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

“Did she tell you that?” the Watcher asked, a hin

t of doubt in her tone.

“Well, yes, sort of. He came back to visit her when I was healing in her valley, but he didn’t like seeing me there, and attacked. Ayla stepped in front of me and he twisted himself around and stopped cold. Then she rolled around on the ground and hugged him, and got on his back and rode him, like she does Whinney. Except I don’t think he would go where she wanted, only where he wanted to take her. He did bring her back, though. Then, after I asked her, she told me,” Jondalar said.

His story was straightforward enough to be convincing. The Watcher just shook her head. “I think we should all light new torches,” she said. “There should be at least one left for each of us, and I have some lamps, too.”

“I think we should wait with the torches until we all get back out of this corridor,” Willamar said.

“Yes, you’re right,” Jonokol said. “Will you hold mine?” he said to the Watcher.

Jonokol, Jondalar, Ayla, and Willamar literally lifted the First up some of the bigger drops, while the Watcher held up the torches to light the way. She threw one that had burned to almost nothing into one of the hearths that were lined up against the walls. When they reached the painted horses, everyone took a new torch. The Watcher stubbed out the ones that were partially burned and put them in her backframe; then they started back the way they had come. No one said much, just looked again at the animals as they passed by. Before they reached the entrance they noticed how much light found its way deeper into the cave.

At the entrance, Jonokol stopped. “Will you take me back into the large area in that other room?”

“Of course,” she said without asking why. She knew.

“I’d like to go with you, Zelandoni of the Nineteenth Cave,” Ayla said.

“I’m glad. I’d like you to. You can hold my torch,” he said with a grin.

She was the one who found the white cave, and he was the first one she showed it to. She knew he was going to paint on those beautiful walls, although he might want some helpers. The three of them went back into the second room of the Bear Cave while the rest went out. The Watcher took them in a shorter way, and she knew where to take him, to the place where he had looked when they first went into this part of the cave. He found the secluded recess, and the ancient concretion he had seen before.

Taking out a flint knife, he went to the basin-topped stalagmite and in its base, in one accomplished movement, he carved the forehead, nose, mouth, jaw, and cheek, then two stronger lines for the mane and back of a horse. He looked at it a moment, then engraved the head of a second horse facing the opposite way on top of the first one. The stone of this one was a little harder to cut through, and the forehead line was not as precise, but he went back and cut individual hairs of a stand-up mane spaced at consistent intervals. Then he stepped back and looked.

“I wanted to add to this cave, but I wasn’t sure if I should until after the First sang the Mother’s Song deep in this cave,” the Zelandoni of the Nineteenth Cave of the Zelandonii said.

“I told you it was the Mother’s choice, and you would know. Now I know. It was appropriate,” the Watcher said.

“It was the right thing to do,” Ayla said. “Perhaps it is time for me to stop calling you Jonokol and start referring to you as the Zelandoni of the Nineteenth.”

“Perhaps in public, but between us I hope I will always be Jonokol and you will be Ayla,” he said.

“I would like that,” Ayla said; then she turned to the Watcher. “In my mind I think of your name as the Watcher, as the one who watches over, but if you don’t mind, I would like to know the name you were born with.”

“I was called Dominica,” she said, “and I will always think of you as Ayla no matter what happens, even if you become the First.”

Ayla shook her head. “That is not likely. I am a foreigner with a strange accent.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Dominica said. “We acknowledge the First, even if we don’t know her or him. And I like your accent. I think it makes you stand out, as the One Who Is First should.” Then she led them back out of the cave.

All that evening Ayla thought about the remarkable cave. There had been so much to see, to take in, it made her wish she could see it again. People were talking that evening about what to do with Gahaynar, and she kept finding her mind straying back to the cave. He appeared to be recovering from the severe beating he had received. Though he would carry the scars for the rest of his life, he seemed to hold no ill feelings toward the people who had done it. If anything, he seemed grateful not only to be alive, but that the zelandonia were taking care of him.

He knew what he had done, even if no one else did; Balderan and the others had died for not much worse. He didn’t know why he had been spared, except that silently, while Balderan was planning how to kill the foreign woman, he had begged the Mother to save him. He knew they would never get away and he didn’t want to die.

“He seems sincere in his wish to make reparations,” Zelandoni First said. “Perhaps because he knows now that he can be made to pay for his actions, but it appears that the Mother has decided to spare him.”

“Does anyone know to which Cave he was born?” the First asked. “Does he have relatives?”

“Yes, he has a mother,” said one of the other Zelandonia. “I don’t know of any other kin, but I think she’s quite old and is losing her memories.”

“That’s the answer then,” said the First. “He should be sent back to his Cave to care for his mother.”

“But how is that reparations? It’s his own mother,” said another Zelandoni.

“It won’t necessarily be easy if she continues to deteriorate, but it will relieve the Cave of having to look after her, and it will give him something worthwhile to do. I don’t think it was something he planned to do as long as he was with Balderan, taking whatever he wanted without having to work for it. He should be made to work, to hunt for himself, or at least assist in communal hunts with his Cave, and to personally help his mother with whatever she needs.”

“I guess that’s not something a man necessarily likes to do, to take care of an old woman,” the other Zelandoni said, “even his own mother.”