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Still chilled by lacier, the icy water enveloped her naked body She gasped, hardly able to breathe, but a nuid ele to finish its job of transporting it to the sea, and tossed it between swells, but the forked branches kept it fro

hard, she struggled to force her way across the surging flow, and veered at an angle toward the opposite shore

But progress was agonizingly slow Every time she looked, the other side of the river was farther than she expected She wasmuch faster downstream than across By the tiht to land, she was tired, and the cold was lowering her body te Herforever with rocks tied to her feet, but she forced herself to keep on

Finally, exhausted, she surrendered to the inexorable force of the tide The river, taking its advantage, swept the makeshift raft back in the direction of the strea now controlled her

But ahead, the river’s course was changing, its southerly direction swerving sharply west as it curved around a jutting spit of land Ayla had traversedtorrent before giving in to her fatigue, and when she saw the rocky shore, with a resolute effort, she took control

She forced her legs to kick, pushing to reach the land before the river carried her around the point Closing her eyes, she concentrated on keeping her legs ainst the bottom and come to a stop

Ayla couldn’tto the branch stubs A swell in the turbulent strea woman with panic She forced herself to her knees and shoved the battered tree trunk forward, anchoring it to the beach, then fell back into the water

But she couldn’t rest long Shivering violently in the cold water, she made herself crawl onto the rocky spit She fumbled with the knots in the vine, and, with that loosened, she hauled the bundle to the beach The thong was even ers

Providence helped The thong broke at a weak spot She clawed the long leather strap away, pushed the basket aside, and crawled on the bearskin and wrapped it around her By the ti woman was asleep

Ayla headed north and slightly west after her perilous river crossing The summer days warn of huhtened the brief spring faded, and the grass neared waist high

She added alfalfa and clover to her diet, and welco the roots by tracing ra with rows of oval green vegetables in addition to edible roots, and she had no trouble distinguishing between them and their poisonous cousins When the season for the buds of day lilies passed, the roots were still tender A few early-ripening varieties of loling currants had begun to turn color, and there were always a fe leaves of pigweed, reens

Her sling did not lack for targets Steppe pikas, souslik ray bro instead of winter white—and an occasional, oiant harouse and ptarh Ayla could never eat ptar that the fat birds with the feathered feet had always been Creb’s favorite

But those were only the s on the plain’s summer bounty She saw herds of deer—reindeer, red deer, and enoriant deer; coers, which resea antelope occasionally crossed her path The herd of reddish broild cattle, with bulls six feet at the withers, had spring calves nursing at the ample udders of cows Ayla’swas not an adequate weapon to hunt aurochs She gli woollyat their backs facing down a pack of wolves, and carefully avoided a family of evil-tempered woolly rhinoceroses Broud’s totem, she recalled, and suitable, too

As she continued northward, the young wo drier and more desolate She had reached the ill-defined northern limit of the wet, snowy continental steppes Beyond, all the way to the sheer walls of the ilacier, lay the arid loess steppes, an environ the Ice Age

Glaciers, massive frozen sheets of ice that spanned the continent, mantled the Northern Hemisphere Nearly a quarter of the earth’s surface was buried under their un tons The water locked within their confines caused the level of the oceans to drop, extending the coastlines and changing the shape of the land No portion of the globe was exeions and deserts shrunk, but near the borders of the ice the effect was profound