The valley of horses_ a novel - Jean M. Auel [84]
What am I doing up here? she thought. I didn’t know it could be so cold. I’m going back.
She turned around and stopped still, for the moment forgetting the intense cold. Across the ravine a small herd of woolly mammoths was lumbering past; huge moving hummocks of dark reddish brown fur with long curving tusks. This stark, seemingly barren land was their home; the rough grass burned crisp with cold was life-sustaining nourishment for them. But in adapting to such an environment, they had forfeited their ability to live in any other. Their days were numbered; they would last only as long as the glacier.
Ayla watched, spellbound, until the indistinct shapes disappeared into the swirling snow, then hurried on and was only too glad to drop over the edge and out of the wind. She remembered feeling the same way when she first found her sanctuary. What would I ever have done if I hadn’t found this valley? She hugged the filly when she reached the ledge in front of her cave, then walked to the edge and looked out over the valley. The snow was slightly deeper there, especially where it had blown into drifts, but just as dry, and just as cold.
But the valley did offer protection from the wind, and a cave. Without it, and fur and fire, she could not have survived; she was not a woolly creature. Standing on the ledge, the wind brought the howl of a wolf to her ears, and the yipping bark of a dhole. Below, an arctic fox walked across the ice of the frozen stream, its white fur almost hiding it from view when it stopped and held a stiff pose. She noticed movement down the valley and made out the shape of a cave lion; its tawny coat, lightened to almost white, was thick and full. Four-legged predators adapted to the environment of their prey. Ayla, and her kind, adapted the environment to themselves.
Ayla started when she heard a whooping cackle close by, and looked up to see a hyena above her at the rim of the gorge. She shivered and reached for her sling, but the scavenger moved off with its distinctive shuffling lope along the edge of the ravine, then turned back to the open plains. Whinney moved up beside her, nickered softly, and nudged her gently. Ayla pulled her dun-colored wrap of horse fur closer around her, put her arm around Whinney’s neck, and walked back to her cave.
Ayla lay on her bed of furs, staring at a familiar formation of rock over her head, wondering why she was suddenly wide awake. She lifted her head and looked in Whinney’s direction. Her eyes were open too, and looking toward the woman, but she displayed no anxiety. Yet, Ayla was sure something was different.
She snuggled back down in her furs, not wanting to leave their warmth, and looked around the home she had made for herself by the light shining in the hole above the mouth of the cave. Her projects were scattered around, but there was a growing stack of completed utensils and implements along the wall on the other side of the drying rack. She was hungry, and her eye was drawn back to the rack. She had poured the fat she had rendered from the horse into the cleaned intestines, giving it a pinch and a twist at intervals, and the little white sausages were dangling near a variety of dried herbs and seasonings hanging by their roots.
It made her think of breakfast. Dried meat made into a broth, a little fat added for richness, seasonings, maybe some grain, dried currants. She was too wide awake to stay in bed, and threw back the covers. She quickly tied on her wrap and foot coverings, then reached for the lynx fur from her bed, still warm from body heat,