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

es. She tried to compose herself and began repeating the words to the Mother’s Song to calm herself. It was still her favorite, but as she repeated the verses to herself, she only felt more tension.

“Why am I so jittery? I wonder if a storm is coming. That sometimes makes me tense,” she said to herself. She realized she was talking to herself. Perhaps I should meditate, she thought. That should help me relax. Maybe I’ll make a cup of tea.

She went back to the place where she had been sitting, stirred up the fire, filled a small cooking container with water from her waterbag, and sorted through the collection of herbs she kept in a medicine bag attached to her waist thong. She kept the dried leaves in packets, tied with various types and thicknesses of cord and twine, with various numbers of knots tied on the ends, so she could distinguish between them, the way Iza had taught her.

As she felt the various packets in the simple leather pouch, even with a fire and moonlight, it was too dark to see the differences, and she had to distinguish between the various herbs and medicines by feel and smell alone. She recalled her first medicine bag, given to her by Iza. It had been made from the entire waterproof hide of an otter with its innards removed through the large opening in the neck. She had made several reproductions of it and still had the last version of it that she had made. Though worn and shabby, she couldn’t bear to throw it out. She had thought about making a new one again. It was a Clan medicine bag, and displayed a unique power. Even Zelandoni had been impressed when she first saw it, realizing it was special just from the look of it.

Ayla selected a couple of packets. Most of her herbs were medicinal, but some only mildly so and posed no harm if drunk for pleasure, such as mint or chamomile, which were good for soothing upset stomachs and aiding digestion, but were tasty in their own right. She decided on a mint mixture that included an herb to help her relax, and felt for the packet and sniffed it. It definitely was mint. Pouring some into the palm of her hand, she added it to the steaming water, and after it had steeped for a while, she poured herself a cup. She drank it down, partly for thirst, and then poured a second cup to sip on. The taste seemed a little off; she would have to get some fresher mint, she thought, but it wasn’t that bad, and she was still thirsty.

When she finished it, she composed herself, then began to breathe deeply, the way she had been taught. Slowly, deeply, she said to herself. Think of Clear, think of the color called Clear, of a clear creek running over round stones, think of a clear cloudless sky with only the light of the sun, think of emptiness.

She found herself staring at the moon, less than a quarter last time she looked, but now big and round in the night sky. It seemed to grow larger, filling her vision, and she felt herself being pulled into it faster and faster. She tore her eyes away from the moon and got up.

She walked slowly toward the large, tilted boulder. “That stone is glowing! No, I’m imagining things again. It’s just the moonlight. It’s a different kind of stone from the rest; maybe it just shines more in the light of a full moon,” she said out loud.

She closed her eyes, it seemed for a long time. When she opened them, the moon attracted her again; the large full moon was drawing her in. Then she looked around. She was flying! Flying without wind or sound. She looked down. The cliff and river were gone and the land below was unfamiliar. For an instant she thought she would fall. She felt dizzy. Everything was spinning. Bright colors formed a vortex of shimmering light around her, spinning faster and faster.

Ayla came to a sudden halt and was back on the top of the cliff again. She found herself concentrating on the moon, big and huge, and growing larger, filling her vision. She was pulled into it, and then she was flying again, flying the way she had done when she used to assist Mamut. She looked down and saw the stone. It was alive, glowing with spirals of pulsating light. She was drawn toward it, felt captured by the movement. She stared as lines of energy, emerging from the ground, wound around the huge, perilously balanced column, then disappeared into a corona of light at the top. She was floating just above the glowing rock, staring down into it.

It was brighter than the moon and lighted the landscape around it. No wind blew, not the slightest breeze, no leaf or branch stirred, but the ground and the air around her were alive with movement, filled with shapes and shadows flitting about, fleeting, insubstantial forms darting in random motion, glowing with faint energy akin to the light from the stone. As she watched, their motion took shape, developed purpose. The shapes were coming toward her, coming after her! She felt a tingling sensation; her hair rose straight up. Suddenly she was scrambling down the steep path, stumbling and slipping with fear. When she reached the abri, she ran toward the porch, lit by the moonlight.

Lying beside Marthona’s bed where he had been told to stay, Wolf raised his head and whimpered.

Ayla raced across the porch toward Down River, then down to The River, and followed the path along it. She felt charged with energy, and ran now for the joy of it, no longer chased, but pulled by some incomprehensible attraction. She splashed across the river at the Crossing, and kept going, it seemed forever. She was approaching a tall cliff that jutted out by itself, a familiar cliff, yet totally unfamiliar.

She came to an inclined path and started climbing, her breath tearing from her throat in ragged gasps, but she was unable to stop. At the top of the path was the dark hole of a cave. She ran into it, into a black so thick she could almost grasp it in her hands, then stumbled on the uneven floor and fell heavily. Her head hit the stone wall.

