The Land of Painted Caves (Earth's Children 6)

Ayla had been listening and smiling with the rest, but she had been wanting to ask a question. At a break in the conversation, she finally said, “Now that you have brought up the ages of the Caves, there is something I would like to know.” They all turned to look at her.

“You have only to ask,” Kimeran said with exaggerated courtesy and friendliness that intimated the suggestion of more. He had drunk a few cups of barma and was noticing how attractive his tall friend’s mate was.

“Last summer Manvelar was telling me a little about the counting-word names of each Cave, but I’m still confused,” Ayla said. “When we w

ent to the Summer Meeting last year, we stopped overnight at the Twenty-ninth Cave. They live at three separate shelters around a big valley, each with a leader and a zelandoni, but they are all called by the same counting word, the Twenty-ninth. The Second Cave is closely related to the Seventh Cave, and you live just across a valley, so why do you have a Cave with a different counting word? Why aren’t you part of the Second Cave?”

“That’s one I can’t answer. I don’t know,” Kimeran said, then gestured toward the older man. “You’ll have to ask the more senior leader. Sergenor?”

Sergenor smiled, but pondered the question for a moment. “To be honest, I don’t know, either. It never occurred to me before. And I don’t know of any Histories or Elder Legends that tell about it. There are some that tell stories of the original inhabitants of the region, the First Cave of the Zelandonii, but they have long since disappeared. No one even knows for sure where their shelter was.”

“You do know that the Second Cave of the Zelandonii is the oldest settlement of Zelandonii still in existence?” Kimeran said, his voice slightly slurred. “That’s why it’s called Elder Hearth.”

“Yes, I knew that,” she said, wondering if he would need the “morning after” drink she had concocted for Talut, the Mamutoi leader of the Lion Camp.

“I’ll tell you what I think,” Sergenor said. “As the families of the First and Second Caves grew too large for their shelters, some of them, offshoots of both Caves as well as new people who had come into the region, moved farther away, taking the next counting words when they established a new Cave. By the time the group of people from the Second Cave who founded our Cave decided to move, the next unused counting word was ‘seven.’ They were mostly young families—some newly mated couples, the children of the Second Cave—and they wanted to stay close to their relatives, so they moved here, just across Sweet Valley, to make their new home. Even though the two Caves were so closely related, they were the same as one Cave, I think they chose a new number because that’s the way it was done. So we became two separate Caves: Elder Hearth, the Second Cave of the Zelandonii, and Horsehead Rock, the Seventh Cave. We are still just different branches of the same family.”

“The Twenty-ninth is a newer Cave,” Sergenor continued. “When they moved to their new shelters, I suspect they all wanted to keep the same counting-word name, because the smaller the counting word, the older the settlement. There is a certain prestige in having a lower counting word and Twenty-nine was rather large already. I suspect none of the people founding the new Caves wanted a larger one. They decided to call themselves Three Rocks, the Twenty-ninth Cave of the Zelandonii, and then use the names they had already given to the locations to explain the difference.

“The original settlement is called Reflection Rock, because from certain places you can see yourself in the water below. It is one of the few shelters that face north and is not quite as easy to keep warm, but it is a remarkable place and has many other advantages. It is the South Holding of the Twenty-ninth Cave, or sometimes the South Holding of Three Rocks. South Face became the North Holding, and Summer Camp became the West Holding of the Twenty-ninth Cave. I think their way is more complicated and confusing, but it’s their choice.”

“If the Second Cave is the oldest, then the next-oldest group still in existence must be Two Rivers Rock, the Third Cave of the Zelandonii. We stayed there last night,” Ayla said, nodding as she understood more.

“That’s right,” Proleva said, joining in.

“But there is no Fourth Cave, is there?”

“There was a Fourth Cave,” Proleva replied, “but no one seems to know what happened to it. There are Legends that hint at some catastrophe that struck more than one Cave, and the Fourth may have disappeared around that time, but no one knows. It’s a dark time in the Histories, too. Some fighting with the Flatheads is inferred.”

“The Fifth Cave, called Old Valley, upstream along The River, is next after the Third,” Jondalar said. “We were going to visit them on our way to the Summer Meeting last year, but they had already left, remember?” Ayla nodded. “They have several shelters on both sides of Short River Valley, some for living, some for storage, but they don’t give them separate counting words. All of Old Valley is the Fifth Cave.”

