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"I never thought I'd fall in love," he said, relaxing again and idly caressing the dip at the small of her back and the smooth mound beyond. "Why did I have to travel beyond the end of the Great Mother River to find a woman I could love?"
He had been thinking about that ever since he woke up and realized they were almost home. It was good to be on this side of the glacier, but he was full of anticipation, wondering about everyone, and eager to see them.
"Because my totem meant you for me. The Cave Lion guided you."
"Then why did the Mother cause us to be born so far apart?"
Ayla lifted her head and looked at him. "I've been learning, but I still know very little about the ways of the Great Earth Mother, and not much more about the protective spirits of the Clan totems, but I know this: you found me."
"And then I almost lost you." A sudden rush of cold fear clutched at him. "Ayla, what would I do if I lost you?" he said, his voice hoarse with the emotion he seldom showed openly. He rolled over, covering her body with his, and buried his head in her neck, holding her so tightly she could hardly breathe. "What would I do?"
She clung to him, wishing there was some way she could become a part of him, and she gratefully opened herself to him when she felt his need swell again. With an urgency as demanding as his love, he took her as she came to him with a need as driving.
It was over even more quickly, and with the release, the tension of their fierce emotion melted into a warm afterglow. When he started to move aside, she held him, wanting to cling to the intensity of the moment.
"I wouldn't want to live without you, Jondalar," Ayla said, picking up the conversation begun before their lovemaking. "A piece of me would go with you to the spirit world, I'd never be whole again. But we're lucky. Think of all the people who never find love, and those who love someone who ca
"Like Ranec?"
"Yes, like Ranec. I still hurt inside when I think of him."
Jondalar rolled over and sat up. "I feel sorry for him. I liked Ranec – or I could have." Suddenly he was eager to be moving. "We'll never get to Dalanar's this way," he said, starting to roll up sleeping furs. "I can't wait to see him again."
"But first, we have to find the horses," Ayla said.
43
Ayla got up and went outside the tent. A mist hovered close to the ground and the air felt cold and damp on her bare skin. She could hear the roar of the waterfall in the distance, but the vapor thickened into a dense fog near the back end of the lake, a long narrow body of greenish water, so cloudy it was nearly opaque.
No fish lived in such a place, she was sure, just as no vegetation grew along the edge; it was too new for life, too raw. There was only water and stone, and a quality of time before time, of ancient begi
She stopped to pass her water, then hurried across the sharp-edged gravel shore, waded in, then ducked down. It was icy cold and gritty with silt. She wanted to bathe – it hadn't been possible while they were crossing the ice – but not in this water. She didn't mind the cold so much, but she wanted clear, fresh water.
She started back to the tent to dress and help Jondalar pack up. On the way, she looked through the mist across the lifeless landscape to a hint of trees below. Suddenly she smiled.
"There you are!" she said, sounding a loud whistle.
Jondalar was out of the tent in an instant. He smiled as broadly as Ayla to see the two horses galloping toward them. Wolf followed along behind, and Ayla thought he looked pleased with himself. He hadn't been around that morning, and she wondered if he had played any part in the horses' return. She shook her head, realizing she would probably never know.
They greeted each horse with hugs, caressing strokes, friendly scratches, and words of affection. Ayla checked them over carefully at the same time, wanting to be sure they had not injured themselves. The horse boot on Whi
Ayla removed the rest of the mare's boots, lifting each leg to untie them while Jondalar stood close to steady the animal. Racer still had all his horse boots, although Jondalar noticed they were wearing thin over the sharp hooves; even mammoth hide would not last long worn over hooves.
When they had gathered all their things together and gone to drag the bowl boat closer, they discovered the bottom was wet and soggy. It had developed a leak.
"I don't think I'd want to try getting across a river in this, any more," Jondalar said. "Do you think we should leave it?"
"We have to, unless we want to drag it ourselves. We don't have the poles for the travois. We left them behind when we came flying down that ice, and there are no trees around here for new ones," Ayla said.
"Well, that settles it!" Jondalar said. "It's a good thing we don't need to haul rocks any more, and we've lightened our load so much that I think we could carry everything ourselves, even without the horses."
"If they hadn't come back, that's what we'd be doing while we were looking for them," Ayla said, "but I am so glad they found us."
"I was worried about them, too," Jondalar said.
As they descended the steep southwestern face of the ancient massif that supported the harrowing ice field on its worn summit, a light rain fell, flushing out pockets of dirty snow that filled shaded hollows in the open spruce forest they passed through. But a watercolor wash of green tinged the brown earth of a sloping meadow and brushed the tips of shrubs nearby. Below, through openings in the misty fog, they caught glimpses of a river curling from west to north, forced by the surrounding highlands to follow a deep rift valley. Across the river to the south, the rugged alpine foreland faded into a purple haze, but rising wraith-like out of the haze was the high mountain range with ice halfway down its slopes.
"You're going to like Dalanar," Jondalar was saying as they rode comfortably side by side. "You'll like all the Lanzadonii. Most of them used to be Zelandonii, like me."
"What made him decide to start a new Cave?"
"I'm not sure. I was so young when he and my mother parted, I didn't really get to know him until I went to live with him, and he taught Joplaya and me how to work the stone. I don't think he decided to settle and start a new Cave until he met Jerika, but he chose this place because he found the flint mine. People were already talking about Lanzadonii stone when I was a boy," Jondalar explained.
"Jerika is his mate, and… Joplaya… is your cousin, right?"
"Yes. Close-cousin. Jerika's daughter, born to Dalanar's hearth. She's a good flint knapper, too, but don't ever tell her I said so. She's a great tease, always joking. I wonder if she's found a mate. Great Mother! It's been so long. They are going to be so surprised to see us!"
"Jondalar!" Ayla said in a loud, urgent whisper. He pulled up short. "Look over there, near those trees. There's a deer!"
The man smiled. "Let's get it!" he said, reaching for a spear as he pulled out his spear-thrower and signaled Racer with his knees. Although his method of guiding his mount was not quite the same as hers, after nearly a year of traveling, he was as good a rider as Ayla.
She turned Whi