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

“Look above the hole,” she said, pointing to a smooth, bladelike pendant of rock descending from the ceiling over the hole.

Everyone looked. Because the surfaces of most of the walls and descended ceiling rocks in this chamber were coated with a soft layer of light brown clay-like material, vermiculite—a chemical alteration of the mineral constituents of the stone that softened the surface—the images were white. Drawings, engravings of a sort, could be made with a stick, or even a finger, displacing the brown-colored surface clay and leaving a pure white line underneath.

Ayla noticed that there were many white drawings in this room, but on the overhanging rock she could clearly see a horse, and an owl with its head turned around so that its face could be seen over its back. It was something owls were known to do, but she had never seen a drawing of it; she had never seen any owl drawings in any cave.

“You are right. That had to be made by the Ancients before the floor collapsed,” Jondalar said, “because no one could reach it now.”

The Watcher smiled at him, and enjoyed the incredulity in his voice. She pointed out several more of the finger-etched drawings in the large room. She took them around to the other side of the circular depression, the left wall. Although it was filled with hanging pendants of stalactites and stalagmitic pillars and circular pyramids built up on the floor, it was not difficult to move around in the room, and most of the decorations were at eye level. Even at a distance, the light from their torches showed many white engravings, some scraped to produce a white surface. Standing in the middle of the room they could see mammoths, rhinoceroses, bears, aurochs, bison, horses, and a series of curved lines and sinuous fingermarks drawn over bear claw marks.

“How many animals are in this room?” Ayla asked.

“I have counted almost twice twenty-five,” the Watcher said, holding up her left hand with all her fingers and her thumb bent at the knuckles, then opening her hand and closing the knuckles again.

Ayla remembered the other way to count with fingers. Counting with hands could be more complex than the simple counting words, if one understood how to do it. The right hand counted the words, and as each word was spoken, a finger was bent; the left hand indicated the number of fives counted. The left hand, held palm facing out, with all the fingers and thumbs bent at the knuckles, counted not five, the way she had taught herself when she first learned to count and the way Jondalar had once taught her the counting words, but twenty-five. She had learned this way of counting in her training, and the concept had astounded her. It made the counting words so much more powerful when used like that.

It occurred to her that the large dots could be a way of using the counting words, too. One handprint could be counted as five; one large dot made with only the palm of the hand could mean twenty-five; two would be twice twenty-five, fifty; and so many on the wall in one place would be a very large number, if one understood how to read it. But as with most things associated with the zelandonia, it was probably more complex than that. All signs had more than one meaning.

As they were walking around the room, Ayla saw a beautifully made horse, and behind it two mammoths, one superimposed on the other, with the line of their bellies drawn as a high arch, which made Ayla think of the massive arch outside. Was the arch supposed to represent a mammoth? Most of the animals in this chamber seemed to be mammoths, but there were many rhinoceroses, too; one in particular captured Ayla’s attention. Just the front half was engraved and it seemed to be emerging from a crack in the wall, emerging from the world behind the wall. There were also a few horses, aurochs, and bison, but no felines or deer. And while almost all of the images in the first part of the cave were made with red paint—the red ocher from the floor and walls—the images in this part were white, engraved with fingers or another hard object, except for some made with black on the right wall at the end, including a beautiful black bear nearby.

They looked interesting and she wanted to go see them, but the Watcher led them around the left side of the large crater in the middle of the room toward another section of the cave. The left wall was hidden by a rocky mass of big blocks that she could barely make out in the light of the torches, which reminded her to knock off the excess burned ash from her torch. The light flared up and she realized that she would need to light another torch soon.

The Watcher began humming again as they approached another space defined by a much lower height. So low that someone had climbed up on the blocks and drawn a mammoth with a finger on the ceiling. On the right was the head of a bison, quickly done, followed by three mammoths, then several more drawings on rock pendants hanging from the ceiling. Ayla could see two big reindeer drawn in black and shaded to give them contours and, less detailed, a third one. On another part of the pendant, two black mammoths faced each other, but only the forequarters of the one on the left were made. The one on the right was filled in with black, and it had tusks—the only tusks she had seen on the mammoths in this cave. There were other drawings on pendants farther back, quite a distance above the floor: another mammoth engraved in left profile, a big lion, and then, surprisingly, a musk-ox identifiable by its down-curving horns.

Ayla had been so involved in trying to see the animals on the pendants in the back that it wasn’t until she heard the First join in that she realized the Watcher, the First, and the Zelandoni of the Nineteenth Cave were singing to the cave again. She didn’t join in this time. She could make bird and animal sounds, but she couldn’t sing. But she did enjoy listening.

She welcomed him back, Her lover of old,

With heartache and sorrow, Her story She told.

Her dear friend agreed to join in the fight,

To rescue her child from his perilous plight.

She told of Her grief. And the dark swirling thief.

The Mother was tired, She had to recover,

She loosened Her hold to Her luminous lover.

While She was sleeping, he fought the cold force,

And for a time drove it back to the source.

His spirit was strong. The encounter too long.

Her fair shining friend struggled hard, gave his best,

The conflict was bitter, the struggle hard pressed.

His vigilance waned as he closed his great eye,

Then darkness crept close, stole his light from the sky.

Her pale friend was tiring. His light was expiring.

When darkness was total, She woke with a cry.

The tenebrious void hid the light from the sky.