Chapter 20

Glade was by far the villager least visibly upset by the discovery that the winter route was blocked. While the chief and his most experienced hunters spent the rest of the day and all the next exploring and evaluating the few limited options available to them, she was preoccupied in checking the health and well-being of the woman and children. While Ivory anxiously gnawed on the last morsel of aurochs meat when the village gathered around the fire at the end of the day, Glade seemed comparatively unruffled.

"I suppose this disaster is as nothing compared to the trials and tribulations you've been through," Ivory said almost bitterly.

Glade smiled and placed a loving hand on Ivory's cross-legged knee. "That's all too true, my darling. Be of good cheer. It is by trials such as this that you learn to cope with all that life can throw at you."

"We will starve if we don't find somewhere to stay in the winter months before the worst descends on us from the North," Ivory wailed. "Everything and everyone I've ever loved or known will perish under the snow, left to be eaten by wolves and vultures."

Glade knew better than to disparage Ivory's anxieties by comparing it with those she and Demure had suffered on their travels north. The mismatched couple's wandering soon led them to a company of desert wanderers who understood not one word from Glade's and Demure's growing repertoire of languages and although they were generally friendly, it became obvious that this wasn't a community with which the pair could remain for even as much as half a moon.

For the next year or so, the two itinerants continued to roam northwards with no opportunity to settle down. The ocean was to their left and the endless dust and dirt of the desert to their right. They trudged sometimes through sand, sometimes through woodland, but more often over patchy bush and savannah. On occasion they followed the path of a river that took them deep inland, but as both women now knew better how to find food from the shore than from the desert as soon as an opportunity presented itself they would cross the river and resume their journey on the other bank. They never travelled with a purpose beyond the need to find a place to rest for the night. Everywhere they came across was either uninhabitable or already inhabited, so the couple's northward pursuit was essentially to find a community in which they could make their home. It soon became clear that food and shelter was most easily available on the beaches and shores that were constrained by ocean to the West and by inhospitable desert to the East. This desert became steadily more formidable as they advanced north. The sand was often so fine that it was impossible to walk on it, even if their feet could endure its burning heat by day and the constant risk of treading on a scorpion in the evening.

Just where did Glade and Demure hope to finally find? At first, it was obvious. They needed to find a home for themselves. But as they moved from one village to the next, such a relatively modest ambition seemed increasingly out of reach. The villagers had little to spare to feed a pair of alien women who couldn't even speak their language. Furthermore, since no tribe they encountered had skin as dark as Demure's, her complexion was usually enough for villagers to be superstitiously wary of both women. And this was despite Demure's willingness to trade her physical beauty to whatever demands the men (or sometimes women) might make. Another much more disturbing pattern was that the further north the two women wandered along the shore, the more sparse the population and the scarcer the supply of food.

"We have to continue walking every day simply to find enough to eat," Glade complained bitterly as the two women trudged under the shadow of scattered palm trees between the sands and pebbles on the shore and the expanse of sand that stretched eastwards to their right. "If we rest for long, we'll exhaust all the little that the spirits have provided for us."

"And very mean the spirits are too," said Demure bitterly. "Perhaps soon we'll have nothing to eat at all."

Glade was convinced that this could not be true. Surely somewhere ahead of them the desert would give way to forest and savannah. Surely there would again be plentiful game and verdant pastures. Perhaps there would once more be villages and people amongst whom Glade and Demure could live. And, if not that, perhaps somewhere they could live with only one another for company and what little of their nerves that the other hadn't frayed to shreds.

What did Glade and Demure have to eat? There was the occasional flesh of fish and turtle the two women managed to net in the sea; a more reliable diet of shellfish and seaweed; small insects and grubs from rotting trees; and sometimes dates and other fruit dropped down from trees onto the sandy shore. The larger animals they saw were either out at sea, such as dolphins, manatees and seals, or in the distant sand dunes, such as the occasional antelope or elephant. In both cases, the animals were far too distant for the women to hunt, even if they had the tools and expertise to do so.

