"I'm sorry we frightened these people. Maybe we could leave them a gift, even if we didn't share their hospitality," Ayla said. She began to look through her pack baskets. "I think some food would be nice, some meat, I think."
"Yes, that's a good idea. I have some extra points. I think I'll leave one to replace the one that toolmaker ruined. There is nothing more disappointing than to spoil a good tool just when you're about to finish it," Jondalar said.
As he reached into his pack for his leather-wrapped tool kit, Jondalar recalled that when he and his brother were traveling they met many people along the way, and they were usually welcomed and often helped. There had even been a couple of occasions when their lives had been saved by strangers. But if people were going to be afraid of them because of their animal companions, what would happen if Ayla and he ever needed help?
They left the Camp and climbed back up the sandy dunes to the level field at the top of the long, narrow island, stopping when they reached the grass. They looked down at the thin column of smoke from the Camp and the brown silty river below, its noticeable current heading for the broad blue expanse of Beran Sea. With unspoken assent, they both mounted and turned east to get a better – and a last – look at the great inland sea.
When they reached the eastern tip of the island, though still within the banks of the river they were so close to the choppy waters of the sea that they could watch its waves washing sandbars with briny foam. Ayla looked out across the water and thought she could almost see the outline of a peninsula. The cave of Brun's clan, the place where she had grown up, had been at its southern tip. It was there that she had given birth to her son, and there she had to leave him when she was forced out.
I wonder how big he is? she said to herself. Taller than all the boys his age, I'm sure. Is he strong? Healthy? Is he happy? Does he remember me? I wonder. If only I could just see him one more time, she thought, then realized that if she was ever going to look for him, this would be her last chance. From here, Jondalar planned to turn west. She would never be this close to her clan, or Durc, again. Why couldn't they go east, instead? Just make a short side trip before they went on? If they skirted the northern coast of the sea, they could probably reach the peninsula in a few days. Jondalar did say he would be willing to go with her if she wanted to try to find Durc.
"Ayla, look! I didn't know there were seals in Beran Sea! I haven't seen those animals since I was a youngster and went on a trek with Willomar," Jondalar said, his voice full of excitement and longing. "He took both Thonolan and me to see the Great Waters, and then the people who live near the edge of the earth took us north on a boat. Have you seen them before?"
Ayla looked toward the sea, but closer in, where he was pointing. Several dark, sleek, streamlined creatures, with light gray underbellies, were humping clumsily along a sandbar that had formed behind some nearly submerged rocks. While they watched, most of the seals dived back into the water, chasing a school of fish. They watched heads bobbing up while the last of them, smaller and younger, dove into the sea again. Then they were gone, disappearing as quickly as they had come.
"Only from a distance," Ayla said, "during the cold season. They liked the floating ice offshore. Brun's clan didn't hunt them. No one could reach them, though Brun once told about a time he saw some on the rocks near a sea cave. Some people thought they were winter water spirits, not animals at all, but I saw little ones on the ice once, and I didn't think water spirits had babies. I never knew where they went in the summer. They must have come here."
"When we get home, I'll take you to see the Great Waters, Ayla. You won't believe it. This is a large sea, much bigger than any lakes I've ever seen, and salty I'm told, but it's nothing compared to the Great Waters. That's like the sky. No one has ever reached the other side."
Ayla heard the eagerness in Jondalar's voice, and she sensed his yearning to be home. She knew he wouldn't hesitate to go with her to look for Brun's clan and her son, if she told him that she wanted to. Because he loved her. But she loved him, too, and knew that he would be unhappy about the delay. She looked at the great sweep of water, then closed her eyes trying to hold back tears.
She wouldn't know where to look for the clan, anyway, she thought. And it wasn't Brun's clan any more. It was Broud's clan now, and she would not be welcome. Broud had cursed her with death; she was dead to them all, a spirit. If she and Jondalar had frightened the Camp on this island because of the animals, and their seemingly supernatural ability to control them, how much more would they scare the clan? Including Uba, and Durc? To them, she would be returning from the spirit world, and the companionable animals would be proof of it. They believed a spirit who came back from the land of the dead came to do them harm.
But once she turned west, it would be final. From this time on, for the rest of her life, Durc would be no more than a memory. There would be no hope of ever seeing him again. That was the choice she had to make. She thought she had made it long ago; she didn't know the pain would be still so sharp. Turning her head so Jondalar would not see the tears that filled her eyes as she stared at the deep blue expanse of water, Ayla said a silent goodbye to her son for the last time. A fresh stab of grief filled her and she knew she would carry the ache in her heart with her forever.
They turned their backs on the sea and started walking through the waist-high steppe grass of the large island, giving the horses a rest and time to graze. The sun was high in the sky, bright and hot. Shimmering heat waves rose up from the dusty ground, bringing the warm aroma of earth and growing things. On the treeless plain atop the long narrow strip of land, they moved within the shade of their grass hats, but the evaporation of the surrounding river channels made the air humid and beads of sweat trickled down their dusty skin. They were grateful for the occasional cool breath from the sea, a fitful breeze filled with the rich scent of the life within its deep waters.
Ayla stopped and unwound her leather sling from her head and tucked it into her waistband, not wanting it to get too damp. She replaced it with a rolled piece of soft leather, similar to the one Jondalar wore, bound across her forehead and tied in the back, to absorb the moisture that dripped from her forehead.
When she continued, she noticed a dull greenish grasshopper spring up, then drop back down and hide in its camouflaged disguise. Then she saw another. More of them chirked sporadically, bringing to mind the swarming locusts. But here they were just one of a variety of insects, like the butterflies flicking their bright colors in a quivery dance across the tops of the fescue, and the harmless drone fly, that resembled a stinging honeybee, hovering over a buttercup.
Though the raised field was much smaller, it had the familiar feeling of the dry steppes, but when they came to the other end of the island and looked out, they were astonished by the vast, strange, wet world of the massive delta. To the north, on their right, was the mainland; beyond a fringe of river brush, a grassland of muted greenish-gold. But to the south and west, spreading all the way to the horizon, and in the distance seeming as solid and substantial as the land, was the marshy outlet of the great river. It was an extensive bed of rich green reeds, swaying in a motion as constant as the sea with the gusty rhythm of the wind, broken only by occasional trees casting shadows across the waving green and the winding paths of open waterways.
As they moved down the slope through the open woods, Ayla became aware of the birds, more varieties than she had ever seen in one place before, some of them unfamiliar. Crows, cuckoos, starlings, and turtledoves each called to their kind in distinctive voices. A swallow, chased by a falcon, swooped and twisted, then dived into the reeds. High-flying black kites and ground-skimming marsh harriers searched for dead or dying fish. Small warblers and flycatchers flitted from thicket to tall tree, while tiny stints, redstarts, and shrikes darted from branch to branch. Gulls floated on air currents, hardly moving a feather, and ponderous pelicans, majestic in flight, sailed overhead flapping wide powerful wings.