The Plains of Passage - Jean M. Auel [436]
She looked up, afraid to move even that much, for fear the slightest shift in weight would jar her precarious support loose. Above, the sky looked almost black, and she thought she saw the faint glimmerings of stars. An occasional sliver of ice or puff of snow dropped belatedly from the edge, finally letting go of its precarious hold and showering the woman with fragments on the way down.
Her ledge was a narrow jutting extension of an older surface long buried by new snows. It rested on a large jagged boulder that had been torn from solid rock as the ice slowly filled a valley and overflowed down the sides of an adjacent one. The majestically flowing river of ice accumulated great quantities of dust, sand, gravel, and boulders that it gouged out of hard rock, which were slowly carried toward the faster-moving current at the center. These moraines formed long ribbons of rubble on the surface as they moved along the current. When the temperature eventually rose enough to melt the massive glaciers, they would leave evidence of their passage in ridges and hills of un-sorted rock.
While she was waiting, afraid to move and holding herself very still, she heard faint mutterings and muted rumblings in the deep icy cavern. She thought at first that she imagined them. But the mass of ice was not as solid as it seemed on the hard surface above. It was constantly readjusting, expanding, shifting, sliding. The explosive boom of a new crack opening or closing at some distant point, on the surface or deep within the glacier, sent vibrations through the strangely viscous solid. The great mountain of ice was riddled with catacombs: passages that came to an abrupt halt, long galleries that turned and twisted, dropped off or soared upward; pockets and caves that opened invitingly, then sealed shut.
Ayla began to look around her. The sheer walls of ice glowed with a luminous, unbelievably rich blue light that had a deep undertone of green. With a sudden jolt, she realized she had seen that color before, but in only one other place. Jondalar’s eyes were the same rich, stunning blue! She longed to see them again. The fractured planes of the huge ice crystal gave her the sensation of mysterious flitting movement just beyond her peripheral vision. She felt that if she turned her head quickly enough she would see some ephemeral shape disappearing into the mirrored walls.
But it was all illusion, a magician’s trick of angles and light. The crystal ice filtered out most of the red spectrum of the light from the burning orb in the sky, leaving the deep blue-green, and the edges and planes of the tinted, mirrored surfaces played games of refraction and reflection with each other.
Ayla glanced up when she felt a shower of snow. She saw Jondalar’s head extending beyond the rim of the crevasse, then a length of rope came snaking down toward her.
“Tie the rope around your waist, Ayla,” he called, “and make sure you tie it well. Let me know when you’re ready.”
He was doing it again, Jondalar said to himself. Why did he always recheck what she did when he knew she was more than capable of doing it herself? Why did he tell her to do something that was perfectly obvious? She knew the rope had to be tied securely. That was why she had gotten angry and stomped off ahead and was now in this dangerous predicament … but she should have known better.
“I’m ready, Jondalar,” she called, after wrapping it around her and fastening it with many knots. “These knots won’t slip.”
“All right. Now hang on to the rope. We’re going to pull you up,” he said.
Ayla felt the rope grow taut, then lift her from the ledge. Her feet were dangling in air as she felt herself slowly rising toward the edge of the crevasse. She saw Jondalar’s face, and his beautiful, worried blue eyes, and she gripped the hand he held out to her to help her over the rim. Then she