Where too now were the villages? There was now no one foolish enough to settle on these inhospitable shores where there was so little food, so little shelter and where the oases and streams of fresh water were further and further apart. Had the two women not learnt the practise of not eating all they could find when they could and of carrying vessels and animal hides in which to store the fruit, meat and water of an earlier day's scavenging, they would have starved to death. A bonanza of dates lasted the two women several days, during which they would have otherwise subsisted only on molluscs that weren't always as easy to find as one would like.

"It's been two moons since we last saw another soul," said Glade in the moonlight while the two women sat around a small fire under a palm tree.

"It's been four or five moons since we saw any rain," replied Demure, who was fingering a bosom that sagged from malnutrition. "Perhaps we are near the end of the world. Perhaps we'll soon come to the edge beyond which there is only the same darkness that fills the sky."

Glade nodded her head. It seemed that they'd been disowned by the world of humanity and the game and fruit that supported it.

"Perhaps as we walk away from the Sun, which is always behind us, we are also leaving behind its blessings," Demure speculated. "Perhaps the Sun is the source of rain, food and humanity and by turning our backs on it, we are heading towards only death."

"I don't know," said Glade miserably. "I don't know."

It was about this time, however, that Glade and Demure first came across the melted remains of an iceberg from the north that had somehow become beached on the desert shore. Even at this latitude, the iceberg was still cold but this was only because it had once been so very large. It was still taller than a giraffe and almost as immense as a whale, but it was rapidly melting beneath the hot sunlight on the even hotter sand. This was the first time Glade had ever felt anything as cold as ice on her skin. It was so cold it almost burnt, but it was a welcome respite from the burning heat. The water that melted from it was fresh rather than salt. There were even a few nuts, fruit and even frozen fish trapped inside the ice as it melted.

"There must be an end to this desert," said Glade as she and Demure set up camp for the night. "See, out there, on the waves, there are other floating white boulders." She waved towards a procession of other icebergs that passed by over the ocean. "There must be a place in the north where the desert ends."

"And the birds that fly north must know that there is food at the end of their flight," admitted Demure. "I just hope you're right."

"What other choice have we got?" Glade asked. "We can't now go back the way we came."

The predicament that confronted Glade many years ago on the desert shore were very different from those confronting her now. The cold that would have been occasionally welcome then was most certainly not welcome now. And for the moment there was as yet no shortage of food.

"We've found no way to get through the barrier," Chief Cave Lion announced regretfully to the anxious villagers around the evening fires. "There are no paths up the valley side that we can climb and no other valley within a half-day of here. We have only two choices. One is to winter here where we are. The other is to retreat back to the Wide River and follow it wherever it may lead. It may lead us to another valley where we can settle for the bleak winter months."

"What do you think?" Ivory asked Glade anxiously.

"I've already spoken to the Chief," said the shaman. "And he has decided to take my advice. If we stay here we will be well-fed for the next moon as the animals migrating south enter this valley and are easily picked off by the hunters. But there is no spring or river from which to drink and there will soon be no more migrating animals coming this way. We have no choice. We must follow the Wide River and hope for the best."

The travellers were eventually drawn by argument and debate to the position Chief Cave Lion had already decided. The following day, after a night of despondent resignation, in great contrast to the optimism of the earlier night, the travellers reluctantly marched back out of the valley by the way they had entered to follow the river path to where it flowed from the white-peaked mountains.

It soon became apparent that this wasn't going to be an easy journey. The river became faster, more torrential and treacherous as the villagers ascended the valley through which it flowed, whilst the valley along which the river flowed narrowed from a broad sweeping plain to a densely forested gorge with steep cliffs on either side. Glade became apprehensive and ran ahead to speak to the Chief while Ivory fell behind, the weight of the food and weapons she carried becoming ever more onerous.

Glade eventually returned to Ivory's side with a worried expression on her face.

"What's the matter?" Ivory wondered.

"There is no game migrating this way," said Glade. "The only animals we can see are deer, antelope and bison, and they look like they live here all year. Where are the mammoth, rhinoceros and elk? I think we should either set up camp by the riverside using the forest as shelter or turn back. If the animals aren't travelling this way, then there may well be no food for us ahead."