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

Jonokol looked as unhappy as Ayla. He liked the foreigner Jondalar had brought back with him from his Journey, and he felt he owed her a debt. She was not only the one who found the beautiful new cave; she had made sure he was among the first to see it, and had agreed to become the First’s acolyte, which had allowed him to move to the Nineteenth Cave, which was near it.

“But you can make a true sound, Ayla,” Jonokol said. “You can whistle. I have heard you whistle just like a bird, and you can make many other animal sounds. You can whinny like a horse, you can even roar like a lion.”

“That I’d like to hear,” the Donier said.

“Go ahead, Ayla. Show him,” Jonokol said.

Ayla closed her eyes and gathered up her thoughts to concentrate. She put her mind back to the time when she was living in her valley and raising a young lion alongside a horse, as though they were both her children. She remembered the first time Baby managed to make a full-throated roar. She had decided to practice making the sound, too, and a few days later answered him with a roar of her own. It wasn’t quite as thunderous as his, but he recognized it as a respectable roar. Like Baby, she had always built up to it with a series of distinctive grunts, and began with a series of unhk, unhk, unhk sounds that grew louder with each repetition. Finally she opened her mouth and pushed out the loudest roar she could. It filled the small cave. Then after a period of silence the roar echoed back on itself with a distant, muted sound that with a chill of gooseflesh made each

of them feel that a different lion had answered from a place far away, deep in the cave and beyond.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d vow there was a lion in here,” the young acolyte of the Twenty-sixth said with a smile when the echoes died down. “Can you really whinny like a horse, too?”

That one was easy. It was the true name of Ayla’s horse, Whinney, the one she named her when she was a foal, though now she more often said it like a word rather than a whinny. She made the sound the way she usually greeted her friend when she hadn’t seen her for a while, a happy, welcoming whiiinnneeey.

This time the Donier of the Twenty-sixth Cave laughed out loud. “And I imagine you can whistle like a bird, too.”

Ayla smiled, a big delighted grin, then whistled through a series of bird calls that she had taught herself when she was still alone in her valley, and had learned to coax birds to eat out of her hand. The bird trills and chirps and whistles reverberated with the strangely muted echoing of the cave.

“Well, if I had any doubts about this being a Sacred Cave, I couldn’t anymore. And you won’t have any problem testing with sound, Ayla, even if you can’t sing or play a flute. Like Falithan, you have your own way,” the Zelandoni said. Then he signaled to his acolyte, who removed his backframe and took out of it four small bowls with handles that had been carved out of limestone.

The acolyte next brought out an object that looked like a small white sausage; it was a piece of the intestine of some animal filled with fat. He untwisted one end and squeezed out some of the slightly congealed fat into the bowl of each lamp, then put a strip of a dried boletus mushroom into each. Then he sat down and prepared to make a small fire. Ayla watched him, and almost offered to make a fire with one of her firestones, but the First had made a point the previous year to make a ceremony of showing the firestone, and though many of the Zelandonii now knew how to use it, Ayla wasn’t sure how she wanted to show those who hadn’t seen it the first time.

Using materials he had brought with him, Falithan soon had a small fire going and from it, using another strip of dried mushroom to transfer the fire, he melted some of the fat to make it more easily absorbed, then lit the mushroom wicks.

When the fire was well established in each grease lamp, the Zelandoni of the Twenty-sixth said, “Well, shall we explore this tight little cave? But you will have to assume that you are another animal, Ayla, a snake. Do you think you can slither in here?”

Ayla nodded her assent, though she felt some doubt.

Holding on to the handle of the small bowl-shaped lamp, the Zelandoni of the Twenty-sixth Cave put his head into the small opening first, getting down on his knees and one hand, and finally down on his stomach. Pushing the small oil lamp in front of him, he squirmed into the unique little space. Ayla followed him, then Jonokol and finally Falithan, each of them holding a lamp. She now understood why the Zelandoni had discouraged the First from attempting to enter the place. Though Ayla had occasionally been surprised at what the large woman could do if she set her mind to it, this cave really was too small for her.

The short walls were more or less perpendicular to the floor, but curved together at the ceiling, and appeared to be rock covered with a damp soil. The floor was a wet clayey mud that stuck to them, but actually helped them to slide through some of the tighter places, but it didn’t take long for the cold clammy muck to seep into their clothing. The chill made Ayla aware that her breasts were full of milk and she tried to get up on her elbows so she wouldn’t have to put all her weight on them, though it was difficult while holding the lamp. Small spaces didn’t particularly bother Ayla, but when she got stuck in one place that curved sideways, she began to feel a touch of panic.

“Just relax, Ayla. You can make it,” she heard Jonokol say, then felt a push against her feet from behind. With his help she squeezed through.

The cave was not uniformly small. When they got beyond the constriction, the cave opened up a little. They could actually sit up, and holding their lamps up, see each other. They stopped and rested for a while, then Jonokol couldn’t resist. He took a small, chisel-pointed piece of flint from a pouch tied to his waist thong and, with a few quick strokes, engraved a drawing of a horse on the wall on one side, and then in front of it, another.

It had always amazed Ayla how skilled he was. When he was still at the Ninth Cave, she had often watched him when he practiced on the outside wall of a limestone cliff, or a slab of stone that had broken off, or on a section of rawhide with a piece of charcoal, or even on a smoothed-out area of dirt on the ground. He did it so often and with such ease, he almost seemed profligate, wasteful of his talent. But just as she had had to practice to gain skill with her sling or Jondalar’s spear-thrower, she knew Jonokol had needed to practice to gain his level of proficiency. It was just that to her the ability to think of a living, breathing animal and reproduce its likeness on a surface was so extraordinary, it couldn’t be anything but a great and amazing Gift from the Mother. Ayla was not alone in those feelings.

After they rested awhile, the Zelandoni of the Twenty-sixth Cave continued leading the way into the cave. They encountered a few more tight places before they reached a place where slabs of rock blocked their way; it was the end of the cave. They could go no farther.

“I notice that you felt compelled to make drawings on the wall of this cave,” the Zelandoni of the Twenty-sixth said, smiling at Jonokol.

Jonokol wasn’t sure he would put it quite that way, but he had drawn two horses, so he nodded assent.

“I have been thinking that Sun View should have a ceremony for this space. I am now more sure than ever that it is sacred, and I would like to acknowledge that. It could be a place for young people who want to test themselves to come, even those who are quite young.”

“I think you are right,” the artist acolyte said. “It’s a difficult cave, but staightforward. It would be hard to get lost in here.”

“Would you join us in the ceremony, Jonokol?”

Ayla guessed the Zelandoni wanted Jonokol to make more drawings in this Sacred Cave that was so close to them, and wondered if his drawings would add more status to the place.

“I believe a mark of closure is needed here, to show it is as far as one can go within the cave—in this world,” Jonokol said, then smiled. “I think Ayla’s lion spoke from the next world. Let me know when you plan to have the ceremony.”

Both the Zelandoni and his acolyte, Falithan, smiled their pleasure. “You are welcome to come, too, Ayla,” the Twenty-sixth said.

“I will have to see what the First has planned for me,” she said.