The Plains of Passage Page 4

  Jondalar had mounted and was ready to go when he turned to her. "Ayla, why are you collecting plants? We should be leaving. Do you really need those now?"

  "Yes," she said, "I won't be long," going next after the long, thick horseradish root with the burning hot taste. "I think I know a way to keep him away from our things," Ayla said, pointing at the young canine playfully gnawing on what was left of her leather camp shoe. "I'm going to make 'Wolf repellent.'"

  They headed southeast from their camping place to get back to the river they had been following. The windswept dust had settled overnight, and in the stark, clear air the boundless sky revealed the distant reach of the horizon that had been obscured before. As they rode across country their entire view, from one edge of the earth to the other, north to south, east to west, undulating, billowing, constantly in motion, was grass; one vast, encompassing grassland. The few trees that existed near waterways only accentuated the dominant vegetation. But the magnitude of the grassy plains was more extensive than they knew.

  Massive sheets of ice, two, three, up to five miles thick, smothered the ends of the earth and sprawled over the northern lands, crushing the stony crust of the continent and depressing the bedrock itself with its inconceivable weight. South of the ice were the steppes—cold, dry grassland as wide as the continent, marching from western ocean to eastern sea. All the land bordering the ice was an immense grassy plain. Everywhere, sweeping across the land, from lowland valley to windblown hill, there was grass. Mountains, rivers, lakes, and seas that provided enough moisture for trees were the only intrusions into the essential grassy character of the northern lands during the Ice Age.

  Ayla and Jondalar felt the level ground begin sloping downhill toward the valley of the larger river, though they were still some distance from the water. Before long they found themselves surrounded by tall grass. Stretching to see over the eight-foot growth, even from Whinney's back, Ayla could see little more than Jondalar's head and shoulders between the feathery tops and the nodding stems of minuscule florets, turning gold with a faintly reddish tinge, atop the thin, blue-green stalks. She glimpsed his dark brown mount now and then, but recognized Racer only because she knew he was there. She was glad for the advantage of height the horses gave them. Had they been walking, she realized, it would have been like traveling through a dense forest of tall green grass waving in the wind.

  The high grass was no barrier, parting easily in front of them as they rode, but they could see only a short distance past the nearest stalks, and behind them the grass sprang back, leaving little trace of the way they had come. Their view was limited to the area immediately around them, as though they took with them a pocket of their own space as they moved. With only the brilliant incandescence tracing its familiar path through the clear deep blue above, and the bending stalks to show the direction of the prevailing wind, it would have been more difficult to find their way, and very easy to become separated.

  As she rode, she heard the soughing wind and the high whine of mosquitoes zinging by her ear. It was hot and close in the middle of the dense growth. Though she could see the tallgrass swaying, she barely felt a breath of wind. The buzz of flies and a whiff of fresh dung told her that Racer had recently dropped scat. Even if he hadn't been just a few paces ahead, she would have known it was the young stallion who had passed that way. His scent was as distinctively familiar to her as that of the horse she was riding—and her own. All around was the rich humus odor of the soil, and the green smell of burgeoning vegetation. She did not classify smells as bad or good; she used her nose as she did her eyes and ears, with knowledgeable discrimination to help her investigate and analyze the perceptible world.

  After a time, the sameness of the scenery, of long green stalk after long green stalk, the rhythmic gait of the horse, and the hot sun almost directly above, made Ayla lethargic; awake, but not fully aware. The repetitive tall, thin, jointed grass stems became a blur she no longer saw. Instead, she began to notice all the other vegetation. Much more than grass grew there, and as usual, she took mental note of it, without consciously thinking about it. It was simply the way she saw her environment.

