"THE PLAINS OF PASSAGE" - читать интересную книгу автора (Auel Jean M., Ауэл Джин М.)

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Jondalar was eager to be off early the next morning, but Ayla wanted to go back and see the acquaintances she had made at Feather Grass Camp before they left, and while Jondalar grew impatient, Ayla spent some time making her farewells. When they finally left, it was near noon.

The open grassland of gently rolling hills and far-seeing distances, through which they had been traveling since they left the Summer Meeting, was gaining elevation. The fast-moving current of the tributary river, originating on higher ground, surged with more vigor than the meandering main stream, and it cut a deep channel with steep banks through the wind-sifted loess soil. Though Jondalar wanted to go south, they were forced to travel west, then northwest, while they looked for a convenient place to cross.

The farther they traveled out of their way, the more irritable and impatient Jondalar felt. In his mind, he was questioning his decision to take the longer southern route, rather than the northwestern one that had been suggested – more than once – and in which direction the river seemed determined to take them. True, he wasn't familiar with it, but if it was so much shorter, perhaps they should go that way. If he could just be certain that they would reach the plateau glacier farther to the west, at the source of the Great Mother River, before spring, he would do it, he told himself.

It would mean giving up his last opportunity to see the Sharamudoi, but was that so important? He had to admit that he did want to see them. He had been looking forward to it. Jondalar wasn't sure if his decision to go south really came from his desire to take the familiar, and therefore, safer way to get Ayla and himself back, or his desire to see people who were family to him. He worried about the consequences of making the wrong choice.

Ayla broke into his introspection. "Jondalar, I think we can cross here," she said. "The bank on the other side looks easy to get up."

They were at a bend in the river, and they stopped to study the situation. As the turbulent, swiftly flowing stream swept around the curve, it cut deeply into the outside edge, where they were standing, making a high, steep bank. But the inner side of the turn, on the opposite bank, rose gradually out of the water, forming a narrow shore of hard-packed gray-brown soil backed by brush.

"Do you think the horses can get down this bank?"

"I think so. The deepest part of the river must be near this side, where it cuts into the bank. It's hard to tell how deep it is, or whether the horses will have to swim. It might be better if we would dismount and swim, too," Ayla said, then noticed that Jondalar seemed displeased, "but if it's not too deep, we can ride them across. I hate to get my clothes wet, but I don't feel like taking them off to swim across, either."

They urged the horses over the precipitous edge. Hooves slipped and slid down the fine-grained soil of the bank and into the water with a splash as they were dunked in the fast current and carried downstream. It was deeper than Ayla had thought. The horses had a moment of panic before they got accustomed to their new element and started swimming against the current toward the sloping opposite shore. As they started up the gradual slope on the inner curve of the bend, Ayla looked for Wolf. Turning around, she saw him still on the high bank, whining and yelping, running back and forth.

"He's afraid to jump in," Jondalar said.

"Come, Wolf! Come on," Ayla called. "You can swim." But the young wolf whined plaintively and tucked his tail between his legs.

"What's wrong with him? He's crossed rivers before," Jondalar said, annoyed at another delay. He had hoped to travel a good distance that day, but everything seemed to be conspiring to stall them.

They had gotten off to a late start, then had been forced to double back toward the north and west, a direction he didn't want to go, and now Wolf wouldn't cross the river. He was also aware that they should stop and check the contents of the pack baskets, after their dunking, even if they were closely woven and essentially watertight. To add to his irritation, he was wet, and it was getting late. He could feel the wind cooling, and he knew they ought to change clothes and let the ones they were wearing dry. The summer days were warm enough, but the soughing night winds still brought the chill breath of the ice. The effects of the massive glacier that crushed the northern lands under sheets of ice as high as mountains could be felt everywhere on earth, but nowhere as much as on the cold steppes near its edge.

If it were earlier, they could travel in wet clothes; the wind and sun would dry them while they rode. He was tempted to start south anyway, just to get some distance behind them… if they could only get moving.

"This river is faster than he's used to, and he can't walk up to it. He has to jump in, and he's never done that before," Ayla said.

"What are you going to do?"

"If I can't encourage him to jump, I'll have to go get him," she replied.

"Ayla, I'm sure if we just rode off, he'd jump in and follow you. If we're going to travel any distance at all today, we have to go."

The withering look of disbelief and anger that appeared on her face made Jondalar wish he could take back his words. "Would you like to be left behind because you were afraid? He doesn't want to jump into the river because he hasn't done anything like it before. What can you expect?"

"I just meant… he's only a wolf, Ayla. Wolves cross rivers all the time. He just needs some reason to jump in. If he didn't catch up with us, we'd come back for him. I didn't mean that we should leave him here."

"You won't have to worry about coming back for him. I'll get him now," Ayla said, turning her back on the man and urging Whinney into the water.

