The valley of horses_ a novel - Jean M. Auel [14]
“Thonolan, how far do you really plan to go? You didn’t mean it when you said all the way to the end of the Great Mother River, did you?” Jondalar asked, picking up a flint axe hafted to a short, sturdy, shaped handle and putting it through a loop on his belt next to the bone-handled flint knife.
Thonolan stopped in the process of fitting on a snowshoe and stood up. “Jondalar, I meant it,” he said, without a hint of his usual joking.
“We may not even make it back for next year’s Summer Meeting!”
“Are you having second thoughts? You don’t have to come with me, Brother. I’m serious. I won’t be angry if you turn back—it was a last-moment decision for you anyway. You know as well as I do, we may never get back home again. But if you want to go, you’d better do it now or you’ll never make it back across that glacier until next winter.”
“No, it wasn’t a last-moment decision, Thonolan. I’ve been thinking about making a Journey for a long time, and this is the right time for it,” Jondalar said with a tone of finality, and, Thonolan thought, a shade of unaccountable bitterness in his voice. Then, as though he were trying to shrug it off, Jondalar shifted to a lighter tone. “I never have made much of a Journey, and if I don’t now, I never will. I made my choice, Little Brother, you’re stuck with me.”
The sky was clear, and the sun reflecting the white expanse of virgin snow before them was blinding. It was spring, but at their elevation the landscape showed no sign of it. Jondalar reached into a pouch hanging from his belt and pulled out a pair of snow goggles. They were made of wood, shaped to cover the eyes completely except for a thin horizontal slit, and tied around the head. Then, with a quick twist of the foot to wrap the thong loop into a snowshoe hitch around toe and ankle, he stepped into his snowshoes and reached for his backframe.
Thonolan had made the snowshoes. Spearmaking was his craft, and he carried with him his favorite shaft straightener, an implement made of an antler with the branching tines removed and a hole at one end. It was intricately carved with animals and plants of spring, partly to honor the Great Earth Mother and persuade Her to allow the spirits of the animals to be drawn to the spears made from the tool, but also because Thonolan enjoyed the carving for its own sake. It was inevitable that they would lose spears while hunting, and new ones would have to be made along the way. The straightener was used particularly at the end of the shaft where a hand grip was not possible, and by inserting the shaft through the hole, additional leverage was obtained. Thonolan knew how to apply stress to wood, heated with hot stones or steam, to straighten a shaft or to bend one around to make a snowshoe. They were different aspects of the same skill.
Jondalar turned to see if his brother was ready. With a nod, they both started out, and tramped down the gradual slope toward the timberline below. On their right, across forested lowland, they saw the snow-covered alpine foreland and, in the distance, the jagged icy peaks of the northernmost ridge of the massive mountain range. Toward the southeast, one tall peak was shining high above its brethren.
The highland they had crossed was hardly more than a hill by comparison, a massif that was the stump of eroded mountains far more ancient than the soaring peaks to the south. But it was just high enough and just close enough to the rugged range with its massive glaciers—that not only crowned but mantled the mountains down to moderate elevations—to maintain a year-round ice cover on its relatively level top. Someday, when the continental glacier receded back to its polar home, that highland would be black with forest. Now, it was a plateau glacier, a miniature version of the immense globe-spanning ice sheets to the north.
When the two brothers reached the treeline, they removed their goggles, which