Plains of Passage (112 page)

Madenia had tried to restrain her curiosity, but finally she had to ask. “What are those stones?”

“They’re called amber. They were given to me by the headwoman of the Lion Camp.”

“Is that a carving of your horse?”

Ayla smiled at her. “Yes, it’s a carving of Whinney. It was made for me by a man with laughing eyes and skin the color of Racer’s coat. Even Jondalar said he had never known a better carver.”

“A man with brown skin?” Madenia asked, incredulous.

Ayla smiled wryly. She couldn’t blame her for doubting. “Yes. He was a Mamutoi, and his name was Ranec. The first time I saw him, I couldn’t help staring at him. I’m afraid I was very impolite. I was told that his mother was as dark as … a piece of that burning stone. She lived far to the south, across a great sea. A Mamutoi man named Wymez made a long Journey. He mated her, and her son was born to his hearth. She died on their way back, so he returned with only the boy. The man’s sister raised him.”

Madenia gave a little shiver of excitement. She thought the only thing south was the mountains, and that they went on forever. Ayla had traveled so far and knew so much. Maybe someday she would make a Journey like Ayla, and meet a brown man who would carve a beautiful horse for her, and people who would give her beautiful clothes, and find horses that would let her ride them, and a wolf that loved children, and a man like Jondalar, who would ride the horses and make the long Journey with her. Madenia was lost in daydreams of great adventure.

She had never met anyone like Ayla. She idolized the beautiful woman who led such an exciting life, and she hoped she might be like her in some way. Ayla spoke with a strange accent, but that only added to her mystery, and hadn’t she suffered a forced attack by a man when she was a girl, too? Ayla had gotten over it but understood how someone else felt. In the warmth, love, and understanding of the people around her, Madenia was beginning to recover from the horror of the incident. She began to imagine herself, mature and wise, telling some young girl, who had suffered such an attack, about her experience, to help her overcome it.

While Madenia daydreamed, she watched Ayla pick up a neatly tied package. The woman held it but didn’t open it; she knew exactly what was inside it, and she had no intention of leaving it behind.

“What’s that?” the girl asked, as Ayla put it aside.

Ayla picked it up again; she hadn’t seen it herself for some time. She looked around to make sure Jondalar was not in sight, then untied the knots. Inside was a pure white tunic decorated with ermine tails. Madenia’s eyes became big and round.

“That’s as white as snow! I’ve never seen any leather colored white like that,” she said.

“Making white leather is a secret of the Crane Hearth. I learned how to make it from an old woman, who learned it from her mother,” Ayla explained. “She had no one to pass the knowledge down to, so when I asked her to teach me, she agreed.”

“You made that?” Madenia said.

“Yes. For Jondalar, but he doesn’t know it. I’m going to give it to him when we reach his home, I think for our Matrimonial,” Ayla said.

When she held it up, a package fell out if it, too. Madenia could see it was a man’s tunic. Except for the ermine tails, there were no decorations; no embroidered patterns or designs, no shells or beads, but it needed none. Decorations would have detracted. In its simplicity, the pure whiteness of the color made it stunning.

Ayla opened the smaller package. Inside was the strange figure of a woman with a carved face. If she hadn’t just seen wonder after wonder, it would have frightened the girl; dunai never had faces. But somehow it was all right for Ayla to have one.

“Jondalar made this for me,” Ayla said. “He told me he made it to capture my spirit, and for my womanhood ceremony, the first time he taught me the Mother’s Gift of Pleasure. There was no one else to share in it, but we didn’t need it. Jondalar made it a ceremony. Later he gave this to me to keep because it has great power, he says.”

“I believe it,” Madenia said. She had no desire to touch it, but she didn’t doubt that Ayla could control any power it held.

Ayla sensed her uneasiness and wrapped the figure back up again. She tucked it inside the carefully folded white tunic and wrapped that in the fine, thin sewn-together rabbit hides that protected it, then tied it with the cords.

