The Plains of Passage - Jean M. Auel [378]
Ayla lay awake long after she heard the heavier breathing of sleep from the man beside her, tired but unable to fall asleep herself. She shifted position frequently, trying not to disturb Jondalar with her restless turnings. Though she dozed off, sound sleep was slow in coming, and her thoughts drifted in strange patterns as she wavered between wakeful imaginings and fitful dreams…
The meadow was freshly green with the lush new growth of spring, brightened by the varied hues of colorful flowers. In the distance, the ivory-white scarp face of a rock wall, pocked with caves and textured with black streaks sweeping up and around into roomy cliff overhangs, almost gleamed in the light blazing down from high in the clear azure sky. Reflected sunlight glinted from the river that flowed along its base, hugging close one moment, then veering away, generally tracing the contours of the wall without following it exactly.
About halfway down the field that spread out across level ground away from the river, a man stood watching her, a man of the Clan. Then he turned and headed toward the cliff, leaning on a staff and dragging afoot, yet walking at a good pace. Though he didn’t say or signal a word, she knew he wanted her to follow him. She hurried toward him, and when they came abreast, he glanced at her with his one good eye. It was a deep liquid brown, full of compassion and power. She knew his bearskin cloak covered the stump of an arm that had been amputated at the elbow when he was a boy. His grandmother, a medicine woman of renowned reputation, had cut off the useless, paralyzed limb when it became gangrenous after he was mangled by a cave bear. Creb had lost his eye during the same encounter.
As they neared the rock wall, she noticed a strange formation near the top of an overhanging cliff. A longish, somewhat flat, column-shaped boulder, darker than the creamy matrix of limestone that held it, leaned over the edge as if frozen in place just as it started to tumble down. The stone not only gave the feeling that it would fall any moment, making her uneasy, but she knew something about it was important; something she should remember, something she had done, or was supposed to do—or wasn’t supposed to do.
She closed her eyes trying to recall. She saw darkness, thick, velvet, palpable darkness, as utterly lacking in light as only a cave deep in a mountain could be. A tiny flickering of light appeared in the distance and she groped her way along a narrow passage toward it. As she neared, she saw Creb with other mog-urs, and she suddenly felt great fear. She didn’t want that memory and quickly opened her eyes.
And found herself on the bank of the small river that wound its way along the base of the wall. She looked across the water and saw Creb trudging up a path toward the falling stone formation. She had gotten behind him and now didn’t know how to cross the river to catch up. She called after him, “Creb, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to follow you into the cave.”
He turned around and beckoned to her again, signaling great urgency. “Hurry,” he signed from across the river, which had become wider and deeper, and full of ice. “Don’t wait any longer! Hurry!”
The ice was expanding, taking him farther away. “Wait for me! Creb, don’t leave me here!” she cried.
“Ayla! Ayla, wake up! You’re dreaming again,” Jondalar said, shaking her gently.
She opened her eyes and felt a great sense of loss and a strangely intense fear. She noticed the hide-covered walls of the dwelling space and a reddish glow from the fireplace as she looked at the shadowed silhouette of the man beside her. She reached out and clung to him. “We have to hurry, Jondalar! We have to leave here right away,” she said.
“We will,” he said. “As soon as we can. But tomorrow is the Mother Festival, and then we have to decide what we need to take to cross the ice.”
“Ice!” she said. “We have to cross a river of ice!”
“Yes, I know,” he said, holding her and trying to calm her. “But we have to plan how we’re going to do it with