  There, Ayla thought, in that open space—some animal must have made that by rolling in it—those are goosefoots, what Nezzie called goosefoots, like the pigweed near the clan's cave. I should pick some, she mused, but made no effort to do so. That plant, with the yellow flowers and leaves wrapped around the stem, that's wild cabbage. That would be good to have tonight, too. She passed it by as well. Those purple-blue Mowers, with the small leaves, that's milk vetch, and it has a lot of pods. I wonder if they're ready? Probably not. Up ahead, that wide white flower, sort of rounded, pink in the middle, it's wild carrot. It looks like Racer stepped on some of the leaves. I should get my digging stick, but there's more over there. Seems to be a lot of it. I can wait, and it's so hot. She tried to swat away a pair of flies that buzzed around her sweat-damp hair. I haven't seen Wolf for a while. I wonder where he is?

  She turned to look for the wolf and saw him following close behind the mare, sniffing the ground. He stopped, lifting his head to catch another scent, then disappeared into the grass on her left. She saw a large blue dragonfly with spotted wings, disturbed by the wolf's passage through the dense living screen, hovering near the place he had been, as though marking it. A short time later, a squawk and a whir of wings preceded the sudden appearance of a great bustard taking to the air. Ayla reached for her sling, wrapped around her head across her forehead. It was a handy place to keep it to get it quickly, and it kept her hair out of the way besides.

  But the huge bustard—at twenty-five pounds the heaviest bird on the steppes—was a speedy flier for its size, and it was out of range before she got a stone out of her pouch. She watched the mottled bird with dark-tipped white wings building up speed, its head stretched forward, its legs backward, as it flew away, wishing she had known what Wolf had scented. The bustard would have made a wonderful meal for all three of them, with plenty left over.

  "Too bad we weren't faster," Jondalar said.

  Ayla noticed he was putting a light spear and his spear-thrower back in his pack basket. She nodded as she wrapped her leather sling back around her head. "I wish I had learned to use Brecie's throwing stick. It's so much faster. When we stopped by that marsh where all the birds were nesting on the way to hunt mammoths, it was hard to believe how quick she was with it. And she could get more than one bird at a time."

  "She was good. But she probably practiced as long with that throwing stick as you did with your sling. I don't think that kind of skill is something to be gained in one season."

  "But if this grass wasn't so tall, I might have been able to see what Wolf was going after in time to get my sling and some stones out. I thought it was probably a vole."

  "We should keep our eyes open for anything else that Wolf might scare up," Jondalar said.

  "I had my eyes open. I just can't see anything!" Ayla said. She looked at the sky to check the position of the sun, and she stretched up to try to see over the grass. "But you're right. It wouldn't hurt to think about getting fresh meat for tonight. I've seen all kinds of plants that are good to eat. I was going to stop and gather some, but they seem to be all over, and I'd rather do it later and have them fresh, not after they've wilted in this hot sun. We still have some of the bison roast left that we got from Feather Grass Camp, but it will only last one more meal, and there's no reason to use the dried traveling meat at this time of year, when there is plenty of fresh food around. How much longer before we stop?"

  "I don't think we're far from the river—it's getting cooler, and this high grass usually grows in lowlands around water. Once we reach it, we can start looking for a place to camp as we go downriver," Jondalar said, starting out again.

  The stand of high grass extended all the way to the river's edge, though it was intermixed with trees near the damp bank. They stopped to let the horses drink, and they dismounted to quench their own thirst, us
ing a small, tightly woven basket as a dipper and cup. Wolf soon darted out of the grass, noisily lapped up his own drink, then plopped down and watched Ayla, with his tongue hanging out, panting heavily.

  Ayla smiled. "Wolf is hot, too. I think he has been exploring," she said. "I'd like to know all the things he's found out. He sees a lot more than we do in this high grass."

  "I'd like to get beyond it before we make camp. I'm used to seeing farther and this makes me feel closed in. I don't know what's out there, and I like knowing what's around me," Jondalar said, as he reached for his mount. Holding on to Racer's back just below his stiff, stand-up mane, with a strong jump the man threw a leg over and, bracing himself with his arms, landed lightly astride the sturdy stallion. He guided the horse away from the softened riverbank to firmer ground, before heading downriver.

