The Plains of Passage - Jean M. Auel [437]
“I thought you were gone for sure,” he said, kissing and holding her. “I’m sorry I yelled at you, Ayla. I know you can load your own packs. I just worry so much.”
“No, it’s my fault. I shouldn’t have been so careless with my eye protectors, and I should never have rushed ahead of you like that. I’m still not familiar with ice.”
“But I let you, and I should have known better.”
“I should have known better,” Ayla said at the same time. They smiled at each other at the inadvertent matching of words.
Ayla felt a tug at her waist and saw that the other end of the rope was fastened to the brown stallion. Racer had pulled her out of the crevasse. She fumbled to untie the knots around her waist while Jondalar held the sturdy horse close by. She finally had to use a knife to cut the rope. She had made so many knots and had pulled them so tight—and they’d grown even tighter as she was lifted out—that they were impossible to untie.
Detouring around the crack that had so nearly proved disastrous, they continued their southwesterly course across the ice. They were growing seriously concerned as their supply of burning stones was becoming depleted.
“How much longer before we reach the other side, Jondalar?” Ayla asked in the morning after melting water for them all. “We don’t have many burning stones left.”
“I know. I had hoped that we would be there by now. The storms have caused more delay than I planned on, and I’m getting worried that the weather will turn while we are on the ice. It can happen so fast,” Jondalar said, scanning the sky carefully as he spoke. “I’m afraid it may be coming soon.”
“Why?”
“I got to thinking about that silly argument we had before you fell into the crevasse. Remember how everyone was warning us about the evil spirits that ride ahead of the snow-melter?”
“Yes!” Ayla said. “Solandia and Verdegia said they make you feel irritable, and I was feeling very irritable. I still do. I am so sick and tired of this ice, I have to force myself to keep going. Could that be what it is?”
“That’s what I was wondering. Ayla, if it’s true, we have to hurry. If the foehn comes while we’re up on this glacier, we may all fall into the cracks,” Jondalar said.
They tried to ration the peaty brown stones more carefully, drinking their water barely melted. Ayla and Jondalar started carrying their waterbags full of snow underneath their fur parkas so their body heat would melt enough for them and Wolf. But the conservation wasn’t enough. Their bodies couldn’t melt enough for the horses that way, and when the last of the burning stones were gone, there was no water for the horses. She had run out of feed for them, too, but water was more important. Ayla noticed them chewing ice, but it worried her. Both dehydration and eating ice could chill them so that they wouldn’t be able to maintain sufficient body heat to keep warm on the freezing cold glacier.
Both horses had come to her looking for water, after they had set up their tent, but all Ayla could do was give them a few sips of her own water and break up some ice for them. There had been no afternoon storm that day, and they had kept going until it was almost too dark to see. They had traveled a good distance, and should have been glad, but she felt strangely uncomfortable. She had trouble getting to sleep that night. She tried to shrug it off, telling herself she was just worried about the horses.
Jondalar lay awake for a long time, too. He thought the horizon was looking closer, but he was afraid it was wishful thinking and didn’t want to mention it. When he finally dozed off, he awoke in the middle of the night to find Ayla wide awake, too. They got up at the first faint shift from black to blue, and they started out with stars still in the sky.
By midmorning the wind had shifted, and Jondalar was sure his worst fears were about to materialize. The wind wasn’t so much warm as less cold, but it was coming from the south.
“Hurry, Ayla! We’ve got to hurry,” he said,