Plains of Passage (4 page)

The farther they traveled out of their way, the more irritable and impatient Jondalar felt. In his mind, he was questioning his decision to take the longer southern route, rather than the northwestern one that had been suggested—more than once—and in which direction the river seemed determined to take them. True, he wasn’t familiar with it, but if it was so much shorter, perhaps they should go that way. If he could just be certain that they would reach the plateau glacier farther to the west, at the source of the Great Mother River, before spring, he would do it, he told himself.

It would mean giving up his last opportunity to see the Sharamudoi, but was that so important? He had to admit that he did want to see them. He had been looking forward to it. Jondalar wasn’t sure if his decision to go south really came from his desire to take the familiar, and therefore, safer way to get Ayla and himself back, or his desire to see people who were family to him. He worried about the consequences of making the wrong choice.

Ayla broke into his introspection. “Jondalar, I think we can cross here,” she said. “The bank on the other side looks easy to get up.”

They were at a bend in the river, and they stopped to study the situation. As the turbulent, swiftly flowing stream swept around the curve, it cut deeply into the outside edge, where they were standing, making a
high, steep bank. But the inner side of the turn, on the opposite bank, rose gradually out of the water, forming a narrow shore of hard-packed gray-brown soil backed by brush.

“Do you think the horses can get down this bank?”

“I think so. The deepest part of the river must be near this side, where it cuts into the bank. It’s hard to tell how deep it is, or whether the horses will have to swim. It might be better if we would dismount and swim, too,” Ayla said, then noticed that Jondalar seemed displeased, “but if it’s not too deep, we can ride them across. I hate to get my clothes wet, but I don’t feel like taking them off to swim across, either.”

They urged the horses over the precipitous edge. Hooves slipped and slid down the fine-grained soil of the bank and into the water with a splash as they were dunked in the fast current and carried downstream. It was deeper than Ayla had thought. The horses had a moment of panic before they got accustomed to their new element and started swimming against the current toward the sloping opposite shore. As they started up the gradual slope on the inner curve of the bend, Ayla looked for Wolf. Turning around, she saw him still on the high bank, whining and yelping, running back and forth.

“He’s afraid to jump in,” Jondalar said.

“Come, Wolf! Come on,” Ayla called. “You can swim.” But the young wolf whined plaintively and tucked his tail between his legs.

“What’s wrong with him? He’s crossed rivers before,” Jondalar said, annoyed at another delay. He had hoped to travel a good distance that day, but everything seemed to be conspiring to stall them.

They had gotten off to a late start, then had been forced to double back toward the north and west, a direction he didn’t want to go, and now Wolf wouldn’t cross the river. He was also aware that they should stop and check the contents of the pack baskets, after their dunking, even if they were closely woven and essentially watertight. To add to his irritation, he was wet, and it was getting late. He could feel the wind cooling, and he knew they ought to change clothes and let the ones they were wearing dry. The summer days were warm enough, but the soughing night winds still brought the chill breath of the ice. The effects of the massive glacier that crushed the northern lands under sheets of ice as high as mountains could be felt everywhere on earth, but nowhere as much as on the cold steppes near its edge.

If it were earlier, they could travel in wet clothes; the wind and sun would dry them while they rode. He was tempted to start south anyway, just to get some distance behind them … if they could only get moving.

“This river is faster than he’s used to, and he can’t walk up to it. He has to jump in, and he’s never done that before,” Ayla said.

“What are you going to do?”

“If I can’t encourage him to jump, I’ll have to go get him,” she replied.

“Ayla, I’m sure if we just rode off, he’d jump in and follow you. If we’re going to travel any distance at all today, we have to go.”

The withering look of disbelief and anger that appeared on her face made Jondalar wish he could take back his words. “Would you like to be left behind because you were afraid? He doesn’t want to jump into the river because he hasn’t done anything like it before. What can you expect?”

“I just meant … he’s only a wolf, Ayla. Wolves cross rivers all the time. He just needs some reason to jump in. If he didn’t catch up with us, we’d come back for him. I didn’t mean that we should leave him here.”

