The Plains of Passage - Jean M. Auel [249]
“What are you doing, Ayla?” he asked.
“There’s a cave bear in that cave,” she said. At his look of apprehension, she added, “He’s started his long sleep, I think, but they sometimes move if they are disturbed early in winter, at least that’s what they said.”
“Who said?”
“The hunters of Brun’s clan. I used to watch them when they talked about hunting … sometimes,” Ayla explained. Then she grinned. “Not just sometimes. I watched as often as I could, especially after I started practicing with my sling. The men usually didn’t pay attention to a girl busying herself nearby. I knew they would never teach me, and watching when they exchanged hunting stories was a way to learn. I thought they might be angry if they found out what I was doing, but I didn’t know how severe the punishment would be … until later.”
“I guess if anyone would, the Clan would know about cave bears,” Jondalar said. “Do you think it’s safe to stay around here?”
“I don’t know, but I don’t think I want to,” she said.
“Why don’t you call Whinney. We have time before it gets dark to find another place.”
After spending the night in their tent out in the open, they started out early in the morning, wanting to put still more distance between themselves and the cave bear. Jondalar didn’t want to take the time to dry the meat, and he convinced Ayla that the temperature was cold enough for it to keep. He was in a hurry to get out of the region altogether. Where there was one bear, there were usually more.
But when they reached the top of a ridge, they stopped. In the sharp, clear, cold air, they could see in all directions, and the view was spectacular. Directly east, a snow-covered mountain of somewhat lower elevation rose in the foreground, drawing attention to the eastern range, closer now and curving around them. Though not exceptionally tall, the glaciered mountains reached their highest point to the north, rising to form a line of jagged white peaks, shadowed with hints of glacier blue against the deep azure sky.
The icy northern mountains were in the broad outer belt of the curving arc; the travelers were in the innermost arc, in the foothills of the range that encompassed them, standing on a ridge that stretched across die northern end of the ancient basin that formed the central plain. The great glacier, the densely packed cake of solid ice that had spread down from the north until it covered nearly a quarter of the land, ended in a mountainous wall that was hidden just beyond the far peaks. Toward the northwest, highlands that were lower but closer dominated the horizon. Shimmering in the distance the northern glacial ice could be glimpsed hovering like a pale horizon above the nearer heights. The huge range of much higher mountains to the west was lost in clouds.
The distant mountains that surrounded them were magnificent, but the most heart-stopping sight was closer at hand. Down below, in the deep gorge, the course of the Great Mother River had changed direction. It was now coming from the west. As Ayla and Jondalar stared down from the ridge and looked upstream at the wavering course of the river, they, too, felt as though they had reached a turning point.
“The glacier we have to cross is due west of here,” Jondalar said, his voice taking on a faraway tone that matched his thoughts, “but we’ll follow the Mother and she’ll veer a little to the northwest after a while, then southwest again until we reach it. It’s not a huge glacier and, except for a higher region in the northeast, nearly flat once we get up to it, like a big high plain made out of ice. After we get across it, we’ll head slightly southwest again, but essentially, from here on, we’ll be traveling