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

They returned to the main shelter, or what Ayla had come to think of as the main shelter, and found everything for the feast set up and waiting for them. Although extra dishes were stacked up for the visitors, Ayla and Jondalar got their personal eating cups, bowls, and knives out of their pouches. The First carried her own dishes as well. Ayla took out Wolf’s water bowl, which also served as an eating dish if one was needed, and thought that she should start making eating dishes for Jonayla soon. Though she planned to nurse her until she could count at least three years, she would be giving her tastes of other food long before that.

Someone had recently hunted an aurochs; a roast haunch, turned on a spit over coals, was the main dish. Lately, they only saw the wild cattle in summer, but it was one of Ayla’s favorite foods. The taste was similar to bison, except richer, but then they were similar animals, with hard, round, curving horns that grew to a point and were permanent, not shed every year like deer antlers.

There were summer vegetables, too: sow-thistle stems, cooked pigweed, coltsfoot, and nettle leaves flavored with sorrel, and cowslips and wild rose petals in a salad of young dandelion leaves and clover. Fragrant meadowsweet flowers gave a honey-like sweetness to a sauce of crabapples and rhubarb served with the meat. A mixture of summer berries required no sweetening. They had raspberries, an early-ripening variety of blackberries, cherries, blackcurrants, elderberries, and pitted blackthorn plums, though pitting the small sloes was a time-consuming job. Rose leaf tea finished off the delicious meal.

When she took out Wolf’s bowl and gave him the bone she had chosen with a little meat left on, one of the women looked at the wolf with disapproval, and Ayla heard her say to another woman that she didn’t think it was right to feed a wolf food that was meant for people. The other woman nodded her head in agreement, but Ayla had noticed that both of them had looked at the four-legged hunter with trepidation earlier in the day. She had hoped to introduce Wolf to the women to perhaps reduce their fearfulness, but they made a point of avoiding both Ayla and the meat-eater.

After the meal, more wood was put on the fire to provide stronger light against the encroaching darkness. Ayla was nursing Jonayla and sipping a cup of hot tea with Wolf at her feet in the company of Jondalar, the First, and the Zelandoni of the Fifth. A group of people approached, including Madroman, though he stayed in the background. Ayla recognized others, and gathered that they were the acolytes of the Fifth, probably wanting to spend some time with the One Who Was First.

“I have completed Marking the Suns and Moons,” said one of them. The young woman opened up her hand and revealed a small plaque of ivory covered with strange markings.

The Fifth picked it out of her hand and examined it carefully, turning it over to see the back side and even checking around the edges. Then he smiled. “This is about a half year,” he said, then gave it to the First. “She is my Third Acolyte, and started the Marking this time last year. Her plaque for the first half is put away.”

The large woman looked at the piece with the same careful scrutiny as the Zelandoni of the Fifth, but not as long. “This is an interesting method of marking,” she said. “You show the turns by position and the crescents with curved marks for two of the moons you’ve marked. The rest are around the edge and on the back. Very good.”

The young woman beamed under the praise from the First.

“Perhaps you could explain what you’ve done to my acolyte. Marking the Suns and Moons is something she has yet to do,” the First said.

“I would have thought it was something she had already done. I’ve heard she is known for her medicinal knowledge, and she is mated. There are not many acolytes I know who are mated and have children, not even many Zelandonia,” the Third Acolyte of the Zelandoni of the Fifth Cave said.

“Ayla’s training has been unconventional. As you know, she was not born to the Zelandonii, so the order in which she has gained her knowledge is not the same as ours. She is an exceptional healer. She started young, but she is just beginning her Donier Tour, and hasn’t yet learned to Mark the Suns and Moons,” the Zelandoni Who Was First carefully explained.

“I’ll be happy to explain the way I Marked them to her,” the Third Acolyte of the Fifth said, and sat down next to Ayla.

Ayla was more than interested. This was the first she had heard of Marking the Suns and Moons, and didn’t know it was another task she’d have to complete as part of her training. She wondered what else there was that she didn’t know she would have to do.

“You see, I made one mark each night,” the young woman said, showing her the marks she had etched into the ivory with a pointed tool of sharp flint. “I’d already marked the first half year on another piece, so I was getting an idea of how to keep track of more than just the count of the days. I started this just before the moon was new and I was tr

ying to show where the moon was in the sky, so I began here.” She indicated a mark that was in the middle of what seemed to be just random haphazard pitting. “The next few nights it snowed. It was a big storm and blocked out the moon and the stars, but I wouldn’t have been able to see the moon anyway. It was the time when Lumi was closing his great eye. The next time I saw him, he was a thin crescent, waking up again, so I made a curved mark here.”

Ayla looked where the young woman indicated and was rather surprised to see that what had appeared at first to be a hole made by a sharp point was indeed a small curved line. She looked more closely at the group of markings and suddenly they didn’t look so random. There did seem to be a pattern to it, and she was interested in how the young woman would proceed.

“Since the time of Lumi’s sleeping is the beginning of a Moon, that’s here on the right where I decided to turn back to mark the next set of nights,” the Third Acolyte continued. “Right about here was the first eye-half-closed; some people call it the first half-face. Then it keeps getting bigger until it’s full. It’s hard to tell when it’s exactly full—it looks full for a few days—so that’s here on the left where I turned back again. I made four curved marks, two below and two above. I kept marking until it was the second half-face, when Lumi starts to close his eye again, and you notice it’s just above the first half-face.

“I kept marking until his eye was closed again—see here on the right, where I curved down? All the way around the line with the first right-end turn. You take it and see if you can follow it. I always make the turns when he’s full face, on the right, or when he’s sleeping, on the left. You’ll see that you can count two Moons, plus another half. I stopped at the first half-face after the second Moon. I was waiting for Bali to catch up. It was the time when the sun is as far south as it goes and stands still for a few days, then changes direction and goes north again. It’s the ending of First Winter and the beginning of Second Winter, when it’s colder but has the promise of Bali’s return.”

“Thank you,” Ayla said. “That was fascinating! Did you work it all out yourself?”

“Not exactly. Other Zelandonia showed me their way of marking, but I saw a plaque at the Fourteenth Cave once that was quite old. It wasn’t marked in quite the same way, but it gave me the idea when it was my time to Mark the Moons.”

“It’s a very good idea,” the First said.

It was very dark when they started back to their sleeping place. Ayla was holding the baby, who was sound asleep wrapped up in her carrying blanket, so both Jondalar and the First each borrowed a torch to see their way.

As they approached the visitors’ shelter, they passed by some of the other shelters they had seen earlier. When she came to the one where she had felt so uncomfortable, Ayla shuddered again and hurried past.

“What’s wrong?” Jondalar asked.

“I don’t know,” Ayla said. “I’ve been feeling strange all day. It’s probably nothing.”

When they reached their shelter, the horses were milling around outside, rather than in the large roomy space she had made for them inside. “Why are they out here? The horses have been acting up all day; that may be what’s bothering me,” Ayla said. As they turned into the shelter toward their tent, Wolf hesitated, then sat down on his haunches and refused to enter. “Now, what’s wrong with Wolf?”

17

“Why don’t we take the horses for a run this morning?” Ayla said softly to the man who was lying beside her. “Yesterday they seemed restless and edgy. I am too. They don’t really get to go free and fast when they are pulling the pole-drags. It’s hard work, but not the kind of exercise they like.”

Jondalar smiled. “That’s a good idea. I don’t get to exercise the way I’d like to either. What about Jonayla?”