The Land of Painted Caves (34 page)

But each form was perfect, each spirit complete
,

Each one was a model whose shape could repeat
.

The Mother was willing. The green earth was filling
.

All the birds and the fish and the animals born
,

Would not leave the Mother, this time, to mourn
.

Each kind would live near the place of its birth
,

And share the expanse of the Great Mother Earth
.

Close to Her they would stay. They could not run away
.

Both Ayla and Jondalar looked around the great cavern, and caught each other’s eye. This was certainly a sacred place. They had never been in such a huge cave and suddenly they both understood the meaning of the sacred-origin story better. There might be others, but this had to be one of the places from which Doni gave birth. They felt they were in the womb of the Earth.

They all were Her children, they filled Her with pride

But they used up the life force She carried inside
.

She had enough left for a last innovation
,

A child who’d remember Who made the creation
.

A child who’d respect. And learn to protect
.

First Woman was born full-grown and alive
,

And given the Gifts she would need to survive
.

Life was the First Gift, and like Mother Earth
,

She woke to herself knowing life had great worth
.

First Woman defined. The first of her kind
.

Next was the Gift of Perception, of learning
,

The desire to know, the Gift of Discerning
,

First Woman was given the knowledge within
,

That would help her to live, and pass on to her kin
.

First Woman would know. How to learn, how to grow
.

Her life force near gone, the Mother was spent
,

To pass on Life’s Spirit had been Her intent
.

She caused all of Her children to create life anew
,

And Woman was blessed to bring forth life, too
.

But Woman was lonely. She was the only
.

The Mother remembered Her own loneliness
,

The love of Her friend and his hovering caress
.

With the last spark remaining, Her labor began
,

To share life with Woman, She created First Man
.

Again She was giving. One more was living
.

Both Zelandoni and Ayla looked at Jondalar and smiled, and their thoughts were similar. They both felt that he was a perfect example, he could have been First Man, and they were both grateful that Doni had created man to share life with woman. From their expressions, Jondalar could almost guess their thoughts, and felt a little embarrased, though he didn’t know why he should.

To Woman and Man the Mother gave birth
,

And then for their home, She gave them the Earth
,

The water, the land, and all Her creation
.

To use them with care was their obligation
.

It was their home to use, But not to abuse
.

For the Children of Earth the Mother provided
,

The Gifts to survive, and then She decided
,

To give them the Gift of Pleasure and sharing
,

That honors the Mother with the joy of their pairing
.

The Gifts are well earned, When honor’s returned
.

The Mother was pleased with the pair She created
,

She taught them to love and to care when they mated
.

She made them desire to join with each other
,

The Gift of their Pleasures came from the Mother
.

Before She was through, Her children loved too
.

Earth’s Children were blessed. The Mother could rest
.

As she always did when she heard the Mother’s Song, Ayla wondered why there were two lines at the end. It felt like something was missing, but maybe Zelandoni was right, it was just to give it finality. Just before the woman finished her song, Wolf felt the need to respond in the way wolves always communicated with each other. While the First continued her singing, he sang his wolfsong, yipping a few times then making a great, loud, eerie, full-throated howl, followed by a second, and a third. The resonances in the cave made it sound like wolves from a great distance were howling back, perhaps from another world. And then Jonayla started her wailing cry that Ayla had come to understand was her way of responding to wolfsong.

In her mind, Zelandoni thought, whether Ayla wants it or not, it seems that her daughter is destined to become part of the zelandonia.

15

A
s the First continued into the cave, she held her lamp high. For the first time they began to see a ceiling. As they neared the end of the passage, they entered an area where the ceiling was so low, Jondalar’s head almost brushed it. The surface was almost, but not quite, level and very light colored, but more than that, it was covered with paintings of animals in black outline. There were mammoths, of course, some almost completely drawn, including their shaggy fur and tusks, and some showing just the distinctive shape of their backs. There were also several horses, one quite large that dominated its space; many bison, wild goats, and goat-antelopes; and a couple of rhinoceroses. There was no order to their placement or size. They faced all directions, and many were painted on top of others, as though they were falling out of the ceiling at random.

Ayla and Jondalar walked around, attempting to see it all and trying to make sense of it. Ayla reached up and brushed her fingertips across the painted ceiling. Her fingers tingled at the uniform roughness of the stone. She looked up and tried to take in the entire ceiling the way a woman of the Clan learned to see an entire scene with a quick glance. Then she closed her eyes. As she moved her hand across the rough ceiling, the stone seemed to disappear, and she felt nothing but empty space. In her mind a picture was forming of real animals in that space coming from a long distance, coming from the spirit world behind the stone ceiling and falling to the Earth. The ones that were larger or more finished had almost reached the world she walked in; the ones that were smaller or barely suggested were still on their way.

Finally she opened her eyes, but looking up made her dizzy. She lowered her lamp and looked down at the damp floor of the cave.

