The Land of Painted Caves (101 page)

But the animal wasn’t biting him, he was licking him. Then he saw the ear cocked at a jaunty angle. It was not a wild wolf, he realized. “Wolf! Is it you? What are you doing here?” He sat up and had to fend off the exuberant advances of the excited animal. He sat for a while, petting the wolf and scratching him behind his ears, trying to calm him down. “Why aren’t you with Jonayla, or Ayla? Why did you follow me all this way?” Jondalar said, beginning to have the inkling of alarm.

When he stood up and started on his way again, Wolf pranced nervously in front of him, then back in the direction he had come. “Do you want to go back, Wolf? Well, go ahead. You can go back.” But when Jondalar started out again, the wolf jumped in front of him again. “What is it, Wolf?” Jondalar looked up at the sky, and for the first time noticed that the sun was well past its high point. “Do you want me to go back with you?”

“Yes, that’s what he wants, Jondalar,” Danug said.

“Danug! What are you doing here?” Jondalar said.

“Looking for you.”

“Looking for me? Why?”

“It’s Ayla, Jondalar. You have to come back right away.”

“Ayla? What’s wrong, Danug?”

“Remember that root? The one she made into juice for her and Mamut? She did it again, to show Zelandoni, but this time she drank it herself. No one can wake her up. Not even Jonayla. The Donier says you have to come right away, or Ayla will die and her spirit will be lost forever,” Danug said.

Jondalar turned white. “No! Not that root! O, Great Mother, don’t let her die. Please don’t let her die,” he said, and started running back the way he had come.

If he had been preoccupied on his way out, it was nothing compared to his single-minded intensity as he raced back. He tore along the edge of The River, scrambling through brush that tore at his bare legs and arms, and face. He didn’t feel them. He ran until he was gasping for breath that rasped his throat raw, until he felt a pain in his side that was like a hot knife, until his legs knotted and ached. He hardly felt any of it; the pain in his mind was more. He even outdistanced Danug; only the wolf kept pace.

He couldn’t believe how far he had come, and worse, how long it was taking him to get back. He slowed once or twice to catch his breath, but never stopped, and put on an extra burst of speed when the brush thinned out as he neared the Campsite.

“Where is she?” he asked the first person he saw.

“The zelandonia lodge,” came the answer.

The whole Summer Meeting had been looking for him, waiting for him, and as he raced toward the lodge, several people actually cheered. He didn’t hear it, and he didn’t stop until he crashed through the entrance drape and saw her lying on the bed surrounded by lamps. And then, all he could do was gasp out her name.

“Ayla!”

41

J
ondalar could hardly breathe, and every time he gasped for air, his throat felt raw. Sweat was pouring off him. He was bent over double from the pain in his side. His legs shook and could hardly support him as he approached the bed at the back of the lodge. Wolf had pressed in beside him, and with lolling tongue was panting heavily, too.

“Here, Jondalar, sit,” Zelandoni said, standing up and giving him her own stool. She could see his extreme stress, and knew he must have run a great distance. “Get him some water,” she said to the nearest acolyte. “Some for the wolf, too.”

As he neared, he could see that Ayla’s skin had a deathly gray pallor. “Ayla, oh, Ayla, why did you do it again?” he rasped, barely able to speak. “You know you almost died last time.” He drank from the cup that was handed to him as a reflex, hardly realizing someone had given it to him. Then he literally climbed onto the bed. He pushed back the covers, picked Ayla up, and held her in his arms, shocked at how chilled she was. “She’s so cold,” he said, with a sobbing hiccup. He didn’t know tears were streaming down his face. He wouldn’t have cared if he did.

The wolf looked at the two people on the bed, lifted his muzzle into the air, and howled, a long eerie wolfsong that sent chills down the backs of the zelandonia who were in the lodge, and the people who were outside. It stunned the ones who were chanting, causing them to miss a pulse, and stop the continuous fugue for a heartbeat. It was only then that Jondalar became conscious of the zelandonia chanting. Then Wolf put his front paws on the bed, and whined for her attention.

“Ayla, Ayla, please come back to me,” Jondalar pleaded. “You can’t die. Who will give me a son? Oh, Ayla, what a thing to say. I don’t care if you give me a son. It’s you I want. I love you. I don’t even care if you never talk to me again, just so I can look at you sometimes. Please come back to me. O Great Mother, send her back. Please send her back. I’ll do anything you want, just don’t take her away from me.”

Zelandoni watched the tall, handsome man, face, chest, arms, and legs scratched and in places bleeding, sitting on the bed holding the nearly lifeless woman in his arms like a baby, rocking back and forth, tears streaming down his face, crying for her to come back. She hadn’t seen him cry since he was a small boy. Jondalar didn’t cry. He fought to control his emotions, keep them to himself. Very few people had ever gotten really close to him, except his family and her, and even then, once he reached manhood, there was always some distance, some reserve.

