to her back, pulling him with her, and opened to receive him.

  With a feeling of joy that she was as ready as he was, he knelt between her warm thighs and guided his eager member into her deep well. Her moist warmth enveloped him, caressing his fullness as he entered her depths with a moaning sigh of pleasure.

  Ayla felt him inside her, penetrating deeply, bringing him closer to the core of her being. She let herself forget everything except the warmth of him filling her as she arched to reach him. She felt him pulling back, caressing her from within, and then he filled her again. She cried out her welcome and delight as his long shaft withdrew and penetrated again, in just the right position so that each time he entered, his manhood rubbed against her small center of pleasure, sending shocks of excitement through her.

  Jondalar was building quickly; for a moment he feared it was too quickly—but he could not have held back if he'd tried, and this time he didn't try. He let himself advance and retreat as his need directed, sensing her willingness in the rhythm of her motion matching his as he moved steadily faster. Suddenly, overpoweringly, he was there.

  With an intensity that met his, she was ready for him. She whispered, "Now, oh now," as she strained to meet him. Her encouragement was a surprise. She had not done it before, but it had an immediate effect. With the next stroke, his building force reached an explosive rush and burst through in an eruption of release and pleasure. She was only a step behind, and, with a cry of exquisite delight, she reached her peak a moment later. A few more strokes and they both lay still.

  Though it was over quickly, the moment had been so intense that it took the woman a while to come down from the culminating summit. When Jondalar, feeling his weight on her was becoming too much, rolled over and disengaged, she felt an inexplicable sense of loss and wished they could stay linked together longer. Somehow he completed her, and the full realization of how much she had feared for him, and missed his presence struck her with such poignancy that she felt tears sting her eyes.

  Jondalar saw a transparent bead of water fall from the outside corner of her eye and run down the side of her face to her ear. He raised himself up and looked at her. "What's wrong, Ayla?"

  "I'm just so happy to be with you," she said, as another tear welled up and quivered at the edge of her eye before it spilled over.

  Jondalar reached for it with a finger and brought the salty drop to his mouth. "If you are happy, why are you crying?" he said, though he knew.

  She shook her head, unable to speak at that moment. He smiled with the knowledge that she shared his powerful feelings of relief and gratitude that they were together again. He bent down to kiss her eyes, and her cheek, and finally her beautiful smiling mouth. "I love you, too," he whispered in her ear.

  He felt a faint stirring in his manhood, and he wished they could start all over again, but this was not the time. Epadoa was certain to be trailing them, and sooner or later she would find them.

  "There is a stream nearby," Ayla said. "I need to wash, and I might as well fill the waterbags."

  "I'll go with you," the man said, partly because he still wanted to be close to her, and partly because he felt protective.

  They picked up their lower garments and boots, then the waterbags, and walked to a fairly wide stream, nearly closed over with ice, leaving only a small section in the middle still flowing. He shivered with the shock of freezing water and knew he washed himself only because she did. He would have been content to let himself dry off in the warmth of his clothes, but if she had any opportunity at all, even in the coldest water, she always cleaned herself. He knew it was a ritual her Clan stepmother had taught her, although now she invoked the Mother with mumbled words spoken in Mamutoi.

  They filled up the waterbags, and, as they walked back to their campsite, Ayla recalled the scene she had witnessed just before his lacings had been cut the first time.

  "Why didn't you couple with Attaroa?" she asked. "You damaged her pride in front of her people."

  "I have pride, too. No one is going to force me to share the Mother's Gift. And it wouldn't have made any difference. I'm sure it was her intention all along to make a target out of me. But now, I think you are the one who has to be careful. 'Discourteous and inhospitable'..." He chuckled; then he became more serious. "She hates you, you know. She'll kill us both, if she gets the chance."

  30

  As Ayla and Jondalar settled down for the night, both were wary of every sound they heard. The horses were staked nearby, and Ayla kept Wolf beside her bedroll, knowing he would warn her of anything unusual that he sensed, but she still slept poorly. Her dreams felt threatening, but amorphous and disorganized, with no messages or warnings that she could define, except that Wolf kept appearing in them.

  She awoke as the first glimmerings of day broke through the bare branches of willow and birch to the east, near the stream. It was still dark in the rest of their secluded glen, but as she watched, she began to see thick-needled spruce and the longer needle-shafts of stone pine def
ined in the growing light. A fine powdering of dry snow had sprinkled down during the night, dusting evergreens, tangled brush, dry grass, and bedrolls with white, but Ayla was cozily warm.

