Plains of Passage (52 page)

Dolando nodded and stepped aside.

“I came to ask Darvo if he’d like to spend the night with us,” Markeno said.

“I think he should,” Dolando said. “Darvo, take your bedding and go with Markeno tonight.”

The boy got up, gathered up his pads and covers in his arms, and walked toward the opening. Ayla thought he looked relieved but not happy.

Wolf settled into his corner as soon as they entered. Ayla walked to the darkened rear to check on Roshario.

“Do you have a lamp or a torch, Dolando? I’d like a little more light,” she said.

“And maybe some extra bedding,” Jondalar added, “or should I ask Tholie for some?”

Dolando would have preferred to be alone in the dark, but if Roshario woke up in pain, he knew the young woman would be able to help her much better than he could. From a shelf, he took down a shallow sandstone bowl that had been shaped by pecking and hitting it with another stone.

“The bedding is over here,” he said to Jondalar. “There is some fat for the lamp in the box by the door, but I’ll have to start a fire to light the lamp. It went out.”

“I’ll start the fire,” Ayla said, “if you’ll tell me where your kindling and tinder are.”

He gave her the fire-starting materials she asked for, along with a round stick, black with charcoal on one end, and a flattish piece of wood with several round holes burned out of it from starting other fires, but she didn’t use those. Instead, out of a pouch hanging from her belt, she withdrew two stones. Dolando watched with curiosity as she made a small pile of the dry, light shavings of wood and, hovering closely over it, hit one stone against the other. To his surprise, a large bright spark leaped from the stones and landed on the tinder, sending up a thin column of smoke. She bent close and blew, and the tinder burst into flame.

“How did you do that?” he asked, surprised and a little fearful. Anything so amazing, and unknown, always engendered a little fear. Was there no end to this woman’s shamud magic? he wondered.

“It comes from the firestone,” Ayla said, as she added a few sticks of kindling to keep the fire going, and then larger pieces of wood.

“Ayla discovered them when she was living in her valley,” Jondalar said. “They were all over the rocky shore there, and I collected some extras. I’ll show you how they work tomorrow, and give you one, so you will know what they look like. There may be some around here. As you can see, they make starting a fire much faster.”

“Where did you say the fat was?” Ayla asked.

“In the box by the entrance. I’ll get it. The wicks are there, too,” Dolando said. He put a dollop of soft white tallow—fat that had been rendered in boiling water and skimmed after it cooled—into the stone
bowl, stuck a twisted strand of dried lichen in it, next to the edge, then picked up a burning stick and lit it. It sputtered a bit; then a pool of oil started to form in the bottom of the bowl and was absorbed by the lichen, causing a steadier flame and more even light within the wooden structure.

Ayla put cooking stones in the fire, then checked the level in the wooden water box. She started outside with it, but Dolando took it and went out to get more water instead. While he was gone, Ayla and Jondalar put the bedding on a sleeping platform. Then Ayla selected some dried herbs from her medicine packets to make a relaxing tea for all of them. She put other ingredients in some of her own bowls to have it ready for Roshario when she woke up. Not long after Dolando brought in the water, she gave cups of tea to each of them.

They sat in silence, sipping the warm liquid, which was a relief to Dolando. He was afraid they would want him to make conversation, and he was in no mood for it. It wasn’t a matter of mood to Ayla. She simply didn’t know what to say. She had come for Roshario’s sake, though she would have preferred not to be there at all. The prospect of spending the night within the dwelling of a man who had raged in anger against her was not pleasant, and she was grateful Jondalar had chosen to stay with her. Jondalar was also at a loss for words and had been waiting for someone else to say something. When no one did, he felt that silence, perhaps, was most appropriate.

With timing that almost seemed planned, just as they were finishing their tea, Roshario began to moan and thrash about. Ayla picked up the lamp and went to her. She put it down on a wooden bench that also served as a bedside table, moving aside a damp woven cup of spicy fragrant gillyflowers. The woman’s arm was swollen and warm to the touch, even through the wrappings, which were now tighter. The light and Ayla’s touch woke the woman. Her eyes, glazed with pain, focused on the medicine woman, and she tried to smile.