After he returned from his stay with Dalanar, she had often wondered if he would ever really love a woman again, and blamed herself. She knew he still loved her then, and she had been tempted, more than once, to give up the zelandonia and mate him, but as time went along and she never became pregnant, she knew she had made the right choice. She felt sure he would mate someday, and though she had often doubted that he would be capable of giving himself completely to any woman, Jondalar needed children. Children could be loved freely, completely, without reservation, and he needed to love like that.

She had been genuinely happy for him when he returned from his Journey with a woman whom he obviously loved, a woman who was worthy of his love. But she hadn’t realized until then just how much he did love her. The First felt a small twinge of guilt. Maybe she shouldn’t have pushed Ayla so hard to become Zelandoni. Maybe she should have just left the two of them alone. But it was the Mother’s choice, after all.

“She’s so cold. Why is she so cold?” Jondalar said. He stretched her out on the bed, lay down next to her, then half covered her naked body with his own, and pulled the furs over both of them. The wolf jumped up on the bed with them, crowding in close to her other side. Jondalar’s heat filled the space quickly and the wolf’s helped to hold it in. The man held her for a long time, looking at her, kissing her pale, still face, talking to her, pleading with her, begging the Mother for her, until finally his voice, his tears, and heat of his body and the wolf’s began to penetrate her coldest depths.

   Ayla wept silently. “You did it! You did it!” the people chanted, accusing her. Then only Jondalar stood there. She heard a wolf howl nearby.

“I’m sorry, Jondalar,” she cried. “I’m sorry I hurt you.”

He held out his arms to her. “Ayla,” he gasped. “Give me a son. I love you.”

She started toward the figure of Jondalar standing beside Wolf, and walked between them; then she felt something pulling. Suddenly she was moving, faster, much faster than before, though she felt rooted in place. The mysterious alien clouds appeared and were gone in an instant, yet seemed to take forever. The deep black void swooped by, engulfing her in an unearthly black emptiness that went on endlessly. She fell through the mist, and for a moment saw herself and Jondalar in a bed surrounded by lamps. Then she was inside a frigid, clammy shell. She struggled to move, but she was so stiff, so cold. Finally, her eyelids flickered. She opened her eyes and looked into the tearstained face of the man she loved, and a moment later felt the warm, licking tongue of the wolf.

   “Ayla! Ayla! You’re back! Zelandoni! She’s awake! O Doni, Great Mother, thank you. Thank you for giving her back to me,” Jondalar said with a heaving sob. He was holding her in his arms, crying his relief and his love, afraid to hold her too tight for fear he would hurt her, but not ever wanting to let her go. And she didn’t want him to.

Finally he relaxed his embrace to let the Donier look at her. “Get down now, Wolf,” Jondalar said, pushing the animal toward the edge. “You helped her; now let Zelandoni see her.” The wolf jumped off the bed, but sat on the floor looking at them.

The First Among Those Who Served bent over Ayla, and saw open gray-blue eyes and a wan smile. She shook her head in amazement. “I didn’t believe it was possible. I was sure she was gone, lost forever in some dark irretrievable place, where even I could not go to find her to lead her to the Mother. I was afraid the chanting was useless, that nothing could be done to save her. I doubted that anything would ever bring her back, not my most ardent hopes, nor the transcendent wish of every Zelandonii, not even your love, Jondalar. All the zelandonia combined could not have done what you did. I’m almost willing to believe you could have raised her from the Doni’s deepest underworld. I’ve always said the Great Earth Mother would never refuse you anything you asked Her for. I think this proves it.”

The news spread through the Campsite like a wildfire. Jondalar had brought her back. Jondalar had done what the zelandonia could not do. There wasn’t a woman at the Summer Meeting who didn’t wish in her heart that she was loved as much, or a man who didn’t wish he knew a woman whom he could love so strongly. Stories were already beginning, stories that would be told around hearth fires and campfires for years, about Jondalar’s love, so great it brought his Ayla back from the dead.

Jondalar thought about Zelandoni’s comment. He had heard that before though he wasn’t entirely sure what it meant, but it left him feeling uncomfortable to be told that he was so favored by the Mother that no woman could refuse him, not even Doni Herself; so favored that if he ever asked the Mother for anything, She would grant his request. He had also been warned to be careful of what he wished for, because he might get it, although he didn’t really understand what that meant either.

   For the first few days, Ayla was utterly exhausted, barely able to move and so weak, there were times when the Donier wondered if she would ever fully recover. She slept a great deal, sometimes lying so still, it was hard to tell if she was still breathing, but her sleep wasn’t always restful. Occasionally, she would lapse into waves of delirium, tossing and turning and speaking out loud, but every time Ayla opened her eyes, Jondalar was there. He hadn’t left her side since she awoke, except to take care of essential needs. He slept on his sleeping furs that he spread out on the floor beside her bed.

