The Plains of Passage - Jean M. Auel [213]
In the afternoon, with an unexpected and resounding roar of thunder, the sky opened, lit only heartbeats before by a sudden shaft of lightning. Ayla jerked with surprise, and she shivered with dread as bright flashes of white branching light played with the mountaintops behind them. But it wasn’t the lightning that scared her, it was the anticipation of the explosive noise it presaged.
She recoiled each time she heard a distant rumble or a nearby rolling boom, and it seemed with each burst of thunder that the rain came down harder, as though frightened out of the clouds by the noise. As they worked their way down the west-facing slope of the mountains, rain fell in sheets as thick as waterfalls. Streams filled and overflowed, and rivulets spilling over ledges became gushing torrents. The footing grew slick and dangerous in places.
They were both grateful for their Mamutoi rain parkas, made of de-haired deer hides, Jondalar’s from megaceros, the giant deer of the steppes, and Ayla’s from the northern reindeer. They were worn over their far parkas, when the weather was cold, or over their regular tunics when it was warmer. The exterior surfaces were colored with red and yellow ochres. The mineral pigments had been mixed with fats, and the color was worked into the hides with a special burnishing tool made of rib bone that brought the garments to a hard, shiny luster that was also quite water repellent. Even wet, it provided some protection, but the burnished, fat-soaked finish was unable to entirely resist the soaking deluge.
When they stopped for the night and put up the tent, everything was damp, even their sleeping furs, and no fire was possible. They brought wood into their tent, mostly the dead lower branches of conifers, hoping it would dry overnight. In the morning the rains still poured and their clothes were still damp, but using a firestone and the tinder she had with her, Ayla managed to get a small fire going, enough to boil a little water to make a warming tea. They ate only the square compressed cakes of traveling food Roshario had given them, which were a variation of the commonly made, filling, nutritious, compact food that could sustain a person indefinitely even if that was all he ate. It consisted of some variety of meat that was dried then ground up and mixed with fat, usually some dried fruit or berries, and occasionally partially cooked grains or roots.
The horses were standing outside the tent impassively, their heads drooping and water dripping from long winter fur, and the bowl boat had fallen over and was half-full of water. They were ready to leave it and the dragging poles behind. The travois that had been so useful for hauling loads across the open grasslands, and with the addition of the round boat effective for transporting their gear across rivers, had been an encumbrance in the rugged, forested mountains. It had hampered and slowed their travel, and it could even be dangerous going down difficult slopes in the pouring rain. If Jondalar hadn’t known that for most of the rest of their Journey the passage would still be across plains, he would have left it long before.
They unfastened the boat from the poles and poured out the water, turning the boat upside down and eventually lifting it over them. Standing underneath, holding the round boat above their heads, they looked at each other and grinned. For a moment they were out of the rain. It hadn’t occurred to them that the boat that held them out of the water of a river could also be a roof to keep off the rain. Not while they were moving, perhaps, but they could at least get out of the rain for a short time when it pelted down in earnest.
But that discovery didn’t solve the problem of how they were going to transport it. Then, as though they both thought of it at the same time, they lifted the bowl boat over Whinney’s back. If they could find a way to hold it in place, it could help to keep