The young wolf was still whining, sniffing the broken ground left by the horses' hooves, and looking at the people and the horses across the watery trench. Ayla called out to him again as the horse entered the current. About halfway across, Whinney felt the ground beneath her giving way. She whinnied with alarm, trying to find firmer footing.

"Wolf. Come here, Wolf. It's only water. Come on, Wolf! Jump in!" Ayla called out, trying to coax the apprehensive young animal into the swirling river. She slid off Whinney's back, deciding she would swim across to the steep bank. Wolf finally got up his courage and jumped in. He landed with a splash and started swimming toward her. "That's it! That's good, Wolf!"

Whinney was backing around, struggling with her footing, and Ayla, with her arm around the wolf, was trying to reach her. Jondalar was already there, up to his chest in water, steadying the mare and starting toward Ayla. They all reached the other side together.

"We'd better hurry if we're going to travel any distance today," Ayla said, eyes still flashing anger as she started to remount the mare.

"No," Jondalar said, holding her back. "We're not leaving until you change out of those wet clothes. And I think we should rub down the horses to dry them off, and maybe that wolf, too. We've traveled far enough today. We can camp here tonight. It took me four years to get here. I don't care if it takes four years to get back, just so I get you there safely, Ayla."

As she looked up at him, the look of concern and love in his rich blue eyes melted her last vestiges of anger. She reached for him as he bent his head to her, and she felt the same unbelievable wonder that she had felt the first time he put his lips on hers and showed her what a kiss was, and an inexpressible joy in knowing that she was actually traveling with him, going home with him. She loved him more than she knew how to express, even more now after the long winter when she had thought he didn't love her and would leave without her.

He had feared for her when she went back into the river and now he pressed her to him, holding her. He loved her more than he ever believed it was possible for him to love anyone. Until Ayla, he didn't know he could love so much. He nearly lost her once. He had been sure she was going to stay with the dark man with the laughing eyes, and he couldn't bear the thought that he might lose her again.

With two horses and a wolf for companions, in a world that had never before known they could be tamed, a man stood alone with the woman he loved in the middle of a vast, cold grassland, filled with a great abundance and diversity of animals, but few humans, and contemplated a Journey that would stretch across a continent. Yet there were times when the mere thought that any harm might come to her could overwhelm him with such fear, he almost couldn't breathe. At those moments, he wished he could hold her forever.

Jondalar felt the warmth of her body and her willing mouth on his, and he felt his need for her rise. But that would wait. She was cold and wet; she needed dry clothes and a fire. The edge of this river was as good a place as any to camp, and if it was a little too early to stop, well, it would give them time to dry out the clothes they were wearing, and they could start early tomorrow.

"Wolf! Put that down!" Ayla shouted, rushing to get the leather-wrapped package from the young animal. "I thought you had learned to stay away from leather." When she tried to take it away, he playfully hung on with his teeth, shaking his head back and forth and growling. She let go, stopping the game. "Put it down!" she said sharply. She brought her hand down as though she meant to strike his nose but Mopped short. At the signal and command, Wolf tucked his tail between his legs, abjectly scooted toward her, and dropped the package at her feet, whining in appeasement.

"That's the second time he's gotten into these things," Ayla said, picking up the package and some others he had been chewing on. "He knows better, but he just can't seem to stay away from leather."

Jondalar came to help her. "I don't know what to say. He drops it when you tell him, but you can't tell him if you're not there, and you can't watch him all the time… What's this? I don't remember seeing this before," he said, looking quizzically at a bundle that was carefully wrapped in a soft skin and securely tied.

Flushing slightly, Ayla quickly took the package from him. "It's… just something I brought with me… something… from Lion Camp," she said, and she put it on the bottom of one of her pack baskets.

Her actions puzzled Jondalar. They had both limited their possessions and traveling gear to the minimum, taking little that was not essential. The package wasn't large, but it wasn't small either. She could probably have added another outfit in the space it took. What could she be taking with her?

"Wolf! Stop that!"

Jondalar watched Ayla going after the young wolf again and had to smile. He wasn't sure, but it almost seemed that Wolf was purposely misbehaving, teasing Ayla to make her come after him, playing with her. He had found a camp shoe of hers, a soft moccasin-type of foot-covering that she sometimes wore for comfort after they made camp, particularly if the ground was frozen or damp and cold and she wanted to air out or dry her regular, sturdier footwear.

"I don't know what I'm going to do with him!" Ayla said, exasperated, as she came toward the man. She was holding the object of his latest escapade, and she looked sternly at the miscreant. Wolf was creeping toward her, seemingly contrite, whining in abject misery at her disapproval; but a hint of mischief lurked beneath his distress. He knew she loved him, and the moment she relented, he would be wriggling and yelping with delight and ready to play again.

