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

Ayla had only been half listening, but she understood the gist of it and thought it was a good plan, and then went back to thinking about the Most Ancient Sacred Site. She finally decided that sometime in the next day or two, she would go back into the cave, alone, or perhaps with Wolf.

In the late morning the next day Ayla asked Levela if she would watch Jonayla again, and check to see how her meat was drying. She had put out another load of bison meat on the cords and thought this might be a good time to satisfy her desire to see the Most Ancient Sacred Site once more.

“I’m going to take Wolf and go back to the cave. I just want to see it again before we leave. Who knows how soon, if ever, we’ll be back here again.”

She packed several torches and a couple of stone lamps, along with some lichen wicks and some tied-off sections of intestine filled with fat that she put in a double-layered leather pouch. She checked her fire-making kit to make sure she had adequate materials—a firestone and flint, tinder, kindling, and some larger pieces of wood. She filled her waterbag and packed a cup for herself and a bowl for Wolf to drink from. She took her medicine bag with some extra packets of tea, although she doubted that she would make tea inside the cave, her good knife, and some warm clothes for wearing inside the cave, but she didn’t bother with foot coverings. She was used to going barefoot and the soles of her feet were nearly as hard as hooves.

She whistled for Wolf and started walking up the path to the cave. When she reached the large entrance, she glanced at the sheltered corner. There was no fire burning in the fireplace and when she peeked into the sleeping structure, she saw that it was empty. The Watcher wasn’t there this day. Usually she was told when people would be coming to visit the Most Ancient Sacred Site, and Ayla just decided to go without making prior arrangements.

She started a

small fire in the fireplace and lit a torch, then holding it high, she started in, signaling Wolf to follow. She was aware again of how large the cave was, and of the disordered nature of the first rooms. Columns detached from the ceiling and tipped over, and huge blocks and fallen rock and rubble were scattered around the floor. The light penetrated into the cave quite a distance and she went in the way they originally had, to the left and straight ahead into the huge room with the bear wallows. Wolf stayed close to her side.

She kept to the right side of the passage, knowing that except for the large right-hand room, which she planned to visit on her way out, there would not be much to see until she was halfway into the cave. She did not plan to stay in the cave too long or to try to see everything again, just certain things. She proceeded into the chamber with the bear hollows and followed the right wall around until she came to the next room at the end of it, then looked for the thick blade-shaped rock that descended from the ceiling.

There it was as she remembered, painted in red, the leopard with the long tail and the hyena-bear. Was it a hyena or was it a bear? Yes, the shape of the head gave it the look of a cave bear, but the muzzle was longer and the tuft on the top of the head along with a bit of a mane looked like the stiff hair of a hyena. None of the other bears in this cave had that slender, long-legged shape—look at the second bear painted above it! I don’t know what the artist was trying to say with this painting, she thought, but it looks to me like it is a painting of a hyena, even though it is the only hyena I have ever seen painted in any cave. But I’ve never seen a leopard, either. There are a bear, a hyena, and a leopard painted in this place, all strong, dangerous animals. I wonder what the Traveling Storytellers would say about this scene?

Ayla passed by the next series of images, looking but not lingering—possible insects, a line of rhinoceroses, lions, horses, mammoths, signs, dots, handprints; she smiled at the red drawing of the little bear, so like the other bears in this cave, but smaller. She recalled that at this point in the cave the Watcher had turned left, then continued to follow the right wall. The next space had evidence of cave bears, and the floor was about five feet lower, which led to the next room, the one with the deep hole in the middle.

This was the room where all the drawings, or engravings, were white because the white surfaces were covered with vermiculite. Of all the white engravings, she particularly noticed the rhinoceros emerging from a crack in the wall and stayed to look at it. Why did the Ancients paint these animals on the walls inside caves? she wondered. Why did Jonokol want to carve a drawing of two horses in that room near the entrance to this cave? His mind wasn’t in any other place when he did it, like all the zelandonia who drank the tea in that Sacred Site of the Seventh Cave of the South Land Zelandonii. The artists probably wouldn’t be capable of creating such remarkable images if they were. They had to think about what they were doing.

