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

“Willamar!” a voice called out. “Is that you?”

“Farnadal! Of course it’s me, and a few others, mostly from the Ninth Cave. I thought you’d be expecting us. Aren’t Kimeran and Jondecam here yet?” Willamar said.

“No, they aren’t,” Farnadal said. “Should they be?”

“Are they coming?” a female voice said, with a happy touch of excitement.

“We expected them to be here already. No wonder you look so surprised to see us,” Willamar said.

“You are not the one who surprises me,” Farnadal said, with a sardonic look.

“I think some intr

oductions are in order,” Willamar said. “I’ll begin with the First Among Those Who Serve The Great Earth Mother.”

Farnadal gasped, then caught himself and stepped forward. Once he looked more closely he recognized her both from her general description and from her tattoos. He had met her before but it had been some time and they had both changed since then.

“In the name of Doni you are welcome, Zelandoni the First,” he said, then held out both hands and continued with the formal greeting. The rest of the travelers were introduced, with Jondalar and Ayla last.

“This is Jondalar of the Ninth Cave of the Zelandonii, Master Flint-Knapper …,” the Master Trader began, then continued with Ayla’s introduction.

“This is Ayla of the Ninth Cave of the Zelandonii, formerly of the Lion Camp of the Mamutoi …,” Willamar said. He noticed Farnadal’s expression change as he gave her names and ties, and especially when she greeted him and he heard her speak.

The introductions, by inference, had told him quite a lot about the woman. First that she was a foreigner, which was obvious when she spoke, who had been adopted as a full Zelandonii, in her own right, not just mated to someone who was a Zelandonii, which was unusual in itself. Then that she belonged to the zelandonia, and had become an acolyte of the First. And although the man was holding ropes that had been tied around two horses and was controlling them, she was given the credit for all the animals. It was obvious that she had power over the other horse, and the wolf even without ropes. It seemed to him that she must already be a Zelandoni, not just an acolyte, even of the First.

Then he remembered a troupe of traveling Storytellers a year or so back that had some new and wildly imaginative stories about horses carrying people and a wolf who loved a woman, but he never dreamed there could be any truth in them. Yet, here they were. He hadn’t seen the horses carrying people, but he was beginning to wonder how much truth was in those stories.

A tall woman, whom Ayla thought looked somehow familiar, came forward and asked Willamar, “Did you say you were expecting to see Jondecam and Kimeran here?”

“It has been a long time since you have seen them, hasn’t it, Camora?” Willamar said.

“Yes, it has,” she said.

“You resemble your kin, especially your brother, Jondecam, but Kimeran, too,” Willamar said.

“We are all related,” Camora said, explaining to Farnadal, “Kimeran is my uncle, but he was much younger than his sister, who was my mother. When my mother’s mother joined the spirits of the next world, my mother raised him like a son, along with Jondecam and me. Then when the man to whom she was mated passed on to the next world, she became a Zelandoni. It runs in her family; her grandfa was also a Zelandoni. I wonder if he still walks this world?”

“Yes, he does, in fact, and while age has slowed his step, he is still Zelandoni of the Seventh Cave. Your mother is now the spiritual leader of the Second,” Willamar said.

“The one who was Zelandoni of the Second Cave before her, the one who taught me to make images, walks the next world now,” Jonokol added. “That was a sad day for me, but your mother is a good Donier.”

“Why did you think Kimeran and Jondecam would be here?” Farnadal asked.

“They were supposed to leave shortly after we did and come straight here. We made stops along the way,” the Zelandoni Who Was First said. “I am taking Ayla on her Donier Tour, and Jonokol, too—I should say Zelandoni of the Nineteenth. We never made much of a Tour when he was my acolyte, and he needs to visit some of the Sacred Sites. From here we were all going to travel together to see one of the most important painted caves. It is in the southeast of Zelandonii territory, and then we’ll visit relatives of Kimeran’s mate, Beladora. She is from the Giornadonii, the people who live on the long peninsula that juts into the Southern Sea, south of the eastern Zelandonii territory.

“As a young man, Kimeran traveled with his sister-mother on her Donier Tour to the northern end of the Giornadonii territory. He met Beladora, mated her, and brought her back with him. The story is similar to Amelana’s,” the First said, indicating the pretty, young woman in their group, “but this young woman’s story is much less fortunate. Her mate now walks in the next world, and she wanted to return to her own people. She misses her mother. She is carrying new life, and would like to be near her mother when her child is born.”

“That’s understandable,” Camora said, smiling sympathetically at Amelana. “No matter how kind people may be, a woman always wants her own mother with her when she gives birth, especially the first time.”

Ayla and the First exchanged quick glances. Camora probably missed her people. Even though a woman might find a visitor from another place so attractive that she just had to go away with him, it apparently wasn’t so easy to live with the strangers who were the kin of her mate. Though they might be people from the same territory, with beliefs and customs generally similar, each Cave had its own ways, and a new person was always at a disadvantage in terms of status.

Ayla recognized that her situation was not the same as the two young women. Although she was called Ayla of the Mamutoi, she had been more of a stranger to them than she had been to the Zelandonii, and they to her. When she left the Clan, she had hoped to find people like herself, but she didn’t know where to look. She had lived alone in a pleasant valley for several years until she found Jondalar, who had been wounded by a lion. Except for him, the Mamutoi were the first of her kind she had met since she lost her family when she was a child of five. She had been raised by the Clan, who were not just people of a different Cave or terrritory, or with dissimilar hair or eyes or skin, or who spoke an unknown language. The people of the Clan were genuinely different. Their language capabilities were distinctive, the way they thought, the way their brains functioned was unusual, even the shape of their heads and to some extent their bodies were not quite the same.

There was no doubt that they were people, and there were many similarities between them and the ones they called “the Others.” They hunted the animals in their vicinity, and gathered the food that grew. They shaped tools out of stone and with them made other objects like clothing and containers and shelters. They cared about each other and took care of each other, and even recognized that Ayla was a child when they found her, and though she was one of the Others, they took care of her. But they were different in some ways that, even though she grew up with them, she never fully understood.

Though she sympathized with the young women who lived far away from their families and missed them, she didn’t fully empathize with them. At least they were living with people like themselves. She was grateful to have found her own kind, and especially to have found a man who cared about her among them. She couldn’t even put into words how much she cared for Jondalar. He was more than she could ever have hoped for. He not only said he loved her, he treated her with love. He was kind, he was generous, he adored her daughter. If it weren’t for him, she would not have been able to be an acolyte, to be a part of the zelandonia. He supported her, took care of Jonayla when she wasn’t home, even though she knew he would rather she was there with him, and he could bring her to unbelievable joy when they shared Pleasures. She trusted him implicitly and completely, and could not believe how fortunate she was.

Camora looked at the Zelandoni Who Was First. “Do you think something might have happened to Kimeran and Jondecam?” she asked, with a worried frown. “Accidents can happen.”