Though he was adult size, except for some filling out, Wolf was hardly more than a puppy. He had been born in the winter, out of season, to a lone wolf whose mate had died. Wolf's coat was the usual gray-buff shade – the result of bands of white, red, brown, and black that colored each outer hair, creating the indistinct pattern that allowed wolves to fade invisibly into the natural wilderness landscape of brush, grass, earth, rock, and snow – but his mother had been black.

Her unusual coloring had incited the primary and other females of the pack into badgering her unmercifully, giving her the lowest status and eventually driving her away. She roamed alone, learning to survive in between pack territories for a season, until she finally found another loner, an old male who had left his pack because he couldn't keep up any more. They fared well together for a while. She was the stronger hunter, but he was experienced and they had even begun to define and defend a small piece of territory of their own. It might have been the better diet that two of them working together were able to secure, or the companionship and nearness of a friendly male, or her own genetic predisposition that brought her into heat out of season, but her elderly companion was not unhappy and, without competition, was both willing and able to respond.

Sadly, his stiff old bones were not able to resist the ravages of another harsh winter on the periglacial steppes. He did not last long into the cold season. It was a devastating loss for the black female, who was left to give birth alone – in winter. The natural environment does not tolerate very well animals with much deviation from the norm, and seasonal cycles enforce themselves. A black hunter in a landscape of tawny grass, dun earth, and windblown or drifted snow is too easily seen by canny and winter-scarce prey. With no mate or friendly aunts, uncles, cousins, and older siblings to help feed and care for the nursing mother and the new pups, the black female weakened, and one after another her babies succumbed until there was only one left.

Ayla knew wolves. She had observed and studied them from the time she first started hunting, but she had no way of knowing the black wolf who tried to steal the ermine she had killed with her sling was a starving, lactating female; it was the wrong season for pups. When she tried to retrieve her pelt and the wolf uncharacteristically attacked, she killed it in self-defense. Then she saw the animal's condition and realized she must have been a loner. Feeling a strange kinship with a wolf she knew had been driven from its pack, Ayla was determined to find the motherless pups, who would have no family to adopt them. Following the wolf's trail back, she found the den, crawled in, and found the last pup, unweaned, eyes barely open. She took it with her to Lion Camp. It had been a surprise to everyone when Ayla showed them the tiny wolf pup, but she had arrived with horses who answered to her. They had grown used to them and the woman who had an affinity for animals, and they were curious about the wolf and what she would do with it. That she was able to raise it and train it was a wonder to many.

Jondalar was still surprised at the intelligence the animal displayed; intelligence that seemed almost human. I think he's playing with you, Ayla," the man said. She looked at Wolf and couldn't resist a smile, which brought his head up and caused his tail to start thumping the ground in anticipation. "I think you're right, but that isn't going to help me keep him from chewing on everything," she said, looking at the shredded camp shoe. "I might as well let him have this. He's ruined it already, and maybe he won't be so interested in the rest of our things for a while." She threw it at him, and he leaped up and caught it in the air with, Jondalar was almost sure, a wolfish grin.

"We'd better get packed up," he said, recalling that they hadn't traveled very far south the day before.

Ayla looked around, screening her eyes from the bright sun just beginning to climb the sky toward the east. Seeing Whinney and Racer in the grassy meadow beyond the brushy wooded lobe of land that the river curved around, she whistled a distinctive call, similar to the whistle she used to signal Wolf, but not the same. The dark yellow mare raised her head, whinnied, then galloped toward the woman. The young stallion followed her.

They broke camp, packed the horses, and were nearly ready to start out when Jondalar decided to rearrange the tent poles in one basket and his spears in another to balance out his load. Ayla was leaning against Whinney while she waited. It was a comfortable and familiar posture for both of them, a way of touching that had developed when the young filly was her only companion in the rich but lonely valley.

She had killed Whinney's mother, too. By then she had been hunting for years, but only with her sling. Ayla had taught herself to use the easily concealed hunting weapon, and she rationalized her breaking of Clan taboos by hunting primarily predators, who competed for the same food and sometimes stole meat from them. But the horse was the first large, meat-providing animal she had killed, and the first time she had used a spear to accomplish the deed.

In the Clan, it would have been counted as her first kill, if she had been a boy and allowed to hunt with a spear; as a female, if she used a spear, she would not have been allowed to live. But killing the horse had been necessary for her survival, though she did not select a nursing dam to be the one to fall into her pit-trap. When she first noticed the foal, she felt sorry for it, knowing it would die without its mother, yet the thought of raising it herself didn't occur to her. There was no reason why it should; no one had done it before.

But when hyenas went after the frightened baby horse, she remembered the hyena that had tried to drag off Oga's baby son. Ayla hated hyenas, perhaps because of the ordeal she'd had to face when she killed that one and exposed her secret. They were no worse than any other natural predator and scavenger, but to Ayla they had come to represent everything that was cruel, vicious, or wrong. Her reaction then was just as spontaneous as it had been the other time, and the swift stones hurled with a sling were just as effective. She killed one, drove the others off, and rescued the helpless young animal, but this time, instead of an ordeal, she found company to relieve her loneliness, and joy in the extraordinary relationship that developed.

