The Plains of Passage - Jean M. Auel [250]
In breaking through the ridge of limestone and crystalline rock, the river, as though hesitating, unable to make up her mind, jogged north, then dipped south, and then north again, forming a lobe that the river traced, before finally heading south through the plain.
“Is that the Mother?” Ayla asked. “All of her, I mean, not just a channel?”
“That’s all of her. She’s still a good-size river, but nothing like she was,” Jondalar conceded.
“We’ve been beside her for quite a while, then. I didn’t know that. I’m used to seeing the Great Mother River so much more full, when she isn’t all spread out. I thought we were following a channel. We’ve crossed feeders that were greater,” Ayla said, feeling a little disappointed that the enormous swollen Mother of rivers had become just another large waterway.
“We’re up high. She looks different from here. There is more to her than you think,” he said. “We have some large tributaries to cross, yet, and there will be stretches where she breaks into channels again, but she will keep getting smaller.” Jondalar stared toward the west in silence for a time; then he added, “This is just the beginning of winter. We should make it to the glacier in plenty of time … if nothing happens to delay us.”
The Journeyers turned west along the high ridge, following the outside bend of the river. The elevation continued to increase on the north side of the river until they were looking down from a high point above the little southward lobe. The drop-off toward the west was quite steep, and they headed north down a slightly more gradual slope through scattered brush. At the bottom, a tributary that curled around the base of the lofty prominence from the northeast cut a deep gorge. They traced it upstream until they found a crossing. It was only hilly on the other side, and they rode beside the feeder until they reached the Great Mother again, then continued west.
In the broad central plain there had been only a few tributaries, but they were now in an area where many rivers and streams fed the Mother from the north. They came upon another large tributary later in the day and their legs got wet in the crossing. It was not like crossing rivers in the warm summertime, when it didn’t matter if they got a little wet. The temperature was dipping down to freezing at night. They were chilled by the icy cold water, and they decided to camp on the far bank to get warm and dry.
They continued due west. After passing through the hilly terrain, they reached the lowland again, a marshy grassland, but not like the wetlands downstream. These were on acid soils, and more swampy than marshy, with moors of sphagnum mosses that in places were compacting into peat. They discovered the peat would burn when they made camp one day and inadvertently built a fire on top of a dry patch of it. The following day they collected some on purpose for their next fires.
When they came to a large, fast tributary that fanned into a broad delta at its confluence with the Mother, they decided to follow it upstream a short distance to see if they could find an easier place to cross. They reached a fork where two rivers converged, followed the right branch, and came to another fork where yet another river joined. The horses easily waded across the smaller river, and the middle fork, though larger, wasn’t too difficult. The land between the middle and the left fork was a boggy lowland with sphagnum moors, and it was difficult going.
The last fork was deep, and there was no way to cross it without getting wet, but on the other side they disturbed a megaceros with an enormous rack of palmate antlers and decided to go after him. The giant deer, with his long legs, easily outdistanced the stocky horses, although Racer and Wolf gave him a good run. Whinney, hauling the pole drag, couldn’t keep up, but the exercise had put them all in a good mood.
Jondalar, red-faced and windblown, his fur hood thrown back, was smiling when he came back. Ayla felt an unexplainable pang of love and longing as he rode up. He had let his