Plains of Passage (29 page)

When they finally gained the far shore, Ayla stumbled out of the water, exhausted and shivering, and fell to the ground. The wolf and the horse were little better. They both shook themselves, spraying water everywhere, then Wolf dropped down, breathing hard. Whinney’s shaggy coat was heavy even in summer, though it would be much thicker in winter when the dense underfur grew in. She stood with her
feet spraddled and her body quivering, her head hanging down and her ears drooping.

But the summer sun was high, and the day had warmed, and once she had rested, Ayla stopped shivering. She stood up, looking for Racer, sure that if they had made it across, the stallion would have, too. She whistled, her call for Whinney first, since Racer usually came along whenever she whistled for his dam. Then she made Jondalar’s call whistle for him, and she suddenly felt a stab of worry about the man. Had he made it across the river in that flimsy little boat? And if he had, where was he? She whistled again, hoping the man would hear and respond, but she wasn’t unhappy when the dark brown stallion came galloping into view, still wearing the halter, with a short length of lead rope hanging from it.

“Racer!” she called out. “You did make it. I knew you would.”

Whinney greeted him with a welcoming nicker and Wolf with enthusiastic puppy barks that worked their way into a full-throated howl. Racer responded with loud neighs, which Ayla was sure contained a sound of relief at finding his familiar friends. When he reached them, Racer touched noses with Wolf, then stood near his dam with his head over her neck, drawing comfort after the frightening river crossing.

Ayla joined them and gave him a hug, then patted and stroked him before removing his halter. He was so used to the device that it didn’t seem to bother him, and it did not interfere with his grazing, but Ayla thought the dangling rope could create problems, and she knew she wouldn’t like to wear something like that all the time. She then took Whinney’s halter off and tucked them both into the waist thong of her tunic. She thought about removing her wet clothes, but she felt the need to hurry, and they were drying on her.

“Well, we’ve found Racer. Now it’s time to find Jondalar,” she said aloud. The wolf looked at her expectantly, and she directed her comments at him. “Wolf, let’s find Jondalar!” She mounted Whinney and started off downstream.

   After many spins, turns, and bumps, the small, round, hide-covered boat, with Jondalar’s assistance, was calmly following the current again, this time with the three poles trailing behind. Then, with the single paddle and considerable effort, he began to propel the small craft across the large river. He discovered that the three trailing poles tended to stabilize the floating bowl, keeping it from rotating and making it easier to control.

All the while, as he worked his way toward the land that was slipping past, he was berating himself for not jumping into the river after Ayla.
But it had happened so fast. Before he knew it, she was out of the boat and he was being carried away on the swift stream. It was pointless to jump into the river after she was out of sight. He couldn’t have swum back to her against the current, and they would lose the boat and everything in it.

He tried to console himself with the knowledge that she was a strong swimmer, but his concern caused him to increase his efforts to get across the river. When he finally reached the opposite shore, far downstream of their starting point, and felt the bottom grate against the rocky beach that jutted out from the inside corner of a bend, he breathed a ragged sigh. Then he climbed out and dragged the heavily loaded small boat up on the shore and sank down, giving in to his exhaustion. After a few moments, though, he stood up and started walking back along the river in search of Ayla.

He stayed close to the water, and when he came to a small tributary stream that was adding its measure to the river, he just waded through it. But some time later, when he reached another river of more than respectable size, he hesitated. This was not a river that could be waded, and if he attempted to swim across so close to the major watercourse, he’d be swept into it. He’d have to walk upstream beside the smaller river until he found a more suitable place to attempt a crossing.

   Ayla, riding on Whinney, reached the same river not long after, and she also headed upstream for a distance. But a decision about where to cross on horseback required different considerations. She didn’t go nearly as far as Jondalar did before she turned her horse into the water. Racer and Wolf followed behind, and, with only a short swim across the middle, they were soon across. Ayla started down toward the large river but, looking back, she saw Wolf heading the other way.