“It’s overwhelming,” Jondalar said.

“Yes, it is,” Zelandoni said.

“I didn’t know this was here,” he said. “No one talks about it.”

“The zelandonia are the only ones who come here, I think. There is a little concern that youngsters might try to look for this and lose their way,” the First said. “You know how children love to explore caves. As you noticed, this cave would be very easy to get lost in, but some children have been here. In those passages we passed on the right near the entrance, there are some fingermarks made by children, and someone lifted at least one child up to mark the ceiling with fingers.”

“Are we going any farther?” Jondalar asked.

“No, from here, we’ll head back,” Zelandoni said. “But we can rest here for a while first, and while we’re here, I think we should fill the lamps again. We have a long way to go.”

Ayla nursed her baby a little, while Jondalar and Zelandoni filled the lamps with more fuel. Then, after a last look, they turned around and began to retrace their steps. Ayla tried to look for the animals they had seen painted and engraved on the walls along the way, but Zelandoni was not constantly singing, and she wasn’t making her bird calls, and she was sure she missed some. They reached the junction where the large passage they were in reached the main one, and continued south. It was quite a long walk, it seemed, before they reached the place where they had stopped to eat and then turned in to the place of the two mammoths facing each other.

“Do you want to stop here to rest and have a bite to eat, or go around the sharp bend first?” the First asked.

“I’d rather make the turn first,” Jondalar said. “But if you are tired, we can stop here. How do you feel, Ayla?”

“I can stop or I can go on, whatever you want, Zelandoni,” she said.

“I am getting tired, but I think I’d like to get past that sinkhole at the turn before we stop,” she said. “It will be harder for me to get going once I stop, until I get my legs used to moving again. I’d like to have that hard part past me,” the woman said.

Ayla had noticed that Wolf was staying closer to them on the way back, and he was panting a little. Even he was getting tired, and Jonayla was more restless. She had probably done her share of sleeping, but it was still dark and it confused her. Ayla shifted her from her back to her hip, then to the front to let her nurse awhile, then back to her hip. Her haversack was getting heavy on her shoulder, and she wanted to shift it to the other, but it would mean changing everything else around, too, and that would be difficult while they were moving.

They worked their way carefully around the turn, especially after Ayla slipped a little on the wet clay, and then Zelandoni slipped, too. After they made it around the difficult corner, with little effort they reached the turnoff that had been on their right and was now on their left and Zelandoni stopped.

“If you recall,” she said, “I told you there is an interesting sacred space down that tunnel. You can go in and see it, if you want. I’ll wait here and rest; Ayla can use her bird whistle to find it, I’m sure.”

“I don’t think I want to,” Ayla said. “We’ve seen so much, I doubt that I could appreciate anything new. You said that you may not come back here again, but if you’ve been here several times before, I think it’s likely I may come back again, especially since it’s so close to the Ninth Cave. I’d rather see it with fresh eyes, when I’m not so tired.”

“I think that’s a wise decision, Ayla,” the First said. “I will tell you it’s another ceiling, but on this one, the mammoths are painted in red. It will be better to see it with fresh eyes. But I do think we should have a bite to eat and I need to pass water.”

Jondalar breathed a sigh of relief, took off his backframe, and found a darkened corner for himself. He had been sipping on his small waterbag all day, and he felt a need to relieve himself, too. He would have gone in the new passage if the women had wanted to go, he thought as he stood hearing his stream on the stone, but he was tired of the marvelous sights of this cave for now, and tired of walking, and just wanted to get out. He didn’t even care if they ate right now.

There was a small cup of cold soup waiting for him, and a bone with some meat on it. Wolf was working his way through a small pile of cut-up meat, too. “I think we can chew on the meat as we walk,” Ayla said, “but save the bones for Wolf. I’m sure he’d like to gnaw on them while he’s resting by a fire.”

“We’d all like a fireplace about now,” Zelandoni said. “I think we should also put the lamps away when they run out of fat, and use these torches for the rest of the way out.” She had a fresh torch ready for each of them.

Jondalar was the first to light his as they walked by the other passage opening out on their left, across from the first painted mammoth they had seen.

“This is the place where you turn in to see the children’s fingermarks, and there are other kinds of interesting things on the walls and ceilings, deep in that passageway and its several turnoffs,” Zelandoni commented. “No one knows what they mean, though many have made guesses. Many are painted in red, but it’s a bit of a walk from here.”

Not long afterward, both Ayla and Zelandoni lit their torches. Ahead, where the tunnel split, they took the right-hand path, and Ayla thought she could see the hint of light ahead. When it angled farther to the right, she was sure, but it wasn’t bright light, and when they finally walked out of the cave, the sun was setting. They had spent the entire day walking in the great cavern.

