The Mammoth Hunters - Jean M. Auel [150]
Ayla and Jondalar quickly removed the horses’ loads and set up their small tent almost under the mare’s feet, then crawled inside to wait out the storm.
Even in the lee of the bank, out of the direct force of the wind, the storm threatened their simple shelter. The roaring gale blew from all directions at once, and seemed determined to find a way inside. It succeeded often. Drafts and gusts stole under the edges or in through cracks where the skin across the opening overlapped or the smoke-hole cover was fastened, often bringing a dusting of snow. The woman and the man crawled under their furs to keep warm, and talked. Incidents of their childhood, stories, legends, people they’d known, customs, ideas, dreams, hopes; they never seemed to run out of things to talk about. As night came on, they shared Pleasures, and then slept. Sometime in the middle of the night, the wind stopped its assault on their tent.
Ayla awoke and lay with her eyes open, looking around the dim interior, fighting down a growing panic. She didn’t feel well, she had a headache, and the muffled stillness felt heavy in the stale air of the tent. Something was wrong, but she didn’t know what. She sensed a familiarity about the situation, or a memory, as though she’d been there before, but not quite. It was more like a danger she ought to recognize, but what? Suddenly she couldn’t bear it and sat up, pushing the warm covers off the man lying beside her.
“Jondalar! Jondalar!” She shook him, but she didn’t need to. He was awake the moment she bolted up.
“Ayla! What is it?”
“I don’t know. Something is wrong!”
“I don’t see anything wrong,” he said. He didn’t, but something was obviously bothering Ayla. He wasn’t used to seeing her so close to panic. She was usually so calm, so completely in control even when she was in imminent danger. No four-legged predator could bring such abject terror to her eyes. “Why do you think something is wrong?”
“I had a dream. I was in a dark place, darker than night, and I was suffocating, Jondalar. I couldn’t breathe!”
A familiar look of concern spread across his face as he looked around the tent once more. It just wasn’t like Ayla to be so frightened; perhaps something was wrong. It was dark in the tent, but not completely dark. A faint light filtered through. Nothing seemed out of place, the wind hadn’t torn anything or snapped any cords. In fact, it wasn’t even blowing. There was no movement at all. It was absolutely still.…
Jondalar threw back the furs, scrambled to the entrance. He unfastened the tent flap, exposing a wall of soft white, which collapsed into the tent, but showed only more of the same beyond.
“We’re buried, Jondalar! We’re buried in snow!” Ayla’s eyes were wide with terror and her voice cracked with the strain of trying to keep it under control.
Jondalar reached for her and held her. “It’s all right, Ayla. It’s all right,” he murmured, not at all sure that it was.
“It’s so dark and I can’t breathe!”
Her voice sounded so strange, so remote, as though it came from afar, and she had become limp in his arms. He laid her down on her furs, and noticed her eyes were closed, but she still kept crying out in that eerie, distant voice that it was dark, and she couldn’t breathe. Jondalar was at a loss, frightened for her, and of her, a little. Something strange was going on, something more than their snowy entombment, as frightening as that was.
He noticed his pack near the opening, partly covered with snow, and stared at it for a moment. Suddenly he crawled over to it. Brushing off the snow, he felt for the side holder and found a spear. Rising to his knees, he unfastened the smoke-hole cover that was near the middle. With the butt end of the spear he poked up through the snow. A pile plopped