"Jondalar, you are an unbelievable man. Do you have any idea how remarkable you are?" Ayla said.

"Haven't I heard those words before? Seems to me I said them to you," he said.

"But they're true for you. How do you know me so well? I get lost inside my own self, just feeling what you do to me."

"I think you were ready."

"That's true. It's always wonderful, but this time, I don't know. Maybe it was the mammoths. I've been thinking about that pretty red mammoth, and her wonderful big bull – and you – all day."

"Well, maybe we'll have to play at being mammoths again," he said, with a big smile, as he rolled over on his back.

Ayla sat up. "All right, but right now I'm going to go play in the river before it gets dark" – she bent down and kissed him and tasted herself on him – "after I check on the food."

She ran to the fireplace, turned the bison roast again, took out the cooking stones and added a couple more from the dying fire that were still hot, put a few pieces of wood in the flames, and ran toward the river. It was cold when she splashed in, but she didn't mind. She was used to cold water. Jondalar soon joined her, carrying a large, soft buckskin hide. He put it down and entered more carefully, finally taking a deep breath and plunging in. He came up pushing his hair out of his eyes.

"That's cold!" he said.

She came up beside him and, with a mischievous smile, splashed him. He splashed her back, and a noisy water fight ensued. With one last splash, Ayla bounded out of the water, grabbed the soft hide, and began to dry herself. She handed it to Jondalar when he emerged from the river, then hurried back to the campsite and quickly dressed. She was ladling the soup into their personal bowls as Jondalar walked up from the river.

The last rays of the summer sun gleamed through the branches of the trees as it dropped over the edge of the high ground to the west. Smiling at Jondalar with contentment, Ayla reached into her bowl for the last ripe raspberry and popped it in her mouth. Then she got up to clean up and arrange things for a quick and easy departure in the morning.

She gave Wolf the leftovers from their bowls and put cracked and parched grains – the wild wheat, barley, and goosefoot seeds that Nezzie had given her when they left – into the warm soup and left it at the edge of the firepit. The cooked bison roast and tongue from their meal were put into a rawhide parfleche in which she stored food. She folded the large envelope of stiff leather together, tied it with sturdy cords, and suspended it from the center of a tripod of long poles, to keep it out of the reach of night prowlers.

The tapering poles were made from whole trees, tall, thin, straight ones with the branches and bark stripped off, and Ayla carried them in special holders sticking up from the back of Whinney's two pack baskets, just as Jondalar carried the shorter tent poles. The lengthy poles were also used on occasion to make a travois that could be dragged behind the horses to transport heavy or bulky loads. They took the long wooden poles along with them because trees that would make suitable replacements were so rare on the open steppes. Even near rivers there was often little more than tangled brush.

As the twilight deepened, Jondalar added more wood to the fire, then got the slab of ivory with the map scratched on it and brought it back to study it by the firelight. When Ayla finished and sat beside him, he seemed distracted and had that look of anxious concern that she'd often noticed the past few days. She watched him for a while, then put some stones in the fire to boil water for the evening tea it was her custom to make, but instead of the flavorful but innocuous herbs she generally used, she took some packets out of her otter-skin medicine bag. Something calming might be helpful, maybe feverfew or columbine root, in a woodruff tea, she thought, though she wished she knew what the problem was. She wanted to ask him but wasn't sure if she should. Finally she made a decision.

"Jondalar, do you remember last winter when you weren't sure how I felt, and I wasn't sure how you felt?" she said.

He had been so deeply immersed in his thoughts that it took a few moments before he comprehended her question. "Of course I remember. You don't have any doubts how much I love you, do you? I don't have any doubts about your feelings for me."

"No, I don't have any doubts about that, but misunderstandings can be about many things, not just if you love me, or if I love you, and I don't want to let anything like last winter ever happen again. I don't think I could stand to have any more problems just because we didn't talk about it. Before we left the Summer Meeting, you promised to tell me if anything was bothering you. Jondalar, something is bothering you, and I wish you would tell me what it is."

"It's nothing, Ayla. Nothing you have to worry about."

"But it's something you have to worry about? If something is worrying you, don't you think I should know about it?" she said. She took two small tea holders, each woven out of split reeds into a fine mesh, out of a wicker container in which she kept various bowls and utensils. She paused for a moment, considering, then selected the dried leaves of feverfew and woodruff, added to chamomile for Jondalar, and just the chamomile for herself, and filled the tea holders. "If it concerns you, it must concern me, too. Aren't we traveling together?"

"Well, yes, but I'm the one who made the decision, and I don't want to upset you unnecessarily," Jondalar said, getting up for the waterbag, which was hanging from a pole near the entrance to the tent that was set back a few paces from the fireplace. He poured a quantity of liquid into a small cooking bowl and added the hot stones.

"I don't know if it's necessary or not, but you are already upsetting me. Why not tell me the reason?" She put the tea holders into their individual wooden cups, poured steaming water over them, and put them aside to steep.

Jondalar picked up the marked piece of mammoth tusk and looked at it, wishing it would tell him what lay ahead and whether he was making the right decision. When it was just his brother and him, it didn't matter too much. They were on a Journey, an adventure, and whatever came along was part of it. He wasn't sure, then, if they would ever return; he wasn't even sure if he wanted to. The woman he was forbidden to love had chosen a path that led even farther away, and the one he was expected to mate was… just not the one he wanted. But this Journey was different. This time, he was with a woman he loved more than life itself. He not only wanted to get back home, but he wanted to get her there, and safely. The more he thought about the possible dangers they might encounter along the way, the more he imagined even greater ones, but his vague worries were not something he could easily explain.

"I'm just worried about how long this Journey will take. We need to reach that glacier before the end of winter," he said.

"You told me that before," she said. "But why? What will happen if we don't reach it by then?" she asked.

"The ice starts to melt in spring and it becomes too dangerous to attempt a crossing."

"Well, if it's too dangerous, then we won't attempt it. But if we can't cross it, what do we do then?" she asked, pushing him to think about alternatives he had avoided thinking about. "Is there any other way to go?"

"I'm not sure. The ice we have to cross is just a small plateau glacier that's on a highland north of the great mountains. There is land to the north of it, but no one ever goes that way. It would take us even more out of our way, and it's cold. They say the northern ice is closer there, it dips south in that region. The land between the high mountains of the south and the great ice of the north is the coldest anywhere. It never gets warm, not even in summer," Jondalar said.