  She had almost forgotten how good it felt to have Jondalar sleeping beside her, and she stayed still for a while, just enjoying his nearness. But her mind would not stay still. She kept worrying about the day ahead and thinking over what she was going to make for the feast. She finally decided to get up, but when she tried to slip out of the furs, she felt Jondalar's arm tightening around her, holding her back.

  "Do you have to get up? It's been so long since I've felt you beside me, I hate to let you go," Jondalar said, nuzzling her neck.

  She settled back into his warmth. "I don't want to get up either. It's cold, and I'd like to stay here in the furs with you, but I need to start cooking something for Attaroa's 'feast,' and make your morning meal. Aren't you hungry?"

  "Now that you mention it, I think I could eat a horse!" Jondalar said, eying the two nearby exaggeratedly.

  "Jondalar!" Ayla said, looking shocked.

  He grinned at her. "Not one of ours, but that is what I've been eating lately—when I've had anything at all. If I hadn't been so hungry, I don't think I would have eaten horsemeat, but when there is nothing else, you eat what you can get. And there's nothing wrong with it."

  "I know, but you don't have to eat it any more. We have other food," she said. They snuggled together for a moment longer, then Ayla pulled back the fur. "The fire has gone out. If you start a new one, I'll make our morning tea. We'll need a hot fire today, and a lot of wood."

  For their meal the evening before, Ayla had prepared a larger than usual amount of a hearty soup from dried bison meat and dried roots, adding a few pine nuts from the cones of the stone pines, but Jondalar had not been able to eat as much as he thought. After she put the rest aside, she had taken out a basket of small whole apples, hardly bigger than cherries, which she had found while trailing Jondalar. They had frozen but were still clinging to a dwarfed clump of leafless trees on the south face of a hillside. She had cut the hard little apples in half, seeded them, then boiled them for a while with dried rose hips. She left the result overnight near the fire. By morning it had cooled and thickened from the natural pectin to a sauce of a jellylike consistency with bits of chewy apple skin.

  Before she made their morning tea, Ayla added a little water to the soup that was left and put extra cooking stones in the fire to heat it for their breakfast. She also tasted the thickened apple mixture. Freezing had moderated the usual tart sourness of the hard apples and adding rose hips had imparted a reddish tinge and a tangy sweet flavor. She served a bowl to Jondalar along with his soup.

  "This is the best food I've ever eaten!" Jondalar said after the first few bites. "What did you put in it to make it taste so good?"

  Ayla smiled. "It's flavored with hunger."

  Jondalar nodded, and between mouthfuls he said, "I suppose you're right. It makes me feel sorry for the ones still in the Holding."

  "No one should have to go hungry when there is food available," Ayla said, her anger flaring for a moment. "It's another thing when everyone is starving."

  "Sometimes, near the end of a bad winter, that can happen," Jondalar said. "Have you ever gone hungry?"

  "I've missed a few meals, and favorite foods always seem to go first, but if you know where to look, you can usually find something to eat —if you are free to go looking!"

  "I've known of people who starved because they ran out of food and didn't know where to find more, but you always seem to find some-tiling to eat, Ayla. How do you know so much?"

  "Iza taught me. I think I've always been interested in food and things that grow," Ayla said, then paused. "I guess there was a time when I nearly starved, just before Iza found me. I was young, and I don't remember much about it." A fond smile of remembrance flitted across her face. "Iza said that she never knew anyone who learned to find food as fast as I did, especially since I was not born with the memories of where or how to look for it. She told me that hunger taught me."

  After he finished devouring a second large serving, Jondalar watched Ayla sort through her carefully hoarded preserved food supplies and begin preparations for the dish she wanted to make for the feast. She had been thinking about what container she could cook in that would be large enough to make the amount she would need for the entire S'Armunai Camp, since they had cached most of their equipment and brought only bare essentials with them.

  She took down their largest waterbag and emptied it into smaller bowls and cooking utensils, then separated the lining from the hide covering, which had been sewn together with the fur side out. The lining had been made from the stomach of an aurochs, which was not exactly waterproof, but seeped very slowly. The moisture was absorbed by the soft leather of the covering and wicked away by the hair, which kept the outside essentially dry. She cut open the top of the lining, tied it to a frame of wood with sinew from her sewing kit, then refilled it with water and waited until a thin film of moisture had seeped through.