Ayla loved the young wolf as she would a bright and delightful child, but her feeling for the horse was of a different nature. Whinney had shared her isolation; they had grown as close as any two such dissimilar creatures could. They knew each other, understood each other, trusted each other. The yellow mare was not merely a helpful animal companion, or a pet, or even a well-loved child. Whinney had been her only companion for several years and was her friend.

But it had been a spontaneous, even irrational, act the first time Ayla climbed on her back and rode like the wind. The sheer excitement of it brought her back. In the beginning she did not purposely try to direct the horse, but they were so close that their understanding of each other grew with each ride.

While she waited for Jondalar to finish, Ayla watched Wolf playfully chewing on her camp shoe and wished she could think of a way to control his destructive habit. Her eye casually noted the vegetation on the spit of land where they had camped. Caught between the high banks on the other side of the river as it curved around the sharp bend, the low land on this side flooded every year, leaving fertile loam to nourish a rich variety of brush, herbs, even small trees, and the rich pasture beyond. She always noticed the plants in her vicinity. It was second nature for her to be aware of everything that grew and, with a knowledge that was so ingrained it was almost instinctive, to catalogue and interpret it.

She saw a bearberry shrub, a dwarf evergreen heath plant with small, dark green, leathery leaves, and an abundance of small, round, pink-tinged white flowers that promised a rich crop of red berries. Though sour and rather astringent, they tasted fine when they were cooked with other food, but more than food, Ayla knew the juice of the berry was good for relieving the burning sensation that could occur when passing water, especially if it was pinkish with blood.

Nearby was a horseradish plant with small white flowers clustered in a bunch on stems with small narrow leaves, and lower down, long, pointed, shiny dark green leaves, growing up from the ground. The root would be stout and rather long with a pungent aroma and a burning hot taste. In very small quantities, it was an interesting flavor with meats, but Ayla was more intrigued with its medicinal use as a stimulant for the stomach, and for passing water, and as an application to sore and swollen joints. She wondered if she should stop to collect some, and then decided that she probably shouldn't take the time.

But she reached for her pointed digging stick with no hesitation when she saw the antelope sage plant. The root was one of the ingredients of her special morning tea, one she drank during her moon time when she bled. At other times she used different plants in her tea, particularly the golden thread that always grew on other plants and often killed them. Long ago Iza had told her about the magic plants that would make the spirit of her totem strong enough to defeat the spirit of any man's totem, so no baby would start growing inside her. Iza had always warned her not to tell anyone, particularly a man.

Ayla wasn't sure if it was spirits that caused babies. She thought a man had more to do with it, but the secret plants worked anyway. No new life had started in her when she drank the special teas, whether she was near a man or not. Not that she would have minded, if they were settled in one place. But Jondalar had made it clear to her that with such a long Journey ahead of them, it would be a risk to get pregnant along the way.

As she pulled out the root of the antelope sage and shook the dirt off, she saw the heart-shaped leaves and long yellow tubular flowers of snakeroot, good for preventing miscarriage. With a twinge of sorrow, she remembered when Iza had gone to get that plant for her. When she stood up and went to put the fresh roots she had collected into a special basket that was attached near the top of one of the pack baskets, she saw Whinney selectively biting off the tops of wild oats. She liked the seeds, too, she thought, when they were cooked, and her mind, continuing its automatic medicinal cataloguing, added the information that the flowers and stalks aided digestion.

The horse had dropped dung, and she noticed flies buzzing around it. In certain seasons insects could be terrible, she thought, and decided she would watch for insect repellent plants. Who knew what kind of territory they would have to travel through?

In her offhand perusal of the local vegetation she noted a spiny bush that she knew was the variety of wormwood with the bitter taste and strong camphor smell, not an insect repellent, she thought, but it had its uses. Nearby were cranesbills, wild geraniums with leaves of many teeth and five-petaled reddish-pink flowers, that grew into fruits that resembled the bills of cranes. The dried and powdered leaves helped stop bleeding and heal wounds; made into a tea it healed mouth sores and rashes; and the roots were good for runny stools and other stomach problems. It tasted bitter and sharp, but was gentle enough for children and old people.

Glancing around toward Jondalar, she noticed Wolf again, still chewing on her shoe. Suddenly she stopped her mental ruminations and focused again on the last plants she had noted. Why had they caught her attention? Something about them seemed important. Then it came to her. She quickly reached for her digging stick and started breaking up the ground around the bitter-tasting wormwood with the strong smell of camphor, and then the sharp, astringent, but relatively harmless geranium.

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 flowers, 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, using 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.