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

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

As 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 w

here 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.