"And you once saved my life, but you are much more than a hunting brother," he said, smiling at the idea. "I love you. I understand now why Thonolan didn't want to go on living when Jetamio died. Sometimes I think he was searching for a way into the next world, so he could find them, Jetamio and the baby who was never born."

"But if anything ever happened to me, I wouldn't want you to follow me to any spirit world. I'd want you to stay right here, and find someone else," Ayla said, with conviction. She didn't like all his talk about next worlds. She wasn't sure what some other world after this one would be like, or even, deep in her heart, if one really existed. What she did know was that to get to any next world, you had to die in this one, and she didn't want to hear about Jondalar dying, either before or after she did.

Thinking about worlds of the spirit led to other random thoughts. "Maybe that's what happens when you get old," she said. "If you exchange pieces of your spirit with people you love, after you've lost a lot of them, so many pieces of your spirit have gone with them to the next world that there's not enough left to keep you alive in this world. It's like a hole inside of you that keeps getting bigger, so you want to go to the next world where most of your spirit and your loved ones are."

"How do you know so much?" Jondalar asked with a little smile. For all her lack of knowledge of the world of the spirits, her ingenuous and spontaneous observations made sense to him in a way, and displayed a genuine and thoughtful intelligence, though he had no way of knowing if there was any merit in the ideas. If Zelandoni were there, he could ask her, he thought. Then suddenly he realized they were going home and he would be able to ask her, some day soon.

"I lost pieces of my spirit when I was a little girl and the people I was born to were taken by the earthquake. Then Iza took a piece when she died, and Creb, and so did Rydag. Even though he isn't dead, even Durc has a piece of me, of my spirit, that I will never see. Your brother took a piece of you with him, didn't he?"

"Yes," Jondalar said, "he did. I will always miss him, and always hurt about it. Sometimes I still think it was my fault, and I would have done anything to save him."

"I don't think there is anything you could have done, Jondalar. The Mother wanted him, and it is for Her to decide, not for someone to search for a way to the next world."

When they got back to the tall sallow brush where they had spent the night, they began going through their belongings. Almost everything was at least damp, and many things were still very wet. They untied the swollen knots that still tied the ground cover to the upper shaped part of the tent and, each taking an end and twisting in opposite directions, tried to wring the pieces out. But too much twisting put a strain on the stitching. When they decided to erect the tent to begin letting it dry out, they discovered they had lost some of the tent poles.

They spread the ground cover out over the brush, and then checked their outer clothes, which were also still quite wet. Objects that were in the pack baskets had fared a little better. Many things were damp, but would probably dry soon enough, if they had a warm, dry place to air them out. The open steppes would be fine during the day, but that's when they needed to travel, and it could get damp and cool on the ground at night. They did not look forward to sleeping in a wet tent.

"I think it's time for some hot tea," Ayla said, feeling discouraged. It was already later than usual. She got a fire started and put heating stones in it, thinking about breakfast. That was when she realized they didn't have the food left from their evening meal the night before.

"Oh, Jondalar, we don't have anything to eat this morning," she complained. "It's still down in that valley. I left the grains in my good cooking basket near the hot coals in the fireplace. The cooking basket is gone, too. I have others, but it was a good one. At least I still have my medicine bag," she said with obvious relief when she found it. "And the otter skin still resists water, even as old as it is. Everything inside is dry. At least I can make tea for us, I have some good-tasting herbs in it. I'll get some water," she said, then looked around. "Where's my tea-making basket? Did I lose that, too? I thought I brought it into the tent when it began to rain. It must have dropped when we were hurrying to leave."

"We left something else back there that isn't going to make you very happy," Jondalar said.

"What?" Ayla said, looking upset.

"Your parfleche, and the long poles."

She shut her eyes and shook her head in dismay. "Oh, no. That was a good meat-keeper and it was full of roe deer meat. And those poles. They were just the right size. It's going to be hard to replace them. I'd better see if anything else was lost and make sure the emergency food is all right."

She reached for the pack basket where she kept the few personal things she was taking with her and the clothing and equipment that would be used later. Though all the baskets were wet, and sagging, the spare ropes and cords on the bottom had kept the contents of this one reasonably dry and undamaged. The food they were using along the way was near the top of the basket; below it the emergency traveling-food package was still securely wrapped and essentially dry. She decided this might be a good time to look over all their supplies just to be certain nothing was spoiled, and to judge how long the food they had with them would last.

She took out all the various kinds of dried preserved food she had brought with them and spread it out on top of their sleeping roll. There were berries – blackberries, raspberries, bilberries, elderberries, blueberries, strawberries, alone or mixed together – that had been mashed and dried into cakes. Other sweet varieties were cooked down, then dried to a leathery texture, sometimes with added pieces of small hard apples, tart but high in pectin. Whole berries and wild apples, along with other fruits such as wild pears and plums, were sliced or left whole, and sweetened a bit as they dried in the sun. Any of them could be eaten as they were, or soaked or cooked with water, and were often used to flavor soups or meats. There also were grains and seeds, some that had been partially cooked and then parched; some shelled and roasted hazelnuts; and the stone-pine cones full of rich nuts she had collected from the valley the day before.

Vegetables were also dried – stems, buds, and particularly starchy roots, such as cattail, thistle, licorish fern, and various lily corms. Some were steam-cooked in ground ovens before being dried, but others were dug, peeled, and strung immediately on cords made of the stringy bark of certain plants or sinew from the backbone or leg tendons of various animals. Mushrooms were also strung, and for flavor were often hung over smoky fires to dry, and certain edible lichens were steamed and dried into dense, nutritious loaves. Their provisions were rounded out by a large selection of dried smoked meat and fish, and in a special packet, put aside for emergencies, was a mixture of ground-up dried meat, clean rendered fat, and dried fruits, molded into small cakes.

The dried food was compact and kept well; some of it was more than a year old and had come from the previous winter's supplies, but the quantities of certain items were quite limited. Nezzie had collected it for them from friends and relatives who had brought it to the Summer Meeting. Ayla had drawn sparingly from their store of food; for the most part they were living off the land. It was the season for it. If they could not survive by harvesting the bounty of the Great Earth Mother when Her offerings were rich, they could never hope to survive traveling across country during leaner times.