“The Sixth Cave has disappeared, too,” Sergenor continued. “There are different stories about what happened to it. Most people think illness reduced their numbers. Others believe there was a difference of opinion between factions. In any case, the Histories indicate that the people who had once been the Sixth Cave joined up with other Caves, so we, the Seventh Cave, are next. There is no Eighth Cave, either, so your Cave, the Ninth, comes after ours.”

There was a moment of silence while the information was absorbed. Then, changing the subject, Jondecam asked Jondalar if he would look at the spear-thrower he had made, and Levela told her older sister, Proleva, that she was thinking about going to the Ninth Cave to have her baby, which elicited a smile. People started having private conversations and soon split up into other groups.

Jondecam was not the only one who wanted to ask questions about the spear-thrower, especially after learning about the lion hunt the day before. Jondalar had developed the hunting weapon while he lived with Ayla in her eastern valley and had demonstrated it shortly after he had returned to his home the previous summer. He had held further exhibitions at the Summer Meeting.

Earlier in the afternoon, when Jondalar was waiting for Ayla to visit Horsehead cave, several had practiced casting spears with throwers they had made, patterned after the ones they had seen him use, while Jondalar gave them instructions and advice. Now a group of people, primarily men but including some women, were gathered around him, asking questions about the techniques of making spear-throwers, and the lightweight spears that had proved to be so effective with it.

Across the hearth, near the wall that helped contain the heat, several women who had babies, Ayla among them, were gathered together feeding, rocking, or keeping an eye on sleeping ones while they chatted.

In a separate, more isolated area of the shelter, Zelandoni Who Was First had been talking with the other Zelandonia and their acolytes, feeling just a little annoyed that Ayla, who was her acolyte, had not joined them. She knew she had pushed her into it, but Ayla was already an accomplished healer when she had arrived, and had other remarkable skills besides, including knowing how to control animals. She belonged in the zelandonia!

The Zelandoni of the Seventh had asked the First a question and was waiting for an answer with a patient expression. He had noticed that the Zelandoni of the Ninth Cave seemed distracted and a bit annoyed. He had been observing her since the visitors had arrived and had seen her irritation grow, and guessed why. When Zelandonia visited each other with their acolytes, it was a good time to teach the novices some of the knowledge and lore they had to learn and memorize, and her acolyte was not here. But, he thought, if the First was going to choose an acolyte who had a mate and a new baby, she had to know her full attention would not be devoted to the zelandonia.

“Excuse me for a moment,” the First said, pulling herself up from a mat on a low stone ledge and walking toward the group of chattering young mothers. “Ayla,” she said, smiling. She was adept at hiding her true feelings. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but the Zelandoni of the Seventh Cave just asked me a question about setting broken bones, and I thought you might have some thoughts to contribute.”

“Of course, Zelandoni,” she said. “Let me get Jonayla; she’s right over there.”

Ayla got up, but hesitated when she looked down at her sleeping baby. Wolf looked up at her and whined, beating his tail against the ground. He was lying beside the infant that he considered to be his special charge. Wolf had been the last of the litter of a lone wolf that Ayla had killed for stealing from her traps, before she knew it was a nursing mother. She had tracked back to the den, found one living cub, and had brought him back with her. He had grown up in the close confines of the Mamutoi winter dwelling. He was so young when she found him—he would have counted perhaps four weeks—that he had imprinted on humans, and he adored the youngsters, especially the young one born to Ayla.

“I hate to disturb her. She just fell asleep. She’s not used to visiting and has been overexcited this evening,” Ayla said.

“We can watch her,” Levela said, then grinned. “At least help Wolf. He won’t let her out of his sight. If she wakes, we’ll bring her over. But now that she has finally settled down, I don’t think she’ll stir for some time.”

“Thank you, Levela,” Ayla said, then smiled at her and the woman beside her. “You really are Proleva’s sister. Do you know how much you are like her?”

“I know I’ve missed her since she mated Joharran,” Levela said, looking at her sister. “We were always close. Proleva was almost a second mother to me.”