of the creatures themselves. A profound apprehension crept like the stealthy cold into Kit’s soul. This curious shelter had been erected for a purpose, and it was for that purpose they had come.
En-Ul turned to him and, gazing into Kit’s eyes, willed him to understand. Kit received an impression of immense importance, of an unfathomable weight of consequence, a significance of unimaginable magnitude-as if whole worlds of significance converged in this place. There was no single word for it, but the force of the concept struck him with an urgency that was as powerful as hunger and thirst.
Kit, trying hard to understand, was overwhelmed by the thought that had been conveyed. “Why have we come here?” he asked aloud.
The old one tilted back his head and looked at the pale white sky for a moment. Then, returning his gaze to Kit, breathed into Kit’s mind the image of living things of many kinds-the creatures of the forest, the entire forest itself, whole Stone Age tribes-combined with a feeling of swimming against the strong flow of the river, or struggling against a powerful grinding, uncompromising force bent on mindless destruction: survival.
Their presence at the Bone House had something to do with the survival of themselves and their world, was how Kit explained it to himself; and although he could not see how this was so, he did not doubt En-Ul’s sincerity.
As soon as this thought had passed through Kit’s mind, the ancient chieftain turned and walked to the entrance of the Bone House. He paused at the low doorway and stood for a moment, then raised his hand and placed the palm on the forehead of the skull of the giant elk, and bowed his own head in a gesture Kit had never seen one of them make before. Then, bending low, he entered the bone hut, beckoning Kit to follow.
Inside, the bones formed a dome-shaped room of weird, undulating design lit only by the watery winter daylight that found its way through the chinks and crevices of the interlocking bones. The floor was packed snow over which pine branches had been spread, and these piled with skins and furs. Kit saw that a small cache of food- dried meat and berries-and little heaps of snow for water had been set aside.
En-Ul crawled in and sat himself cross-legged in the centre of the room. He looked around and gave a grunt of satisfaction, as if approving of the finished product. Then, when Kit had sat down across from him, he addressed himself to conveying what was about to happen.
In imitation of the old one, Kit crossed his legs and pulled furs around him as into his mind came the image of himself asleep-as seen by one of the clan, perhaps-and then immediately, a sort of curious sensation of flying, of actually having wings and soaring high on the wind… dreaming?
This thought met with a satisfied grunt, and instantly Kit felt once again the immense, bottomless ocean of consequence-only this time it was an ocean, a vast tidal stream in endless flux… time?
“Dreaming time,” Kit said aloud, although strictly speaking, this did not make any sense to him at all.
The mental contact faded, evaporating into the ether, and En-Ul closed his eyes. His breathing altered, his body relaxed, and soon Kit realised that the old one was asleep.
He waited.
When nothing more happened, Kit crept from the Bone House and went out to the perimeter of the circle to relieve himself. The day was growing blustery; a sharp wind, rising out of the north, was soughing through the tall pines all around. The pale sky was darker now with heavy, snow-laden clouds. There was a storm on the way; he could smell the metallic tang on the air. They would have to go back to the shelter of the rock ledge soon, but he was reluctant to disturb the Ancient One’s sleep. Kit did not know what to do, but one thing was certain-he did not care to be out in the forest alone. It was not safe.
Kit returned to the Bone House. En-Ul was, if possible, even more deeply asleep than before. Kit settled down to wait, but after what seemed like an age of doing nothing more than listening to the old chieftain’s deep and regular breathing, he grew too anxious to put off leaving any longer. He took the furs he had been using and wrapped those around En-Ul’s body. Wishing his sleeping companion well, he departed.
Running, jogging, floundering through the snow, Kit scrambled back to the safety of the valley encampment, arriving as the last light faded into twilight mist. The River City Clan greeted his return with grunts of recognition and seemed to accept his absence as a matter of little interest. Kit sought out Dardok, thinking to gain an explanation of what had taken place that day. Holding an image of the Bone House firmly in mind, he said, “En-Ul sleeps there.”
This appeared to be understood-as least so far as Kit could discern-for it met with a snort of gruff acknowledgement.
“He says he is dreaming time,” Kit continued, pushing his luck. “Is that so?”
Dardok’s expression grew opaque, and he grumbled low in his throat-a sign of dissatisfaction. And that was that. The discussion went no further. It confirmed what Kit already knew: whatever faculty En-Ul possessed that allowed him to communicate with Kit, the others did not have it, or at least not to the same degree.
Later Kit ate and, unaccountably tired from his exertions, crawled off to sleep in his customary place. But sleep eluded him. For a long time, he lay pondering the possible meaning of the concept dreaming time. What could it mean?
Wrapped in fur against the cold, Kit stared past the glowing red embers of the dying fire into the fathomless sea of darkness beyond as into a daunting future. His mind, filled with the strangeness and wonder of the Bone House, conjured a vision.
He saw a full moon rising over a high windswept plain, its silvery light illuminating a curving slice of river cradled in a shallow bowl of a valley. The great round moon poured down its light as it passed overhead, and the stars wheeled slowly in the sky until it sank again below the western horizon.
All was dark then… but only for a moment. Before Kit could blink, the moon rose again, faster this time, passing over the bend in the river once more. The moon soared and sank, only to repeat the process again and yet again. With every repetition the moon flew faster, its rising and setting merging into a single fluid tracery of light, a shining arc across the limitless star field. This bright arc widened, expanding into a luminous band encircling the wandering earth.
Out on the plain he saw a mountain rising in the distance, white and ghostly in the silver moonlight. The mountain rose higher, and Kit saw that it was moving, slowly, inexorably, following the course of the river, which now ran with chunks of ice. With the mountain came snow. Kit could see the drifts deepening over the landscape, spreading, merging, covering the land, covering the rocks and trees, filling the valley, covering everything. And still the snow fell-as if the inexhaustible vaults of winter had opened and poured out their unending store upon the world below.
And all the while the mountain lurched nearer, a glacier on the move, growing even as it came, driving all before it: trees, rocks, boulders, entire hills. On and on it came, tearing, grinding with the low rumble of constant thunder, annihilating everything that fell beneath the massive wall of its leading edge, gouging the land, carving deep into the soft soil of the river valley, its stupendous weight forming new hills on either side, shaping landscapes as it passed.
And still the ice mountain grew, spreading as it came; it stretched now from horizon to horizon, gathering cold, draining the rivers, lowering the seas, leaching moisture from all it touched, from the very atmosphere until the air became dry and brittle, and still it grew, shimmering with a terrible majesty beneath the brilliant band of light that was the ever-racing moon: a continent of ice on the move, pushing up mountains, slicing out canyons, tilting the earth with its passing.
More images wheeled before Kit’s unblinking eyes: an endless line of enormous woolly mammoths staggering across a plain drifted high with wind-whipped snow… fire falling from the sky in burning chunks the size of boulders, setting the hills ablaze… an ocean locked tight, its waves thrashed into hard, motionless peaks… bony carcasses of starved creatures piled in a frozen bog… a bear on its hind legs gnawing at the bark of a tree… a man, woman, and two infant children dressed in wolf skin and forever huddled in a frozen embrace… a high mountain pass leading down to lands yet green, lands that had not felt the bitter sting of killing cold… and more, faster and faster until one image could not be distinguished from another.
Reeling from what he had seen, Kit closed his eyes, but the images persisted, flickering through his consciousness in a mist of motion and light: fusing, swirling, all detail muted and lost, merging into a dense, luminous fog that resolved into the Milky Way, the measureless star path of the galaxy. The shining mist slowly dissipated until at last it was swallowed in the end by the eternal darkness of empty space.
