Chapter 21

The warmth coming from the hastily assembled camp fire provided the only comfort for Ivory and her mostly silent companions as they anxiously awaited the outcome of the Chief's conference to which Glade was the only woman other than the Chief's wife who was privileged to attend. They had been gone for such a very long time and Ivory, like everyone else, hoped that whatever came of their discussions would at last bring direction and purpose to the villagers' wandering.

Ivory's only distraction from her fears was the execution of her communal duties. During the day she foraged in the forest with the other women for vegetables, nuts and mushrooms while the men hunted boar and deer. Ivory was pleased to find that although the Mountain Valley might not be her final destination, it provided enough food, shelter and fresh water for the moment.

As the shaman's assistant, Ivory also had to provide care and succour to the sick and injured. She appreciated Glade's training in the skill of bandaging limbs in leaves, patching scratches with berry-juice, and chanting incantations to the suffering. The ailments that most troubled Ivory were the broken limbs and old wounds that were slowly healing but still needed attention. There were also the shivers, fatigues and fevers best treated by poultices, herbs and prayer, but there was also the need to carefully manage the dwindling medicine supply. When would she and Glade again gather the fungi, herbs and weeds that gave such magical relief? Could they even be found in the mountains as they were in the forests and savannah?

It was well after the North Star had reached its apogee that Glade at last emerged from the shadows of the sheltered encampment where Chief Cave Lion and his closest confidantes remained. Ivory sensed anxiety in her determined smile. She slipped under the furs that Ivory had pulled over her shoulders to ward off the night's icy chill and the harsh wind that rolled down the mountain slopes.

"What's been decided?" Ivory asked.

"We spoke for a long time," said Glade. "Not just the Chief and me, but all the elders and senior huntsmen. Even Ptarmigan was in attendance but as always she had nothing to say."

"What are we going to do?"

"There were many options put forward," said Glade who was not to be hurried. "The essential question is whether we stay or leave. This valley is rich in forest and there is much game, but it is small and there won't be enough to feed everyone in the long winter months. We have followed the Wide River until it is no longer either wide or a river, but we don't know where else to go. If we retrace our steps we may not find a valley better than this and we'll have lost precious days before the worst of Winter arrives. The only alternative is to follow the tracks up the cliff-side which the scouts have verified are well-used. There must be habitable lands at the top and maybe beyond, but we don't know how far the lands extend or whether those who live there will be well-disposed towards us."

"And the Chief decided... ?" persisted Ivory.

"The Chief and I will ascend the hillside with some of the hunters and follow the paths to wherever they lead. After we've scouted the hills beyond, we shall return with report of the nearest hunting grounds where we can settle. You shall stay in the Chief's tent with Ptarmigan and provide the village with necessary spiritual and medical succour. We shall leave tomorrow when the sun rises. I hope that we shan't be long."

Ivory had slept by Glade's side almost every night for many moons now and she dreaded the prospect of separation.

"How long will you be away?" she asked.

"As long as it takes. Maybe days. Perhaps more."

Ivory wept. "I don't know that I can bear to be parted from you for so long," she choked.

"Relax, child," said Glade, nuzzling her beloved apprentice. "I've known worse than this and I've survived. It won't be long until we're together again."

It was true that Glade had known much greater peril. One such occasion on her arduous trek with Demure beyond the northernmost sands of the Great Desert was when she was pursued by a hyena.

Glade and Demure were always in danger of attack by predators, but they generally presented less of a threat when the two women were together. Most animals maintained a wary respect for humans especially when they carried sharpened sticks and a toolset of flints. However, this was a day on which Demure was ill. She'd eaten something that disagreed with her and was now lying in a pool of vomit and diarrhoea in the shelter of the cave they shared. The hyena that pursued Glade was young and inexperienced but most certainly hungry.

Glade had no time to plan a sophisticated course of evasive action. As soon as danger came pouncing towards her, she sprinted towards the nearest tree. Hyenas were strong and vicious but they couldn't climb trees.

It was not the first panicked flight in Glade's life. She'd been pursued by a lion, another time by a rhinoceros and on another occasion by a leopard. There were other less memorable but also potentially lethal encounters, where Glade escaped by darting up a tree or by splashing over a stream or by returning to the protection of her tribe. Glade hoped she would be just as fortunate this time.

Glade couldn't outrun the hyena for long and she could hear the approaching yelps as he steadily gained on her. Her skin was saturated by perspiration and every stride stabbed her lungs. Her feet thundered painfully on sharp pebbles and blades of grass. She was nearly at the woodland ahead of her, the hyena not quite yet on her, and she'd identified which tree to climb.

Glade couldn't recall how events followed each other in the next few minutes. She scrambled up the trunk of a tree only to drop backwards in her haste and fall beside the hyena who was startled to see the prey he'd been yelping at from below suddenly land beside him.

