The Shelters of Stone (Earth's Children 5)

I’m fine,” Ayla said. “It’s just cool in here. I should have brought something warmer.” Wolf, who had been exploring the new cave, had appeared at her side and was pushing against her leg. She reached down and felt his head, then kneeled down and hugged him.

“It is cool, and you are pregnant. You feel things more,” Zelandoni said, but she knew there was more to it than Ayla was saying. “You know about the meeting tomorrow, don’t you?”

“Yes, Marthona told me. She will be coming with me, since I have no mother of my own to come,” Ayla said.

“Do you want her to come?

” Zelandoni asked.

“Oh, yes. I was grateful that she offered. I didn’t want to be the only woman there without a mother, at least someone who is like a mother,” Ayla said.

The First nodded. “Good.”

People were getting over their first feelings of awe at the new cave and were beginning to move around in it. Ayla saw Jondalar walking the length of the large room with purposeful strides, and smiled. She knew that he used his body to measure, she had seen him do it before. The width of his clenched fist was one measurement, the length of his hand another. He used his open arms to gauge spaces, and he often paced off distances by naming his steps with the counting words. That was why she had started doing it. He looked into the gallery at the back, holding his torch high, but didn’t enter.

A cluster of people were watching him. Tormaden, the leader of the Nineteenth Cave, was talking to Morizan, the young man from the Third Cave. They were the only two people who were not from the Ninth Cave. Willamar, Marthona, and Folara were standing next to Proleva and Joharran and his two closest advisers and their mates. Dark-haired Solaban and his pale blond mate, Ramara, were talking to Rushemar and Salova, who was holding little Marsola on her hip. Ayla noticed that neither Proleva’s son, Jaradal, nor Ramara’s son, Robenan, was with them and guessed that the two boys who played together had gone off to do something at the main camp. Jonokol was smiling at Ayla as she walked toward them with Zelandoni and the wolf. Jondalar came back and joined them.

“I would guess this room is the height of three tall men to the ceiling,” he said, and about the same or a little more across, about six of my strides. Probably the length is something short of three times that much, around sixteen steps, but I have a long stride. The darker stone of the lower part of the walls comes to about here,” he held his hand about mid-chest height, “that’s about five of my feet, one after another.”

Jondalar had judged the distances fairly well. He was six feet six inches tall, and the white walls, which began at the middle of his chest, were around five feet up and went all the way to the nineteen-foot ceiling. The room was about twenty-two feet across and fifty-five feet in length, with some water pooled in the middle. The space was not large enough to hold everyone at the Summer Meeting, but more than enough to hold an entire Cave, except perhaps the Ninth, and certainly big enough for the entire zelandonia.

Jonokol walked to the middle of the room and stared up at the walls and ceiling with an entranced grin. He was in his element, lost in his imagination. He knew that these beautiful white walls hid something spectacular that wanted to come out. He wasn’t in a hurry. Whatever was done with them had to be exactly right. He was beginning to get some ideas, but he needed to consult with the First, to meditate with the zelandonia, to reach inside those spaces and find the imprint of the other world that the Mother had left there. She had to tell him what was there.

“Should we explore those two passageways now, or come back later, Tormaden?” Joharran asked. He wanted to go farther now, but felt that he should defer to the leader within whose territory the cave was.

“I’m sure some people of the Nineteenth Cave would like to see this cave, and explore it deeper. Our Zelandoni probably can’t do anything very strenuous, but I’m sure her First Acolyte would like to be involved. His kinship line has a wolf sign, and since it was a wolf that found this cave, he will be very interested,” Tormaden said.

“Yes, the wolf found it, but if Ayla hadn’t been curious enough to see where he had been, we still wouldn’t know it was here,” Joharran said.

“I’m sure he’d be interested in any case,” Zelandoni said. “We all are, and all the Zelandonii will be. This is a rare and sacred cave. The other world is very close here, I’m sure we all feel it. The Nineteenth Cave is very fortunate that it is so close to them, but I suspect that means you will be hosting more of the zelandonia, and others, of course, who will want to make a pilgrimage to this spiritual place,” the First said. She was making it clear that no one Cave could lay claim to such a special find even if it was within their understood territory. This place belonged to all of Earth’s Children. The Nineteenth Cave of the Zelandonii only held it in trust for the rest.

