Plains of Passage (23 page)

The soggy and fragile northern bogs were not the same. They were too wet for much grass to grow, and their stinting, acid soils caused plants to develop toxins to avoid being grazed by the great multitudes, which would destroy such delicate slow-growing flora. The varieties were limited and offered poor nutrients for the diversity of large herding animals; there was not sufficient feed. And only those with wide splaying hooves, like reindeer, could live there. Huge creatures of great weight with large stumpy legs, or fast runners with narrow dainty hooves became mired in the soft, wet land. They needed firm, dry, solid ground.

Later, the grassy plains of warmer, more temperate regions developed distinct bands of more limited vegetation controlled by temperature and climate. They offered too little diversity in summer, and too much snow in winter. Snow also bogged down animals that required firm ground, and it was difficult for many to push aside to reach food. Deer could live in woods where the snow was deep, but only because they browsed leaves and twig tips from trees that grew above the snow; reindeer could dig through snow to reach the lichen on which they fed in winter. Bison and aurochs subsisted, but they were reduced in size, no longer reaching their fall potential. Other animals, such as horses, decreased in number as their preferred environment shrunk.

It was the unique combination of all the many elements of the Ice Age steppes that fostered the magnificent multitudes, and each was essential, including the bitter cold, the withering winds, and the ice itself. And when the vast glaciers shrank back to polar regions and disappeared from the lower latitudes, so, too, did the great herds and gigantic animals become dwarfed or disappear entirely from a land that had changed, a land that could no longer sustain them.

While they traveled, the missing parfleche and long poles preyed on Ayla’s mind. They were more than useful, they might be necessary during the long trip ahead. She wanted to replace them, but it would take
more than an overnight stop, and she knew Jondalar was anxious to keep moving.

Jondalar, however, was not happy about the wet tent, nor the thought of depending on it for shelter. Besides, it wasn’t good for wet skins to be folded up and packed together so tight; it could make them rot. They needed to be spread out to dry, and the hides would probably need to be worked as they were drying to keep them pliable, in spite of the smoking they had received when the leather was made. That would take more than a day, he was sure.

In the afternoon they approached the deep trench of another large river, which separated the plain from the mountains. From their vantage point on the plateau of the open steppes, above the broad valley with its wide, swiftly flowing waterway, they could see the terrain on the other side. The foothills across the river were fractured with many dry ravines and gullies, the ravages of flooding, as well as many more running tributaries. It was a major river, channeling a good proportion of the runoff, which drained the eastern face of the mountains into the inland sea.

As they rounded the shoulder of the steppe plateau and rode down the slope, Ayla was reminded of the territory around the Lion Camp, though the more broken landscape across the river was different. But on this side she saw the same kind of deep-cut gullies carved out of the loess soil by rain and melting snow, and high grass drying into standing hay. On the floodplain below, isolated larch and pine trees were scattered among leafy shrubs, and stands of cattails, tall phragmite reeds, and bulrushes marked the river’s edge.

When they reached the river, they stopped. This was a major watercourse, wide and deep, and swollen from the recent rains. They were not at all sure how they were going to get across. It was going to take some planning.

“It’s too bad we don’t have a bowl boat,” Ayla said, thinking of the skin-covered round boats the Lion Camp had used to cross the river near their lodge.

“You’re right. I think we are going to need some kind of a boat to get across this without getting everything all wet. I’m not sure why, but I don’t remember having so much trouble crossing rivers when Thonolan and I were traveling. We just piled our gear on a couple of logs and swam across,” Jondalar said. “But I guess we didn’t have as much, only a backframe for each of us. That’s all we could carry. With the horses, we can take more with us, but then, we have more to worry about.”

As they rode downstream, looking over the situation, Ayla noticed a
stand of tall, slender birches growing near the water. The place had such a familiar feeling that she half expected to see the long, semisubterranean earthlodge of the Lion Camp tucked into the side of the slope at the back of a river terrace, with grass growing out of the sides, a rounded top, and the perfectly symmetrical arched entrance that had so surprised her when she first saw it. But when she actually saw such an arch, it gave her an eerie, spine-tingling shock.