Glade picked herself rapidly, but not fast enough to escape the graze of the hyena's claws across her thigh. Now with blood as well as sweat coursing down her body, Glade ran towards another tree across the tangled brushwood plain when all of a sudden her feet gave away beneath her. This wasn't the stumbling that came from exhaustion or by tripping over a branch that she'd not noticed in her haste. This was the ground beneath her giving way under her weight.

She fell forward onto the slope of a hole that was deep enough to hold a buffalo or even a small rhinoceros. Her leg was caught on stakes placed deliberately upright in the hole that shot a spasm of intense pain through her body from an ankle badly sprained by her fall. She was thrown onto pebbles and stones that scratched her flesh and scored her scalp.

And then Glade lost consciousness. But not immediately. For a time measured in moments of anxiety and fear, she hovered in a state midway between uneasy sleep and wary wakefulness. Above her, the hyena stared down into the hole startled but apparently unharmed. During her moments of consciousness, Glade watched the snarling and yelping hyena circle the newly formed hole. He was weighing the rewards of jumping into the hole for the meal of human flesh awaiting him against the risk of not getting out again.

"Go away! Please go away!" Glade begged pathetically as the hyena's muzzle peeked over the rim. Saliva was dripping through his sharp teeth and below his calculating eyes.

Glade's awareness ebbed away and she collapsed awkwardly on the pit slope, her hair entangled in brush and her leg squeezed between stakes while ants and flies crawled over her prone body.

This wasn't a memory of misery Glade wanted to relate to Ivory. She wanted her apprentice to be optimistic. There were many stories Glade could recount of her northward wandering from the Great Desert to the Great Sea. There were stories of near-death and stories of love and triumph. And in all of these there was Demure: sometimes a saviour and sometimes a bane. On this occasion, Demure was a saviour.

When Glade's consciousness fully returned after several days of fever and delirium it was Demure who greeted her with a face of unfeigned delight at her lover's recovery.

And Demure wasn't alone. She was accompanied by several warriors with straight noses, long straight black hair and brown skin. They wore fur around their crotch and shoulders which was a bizarre sight for Glade, as it was for Demure. Neither of them had encountered a tribe before who were attired in such a way. And more bizarre still was that they wore clothes irrespective of how warm the day was.

When Demure realised that Glade had been missing for an unusually long time, despite her illness not only did she trace her lover's whereabouts from the trail she and the hyena had left behind but she also found the tribe who'd built the trap into which Glade had stumbled. And then she somehow persuaded them to rescue her.

Glade soon discovered that this was a tribe that hunted game and knew nothing of fishing although they lived fairly close to the sea. They were as promiscuous as any tribe that Glade had met apart from her own. The clothes they wore served less to cover the genitals than to enhance them. They were delighted to welcome two new women to their orgiastic ceremonies. And Glade and Demure were soon not so much just participants but pretty much the star attraction.

This intermingling of bodies—men and women fucking together like bonobos—was a key part of the tribe's rituals. Almost all sexual activity took place in public. So enthusiastically did Demure participate in the sex (and Glade too when she recovered) that the couple earned the privilege of being able to live with the tribe for a whole year.

Glade and Demure soon discovered why the tribe had adopted the habit of wearing clothes. In the warm sun, clothes were nothing more than ornamentation, although they were useful in that stone or wooden tools could be tied to them and their hands left free. It was when it was cool that clothes were most useful. Glade and Demure discovered for the first time in their lives that north of the Great Desert there were seasons in which it was sometimes warmer than it ever was further south and other seasons when it was decidedly cold. It was sometimes so cold that the rain fell from the sky in soft white flakes. Outlandish though it was to Glade, she also chose to wear furs to cover her skin, although not necessarily her crotch.

Demure's scheming inevitably caused trouble for the two women again. This time it was a result of her attempt to inveigle herself with the village matriarch who, although a passionate participant in the ceremonial orgies, was far more attracted to men than women. Demure's attempts to become one of the matriarch's lovers backfired when the outcome was that two of her regular male lovers transferred their affection to Demure and her exotic skin colour. This aroused jealousy and then rage in the very woman whom Demure should have known better than to upset.

So, Glade and Demure were once again wandering vagrants. This time their travel northwards was between the ocean on one side and a range of mountains on the other, although the distance between the two was so great that it was only on days when the air was extraordinarily clear could that they see both these glorious sights at the same time.

The spectacle of the mountains looming from the far distance was at first as strange as the ocean had once been. Just as they had known rivers and lakes before they'd first seen an ocean, the two women were familiar with hills. However, no freshwater lake had prepared them for the ocean's immensity and nothing had prepared them for the majesty of the white peaked mountains. This was particularly so because this was the first time either woman had ever seen a permanent covering of snow. These mountains were as impassable a barrier as the ocean or desert. The glaciers spread over the valleys and the windblown air was sometimes very cold.