The Plains of Passage - Jean M. Auel [109]
“Ayla, look! I didn’t know there were seals in Beran Sea! I haven’t seen those animals since I was a youngster and went on a trek with Willomar,” Jondalar said, his voice full of excitement and longing. “He took both Thonolan and me to see the Great Waters, and then the people who live near the edge of the earth took us north on a boat. Have you seen them before?”
Ayla looked toward the sea, but closer in, where he was pointing. Several dark, sleek, streamlined creatures, with light gray underbellies, were humping clumsily along a sandbar that had formed behind some nearly submerged rocks. While they watched, most of the seals dived back into the water, chasing a school of fish. They watched heads bobbing up while the last of them, smaller and younger, dove into the sea again. Then they were gone, disappearing as quickly as they had come.
“Only from a distance,” Ayla said, “during the cold season. They liked the floating ice offshore. Bran’s clan didn’t hunt them. No one could reach them, though Bran once told about a time he saw some on the rocks near a sea cave. Some people thought they were winter water spirits, not animals at all, but I saw little ones on the ice once, and I didn’t think water spirits had babies. I never knew where they went in the summer. They must have come here.”
“When we get home, I’ll take you to see the Great Waters, Ayla. You won’t believe it. This is a large sea, much bigger than any lakes I’ve ever seen, and salty I’m told, but it’s nothing compared to the Great Waters. That’s like the sky. No one has ever reached the other side.”
Ayla heard the eagerness in Jondalar’s voice, and she sensed his yearning to be home. She knew he wouldn’t hesitate to go with her to look for Bran’s clan and her son, if she told him that she wanted to. Because he loved her. But she loved him, too, and knew that he would be unhappy about the delay. She looked at the great sweep of water, then closed her eyes trying to hold back tears.
She wouldn’t know where to look for the clan, anyway, she thought. And it wasn’t Bran’s clan any more. It was Broud’s clan now, and she would not be welcome. Broud had cursed her with death; she was dead to them all, a spirit. If she and Jondalar had frightened the Camp on this island because of the animals, and their seemingly supernatural ability to control them, how much more would they scare the clan? Including Uba, and Durc? To them, she would be returning from the spirit world, and the companionable animals would be proof of it. They believed a spirit who came back from the land of the dead came to do them harm.
But once she turned west, it would be final. From this time on, for the rest of her life, Durc would be no more than a memory. There would be no hope of ever seeing him again. That was the choice she had to make. She thought she had made it long ago; she didn’t know the pain would be still so sharp. Turning her head so Jondalar would not see the tears that filled her eyes as she stared at the deep blue expanse of water, Ayla said a silent goodbye to her son for the last time. A fresh stab of grief filled her and she knew she would carry the ache in her heart with her forever.
———
They turned their backs on the sea and started walking through the waist-high steppe grass of the large island, giving the horses a rest and time to graze. The sun was high in the sky, bright and hot. Shimmering heat waves rose up from the dusty ground, bringing the warm aroma of earth and growing things. On the treeless plain atop the long narrow strip of land, they moved within the shade of their grass hats, but the evaporation of the surrounding river channels made the air humid and beads of sweat trickled down their dusty skin. They were grateful for the occasional cool breath from the sea, a fitful breeze filled with the rich scent of the life within its deep waters.
Ayla stopped and unwound her leather sling from her head and tucked it into her waistband, not wanting it to get too damp. She replaced it with a rolled piece of soft leather,