“Jondalar! Look!”

He looked up the slope where she was pointing. There he saw not just one, but several, perfectly symmetrical archways, each an entrance to a circular, dome-shaped structure. They both dismounted and, finding the path up from the river, climbed to the Camp.

Ayla was surprised at how eager she was to meet the people who lived there, and realized how long it had been since they had seen or spoken to anyone besides each other. But the place was empty, and planted in the ground between the two curved mammoth tusks whose tips were joined together at the top, forming the arched entrance to one of the dwellings, was a small carved ivory figure of a female with ample breasts and hips.

“They must be gone,” Jondalar said. “They left a donii to guard each lodge.”

“They’re probably hunting, or at a Summer Meeting, or visiting,” Ayla said, feeling real disappointment that there were no people. “That’s too bad. I was looking forward to seeing someone.” She turned to go.

“Wait, Ayla. Where are you going?”

“Back to the river.” She looked puzzled.

“But this is perfect,” he said. “We can stay here.”

“They left a mutoi—a donii—to guard their lodges. The spirit of the Mother is protecting them. We can’t stay here and disturb Her spirit. It will bring us bad luck,” she said, knowing full well that he knew it.

“We can stay, if we need to. We just can’t take anything we don’t need. That’s always understood. Ayla, we need shelter. Our tent is soaked. We have to give it a chance to dry out. While we’re waiting, we can go hunting. If we get the right kind of animal, we can use the hide to make a bowl boat to cross the river.”

Ayla’s frown slowly changed to an enlightened smile, as she grasped his meaning and realized the implications. They did need a few days to recover from their near disaster and replace some of their losses. “Maybe we can get enough hide to make a new parfleche, too,” she said. “Once it’s cleaned and dehaired, rawhide doesn’t take that long to set up, not any longer than it takes to dry meat. It just has to be stretched and left to get hard.” She glanced down toward the river.
“And look at those birches down there. I think I could make good poles out of some of those. Jondalar, you’re right. We need to stay here for a few days. The Mother will understand. And we could leave some dry meat for the people who live here, to thank them for the use of their Camp … if we’re lucky with our hunting. Which lodge should we stay in?”

“The Mammoth Hearth. That’s where visitors usually stay.”

“Do you think there is a Mammoth Hearth? I mean, do you think this is a Mamutoi Camp?” Ayla asked.

“I don’t know. It’s not one big earthlodge that everyone lives in like Lion Camp,” Jondalar said, looking at the group of seven round dwellings covered with a smooth layer of hardened earth and river clay. Rather than a single, large, multifamily longhouse, like the one they had lived in during the winter, this place had several smaller dwellings clustered together, but the purpose was the same. It was a settlement, a community of more-or-less related families.

“No, it’s like Wolf Camp, where the Summer Meeting was,” Ayla said, stopping in front of the entrance of one of the small dwellings, still a bit reluctant to push the heavy drape aside and enter the home of strangers without being invited, in spite of generally understood customs that had developed out of a mutual necessity for the sake of survival in time of need.

“Some of the younger people at the Summer Meeting thought the big lodges were old-fashioned,” Jondalar said. “They liked the idea of an individual lodge for just one or two families.”

“You mean they wanted to live by themselves? Just one lodge with one or two families? For a winter Camp?” Ayla asked.

“No,” he said. “No one wanted to live alone all winter. You never see just one of these small lodges by itself; there are always at least five or six, sometimes more. That was the idea. The people I talked to thought it was easier to build a smaller lodge for a new family or two, than to crowd into one big lodge until they had to build another. But they wanted to build near their families, and stay with their Camps, and share in the activities and the food that everyone worked together to collect and store for winter.”

He pushed aside the heavy skin hanging from the joined tusks that formed the entrance, ducked under it and stepped inside. Ayla stood back, holding up the drape to shed some light.

“What do you think, Ayla? Does it look like a Mamutoi lodge?”