  By then the hot fire they had started earlier had burned down to searing coals, and she placed the mounted waterbag directly over them, making sure she had additional water close at hand to keep the skin pot filled. While she waited for it to boil, she started weaving a tight basket out of willow withes and yellowed grasses made flexible by moisture from the snow.

  When bubbles appeared, she broke strips of lean dried meat and some fatty cakes of traveling food into the water to make a rich, meaty broth. Then she added a mixture of various grains. Later she planned to mix in some dry roots—wild carrots and starchy groundnuts—plus other pod and stem vegetables, and dried currants and blueberries. She flavored it all with a choice selection of herbs including coltsfoot, ramsons, sorrel, basil, and meadowsweet, and a bit of salt saved since they left the Mamutoi Summer Meeting, which Jondalar didn't even know she still had.

  He had no desire to go very far, and he stayed nearby gathering wood, getting more water, picking grasses, and cutting willow withes for the baskets she was weaving. He was so happy to be with her that he didn't want to let her out of his sight. She was just as happy to be in his company again. But when the man noticed the large quantity of their food supplies she was using, he became concerned. He had just been through a very hungry time and was unusually aware of food.

  "Ayla, a lot of our emergency food stores are in that dish. If you use up too much, it could leave us short."

  "I want to make enough for all of them, the women and the men of Attaroa's Camp, to show them what they could have in their own storage if they work together," Ayla explained.

  "Maybe I should take my spear-thrower and see if I can find fresh meat," he said with a worried frown.

  She glanced up at him, surprised at his concern. By far, the majority of the food they had eaten on their Journey had been gleaned from the land they passed through, and most of the time, when they did dip into their stores, it was more for convenience than necessity. Besides, they had more food supplies stashed away with the rest of their things near the river. She looked at him closely. For the first time, she noticed that he was thinner, and she began to understand his uncharacteristic misgivings.

  "That might be a good idea," she agreed. "Maybe you should take Wolf with you. He's good at finding and flushing out game, and he could warn you if anyone was near. I'm sure Epadoa and Attaroa's Wolf Women are looking for us."

  "But if I take Wolf, who will warn you?" Jondalar said.

  "Whinney will. She'll know if strangers are approaching. But I would like to leave here as soon as this is done and head back to the S'Armunai settlement."

  "Will you be very long?" he asked, his forehead knotted deeper as he weighed his alternatives.

  "Not too long, I hope, but I'm not used to cooking this much at one time, so I'm not sure."

  "Maybe I should wait, and go hunting later."

  "It's up to you, but if you stay here, I could
use more wood," she said.

  "I'll get you some wood," he decided. Looking around, he added, "And I'll pack up everything you're not using so we'll be ready to go."

  It took Ayla longer than she expected, and around midmorning, Jondalar did take Wolf to survey the area, more to make sure that Epadoa was not nearby than to look for game. He was a little surprised at how eager the wolf was to accompany him ... once Ayla told him to go. He had always thought of the animal as hers alone and never considered taking Wolf along with him. The animal turned out to be good company, and he did flush something, but Jondalar decided to let him make a meal of the rabbit by himself.

  When they came back, Ayla handed Jondalar a large hot serving of the delicious mixture she had prepared for the Camp. Though they usually ate no more than twice a day, as soon as he saw the bowl piled high with food, he realized that he was very hungry. She took some herself and gave a little to Wolf as well.

  It was just after noon before they were ready to leave. While the food was cooking, Ayla had completed two rather steep-sided bowl-shaped baskets, both of good size but one somewhat larger than the other, and both were filled with the thick, rich combination. She had even added some oily pine nuts from the cones of the stone pines. She knew with their diet of mostly lean meat, it was the richness of fats and oils that would be most appealing to the people of the Camp. She also knew, without entirely understanding why, that it was what they needed the most, especially in winter, for warmth and energy, and, along with the grains, to make everyone feel full and satisfied.

  Ayla covered the heaping bowls with inverted shallow baskets used as lids, lifted them to Whinney's back, and secured them in a roughly made holder of dry grass and willow withes that she had worked together quickly, since it would be used only once and then disposed of. Then they started back to the S'Armunai settlement, using a different route. On the way they discussed what to do with the animals once they reached Attaroa's Camp.