When she woke, there was no light; she was in a long black tunnel, but somehow she could see. The walls glowed with faint iridescence. Moisture glistened. When she sat up, her head hurt, and for a moment she could only see red. She felt as though the walls were racing past her, but she hadn’t moved. Then the iridescence shimmered again, and it was no longer dark. The rock walls glowed with eerie color, fluorescent greens, glowing reds, lustrous blues, pale luminous whites.

She got up and stood next to the wall, and felt the slick cold wetness as she followed the wall, which became an icy blue-green. She was no longer in a cave, but in a sheer crevasse deep in a glacier. Large plane surfaces reflected fleeting, darting, ephemeral shapes. Above her the sky was a deep purple blue. A glaring sun blinded her, and her head hurt. The sun came closer and filled the crevasse with light, but it was a crevasse no longer.

She was in a swirling river, being carried along in its current. Objects floated past, caught in eddies and whirling back-currents that turned faster and faster. She was caught in a whirlpool, turning, turning, round and round. It sucked her down. In a vertigo of spinning motion, the river closed over her head, and everything was black.

She was in a deep, empty, wrenching void, flying; flying faster than she could comprehend. Then her motion slowed and she found herself in a deep fog that glowed with light closing in on her. The fog opened to reveal a strange landscape. Geometric shapes in fluorescent greens, glowing reds, lustrous blues repeated themselves over and over again. Unfamiliar structures rose high in the air. Broad ribbons of white rolled out along the ground, luminous white, full of shapes speeding along it, speeding after her.

She was petrified with fear and felt a tickle probing the edge of her mind that seemed to recognize her. She shrank back, pulled away, feeling her way along the wall as fast as she could. She came to an end as panic filled her. She dropped down to the ground and felt a hole ahead. It was a small hole she could enter only by crawling. She skinned her knees on the rough ground, but didn’t notice. The hole grew smaller; she could go no farther. Then she was speeding through a void again, so fast she lost all sense of motion.

She wasn’t moving; the black around her was. It closed in, smothering her, drowning her, and she was in the river again and the current was pulling her. She was tired, exhausted; the river drew her into the current as it raced toward the sea, the warm sea. She felt a sharp pain deep inside, and felt the warm, salty waters flooding around her. She breathed in the smell

of it, the taste of the waters, and felt she was floating peacefully in the tepid liquid.

But it wasn’t water, it was mud. She gasped for breath as she tried to crawl out of the slime; then the beast that was chasing her grabbed her. She doubled up and cried out with pain as it crushed her. She was burrowing though the mud, trying to crawl out of the deep hole the crushing beast had pulled her into, trying to escape.

Then she was free, climbing a tree, swinging from its branches, driven by drought and thirst to the edge of the sea. She plunged in, embraced the water, and grew larger, more buoyant. Finally standing upright, she gazed out at a vast grassland and waded toward it.

But the water dragged against her. She fought to haul herself from the resistant tide; then exhausted, she collapsed. Waves lapping on the shore washed over her legs, pulling her back. She felt the pull, the pain, the grievous, wrenching, tearing pain that threatened to pull her insides out. With a gush of warm liquid, she gave in to the demand.

She crawled a little farther, leaned back against a wall, closed her eyes, and saw a rich steppeland, bright with spring flowers. A cave lion loped toward her in slow, graceful motion. She was in a tiny cave, crunched into a small declivity. She grew to fill the cave as the cave expanded. The walls breathed, expanding, contracting, and she was in a womb, a huge black womb deep in the earth. But she was not alone.

Their forms were vague, transparent; then the shapes coalesced into recognizable forms. Animals, every kind of animal she had ever seen, and birds, and fish, and insects, and some she was sure she had never seen before. They formed a procession, without order or pattern, one seeming to flow into the other. An animal became a bird or a fish, or another bird or animal or insect. A caterpillar became a lizard, then a bird, which grew into a cave lion.

The lion stood and waited for her to follow. Together they went through passages, tunnels, corridors, the walls becoming shapes that thickened and took form as they approached, and grew translucent, fading into the wall as they passed. A procession of woolly mammoths lumbered along through a vast, grassy steppe; then a herd of bison overtook them, and formed their own rank in their place.

She watched two reindeer approach each other. They touched noses; then the female dropped down to her knees, and the male reached down and licked her. Ayla was moved by the tender scene; then her attention was drawn by two horses, male and female. The female was in heat and moved in front of the male, making herself available as he prepared to mount.

She turned in another direction and followed the lion down another long corridor. At the end of the tunnel, she came to a rather large, rounded womb-like niche. She heard a distant pounding that drew closer as a bison herd appeared and filled the niche. They stopped to rest and graze.

But the pounding continued; the walls were throbbing in a slow, steady beat. The hard rock floor seemed to give under her feet and the throbbing became a deep, earthy voice, at first so faint she could hardly detect it. Then it grew louder and she recognized the sound. It was the talking drum of the Mamutoi! Only among the mammoth hunters had she ever heard a drum like that.