“I’m glad you are awake,” Ayla said. “I need to take off the sling and loosen the wrappings and splints, but you were thrashing in your sleep, and you need to keep your arm still. I’ll make a fresh poultice that should lessen the swelling, but I want to make you something for the pain, first. Will you be all right for a while?”

“Yes, you go and do what you need to. Dolando can stay and talk to me,” Roshario said, looking past Ayla’s shoulder to one of the men standing behind her. “Jondalar, don’t you think you should help Ayla?”

He nodded. It was obvious that she wanted to talk to Dolando in private, and he was just as happy to leave them alone. He brought in more wood for the fire, and then more water, and a few more river-smoothed, large pebbles to use for heating the liquid. One of the cooking
stones had cracked when it was transferred from the hot fire to the fresh, cold water Dolando had brought in for tea. As he watched Ayla preparing her medications, he heard the low murmur of voices from the rear of the dwelling. He was glad he could not hear what they were saying. When Ayla finished treating Roshario and making her more comfortable, they were all tired and ready for sleep.

Ayla was awakened in the morning by the delightful sound of children laughing and playing, and Wolfs wet nose. When she opened her eyes, Wolf looked toward the entrance, where the sounds were coming from. Then he looked back at her and whined.

“You want to go out there and play with those children, don’t you?” she said. He whined again.

She lifted off her covers and sat up, noticing that Jondalar was sprawled out in sound sleep beside her. She stretched, rubbed her eyes, and glanced toward Roshario. The woman was still sleeping; she had many wakeful nights to make up for. Dolando, wrapped in a fur cover, was sleeping on the ground beside her bed. He, too, had spent many sleepless nights.

When Ayla got up, Wolf dashed to the entrance and stood there waiting for her, his whole body wriggling with anticipation. She pushed back the flap and quickly stepped outside, but told Wolf to stay. She did not want him scaring anyone by dashing into the middle of something without warning. She looked across and saw several children of various ages in the pool made by the waterfall along with several women, all taking a morning bath. She walked toward them with Wolf close to her side. Shamio squealed when she saw him.

“C’mon, Wuffie. You should take a bath, too,” the girl said. Wolf whined, looking up at Ayla.

“Would anyone mind if Wolf got in the pool, Tholie? Shamio seems to want him to come in and play.”

“I was just getting out,” the young woman said, “but she can stay in and play with him, if the others don’t mind.”

When no one made an objection, Ayla gave him a signal. “Go ahead, Wolf,” she said. The wolf bounded into the water, making a big splash, straight to Shamio.

A woman who was coming out of the water alongside Tholie smiled, then said, “I wish my children would mind as well as that wolf does. How do you make him do what you want?”

“It takes time. You have to go over it a lot, make him repeat what you want many times, and it can be difficult to make him understand at first, but once he learns something, he doesn’t forget. He’s really very smart,” Ayla said. “I’ve been teaching him every day while we were traveling.”

“Sounds like teaching a child,” Tholie said, “but why a wolf? I never knew you could teach them to do anything, but why do you do it?”

“I know he can be frightening to people who don’t know him, and I didn’t want him to scare anyone,” Ayla said. Watching Tholie come out of the pool and dry herself, Ayla was suddenly aware she was pregnant. Not too far along yet, and her plumpness concealed it when she was dressed, but she was definitely pregnant. “I think I’d like to wash, too, but first I have to pass water.”

“If you follow that path up the back, you’ll find a trench. It’s quite a ways up, over the far wall so it runs off the other side when it rains, but it’s closer than going around,” Tholie said.

Ayla started to call Wolf, then hesitated. As usual, he had lifted his leg in the bushes—she had taught him to go outside of dwellings, but not to use special places. She watched the children playing with him and knew he would rather stay, but she wasn’t sure if she should leave him. She was sure everything would be fine, but she didn’t know how the mothers would feel.

“I think you can leave him for a while, Ayla,” Tholie said. “I’ve seen him around the children, and you were right. They’d all be disappointed if you called him away so soon.”

Ayla smiled. “Thank you. I’ll be right back.”

She started up the path that traversed in a diagonal across the steepest incline to one wall and then switchbacked toward the other. When she reached the far wall she climbed over it on steps made out of short sections of logs. These were held in place with stakes pounded into the ground in front of them, so they would not roll, and filled in behind with stones and dirt.