Another wrapped package held some of the gifts she had received at her adoption ceremony, when she was accepted into the Mamutoi. She would keep them. Her medicine bag would go with her, of course, fire-stones and fire-making kit, her sewing kit, one change of inner clothes, and felt boot liners, sleeping rolls, and hunting weapons. She looked over her bowls and cooking implements and eliminated all but the absolute essentials. She would have to wait for Jondalar to decide about the tents, ropes, and other gear.

Just as she and Madenia were about to go out, Jondalar came into the
dwelling space. He and several others had just returned with a load of brown coal, and he had come in to sort through his things. Several other people came in then, too, including Solandia and her children with Wolf.

“I’ve really come to depend on this animal, and I’m going to miss him. I don’t suppose you’d like to leave him,” she said.

Ayla signaled Wolf. For all his love of the children, he came to her immediately and stood at her feet looking at her expectantly. “No, Solandia. I don’t think I could.”

“I didn’t think so, but I had to ask. I’m going to miss you, too, you know,” she added.

“And I will miss you. The hardest part of this Journey has been making friends, then leaving and knowing that I would probably never see them again,” Ayla said.

“Laduni,” Jondalar said, carrying a piece of mammoth ivory with strange markings incised on it. “Talut, the headman of the Lion Camp, made this map of the country far to the east, showing the first part of our Journey. I had hoped to keep it as a remembrance of him. It’s not essential, but I would hate to throw it away. Would you keep it for me? Who knows, someday I may come back for it.”

“Yes, I’ll keep it for you,” Laduni said, taking the ivory map and looking it over. “It looks interesting. Perhaps you can explain it to me before you go. I hope you do come back, but if not, perhaps someone going that way may have room for it and I can send it to you.”

“I’m also leaving some tools behind. You can keep them or not. I always hate to give up a hammerstone I’m used to, but I’m sure I’ll be able to replace it once we reach the Lanzadonii. Dalanar always has good supplies around. I’ll leave my bone hammers and some blades, too. I’ll keep an adze and an axe to chop ice, though.”

After they had walked over to their sleeping area, Jondalar asked, “What are you taking, Ayla?”

“It’s all here, on the bed platform.”

Jondalar saw the mysterious package among her other things. “Whatever is in that must be very valuable,” he said.

“I will carry it,” she said.

Madenia smiled slyly, pleased to know the secret. It made her feel very special.

“What about this?” he asked, pointing to another package.

“These are gifts from the Lion Camp,” she said, opening it up to show him. He spied the beautiful spear point Wymez had given her, and he picked it up to show Laduni.

“Look at this,” he said.

It was a large blade, longer than his hand, and as wide as his palm, but less than the size of the tip of his small finger in thickness, tapering to a fine sharpness at the edges.

“It’s bifacially worked,” Laduni said, turning it over. “But how did he get it so thin? I thought working both sides of a stone was a crude technique used for simple axes and such, but this is not crude. This is as fine a piece of workmanship as I’ve ever seen.”

“Wymez made it,” Jondalar said. “I told you he was good. He heats the flint before he works it. It changes the quality of the stone, makes it easier to detach fine flakes, that’s how he gets it so thin. I can hardly wait to show this to Dalanar.”

“I’m sure he will appreciate it,” Laduni said.

Jondalar gave it back to Ayla, and she rewrapped it carefully. “I think we’ll just take a single tent, more as a windbreak,” he remarked.

“What about a ground cloth?” Ayla said.

“We have such a heavy load of rocks and stones, I hate to take any more than we need to.”

“A glacier is ice. We might be glad for a ground cover.”

“I suppose you’re right,” he said.

“What about these ropes?”

“Do you really think we need them?”

“I’d suggest you take them,” Laduni said. “Ropes can be very useful on a glacier.”

“If you think so, I’ll take your advice,” Jondalar said.

They had packed as much as possible the night before and spent the evening saying their farewells to the people they had come to care for so much in the short time they were there. Verdegia made a point of coming to talk to Ayla.

“I want to thank you, Ayla.”

“It’s not necessary to thank me. We need to thank everyone here.”