“Come on, Wolf. This way,” she called. She whistled impatiently, then signaled Whinney to continue. The canine hesitated, started toward her, then went back again before he finally followed her. When she reached the large river, she turned downstream and urged the mare to a gallop.

Ayla’s heart beat faster when she thought she saw a round, bowl-shaped object on a rocky beach ahead. “Jondalar! Jondalar!” she shouted, racing toward it at fall speed. She jumped down before her horse came to a full stop and rushed toward the boat. She looked inside it, and then around the beach. Everything seemed to be there, including the three poles, everything except Jondalar.

“Here’s the boat, but I can’t find Jondalar,” she said aloud. She heard Wolf yip, as if in response. “Why can’t I find Jondalar? Where is he?
Did the boat float here by itself? Didn’t he make it across?” Then it struck her. Maybe he went looking for me, she thought. But if I was coming down the river, and he was going upstream, how did we miss each other…

“The river!” she almost shouted. Wolf yipped again. Suddenly she recalled his hesitation after they had crossed the large tributary. “Wolf!” she called.

The large four-legged animal ran toward her and jumped up, putting his paws on her shoulders. She grabbed the thick fur of his neck with both hands, looked at his long muzzle and intelligent eyes, and remembered the young, weak boy who had reminded her so much of her son. Rydag had sent Wolf to look for her once, and he had traveled across a long distance to find her. She knew he could find Jondalar, if she could only make him understand what she wanted.

“Wolf, find Jondalar!” she said. He jumped down and began sniffing around the boat, then started back the way they had come, upstream.

   Jondalar had been waist-high in water, carefully picking his way across the smaller river, when he thought he heard a faint bird whistle that sounded somehow familiar—and impatient. He stopped and closed his eyes, trying to place it, then shook his head, not even sure if he’d actually heard it, and continued across. When he reached the other side and started walking toward the major river, he couldn’t stop thinking about it. Finally his worry about finding Ayla began to push it out of his mind, though it kept nagging at him.

He’d been walking for quite a while in his wet clothes, knowing that Ayla was wet, too, when it occurred to him that he perhaps should have taken the tent, or at least something for shelter. It was getting late, and anything could have happened to her. She might even be hurt. The thought made him scan the water, the bank, and the vegetation nearby more carefully.

Suddenly he heard the whistle again, this time much louder and closer, followed by a yip, yip, yip, and then a full-blown wolf howl and the sound of hoofbeats. Turning around, he broke into a great welcoming smile as he saw the wolf coming straight for him with Racer close behind, and best of all there was Ayla riding Whinney.

Wolf jumped up on the man, put his huge paws on Jondalar’s chest, and reached up to lick his jaw. The tall man grabbed his ruff, as he’d seen Ayla do, and then gave the four-legged beast a hug. Then he pushed the wolf away as Ayla raced up on the horse, jumped down, and ran to him.

“Jondalar! Jondalar!” she said as he took her in his arms.

“Ayla! Oh, my Ayla,” he said, crushing her to his chest.

The wolf jumped up and licked both of their faces, and neither one of them pushed him away.

   The large river, which the two riders along with the horses and the wolf had crossed, emptied into the brackish inland body of water that the Mamutoi called Beran Sea just north of the huge delta of the Great Mother River. As the travelers neared the many-mouthed culmination of the watercourse that had wound its way across the breadth of the continent for nearly two thousand miles, the downward slope of the land leveled off.

The magnificent grasslands of this flat southern region surprised Ayla and Jondalar. A rich new growth, unusual so late in the season, burgeoned across the open landscape. The violent thunderstorm with its downpour of flooding rains, exceptional in its timing and very widespread, was responsible for the unseasonal greening. It brought a springlike resurgence to the steppes of not only grass, but colorful blooms: dwarf iris in purple and yellow, deep red multipetaled peonies, spotted pink lilies, and vetch in variable colors from yellow and orange to red and purple.

Loud whistling and squawking called Ayla’s attention to the vociferous black-and-rose birds that were wheeling and dipping, separating and coming together in large flocks, creating a confusion of ceaseless activity. The heavy concentration of the noisy, gregarious, rose-colored starlings that had gathered nearby made the young woman uneasy. Though they bred in colonies, fed in flocks, and roosted together at night, she didn’t recall ever seeing so many of them at one time.