Jondalar stacked wood in the pit to light with his torch. Ayla dropped her haversack on the ground near the firepit, and whistled for the horses. She heard a distant whinny, and started in that direction.

“Leave the baby with me,” Zelandoni said. “You’ve been carrying her all day. You both need a rest.”

Ayla put the blanket down on the grass, and put Jonayla on it. She seemed glad to kick her feet in freedom, as her mother whistled again and ran toward the answering sounds of horses. She always worried when she was gone from them for some time.

   They slept late the next morning, and didn’t feel any particular rush to continue their travels, but by midmorning, they were getting restless and anxious to go. Jondalar and Zelandoni discussed what would be the best way to get to the Fifth Cave.

“It’s east of here, maybe two days’ travel, or three if we take our time. I think if we just headed in that direction, we’d get there,” Jondalar said.

“That’s true, but I think we are also a little north, and if we just go east, we’ll have to cross both North River and The River,” Zelandoni said. She picked up a stick and started drawing lines on the ground where it was bare. “If we start out going east but somewhat south, we can reach Summer Camp of the Twenty-ninth Cave before nightfall and stay with them tonight. North River joins The River near South Face of the Twenty-Ninth Cave. We can cross The River at the ford between Summer Camp and South Face and have only one river to cross. The River is bigger there, but shallow, and then we can go on toward Reflection Rock and to the Fifth Cave the way we did last year.”

Jondalar studied her scratchings on the ground, and while he was looking at them, Zelandoni added another comment. “The trail is fairly well blazed on the trees between here and Summer Camp, and there’s a path on the ground the rest of the way.”

Jondalar realized that he had been thinking about traveling the way he and Ayla did on their Journey. On horseback, with the bowl boat attached to the end of the travois to float their things across streams, they didn’t need to concern themselves much about crossing any but the biggest of rivers. But with the First sitting on the pole-drag Whinney was pulling, it wasn’t likely to float, and neither was the one Racer was dragging with all their supplies. Besides, it would be easier to find their way with blazed trails.

“You are right, Zelandoni,” he said. “It might not be quite as direct, but your way would make it easier, and likely get us there just as fast or faster.”

The trail blazes weren’t quite as easy to follow as the First had remembered. It seemed that people hadn’t been that way very often lately, but they renewed some of them as they went along so the trail would be easier for the next person to use. It was nearing sunset when they reached the home of Summer Camp, also known as the West Holding of the Twenty-ninth Cave, which was sometimes known as Three Rocks, meaning three separate locations.

The Twenty-ninth Cave had a particularly interesting and complex social arrangement. They once had been three separate Caves that lived in three different shelters that looked out on the same rich expanse of grassland. Reflection Rock faced north, which would have been a major disadvantage except that what it had to offer more than compensated for its north face. It was a huge cliff, a half mile long, two hundred sixty feet high, with five levels of shelters and a vast potential for observing the surrounding landscape and the animals that migrated through it. And it was a spectacular sight that most people looked upon with awe.

The Cave called South Face was just that: a two-story shelter facing south, situated to get the best of the sunlight in summer and winter, high enough up to get a good view of the open plain. The final Cave was Summer Camp, which was on the west end of the plain and offered among other things a wealth of hazelnuts, which many of the people from the other Caves went to pick in late summer. It was also the one with the closest proximity to a small Sacred Cave, which was called by the people who lived in the vicinity simply Forest Hollow.

Since all three Caves utilized essentially the same hunting and gathering areas, hard feelings were developing, leading to fights. It wasn’t that the area couldn’t support all three groups—it was not only rich in itself, it was a major migration route—but often two or more gathering groups or hunting parties from different Caves went after the same things at the same time. Two uncoordinated hunts trying for the same migrating small herd interfered with the plans of both, and had been known to chase away the animals, with neither group getting a kill. If all three groups went after them independently, it was worse. All the Zelandonii Caves in the region were being pulled into the disagreements, one way or another, and finally, at the urging of all their neighbors, and after difficult negotiations, the three separate Caves decided to join together and become one Cave in three locations, and to work together to mutually harvest the plenty of their rich plain. Though there were still occasional differences, the unusual arrangement seemed to be working.

Because the Summer Meeting was still going on, not many people were at the West Holding of the Twenty-ninth Cave. Most of those who stayed back were old, or sick, and unable to make the trip, plus the ones who stayed to care for them. In rare cases, someone who was working on something that couldn’t be interrupted or could only be done in summer also stayed. Those who were at West Holding welcomed the travelers enthusiastically. They seldom had visitors this early in the summer and since they were coming from the Summer Meeting, they could bring news. In addition, the visitors themselves made news wherever they went: Jondalar, the returned traveler, and his foreign woman and her baby, and the wolf and horses, and the First Among Those Who Served The Great Earth Mother. The travelers were especially welcomed by those who were ill or failing, because of who they were: healers, and at least one who was acknowledged as among the best of their people.