Did they make them for themselves or to show others? And what others? The other people of their cave or for the other zelandonia? Some of the larger rooms in certain caves could accommodate many people, and sometimes ceremonies were held in them, but many of the images were made in small caves or very cramped spaces in larger caves. They must have been made for themselves, for their own reasons. Were they looking for something in the spirit world? Perhaps a spirit animal of their own, like her lion totem, or a spirit animal that would bring them closer to the Mother? Whenever she tried to ask Zelandoni, she never got a satisfactory answer. Was that something she was supposed to find out for herself?

Wolf had been staying close, hugging the wall that Ayla was following. She carried the only light in the entire pitch-black cave; although his other senses gave him more information about his surroundings than her single torch, he liked being able to see as well.

The way that she knew she had reached the next section of the cave was the noticeable reduction in the height of the ceiling. There were more mammoths and bison and deer on the walls and pendants, some in white engraving, some in one area drawn in black. This was the room with the cave bear skull on the flat-topped rock, and Ayla walked over to see it again. She stayed awhile, thinking again of Creb and the Clan, before she continued. Banks of gray clay seemed to surround this chamber, which she climbed up to reach the last room, the one the First did not visit. She noticed traces of bear prints on the clay, which she hadn’t seen the first time she was there. Two high steps brought her into the next space.

She found herself in the middle of the room; the ceiling was too low to walk along the sides. She decided it was time to light another torch, then wiped the remains of the first torch on the low ceiling to knock the fire off its small stub. Once she was certain the fire was out, she tucked what was left of the first torch into her backframe. She had to stoop in order to continue along the natural path, and at the base of a pendant she noticed a horizontal row of seven little red dots next to a series of black dots. Finally after another forty feet it was possible to stand erect again.

There were several more black torch marks; other people had evidently used this area to clean their torches. At the back the ceiling slanted down toward the floor. It was covered with a fine yellow coating of softened stone that had broken into vermiculations—little wormlike wavy lines. On this slanted surface the simple outline of a horse had been drawn primarily using two fingers. Because of the way the wall slanted, it was very difficult for the artist to draw, requiring that his or her head be bent backward the whole time, and never being able to get an overall view while the drawing was being worked on. It was slightly out of proportion, but it was the very last drawing in the cave. She noticed a couple of mammoths had also been outlined on the slanting ceiling.

Ayla detected an odor and looked around, then understood that Wolf had passed some solid waste. She smiled. It couldn’t be helped. As she turned around to go back, she wondered if there was a way out of the cave from here, but it was just a random thought. She wasn’t going to look for it. As she walked out closer to the wall, she felt her feet sink into the cold, soft clay floor; Wolf followed after her, walking in the same soft clay. After she climbed down out of this last room, the wall that had been on her right was now on her left. She passed the panel of scraped mammoths, then came to one of the sections she was looking forward to seeing again—the horses painted in black.

She studied the wall more carefully this time. She saw that the soft brown layer had been scraped off a large section of the wall to bring out the white limestone underneath, which included most of the previous engraving of a rhinoceros and a mammoth. The black coloring was charcoal, but because of the way the artist used it, some places were darker and and some lighter to make the horses and other animals look more lifelike. Although the horses were what drew her, they were not the first animals on the panel—aurochs were. And the lions inside the niche made her smile again. That female just wasn’t interested in that young male. She was sitting down and not budging.

Ayla slowly walked the length of the painted wall until she came to the entrance of the long gallery that led to the last room of paintings, and saw the giant deer painted high up on the right. This was also where the hearths to make charcoal were lined up along the wall. The walkway started dropping down. When she made the last big drop and came to the last room, she walked even more slowly. She loved the lions, perhaps because they were her totem, but they were so real. She reached the end and examined the final pendant, the one that looked like a male organ. It had a female vulva painted on it, with human legs, and was part bison and part lion. She felt sure someone had been telling a story there, too. Finally, she turned around and started back and when she reached the beginning of the chamber, she stopped and looked around.