  The great steppes were by no means a single, huge, undifferentiated landscape of gracefully swaying stalks. Tallgrass grew in selected areas of ample moisture, which also contained a great diversity of other plants. Dominated by grasses more than five feet tall but ranging up to twelve feet in height—big bulbous bluestem, feather grasses, and tufted fescues—the colorful forb meadows added a variety of flowering and broad-leaved herbs: aster and coltsfoot; yellow, many-petaled elecampane and the big white horns of datura; groundnuts and wild carrots, turnips and cabbages; horseradish, mustard, and small onions; irises, lilies, and buttercups; currants and strawberries; red raspberries and black.

  In the semiarid regions of little rainfall, shortgrasses, less than a foot and a half tall, had evolved. They stayed close to the ground with most of the growth underneath, and vigorously sent out new shoots, especially in times of drought. They shared the land with brush, particularly artemisias like wormwood and sage.

  Between those two extremes were the midgrasses, filling niches too cold for shortgrass or too dry for tallgrass. Those meadows of moderate moisture could be colorful, too, with many flowering plants intermixed with the grassy ground cover of wild oats, foxtail barley, and, particularly on slopes and uplands, little bluestems. Cordgrass grew where the land was wetter, needlegrass in cooler areas with poor, gravelly soils. There were many sedges, too—stalks were solid in sedges, jointed where leaves grew out of the stems of grasses—including cotton grass, primarily in tundra and wetter ground. Marshes abounded with tall phragmite reeds, cattails, and bulrushes.

  It was cooler near the river, and as afternoon wore into evening, Ayla was feeling pulled two ways. She wanted to hurry and see an end to the stifling tallgrass, but she also wanted to stop and collect some of the vegetables she was seeing along the way for their evening meal. A rhythm began to develop to her tension; yes she would stop, no she would not, sounded over and over in her mind.

  Soon the rhythm itself overcame any meaning in the words, and a silent throbbing that felt as though it should have been loud filled her with apprehension. It was disturbing, this sense of deep, loud sound she could not quite hear. Her discomfort was emphasized by the tallgrass crowding in close all around her, which allowed her to see, but not quite far enough. She was more used to seeing long distances, far vistas, to seeing, at least, beyond the immediate screen of grass stems. As they continued, the feeling became more acute, as though it was coming closer, or they were drawing nearer to the source of the silent sound.

  Ayla noticed that the ground seemed freshly disturbed in several places, and she wrinkled her nose as she sniffed a strong, pungent, musky smell, trying to place it. Then she heard a low growl issue from Wolf's throat.

  "Jondalar!" she called out, and she saw that he had stopped and was holding his hand up, signaling her to stop. There was definitely something ahead. Suddenly, the air was split by a great, loud, blasting scream.

  3

  Wolf! Stay here!" Ayla commanded the young animal, who was inching forward with curiosity. She slid off Whinney's back and moved to catch up with Jondalar, who had dismounted as well, and was cautiously moving through the thinning grass ahead toward the shrill screams and loud rumbles. She reached his side as he stopped, and they both parted the last tall stalks to see. Ayla bent down on one knee to hold Wolf as she looked, but she could not move her eyes away from the scene in the clearing.

  An agitated herd of woolly mammoths was milling about—it had been their feeding that had created the clearing near the edge of the tallgrass region; a large mammoth required over six hundred pounds of feed every day, and a herd could strip a considerable area of vegetation quickly. The animals were all ages and sizes, including some that could not have been more than a few weeks old. That meant it was a herd of, primarily, related females: mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts, and their offspring; an extended family led by a wise and canny old matriarch, who was noticeably larger.

  At a quick glance, the overall color of the woolly mammoths was a reddish brown, but a closer look revealed many variations of the basic shade. Some were more red, some more brown, some tended toward yellow or gold, and a few looked almost black from a distance. The thick, double-layered coats covered them entirely, from their broad trunks and exceptionally small ears, to their stubby tails ending in dark tufts, and their stumpy legs and broad feet. The two layers of fur contributed to the differences in color.