She noticed kestrels and other birds were also congregating. The noise was growing louder, with a strident humming undercurrent of expectation. Then she noticed a large dark cloud, though, strangely, except for that one cloud, the sky was clear. It seemed to be moving closer, riding on the wind. Suddenly the great horde of starlings became even more agitated.

“Jondalar,” she called to the man who had ridden ahead of her. “Look at that strange cloud.”

The man looked, then stopped as Ayla pulled abreast again. While they watched, the cloud grew visibly larger, or perhaps closer.

“I don’t think that’s a rain cloud,” Jondalar said.

“I don’t think it is, either, but what else could it be?” Ayla said. She had an unaccountable desire to seek shelter of some kind. “Do you think we should put up the tent and wait it out?”

“I’d rather keep going. Maybe we can outdistance it, if we hurry,” Jondalar said.

They urged the horses to a faster gait across the green field, but both
the birds and the strange cloud outpaced them. The strident noise rose in intensity, overpowering even the raucous starlings. Suddenly Ayla felt something hit her arm.

“What was that?” she said, but even before she got the words out, she was hit again, and again. Something landed on Whinney, then bounced away, but more came. When she looked at Jondalar, riding just ahead of her, she saw more of the flying, jumping things. One landed just in front of her, and in the moment before it got away, she slapped her hand on it.

She picked it up carefully to look at it more closely. It was an insect, about the length of her middle finger, thick-bodied with long rear legs. It looked like a large grasshopper, but it wasn’t a drab green color that would blend easily into the background, like the ones she had seen jumping through dry grass. This insect was striking for its brightly colored stripes of black, yellow, and orange.

The difference was wrought by the rain. During the season that was normally dry, they were grasshoppers, shy, solitary creatures, who could abide others of their kind only long enough to mate, but a remarkable change took place after the hard rainstorm. With the growth of tender new grass, the females took advantage of the abundance of food by laying many more eggs, and many more larvae survived. As the grasshopper population grew, surprising changes took place. The young grasshoppers developed startling new colors, and they began to seek out each other’s company. They were no longer grasshoppers; they had become locusts.

Soon, large bands of brightly colored locusts joined with other bands, and when they exhausted their local food supply, the locusts took to the air in masses. A swarm of five billion was not uncommon, easily covering sixty square miles and eating eighty thousand tons of vegetation in a single night.

As the leading edge of the cloud of locusts began dropping down to feed on the new green grass, Ayla and Jondalar were engulfed by the insects swarming all around them, hitting and bouncing off them and their horses. It wasn’t hard to urge Whinney and Racer to a gallop; it would have been all but impossible to restrain them. As they raced at top speed, pelted by the deluge of locusts, Ayla tried to look for Wolf, but the air was thick with flying, bouncing, hopping, leaping insects. She whistled as loud as she could, hoping he would hear above the strident roar.

She almost ran into a rose-colored starling as it swooped down and caught a locust right in front of her face. Then she realized why the birds had gathered in such large numbers. They were drawn to the immense food supply, whose bold colors were easy to see. But the sharp
contrasts that attracted the birds also enabled the locusts to locate each other when they needed to fly to new feeding grounds, and even the huge flocks of birds did little to reduce the swarms of locusts as long as the vegetation remained abundant enough to support the new generations. Only when the rains stopped and the grasslands returned to their normal dry condition that could feed only small numbers, would the locusts become well-camouflaged, innocuous grasshoppers again.

   The wolf found them shortly after they left the swarm behind. By the time the voracious insects were settled on the ground for the night, Ayla and Jondalar were camped far away. When they started out the next morning, they headed north again and slightly east, toward a high hill to get a view above the flat landscape that might give them some idea of the distance to the Great Mother River. Just beyond the crest of the hill they saw the edge of the area that had been visited by the cloud of locusts, the swarming mass blown by the strong winds toward the sea. They were overwhelmed by the devastation.