Zelandoni wondered, when Ayla seemed to falter, if he wasn’t the only thing that kept her in the world of the living. In fact he was, along with her own inherent will to live, and her years of hunting and exercise, which had given her a strong, healthy body that could recover from devastating experiences, even those that brought her close to death.

Wolf stayed with her most of the time, as well, and seemed to sense when she was ready to wake up. After Jondalar stopped him from jumping up and putting his dirty paws on the bed, Wolf discovered that the height of the bed was just right for him to stand up and lay his head on it to watch her just before she opened her eyes. Jondalar and Zelandoni came to anticipate her waking by the actions of the animal.

Jonayla was so happy to have her mother awake, and Jondy and her mother back together, that she often came into the zelandonia lodge to be with them. Though she didn’t sleep there, if they were both awake, she sometimes stayed awhile, sitting in Jondalar’s lap, or lying beside her mother, even taking a nap with her. Other times she would run in for only a moment, as if to convince herself that all was still well. After she was recovered enough, Ayla usually sent Wolf out with Jonayla, although at first he was torn between staying with the woman and going with the child.

The Donier hovered nearby as well. The First blamed herself for not paying closer attention to the young woman’s condition from the time she first arrived. But Summer Meetings required so much of her time and attention and Ayla had always been hard for her to read. She seldom talked about herself or her problems, and hid her feelings far too well. It was easy to overlook her symptoms of distress.

   Ayla looked up from the bed and smiled at the bushy red-haired and bearded giant of a man who was looking down at her. Though not fully recovered, she had recently moved back to the camp of the Ninth Cave. She had been awake, earlier, when Jondalar told her Danug wanted to visit, but she dozed off momentarily before she heard her name softly spoken. Jondalar was sitting beside her, holding her hand, and Jonayla was sitting in his lap. Wolf pounded his tail on the floor beside her bed, in greeting to the young Mamutoi.

“I’m supposed to tell you, Jonayla, that Bokovan and some other children are going to Levela’s hearth to play, and have something to eat. She has some bones for Wolf, too,” Danug said.

“Why don’t you go, Jonayla, and take Wolf,” Ayla said, sitting up. “They would like to see you, and it won’t be long before this Summer Meeting is over. After we go home, you probably won’t see them again until next summer.”

“All right, mother. I’m getting hungry, anyway, and maybe Wolf is too.” The child gave her father and mother a hug, then walked toward the entrance with Wolf behind her. He whined back at Ayla before leaving the lodge, then followed after Jonayla.

“Sit down, Danug,” Ayla said, motioning toward a stool. Then she looked around. “Where’s Druwez?”

Danug sat down beside Ayla. “Aldanor needed a male friend who is not related for something having to do with his upcoming Matrimonial. Druwez agreed to be the one, since I have to fill in as an adopted relative,” Danug said.

Jondalar nodded in understanding. “It’s difficult learning a complete new set of customs. I remember how it was when Thonolan decided to mate Jetamio. Because I was his brother, it made me kin to the Sharamudoi, too, and since I was his only relative, I had to be a part of the ceremonies.”

Though he could speak of the brother he’d lost more easily now, Ayla noticed his expression of regret. It would always be a great sadness to him, she knew.

Jondalar moved closer to Ayla and put his arm around her. Danug smiled at both of them. “First, there is something I need to say to you,” he said with mock severity. “When are you two going to learn who you love? You both have to stop making problems for each other. Listen to me closely: Ayla loves Jondalar and no other man; Jondalar loves Ayla and no other woman. Do you think you can remember that? There never was and never will be anyone else for either one of you. I am going to make a rule that you have to follow for the rest of your lives. I don’t care if everyone else couples with anyone they want; you may only couple with each other. If I ever hear differently, I am going to come back here and tie you both together. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Danug,” Jondalar and Ayla said in unison. She turned to smile at Jondalar, who was smiling back at her; then both grinned at Danug.

“And I’ll tell you a secret. As soon as we can, we’re going to start a baby together,” Ayla said.

“Not yet, though,” Jondalar said. “Not until Zelandoni says you are well enough. But woman, just wait until you are.”

“I’m not sure which Gift is better,” Danug said with a big smile. “The Gift of Pleasure, or the Gift of Knowledge. I think the Mother must love us a lot to make starting a new life such a Pleasure!”

“I think you’re right,” Jondalar said.

“I have tried to translate the Zelandonii Mother’s Song into Mamutoi so I can tell everyone, and when I get back, I’m going to start looking for a mate so I can start a son,” Danug said.

“What’s wrong with a daughter?” Ayla said.