“I mean for what you did for Madenia. To be honest, I’m not sure what you did, or what you said to her, but I know that you made the difference. Before you came, she was hiding in a dark corner, wishing she were dead. She wouldn’t even talk to me, and she wanted nothing to do with becoming a woman. I thought all was lost. Now, she’s almost like her old self, and looking forward to her First Rites. I just hope nothing happens to make her change her mind again before summer.”

“I think she will be all right, as long as everyone continues to support her,” Ayla said. “That has been the biggest help, you know.”

“I still want to see Charoli punished,” Verdegia said.

“I think everyone does. Now that everyone has agreed to go after him, I think he will be. Madenia will be vindicated, and she will have
her First Rites and become a woman. You will have grandchildren yet, Verdegia.”

   In the morning they got up early, did their final packing, and came back into the cave for a last morning meal with the Losadunai. Everyone was there to bid them farewell. Losaduna had Ayla memorize a few more verses of lore, and then almost became emotional when she hugged him goodbye. Then he quickly went to talk to Jondalar. Solandia made no qualms about how she felt, and she told them how sorry she was to see them go. Even Wolf seemed to know he would not see the children again, and so did they. He licked the baby’s face and for the first time Micheri cried.

But as they walked out of the cave, it was Madenia who surprised them. She had put on the magnificent outfit Ayla had given her, and she clung to Ayla and tried not to cry. Jondalar told her how beautiful she was, and he meant it. The clothes lent her an air of uncommon beauty and maturity and hinted at the real woman she would someday become.

As they mounted the horses, rested now and eager to go, they looked back at the people standing around the mouth of the cave, and it was Madenia who stood out. But she was still young and, as they waved, tears streamed down her face.

“I will never forget you, either of you,” she called out, then ran into the cave.

As they rode away, back toward the Great Mother River, which was hardly more than a stream, Ayla thought she would never forget Madenia, or her people either. Jondalar was sorry to say goodbye, too, but his thoughts were on the difficulties they had yet to face. He knew the toughest part of their Journey still lay ahead.

J
ondalar and Ayla headed north, back toward Donau, the Great Mother River that had guided their steps for so much of their Journey. When they reached her, they turned west again and continued to follow the stream back toward her beginnings, but the great waterway had changed character. She was no longer a huge meandering surge rolling with ponderous dignity across the flat plains, taking in countless tributaries and volumes of silt, then breaking into channels and forming oxbow lakes.

Near her source, she was fresher, sprightlier, a leaner, shallower stream that tumbled over her wide rocky bed as she raced down the steep mountainside. But the westward route of the travelers along the swiftly flowing river had become a continuous uphill climb, one that took them ever closer to their inevitable rendezvous with the thick layer of unmelting ice that capped the broad high plateau of the rugged highland ahead.

The shapes of glaciers followed the contours of the land. Those on mountaintops were craggy tors of ice, those on level ground spread out like pancakes, with a nearly uniform thickness, rising slightly higher in the middle, leaving behind gravel banks and gouging out depressions that became lakes and ponds. At its farthest advance, the southernmost lobe of the vast continental cake of ice, whose nearly level top was as high as the mountains around them, missed by less than five degrees of latitude a meeting with the northern reaches of the mountain glaciers. The land between the two was the coldest anywhere on earth.

Unlike mountain glaciers, frozen rivers creeping slowly down the sides of mountains, the unmelting ice on the rounded, nearly flat highland—the glacier Jondalar was so concerned about still to the west of them—was a plateau glacier, a miniature version of the great thick layer of ice that spread across the plains of the continent to the north.

As Ayla and Jondalar continued along the river, they gained altitude with each step. They made the ascent with an eye toward sparing the heavily laden horses, most often leading them instead of riding. Ayla was particularly concerned for Whinney, who was hauling the major portion of the burning stones that they hoped would ensure the survival
of their traveling companions when they crossed the icy surface, a terrain that horses would never attempt on their own.

In addition to Whinney’s pole drag, both horses carried heavy packs, though the load on the mare’s back was lighter, to compensate for the travois she pulled. Racer’s load was piled so high that it was somewhat unwieldy, but even the backpacks of the woman and man were substantial. Only the wolf was free of additional burdens, and Ayla had begun to eye his unfettered movements, thinking that he, too, could carry a share.