The Plains of Passage - Jean M. Auel [78]
It was the unique combination of all the many elements of the Ice Age steppes that fostered the magnificent multitudes, and each was essential, including the bitter cold, the withering winds, and the ice itself. And when the vast glaciers shrank back to polar regions and disappeared from the lower latitudes, so, too, did the great herds and gigantic animals become dwarfed or disappear entirely from a land that had changed, a land that could no longer sustain them.
While they traveled, the missing parfleche and long poles preyed on Ayla’s mind. They were more than useful, they might be necessary during the long trip ahead. She wanted to replace them, but it would take more than an overnight stop, and she knew Jondalar was anxious to keep moving.
Jondalar, however, was not happy about the wet tent, nor the thought of depending on it for shelter. Besides, it wasn’t good for wet skins to be folded up and packed together so tight; it could make them rot. They needed to be spread out to dry, and the hides would probably need to be worked as they were drying to keep them pliable, in spite of the smoking they had received when the leather was made. That would take more than a day, he was sure.
In the afternoon they approached the deep trench of another large river, which separated the plain from the mountains. From their vantage point on the plateau of the open steppes, above the broad valley with its wide, swiftly flowing waterway, they could see the terrain on the other side. The foothills across the river were fractured with many dry ravines and gullies, the ravages of flooding, as well as many more running tributaries. It was a major river, channeling a good proportion of the runoff, which drained the eastern face of the mountains into the inland sea.
As they rounded the shoulder of the steppe plateau and rode down the slope, Ayla was reminded of the territory around the Lion Camp, though the more broken landscape across the river was different. But on this side she saw the same kind of deep-cut gullies carved out of the loess soil by rain and melting snow, and high grass drying into standing hay. On the floodplain below, isolated larch and pine trees were scattered among leafy shrubs, and stands of cattails, tall phragmite reeds, and bulrushes marked the river’s edge.
When they reached the river, they stopped. This was a major watercourse, wide and deep, and swollen from the recent rains. They were not at all sure how they were going to get across. It was going to take some planning.
“It’s too bad we don’t have a bowl boat,” Ayla said, thinking of the skin-covered round boats the Lion Camp had used to cross the river near their lodge.
“You’re right. I think we are going to need some kind of a boat to get across this without getting everything all wet. I’m not sure why, but I don’t remember having so much trouble crossing rivers when Thonolan and I were traveling. We just piled our gear on a couple of logs and swam across,” Jondalar said. “But I guess we didn’t have as much, only a backframe for each of us. That’s all we could carry. With the horses, we can take more with us, but then, we have more to worry about.”
As they rode downstream, looking over the situation, Ayla noticed a stand of tall, slender birches growing near the water. The place had such a familiar feeling that she half expected to see the long, semisubterranean earthlodge of the Lion Camp tucked into the side of the slope at the back of a river terrace, with grass growing out of the sides, a rounded top, and the perfectly symmetrical arched entrance that had so surprised her when she first saw it. But when she actually saw such an arch, it gave her an eerie, spine-tingling shock.
“Jondalar! Look!”
He looked up the slope where she was pointing. There he saw not just one, but several, perfectly symmetrical archways, each an entrance to a circular, dome-shaped structure. They both dismounted and, finding the path up from the river, climbed to the Camp.
Ayla was surprised at