The Mammoth Hunters - Jean M. Auel [149]
“Ayla, how do you know exactly what to do? How could you learn so much, where you grew up? Yes, I’ll keep this and put a stone from Thonolan’s grave in it,” he said.
He looked at the loose, sharp-edged gravel sloping against the wall in a tenuous equilibrium, created by the same forces that had split the stone slabs and blocks from the steep canyon sides. Suddenly a stone, giving way to the cosmic force of gravity, rolled down amid a spattering of other rocks and landed at Jondalar’s feet. He picked it up. At first glance, it appeared to be the same as all the other innocuous little pieces of broken granite and sedimentary rock. But when he turned it over, he was surprised to see a shining opalescence where the stone had broken. Fiery red lights gleamed from the heart of the milky white stone, and shimmering streaks of blues and greens danced and sparkled in the sun as he turned it this way and that.
“Ayla, look at this,” he said, showing her the small piece of opal. “You’d never guess it from the back. You’d think it was just an ordinary stone, but look here, where it broke off. The colors seem to come from deep inside, and they’re so bright. It almost seems alive.”
“Maybe it is, or maybe it is a piece of the spirit of your brother,” she replied.
16
A cold eddy of air curled beneath the edge of the low tent; an exposed arm was quickly brought under a fur. A stiff breeze whistled through the flap across the opening; a frown of worry creased a sleeping brow. A gust caught the flap with a sharp crack and snapped it back and forth, opening the way for bellowing drafts, which brought both Ayla and Jondalar fully awake in an instant. Jondalar tied the loose end down, but the wind, increasing steadily through the night, made sleep fitful and uneasy as it gasped and groaned, heaved and howled around the small hide shelter.
In the morning, they struggled to fold the tent hide between them in the blustery wind and packed quickly, not bothering to make a fire. Instead they drank cold water from the icy stream nearby and ate traveling food. The wind abated around midmorning, but there was a tension in the atmosphere which made them doubt that the worst was over.
When the wind picked up again around noon, Ayla noticed a fresh, almost metallic scent to the air, more like an absence of smell than an actual odor. She sniffed, turning her head, testing, evaluating.
“There’s snow on this wind.” Ayla shouted to be heard above the roar. “I can smell it.”
“What did you say?” Jondalar said, but the wind whipped his words away and Ayla understood his meaning more from the shapes his mouth took as he spoke than from hearing him. She stopped to let him come abreast.
“I can smell snow on the way. We’ve got to find a place to shelter before it comes,” Ayla said, searching the broad, flat expanse with troubled eyes. “But where can we find shelter out here?”
Jondalar was equally worried as he scanned the empty steppes. Then he recalled the nearly frozen stream they had camped near the night before. They hadn’t crossed over, it would still be on their left no matter how much it meandered. He strained to see through blowing dust, but nothing was clear. He turned left anyway.
“Let’s try to find that little river,” he said. “There may be trees or high banks along it that will give us some protection.” Ayla nodded, following his lead. Whinney did not object either.
The subtle quality to the air that the woman had detected, and thought of as the smell of snow, had been an accurate warning. Before long, a light powdery sifting whirled and blew in an erratic pattern, defining and giving shape to the wind. It soon gave way to larger flakes that made it more difficult to see.
But when Jondalar thought he saw the outline of vague shapes looming ahead, and stopped to try to make them out, Whinney pushed on and they all followed her lead. Low-bent trees and a screen of brush marked the edge of a