The valley of horses_ a novel - Jean M. Auel [59]
After dropping down karst highlands, she meandered across grassy steppes, winding into oxbows, breaking into separate channels and rejoining again as she wove her way south. The sluggish, braided river, flowing through flat land, gave the illusion of changelessness. It was only an illusion. By the time the Great Mother River reached the uplands at the southern end of the plain that swung her east again and gathered her channels together, she had received into herself the waters of the northern and eastern face of the first, massive, ice-mantled range.
The great swollen Mother swept out a depression as she curled east in a broad curve toward the southern end of the second chain of peaks. The two men had been following her left bank, crossing the occasional channels and streams still rushing to meet her as they came to them. Across the river to the south the land rose in steep craggy leaps; on their side rolling hills climbed more gradually from the river’s edge.
“I don’t think we’ll find the end of Donau before winter,” Jondalar remarked. “I’m beginning to wonder if there is one.”
“There’s an end, and I think we’ll find it soon. Look how big she is.” Thonolan waved an expansive arm toward the right, “Who would have thought she’d get that big? We have to be near the end.”
“But we haven’t reached the Sister yet, at least I don’t think we have. Tamen said she is as big as the Mother.”
“That must be one of those stories that get bigger with the telling. You don’t really believe there’s another river like that flowing south along this plain?”
“Well, Tamen didn’t say he’d seen it himself, but he was right about the Mother turning east again, and about the people who took us across her main channel. He could be right about the Sister. I wish we’d known the language of that Cave with the rafts; they might have known about a tributary to the Mother as big as she is.”
“You know how easy it is to exaggerate great wonders that are far away. I think Tamen’s ‘Sister’ is just another channel of the Mother, farther east.”
“I hope you’re right, Little Brother. Because if there is a Sister, we’re going to have to cross it before we reach those mountains. And I don’t know where else we’re likely to find a place to stay for the winter.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it.”
A movement, apparently at odds with the natural way of things, which brought it to the level of consciousness, caught Jondalar’s attention. By the sound, he identified the black cloud in the distance, moving with no regard for the prevailing wind, and he stopped to watch as the V-formation of honking geese approached. They swooped lower as a single entity, darkening the sky with their numbers, then broke up into individuals as they neared the ground with lowered feet and flapping wings, braking to a rest. The river swerved around the steep rise ahead.
“Big Brother,” Thonolan said, grinning with excitement, “those geese wouldn’t have set down if there wasn’t a marsh up ahead. Maybe it’s a lake or a sea, and I’ll wager the Mother empties into it. I think we’ve reached the end of the river!”
“If we climb that hill, we should get a better view.” Jondalar’s tone was carefully neutral, but Thonolan had the impression his brother didn’t quite believe him.
They climbed quickly, breathing hard when they reached the top, then caught their breath in amazement. They were high enough to see for a considerable distance. Beyond the turn the Mother widened, and her waters became choppy, and, as she approached a vast expanse of water, she rolled and spumed. The larger body of water was cloudy with mud churned up from the bottom, and filled with debris. Broken limbs, dead animals, whole trees bobbed and spun around, caught by conflicting currents.
They had not reached the end of the Mother, They had met the Sister.
High in the mountains in front of them, the Sister had begun as rivulets and