  Though much of the warm, dense, amazingly silky-soft underwool had been shed earlier in the summer, the next year's growth had already started, and was lighter in color than the fluffy, though coarser, wind-breaking overlayer, and gave it depth and highlights. The darker outer hairs, of varying lengths, some up to forty inches long, hung down like a skirt along the flanks, and quite thickly from the abdomen and dewlap—the loose skin of the neck and chest—creating a padding underneath them when they lay down on frozen ground.

  Ayla was entranced by a pair of young twins with beautiful reddish-golden fur accented by spiky black guard hairs, who peeked out from behind the huge legs and long ochre skirt of their hovering mother. The dark brown hair of the old matriarch was shot with gray. She noticed, as well, the white birds that were constant companions of the mammoths, tolerated or ignored whether they sat on the top of a shaggy head, or adroitly avoided a massive foot, while they feasted on the insects that the great beasts disturbed.

  Wolf whined his eagerness to investigate the interesting animals more closely, but Ayla held him back, while Jondalar got the restraining rope from Whinney's basket. The grizzled matriarch turned to look in their direction for a long moment—they noticed that one of her long tusks was broken off—then she turned her attention back to more important activity.

  Only very young males stayed with the females, they usually left the natal herd sometime after they reached puberty at about twelve, but several young bachelors, and even a few older ones were included in this group. They had been drawn by a female with a deep chestnut-colored coat. She was in heat, and that was the cause of the commotion Ayla and Jondalar had heard. A female in heat, estrus, the reproductive period when females were able to conceive, was sexually attractive to all males, sometimes more than she liked.

  The chestnut female had just rejoined her family group after outdistancing three young males in their twenties, who had been chasing her. The males, who had given up, but only temporarily, were standing away from the close-packed herd resting, while she sought respite from her exertions within the midst of the excited females. A two-year-old calf rushed up to the object of the male's attention, was greeted by a gentle touch of a trunk, found one of the two breasts between her front legs and began to suckle, while the female reached for a trunkful of grass. She had been chased and harassed by the males all day, and had had little opportunity to feed her calf, or even to eat or drink herself. She was not to have much chance then.

  A medium-size bull approached the herd and began touching the other females with his trunk, well down from the tail between their hind legs, smelling and tasting, to test their readiness. Since mammoths continued to grow all their lives, his size indicated he was older than the three who had been chasing the b
eleaguered female before, probably in his thirties. As he neared the chestnut-furred mammoth, she moved away at a fast walk. He immediately abandoned the others and started after her. Ayla gasped when he released his huge organ from its sheath and it started to swell into a long curving S-shape.

  The young man beside her heard the sudden intake of breath and glanced at her. She turned to look at him, and their eyes, equally astonished and full of wonder, held for a moment. Although they had both hunted mammoths, neither of them had observed the great woolly beasts very often from so near, and neither had ever seen them mate. Jondalar felt a quickening in his own loins as he watched Ayla. She was excited, flushed, her mouth slightly open, taking quick breaths, and her eyes, opened wide, held a sparkle of curiosity. Fascinated by the awesome spectacle of the two massive creatures about to show honor to the Great Earth Mother, as She required of all Her children, they quickly turned back.

  But the female ran in a large arc, keeping ahead of the larger bull, until she made it back to her family herd again, though it made little difference. In a short time she was being chased again. One male caught up to her and managed to mount, but she was uncooperative and got out from under him, though he sprayed her hind legs. Sometimes her calf tried to follow the chestnut as she sped away from the bachelors several more times, before it finally decided to stay with the other females. Jondalar wondered why she was trying so hard to avoid the interested males. Didn't the Mother expect female mammoths to honor Her, too?

  As though they had mutually decided to stop and eat, it was quiet for a while, with all the mammoths moving slowly south through the tallgrass tearing out trunkful after trunkful in a steady rhythm. In the rare moment of relief from the harassment of the males, the chestnut mammoth stood with her head low, looking very tired as she tried to feed.