“It could be. It’s hard to tell. Remember that Sungaea Camp we stopped at on the way to the Summer Meeting? It wasn’t very different from a Mamutoi Camp. Their customs may have been a little different, but they were like the Mammoth Hunters in many ways. Mamut said
even the funeral ceremony was very similar. He thought they were once related to Mamutoi. I did notice the patterns of their decorations were not the same, though.” She paused, trying to think of other differences. “And some of their clothes—like that beautiful shoulder blanket made out of mammoth and other wools on the girl who had died. But even Mamutoi Camps have different patterns. Nezzie always knew what Camp someone was from just by the small changes in the style and shape of the patterns on their tunics, even when I couldn’t see very much difference at all.”

With the light coming in from the entrance, the main supporting construction was plain to see. The lodge was not framed with wood, although a few of the birch poles were strategically placed; it had been built out of mammoth bones. The large sturdy bones of the huge beasts were the most abundant and accessible building material available on the essentially treeless steppes.

Most of the mammoth bones used for building material did not come from animals that had been hunted and killed for that purpose. They were from animals that had died of natural causes, gathered from wherever they happened to fall on the steppes or, most often, from accumulated piles that had been swept up by flooding rivers and deposited at certain bends or barriers in the river, like driftwood. Permanent winter shelters were often built on river terraces near such piles, because mammoth bones and tusks were heavy.

It usually took several individuals to lift a single bone and no one wanted to carry them very far; the total weight of the mammoth bones that were used to construct one small dwelling was two or three thousand pounds or more. Building such shelters was not the activity of a single family, but a community effort, directed by someone with knowledge and experience, and organized by someone with the ability to persuade others to help.

The place they called a Camp was a settled village, and the people who lived there were not nomadic followers of the itinerant game, but essentially sedentary hunters and gatherers. The Camp might be left vacant for a while in the summer, when the inhabitants went to hunt or gather produce, which was brought back and kept in nearby storage pits, or to visit family and friends from other villages to trade gossip and goods, but it was a permanent home site.

“I don’t think this one is the Mammoth Hearth, or whatever that hearth is called here,” Jondalar said, letting the drape fall behind him. It raised a cloud of dust.

Ayla straightened the small female figure, whose feet were purposely only a suggestion, leaving the legs in a peglike shape that had been
pushed into the ground to stand guard in front of the entrance, then followed Jondalar to the next lodge.

“This one is probably either the leader’s lodge or the mamut’s, maybe both,” Jondalar said.

Ayla noticed that it was slightly larger, and the woman-figure in front was somewhat more elaborate, and she nodded agreement. “A mamut, I think, if they are Mamutoi, or people like them. Both the headwoman and the headman of the Lion Camp had hearths that were smaller than Mamut’s, but his was used for visitors, and by everyone for gathering.”

They both stood at the entrance, holding up the drape, waiting for their eyes to adjust to the dimmer light within. But two small lights continued to glow. Wolf growled, and Ayla’s nose detected a scent that made her nervous.

“Don’t go in, Jondalar! Wolf! Stay!” she commanded, making the sign with her hand as well.

“What is it, Ayla?” Jondalar said.

“Can’t you smell it? There’s an animal in there, something that can make a strong smell, a badger, I think, and if we scare it, it will make a terrible stink that lingers. We won’t be able to use this lodge, and the people who live here will have trouble getting rid of the smell. Maybe if you hold the drape back, Jondalar, it will come out by itself. They dig burrows and don’t like the light much, even if they do hunt in the day sometimes.”

Wolf started a low rumbling growl, and it was obvious he was straining to go in after the fascinating creature. But like most members of the weasel family, the badger could spray an attacker with the powerfully strong and acrid contents of its anal glands. The last thing Ayla wanted was to be around a wolf that stunk of that strong musky odor, and she wasn’t sure how long she could hold Wolf back. If the badger didn’t come out soon, she might have to use a more drastic way to rid the lodge of the animal.

The badger did not see well with its small and inconspicuous eyes, but they were watching the lighted opening with unwavering attention. When it seemed obvious the badger was not going to leave, she reached up for the sling that was wrapped around her head, and into the pouch hanging from her waist for stones. Ayla put a stone in the bulging pocket of the sling, took aim on the reflecting points of light, and with a quick and expert spin to gain momentum, hurled the stone. She heard a thud, and the two small lights went out.