“You won’t have to worry about coming back for him. I’ll get him now,” Ayla said, turning her back on the man and urging Whinney into the water.

The young wolf was still whining, sniffing the broken ground left by the horses’ hooves, and looking at the people and the horses across the watery trench. Ayla called out to him again as the horse entered the current. About halfway across, Whinney felt the ground beneath her giving way. She whinnied with alarm, trying to find firmer footing.

“Wolf! Come here, Wolf! It’s only water. Come on, Wolf! Jump in!” Ayla called out, trying to coax the apprehensive young animal into the swirling river. She slid off Whinney’s back, deciding she would swim across to the steep bank. Wolf finally got up his courage and jumped in. He landed with a splash and started swimming toward her. “That’s it! That’s good, Wolf!”

Whinney was backing around, struggling with her footing, and Ayla, with her arm around the wolf, was trying to reach her. Jondalar was already there, up to his chest in water, steadying the mare and starting toward Ayla. They all reached the other side together.

“We’d better hurry if we’re going to travel any distance today,” Ayla said, eyes still flashing anger as she started to remount the mare.

“No,” Jondalar said, holding her back. “We’re not leaving until you change out of those wet clothes. And I think we should rub down the horses to dry them off, and maybe that wolf, too. We’ve traveled far enough today. We can camp here tonight. It took me four years to get here. I don’t care if it takes four years to get back, just so I get you there safely, Ayla.”

As she looked up at him, the look of concern and love in his rich blue eyes melted her last vestiges of anger. She reached for him as he bent his head to her, and she felt the same unbelievable wonder that she had
felt the first time he put his lips on hers and showed her what a kiss was, and an inexpressible joy in knowing that she was actually traveling with him, going home with him. She loved him more than she knew how to express, even more now after the long winter when she had thought he didn’t love her and would leave without her.

He had feared for her when she went back into the river and now he pressed her to him, holding her. He loved her more than he ever believed it was possible for him to love anyone. Until Ayla, he didn’t know he could love so much. He nearly lost her once. He had been sure she was going to stay with the dark man with the laughing eyes, and he couldn’t bear the thought that he might lose her again.

With two horses and a wolf for companions, in a world that had never before known they could be tamed, a man stood alone with the woman he loved in the middle of a vast, cold grassland, filled with a great abundance and diversity of animals, but few humans, and contemplated a Journey that would stretch across a continent. Yet there were times when the mere thought that any harm might come to her could overwhelm him with such fear, he almost couldn’t breathe. At those moments, he wished he could hold her forever.

Jondalar felt the warmth of her body and her willing mouth on his, and he felt his need for her rise. But that would wait. She was cold and wet; she needed dry clothes and a fire. The edge of this river was as good a place as any to camp, and if it was a little too early to stop, well, it would give them time to dry out the clothes they were wearing, and they could start early tomorrow.

   “Wolf! Put that down!” Ayla shouted, rushing to get the leather-wrapped package from the young animal. “I thought you had learned to stay away from leather.” When she tried to take it away, he playfully hung on with his teeth, shaking his head back and forth and growling. She let go, stopping the game. “Put it down!” she said sharply. She brought her hand down as though she meant to strike his nose but stopped short. At the signal and command, Wolf tucked his tail between his legs, abjectly scooted toward her, and dropped the package at her feet, whining in appeasement.

“That’s the second time he’s gotten into these things,” Ayla said, picking up the package and some others he had been chewing on. “He knows better, but he just can’t seem to stay away from leather.”

Jondalar came to help her. “I don’t know what to say. He drops it when you tell him, but you can’t tell him if you’re not there, and you can’t watch him all the time … What’s this? I don’t remember seeing this before,” he said, looking quizzically at a bundle that was carefully wrapped in a soft skin and securely tied.

Flushing slightly, Ayla quickly took the package from him. “It’s … just something I brought with me … something … from Lion Camp,” she said, and she put it on the bottom of one of her pack baskets.

