I was very unhappy with the latest book in the the Earth's Children series. For me the series started to go off the rails exponentianlly, starting in book3, and slowly got worse. By the end of the Mammoth hunters, I wanted Ayla to end up with neither man. In book 4, I found myself skipping ahead to look for references to the 1st book. I was bored by the endless descriptions instead of plot. Book 5 dragged on. With my proclivities, you'd think I'd like the Mother's song . . . but I thought it needed to be shortened in order to be usefull. Finally, Book 6, which should have been a picture book of Cave paintings, instead of endless descriptions of them. And when plot started to appear, it didn't go anywhere.

But I remember when Valley of the Horses was the most recent of a 5 book series. So here is my last Chapter of book 5, which ends the series and opens the door for another series.

Wolf-girl

After weeks of traveling North, Ayla and Jondalar were starting to get worried. It had been Jondalars idea to try to esablish contact with the Clan and open trade with them. But they had allready passed deep into Clan territory and failed to locate a single Clan. It had been Ayla who had insisted that they send only a small group. She feared that the Clan might view a large group as invaders. This is why Ayla and Jondalar had come alone, bringing only their daughter, Jonayla with them. She had been taught the Clan signs, as well as the Zelandonii spoken language from birth and was almost a fluent in Clan signs as a Clan child of the same age would be. They had brought their three horses, Whiney, Racer and Gray with them. The two older horses, led by the adults on foot pulled pole-drags loaded with a tent, supplies and trade goods. While Gray carried Jonayla on her back. At 5-years-old, she had learned to ride, and Gray had learned to be ridden. Wolf walked alongside her.

Ending yet another day of Fruitless searching for Clans, the family set up the tent on a flat spot near a river and went to bed.

The next morning, Jonayla woke before her parents. Creepting quietly out of the tent Jonayla snuck down to the river. She knew she wasn't allowed to swim alone, but she didn't think she'd get caught by her parents. The horses were grazing on some grass near the river. Jonayla hadn't bothered to get dresssed before leaving the tent, so she nakedly waded into the water. With a splash, Wolf leapt off the bank of the river to swim beside her. Once she'd gotten waist deep, Jonayla swam further out into the river. The current turned out to be stronger than she expected and she was sweapt downstream. The child enjoyed the feeling of being pulled along by the current as her Wolf swam along side her. But then she became fearful of how far she had traveled from her parents. She paddled over to shore and climbed out, followed by her lupine companion.

"Eeeww!" squeeled Jonayla, as Wolf shook himself, spraying her with water.

"Come on, Wolf!" said Jonayla as she began walked back to the tent where her parents were.

They walked for what seemed like a long time to someone with a 5-year-old attention span. As the tent was nearly within sight, Jonayla heard the distressed neighing of the horses, who had started to run away.

"No! Gray! Come back!" yelled Jonayla as she started running after the horses.

Suddenly, there was a rumbling roar as the ground began shaking! The horses were forgotten as Jonayla began running back to the safety of her parents. The girl had just reached sight of the tent when a stinkhole opened up and swallowed it. As the rumbling died down, and the ground stopping shaking, Jonayla's screams echoed:

"MAMAAAAA!"