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

But the animal wasn’t biting him, he was licking him. Then he saw the ear cocked at a jaunty angle. It was not a wild wolf, he realized. “Wolf! Is it you? What are you doing here?” He sat up and had to fend off the exuberant advances of the excited animal. He sat for a while, petting the wolf and scratching him behind his ears, trying to calm him down. “Why aren’t you with Jonayla, or Ayla? Why did you follow me all this way?” Jondalar said, beginning to have the inkling of alarm.

When he stood up and started on his way again, Wolf pranced nervously in front of him, then back in the direction he had come. “Do you want to go back, Wolf? Well, go ahead. You can go back.” But when Jondalar started out again, the wolf jumped in front of him again. “What is it, Wolf?” Jondalar looked up at the sky, and for the first time noticed that the sun was well past its high point. “Do you want me to go back with you?”

“Yes, that’s what he wants, Jondalar,” Danug said.

“Danug! What are you doing here?” Jondalar said.

“Looking for you.”

“Looking for me? Why?”

“It’s Ayla, Jondalar. You have to come back right away.”

“Ayla? What’s wrong, Danug?”

“Remember that root? The one she made into juice for her and Mamut? She did it again, to show Zelandoni, but this time she drank it herself. No one can wake her up. Not even Jonayla. The Donier says you have to come right away, or Ayla will die and her spirit will be lost forever,” Danug said.

Jondalar turned white. “No! Not that root! O, Great Mother, don’t let her die. Please don’t let her die,” he said, and started running back the way he had come.

If he had been preoccupied on his way out, it was nothing compared to his single-minded intensity as he raced back. He tore along the edge of The River, scrambling through brush that tore at his bare legs and arms, and face. He didn’t feel them. He ran until he was gasping for breath that rasped his throat raw, until he felt a pain in his side that was like a hot knife, until his legs knotted and ached. He hardly felt any of it; the pain in his mind was more. He even outdistanced Danug; only the wolf kept pace.

He couldn’t believe how far he had come, and worse, how long it was taking him to get back. He slowed once or twice to catch his breath, but never stopped, and put on an extra burst of speed when the brush thinned out as he neared the Campsite.

“Where is she?” he asked the first person he saw.

“The zelandonia lodge,” came the answer.

The whole Summer Meeting had been looking for him, waiting for him, and as he raced toward the lodge, several people actually cheered. He didn’t hear it, and he didn’t stop until he crashed through the entrance drape and saw her lying on the bed surrounded by lamps. And then, all he could do was gasp out her name.

“Ayla!”

41

Jondalar could hardly breathe, and every time he gasped for air, his throat felt raw. Sweat was pouring off him. He was bent over double from the pain in his side. His legs shook and could hardly support him as he approached the bed at the back of the lodge. Wolf had pressed in beside him, and with lolling tongue was panting heavily, too.

“Here, Jondalar, sit,” Zelandoni said, standing up and giving him her own stool. She could see his extreme stress, and knew he must have run a great distance. “Get him some water,” she said to the nearest acolyte. “Some for the wolf, too.”

As he neared, he could see that Ayla’s skin had a deathly gray pallor. “Ayla, oh, Ayla, why did you do it again?” he rasped, barely able to speak. “You know you almost died last time.” He drank from the cup that was handed to him as a reflex, hardly realizing someone had given it to him. Then he literally climbed onto the bed. He pushed back the covers, picked Ayla up, and held her in his arms, shocked at how chilled she was. “She’s so cold,” he said, with a sobbing hiccup. He didn’t know tears were streaming down his face. He wouldn’t have cared if he did.

The wolf looked at the two people on the bed, lifted his muzzle into the air, and howled, a long eerie wolfsong that sent chills down the backs of the zelandonia who were in the lodge, and the people who were outside. It stunned the ones who were chanting, causing them to miss a pulse, and stop the continuous fugue for a heartbeat. It was only then that Jondalar became conscious of the zelandonia chanting. Then Wolf put his front paws on the bed, and whined for her attention.

“Ayla, Ayla, please come back to me,” Jondalar pleaded. “You can’t die. Who will give me a son? Oh, Ayla, what a thing to say. I don’t care if you give me a son. It’s you I want. I love you. I don’t even care if you never talk to me again, just so I can look at you sometimes. Please come back to me. O Great Mother, send her back. Please send her back. I’ll do anything you want, just don’t take her away from me.”

Zelandoni watched the tall, handsome man, face, chest, arms, and legs scratched and in places bleeding, sitting on the bed holding the nearly lifeless woman in his arms like a baby, rocking back and forth, tears streaming down his face, crying for her to come back. She hadn’t seen him cry since he was a small boy. Jondalar didn’t cry. He fought to control his emotions, keep them to himself. Very few people had ever gotten really close to him, except his family and her, and even then, once he reached manhood, there was always some distance, some reserve.

After he returned from his stay with Dalanar, she had often wondered if he would ever really love a woman again, and blamed herself. She knew he still loved her then, and she had been tempted, more than once, to give up the zelandonia and mate him, but as time went along and she never became pregnant, she knew she had made the right choice. She felt sure he would mate someday, and though she had often doubted that he would be capable of giving himself completely to any woman, Jondalar needed children. Children could be loved freely, completely, without reservation, and he needed to love like that.

She had been genuinely happy for him when he returned from his Journey with a woman whom he obviously loved, a woman who was worthy of his love. But she hadn’t realized until then just how much he did love her. The First felt a small twinge of guilt. Maybe she shouldn’t have pushed Ayla so hard to become Zelandoni. Maybe she should have just left the two of them alone. But it was the Mother’s choice, after all.

“She’s so cold. Why is she so cold?” Jondalar said. He stretched her out on the bed, lay down next to her, then half covered her naked body with his own, and pulled the furs over both of them. The wolf jumped up on the bed with them, crowding in close to her other side. Jondalar’s heat filled the space quickly and the wolf’s helped to hold it in. The man held her for a long time, looking at her, kissing her pale, still face, talking to her, pleading with her, begging the Mother for her, until finally his voice, his tears, and heat of his body and the wolf’s began to penetrate her coldest depths.

Ayla wept silently. “You did it! You did it!” the people chanted, accusing her. Then only Jondalar stood there. She heard a wolf howl nearby.

“I’m sorry, Jondalar,” she cried. “I’m sorry I hurt you.”

He held out his arms to her. “Ayla,” he gasped. “Give me a son. I love you.”

She started toward the figure of Jondalar standing beside Wolf, and walked between them; then she felt something pulling. Suddenly she was moving, faster, much faster than before, though she felt rooted in place. The mysterious alien clouds appeared and were gone in an instant, yet seemed to take forever. The deep black void swooped by, engulfing her in an unearthly black emptiness that went on endlessly. She fell through the mist, and for a moment saw herself and Jondalar in a bed surrounded by lamps. Then she was inside a frigid, clammy shell. She struggled to move, but she was so stiff, so cold. Finally, her eyelids flickered. She opened her eyes and looked into the tearstained face of the man she loved, and a moment later felt the warm, licking tongue of the wolf.