She wanted to leave with a memory, the way the First sang to the cave. She couldn’t sing, but she smiled when she thought of something she could do. She could roar like she did the first time she was here. Like lions often did, she began the hunka-hunka buildup to her roar. When she finally let it out, it was the best roar she could make; it even made Wolf cringe a little.

They had planned to get off to an early start, but Amelana started into labor early in the morning, so of course, the visiting Zelandonia couldn’t leave. Amelana had a healthy baby boy by evening, and her mother provided a celebratory meal afterward. They didn’t start off on their return trip until the following morning, and by then the leave-taking was rather anticlimactic.

The composition of the travelers had changed again. With Kimeran, Beladora, and the two children gone, and Amelana no longer traveling with them, there were only eleven left and they had to organize themselves differently. With only Jonlevan to play with, who was a year younger, Jonayla missed her friends. Jondecam felt the loss of Kimeran, his uncle who was more brother, and didn’t realize how much they had understood each other when they worked together. It saddened him to think he might never see him again. The only women were Ayla, Levela, and the First and they felt the loss of Beladora, and the young antics of Amelana. It took a while to settle into a traveling routine again.

They followed the river downstream, and when it joined the larger river, continued to follow it as it made its way south. They could see the large expanse of the Southern Sea a full day before they reached it, but the panorama offered a glimpse of more than a vast stretch of water. They saw herds of reindeer and megaceroses, a matriarchal crowd of woolly mammoths along with their young of every age, and a collection of woolly rhinoceroses. There were also the beginnings of a coming together of various ungulates like aurochs and bisons in preparation for the fall, when throngs in the thousands would gather for the fighting and mating. Horses were moving toward their winter grazing grounds. There was a cool breeze blowing in from the sea; the Southern Sea was a cold sea, and looking out over the expanse of cold water made Ayla realize the season would be turning soon.

They found the traders Conardi had spoken of, and Conardi himself. He made the introductions, and it turned out that Ayla’s baskets were a desirable item. For people who traveled with things, which traders did, well-made containers were a necessity. Ayla spent the first evening they were camped there making more baskets. Jondalar’s flint points and tools were also well liked. Will

amar’s skill and experience as a trader came to the fore. He organized all of them into a trading bloc and included Conardi in it.

He would offer combinations of things, often to more than one person, like a supply of dry meat and a basket to carry it in. He acquired many shells for beads, and was grateful to have some of Ayla’s baskets in which to hold them. He also got salt for Ayla and a necklace for Marthona made by one of the shell collectors, and some other things that he wasn’t telling everyone about.

Once they were done with their trading, they began the return trip. They traveled faster than their initial journey. For one thing, they knew the way, and they weren’t stopping to visit or to see painted caves. And the changing weather was pushing them. They were well stocked with provisions, so they didn’t have to hunt as often. They did go to visit Camora again. She was very disappointed to learn that Kimeran had changed his plans and was staying with his mate’s people. She and Jondecam were talking about him as though he were gone for good until the First reminded them that he did plan to return.

They had to wait again when they reached Big River because a storm had made the crossing too difficult until it settled down again. It was an anxious time because they didn’t want to be stranded on the wrong side of the river for the season. Finally it cleared up and they made the crossing, although it was still rough. Once they reached The River they could hardly wait. They had to walk upstream because there were no rafts, and it would have been too strenuous to try to paddle upstream in any case.

When they finally spied the huge stone shelter that was the Ninth Cave, they were ready to break into a run, but they didn’t have to. Lookouts had been posted to watch for them, and a signal fire was lit when they were spotted. Nearly the entire community of Caves turned out to meet them and welcome them back home.

Part Three