The trench and a level area in front of it, lined with a low fence of smooth round logs to sit across, had been dug out of the sloping ground on the other side of the wall. The smell and the buzzing flies made its purpose obvious, but the sunlight shining through the trees, and the sound of birds made it a pleasant place to linger when she found herself moving her bowels, as well. She saw a pile of dried moss on the ground nearby and guessed its use. It was not at all scratchy and quite absorbent. When she was through, she noticed that fresh dirt had recently been scattered over the bottom of the trench.

The path continued downhill and Ayla decided to follow it a ways. As she walked along, the region felt so much like the area around the cave where she grew up that she had the haunting feeling she had been there before. She would come upon a rock formation that seemed familiar, or a space opening out at the crest of a ridge, or similar vegetation. She stopped to pick a few hazelnuts off a bush growing against a
rock wall, and she could not resist pushing aside the low branches to see if there was a small cave hidden behind it.

She found another large mound of blackberry bushes with long thorny runners reaching out, heavy with clumps of sweet ripe fruit. She stuffed herself with them and wondered what had happened to the berries she had picked the day before. Then she remembered eating some at the welcoming feast. She decided she’d have to come back and get more for Roshario. Suddenly she realized that she had to return. The woman might be waking up and need some attention. The woods had felt so familiar that Ayla had forgotten where she was for a moment. Roaming the hillsides, she had felt like a girl again, using the excuse of looking for Iza’s medicinal plants to explore.

Perhaps because it was second nature anyway, or because she had always looked harder for plants on her way back so she’d have something to show for her forays, Ayla paid close attention to the vegetation. She almost shouted with excitement, and relief, when she noticed the small yellow vines with tiny leaves and flowers twined around other plants that were dead and dried, strangled by the golden threadlike vines.

That’s it! That’s golden thread, Iza’s magic plant, she thought. That’s what I need for my morning tea, so I won’t start a baby growing. And there’s a lot of it. I was running so low that I didn’t know if I’d have enough to last for the whole Journey. I wonder if there’s antelope sage root around here, too? There ought to be. I’ll have to come back and look.

She found a plant with large basal leaves and wove them together with twigs for a makeshift gathering container, then picked as many of the small plants as she could, without depleting the area entirely. Iza had taught her long ago always to leave some from which the next year’s growth would start.

On the way back, she took a small detour through a thicker, more shaded patch of forest, to look for more of the waxy white plant that would soothe the horses’ eyes, though they did seem to be improving. She scanned the ground under the trees carefully. With so much that was familiar, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but when she saw the green leaves of one particular kind of plant, she gasped and felt a cold chill go through her.

A
yla dropped to the moist ground and sat staring at the plants, breathing the rich forest air, while memories came flooding back. Even in the Clan the secret of the root was little known. The knowledge had belonged to Iza’s line, and only those descended from the same ancestors—or the one to whom she had taught it—knew the complicated processing required to produce the final result. Ayla remembered Iza explaining the unusual method of drying the plant so that its properties would concentrate in the roots, and she recalled that they actually got stronger with long storage, if kept out of the light.

Though Iza had told her, carefully and repeatedly, how to make the drink from the dry roots, she couldn’t let Ayla practice preparing it before she went to the Clan Gathering; it could not be used without proper ritual and, Iza had stressed, it was too sacred to throw away. That was why Ayla had drunk the dregs she had found in the bottom of Iza’s ancient bowl, after she made it for the mog-urs, even though it was forbidden to women, so it wouldn’t have to be thrown out. She wasn’t thinking straight by then. There was so much going on, other beverages that clouded her mind, and the root drink was so powerful that even the little she had swallowed while making it had a strong effect.

She had wandered along narrow passages through the deep honeycombed caves, and by the time she saw Creb and the other mog-urs, she couldn’t have retreated even if she’d tried. That was when it happened. Somehow Creb had known she was there, and he had taken her with them, back into the memories. If he hadn’t, she would have been lost in that black void forever, but something happened that night that changed him. He wasn’t The Mog-ur afterward, he had no heart for it any more, until that last time.