“I think that a closer look is necessary, but there is no hurry,” Jonokol said. “Now that we know it is here, it won’t go away. No one knows how much is here or how deep this cave is. Any explorations should be carefully planned, or we could wait until someone is called to it.”

Zelandoni nodded slightly to herself. She understood, more than he did himself, that her First Acolyte, who had wanted only to be an artist and didn’t care if he ever became Zelandoni, had found a reason to make the commitment. He wanted this cave. It claimed him. He wanted to know it, to explore it, to be called to it, and especially to paint it. He would find a way to move to the Nineteenth Cave so he could be closer to it, not that he would actually plan it, but he would work toward it because all his thoughts and dreams from now on would be of this cave.

Then another thought came to her mind. Ayla knew it! From the moment she saw it, she knew this cave belonged to Jonokol. That’s why she insisted that he had to see it, even if I didn’t. She knew it would be more important for him than anyone else. She is Zelandoni, whether she knows it or not, even whether she wants it or not. The old mamut knew. Perhaps the magician of the people she grew up with, the one she calls Mog-ur, recognized it. She cannot avoid it, she was born to it. And she could replace Jonokol as my acolyte. But as he says, there is no hurry. Let her have her mating, and her baby, then she can start her training.

“Of course, it would take some planning to explore all of it, but I’d like to take a closer look at that passageway at the back,” Jondalar said. “Wouldn’t you, Tormaden? A couple of us could go back there and see where it goes.”

“And some people are ready to leave,” Marthona said. “It’s cool in here, and no one brought warm clothes. I think I’ll take a torch and start out, though I’m sure I’ll want to come back.”

“I’ll go, too,” Zelandoni said, “and Ayla was shivering earlier.”

“I’m fine now,” Ayla said. “I’d like to see what’s back there.”

In the end Jondalar, Joharran, Tormaden, Jonokol, Morizan, and Ayla, six of them—and Wolf—stayed to look a little deeper into the new and wonderful cave.

The corridor at the back of the main room of the cave was almost directly opposite and along the axis of the entrance corridor. The entrance to the axial gallery was fairly symmetrical, wider and rounded at the top, narrowing down at the bottom. To Ayla, who had delivered babies and had examined many women, the opening was feminine, maternal, a wondrous evocation of the female organ. Though both were the same, it didn’t so much put her in mind of the vagina, but the upper round part suggested the birth canal, narrowing to the lower extension of the anal region. She understood exactly what Zelandoni meant when she said this was the womb of the Mother, although all caves were considered an entrance to Her womb.

Once they went in, the winding passage continued to be narrow and difficult to negotiate, although the upper white walls widened out into a broadly curving archway. It wasn’t very long, about the same length as the entrance gallery. When they reached the end, the walls opened out around a pillar of stone that gave the false impression that it supported something above, but in fact it was short of reaching the ground by more than twenty inches. The passage went around the large stone shaft on the right side, making a sharp turn to the left and meandering off a few more feet until it ended.

At the place where it turned around the column, the surface of the floor dropped down about three feet, but it was a wide horizontal space that extended up ten feet, making it one of the few really comfortable places to stand or sit and relax. Ayla took the opportunity and sat down to see how it looked from that position. She noticed that something could easily be stashed beneath the stone shaft, out of the way. She also observed a low hole in the wall opposite the pillar into which one could put small things, so they could be easily found again. She thought when she came again she would bring in something to sit on, even a bundle of grass would keep her off the cold floor.

After they worked their way back out of the gallery, they looked into the entrance of the other passageway that was to the right of it, but it was a smaller tunnel, which would require crawling up into it on hands and knees, and there were pools of water on the floor. They all decided to save exploring that place for another time.

As they left the cave, Wolf went ahead with Jondalar and the two leaders, Joharran and Tormaden. Jonokol walked beside Ayla and stopped her with a question. “Did you ask Zelandoni to invite me here?”

“After seeing what you did inside Fountain Rocks, I thought you ought to see this cave,” she said, “or should it be called a deep?”