Her actions puzzled Jondalar. They had both limited their possessions and traveling gear to the minimum, taking little that was not essential. The package wasn’t large, but it wasn’t small either. She could probably have added another outfit in the space it took. What could she be taking with her?

“Wolf! Stop that!”

Jondalar watched Ayla going after the young wolf again and had to smile. He wasn’t sure, but it almost seemed that Wolf was purposely misbehaving, teasing Ayla to make her come after him, playing with her. He had found a camp shoe of hers, a soft moccasin-type of foot-covering that she sometimes wore for comfort after they made camp, particularly if the ground was frozen or damp and cold and she wanted to air out or dry her regular, sturdier footwear.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do with him!” Ayla said, exasperated, as she came toward the man. She was holding the object of his latest escapade, and she looked sternly at the miscreant. Wolf was creeping toward her, seemingly contrite, whining in abject misery at her disapproval; but a hint of mischief lurked beneath his distress. He knew she loved him, and the moment she relented, he would be wriggling and yelping with delight and ready to play again.

Though he was adult size, except for some filling out, Wolf was hardly more than a puppy. He had been born in the winter, out of season, to a lone wolf whose mate had died. Wolf’s coat was the usual gray-buff shade—the result of bands of white, red, brown, and black that colored each outer hair, creating the indistinct pattern that allowed wolves to fade invisibly into the natural wilderness landscape of brush, grass, earth, rock, and snow—but his mother had been black.

Her unusual coloring had incited the primary and other females of the pack into badgering her unmercifully, giving her the lowest status and eventually driving her away. She roamed alone, learning to survive in between pack territories for a season, until she finally found another loner, an old male who had left his pack because he couldn’t keep up any more. They fared well together for a while. She was the stronger hunter, but he was experienced and they had even begun to define and defend a small piece of territory of their own. It might have been the better diet that two of them working together were able to secure, or the companionship and nearness of a friendly male, or her own genetic predisposition that brought her into heat out of season, but her elderly companion was not unhappy and, without competition, was both willing and able to respond.

Sadly, his stiff old bones were not able to resist the ravages of another harsh winter on the periglacial steppes. He did not last long into the cold season. It was a devastating loss for the black female, who was left to give birth alone—in winter. The natural environment does not tolerate very well animals with much deviation from the norm, and seasonal cycles enforce themselves. A black hunter in a landscape of tawny grass, dun earth, and windblown or drifted snow is too easily seen by canny and winter-scarce prey. With no mate or friendly aunts, uncles, cousins, and older siblings to help feed and care for the nursing mother and the new pups, the black female weakened, and one after another her babies succumbed until there was only one left.

Ayla knew wolves. She had observed and studied them from the time she first started hunting, but she had no way of knowing the black wolf who tried to steal the ermine she had killed with her sling was a starving, lactating female; it was the wrong season for pups. When she tried to retrieve her pelt and the wolf uncharacteristically attacked, she killed it in self-defense. Then she saw the animal’s condition and realized she must have been a loner. Feeling a strange kinship with a wolf she knew had been driven from its pack, Ayla was determined to find the motherless pups, who would have no family to adopt them. Following the wolf’s trail back, she found the den, crawled in, and found the last pup, unweaned, eyes barely open. She took it with her to Lion Camp.

It had been a surprise to everyone when Ayla showed them the tiny wolf pup, but she had arrived with horses who answered to her. They had grown used to them and the woman who had an affinity for animals, and they were curious about the wolf and what she would do with it. That she was able to raise it and train it was a wonder to many. Jondalar was still surprised at the intelligence the animal displayed; intelligence that seemed almost human.

“I think he’s playing with you, Ayla,” the man said.

She looked at Wolf and couldn’t resist a smile, which brought his head up and caused his tail to start thumping the ground in anticipation. “I think you’re right, but that isn’t going to help me keep him from chewing on everything,” she said, looking at the shredded camp shoe. “I might as well let him have this. He’s ruined it already, and maybe he won’t be so interested in the rest of our things for a while.” She threw it at him, and he leaped up and caught it in the air with, Jondalar was almost sure, a wolfish grin.