The Land of Painted Caves (6 page)

Ayla was adept at reading body language, but she thought anyone could have understood what had just transpired. Jondalar found Beladora attractive, and couldn’t help showing it, just as she couldn’t help responding to him. Jondalar was unaware of his own charisma, didn’t even realize he projected it, but Beladora’s mate was very aware of it. Without saying a word, Kimeran had stepped in and made his claim known.

Ayla observed the byplay and was so intrigued that even though Jondalar was her mate, she didn’t feel any jealousy. She did, however, begin to appreciate the comments she had been hearing about him ever since they had arrived. At a deeper level she knew that Jondalar was only appreciating; he had no desire to do more than look. There was another side to him, one that he rarely showed even to her, and then only when they were alone.

Jondalar’s emotions had always been too strong, his passions too great. All his life he had struggled to control them and had finally managed only by learning to keep his feelings to himself. It was not easy for him to show the full intensity of his feelings. That was why he never displayed publicly the depth of his love for her, but sometimes when they were alone he couldn’t control it. It was so powerful, it sometimes overwhelmed him.

When Ayla turned her head, she noticed Zelandoni Who Was First observing her, and understood that she, too, had been aware of the unspoken interactions and was trying to judge her response. Ayla gave her a knowing smile, then turned her attention to her baby, who was squirming in her carrying blanket, trying to find a way to nurse. She approached the handsome young mother who was standing beside Jayvena.

“Greetings, Beladora. I am glad to see you, especially with your children,” she said. “Jonayla has soaked her padding. I brought some extra to replace it; would you show me where I can change it?”

The woman with a baby on each hip smiled. “Come with me,” she said, and the three women started toward the shelter.

Beladora had heard people talk about Ayla’s unusual accent, but she hadn’t really heard her speak before. She was in labor during the Matrimonial when Jondalar mated his foreign woman, and she’d had little occasion to talk to Ayla later. She was busy with her own concerns, but now she knew what they meant. Though Ayla spoke Zelandonii very well, she just couldn’t make some of the sounds exactly right, but Beladora was rather pleased to hear her. She had come from a region far to the south, and though her speech wasn’t as unusual as Ayla’s, she spoke Zelandonii with her own distinctive accent.

Ayla smiled when she heard her talk. “I think you were not born a Zelandonii,” she said. “Just as I was not.”

“My people are known as the Giornadonii. We are neighbors of a Cave of Zelandonii far south of here, where it’s much warmer.” Beladora smiled. “I met Kimeran when he traveled with his sister on her Donier Tour.”

Ayla wondered what a “Donier Tour” was. Obviously, it had something to do with being a Zelandoni, since “donier” was another word for One Who Served The Great Mother, but Ayla decided she would ask the First later.

   The fire’s lambent flames cast a comforting ruddy glow beyond the confines of the oblong hearth that contained it, and painted a warm dancing light on the limestone walls of the abri. The rock ceiling of the overhanging ledge above the fire reflected the glowing hue down on the scene, giving the people a radiant look of well-being. A delicious communal meal that had taken many people a great deal of time and effort to prepare had been consumed, including a huge haunch of megaceros roasted on a sturdy spit stretched across large forked branches over that same extended rectangular firepit. Now the Seventh Cave of the Zelandonii along with many relatives from the Second Cave and their visitors from the Ninth and Third Caves were ready to relax.

Beverages had been offered: several varieties of tea, a fermented fruity wine, and the alcoholic brew called barma made from birch sap, with additions of wild grains, honey, or various fruits. They had each taken a cup of their favorite drink, and were milling about, looking for a place to sit near the welcoming hearth. A heightened feeling of anticipation and delight permeated the group. Visitors always brought a bit of excitement, but the foreign woman with her animals and exotic stories promised to be more stimulating than usual.

Ayla and Jondalar were in the midst of a group that included Joharran and Proleva, Sergenor and Jayvena, and Kimeran and Beladora, the leaders of the Ninth, Seventh and Second Caves, and several others, including Levela and Janida and their mates, Jondecam and Peridal. The leaders were discussing with the people of the Seventh Cave when the visitors should leave Horsehead Rock and go to Elder Hearth, with jocular asides, in a friendly rivalry with the Second Cave about where the visitors should stay the longest.

“Elder Hearth is senior and should be higher ranking and accorded more prestige,” Kimeran said with a teasing grin. “So we should have them longer.”

“Does that mean because I’m older than you, I should be accorded more prestige?” Sergenor countered with a telling smile. “I’ll remember that.”

Ayla had been listening and smiling with the rest, but she had been wanting to ask a question. At a break in the conversation, she finally said, “Now that you have brought up the ages of the Caves, there is something I would like to know.” They all turned to look at her.

“You have only to ask,” Kimeran said with exaggerated courtesy and friendliness that intimated the suggestion of more. He had drunk a few cups of barma and was noticing how attractive his tall friend’s mate was.

“Last summer Manvelar was telling me a little about the counting-word names of each Cave, but I’m still confused,” Ayla said. “When we went to the Summer Meeting last year, we stopped overnight at the Twenty-ninth Cave. They live at three separate shelters around a big valley, each with a leader and a zelandoni, but they are all called by the same counting word, the Twenty-ninth. The Second Cave is closely related to the Seventh Cave, and you live just across a valley, so why do you have a Cave with a different counting word? Why aren’t you part of the Second Cave?”

“That’s one I can’t answer. I don’t know,” Kimeran said, then gestured toward the older man. “You’ll have to ask the more senior leader. Sergenor?”

Sergenor smiled, but pondered the question for a moment. “To be honest, I don’t know, either. It never occurred to me before. And I don’t know of any Histories or Elder Legends that tell about it. There are some that tell stories of the original inhabitants of the region, the First Cave of the Zelandonii, but they have long since disappeared. No one even knows for sure where their shelter was.”

“You do know that the Second Cave of the Zelandonii is the oldest settlement of Zelandonii still in existence?” Kimeran said, his voice slightly slurred. “That’s why it’s called Elder Hearth.”

“Yes, I knew that,” she said, wondering if he would need the “morning after” drink she had concocted for Talut, the Mamutoi leader of the Lion Camp.

“I’ll tell you what I think,” Sergenor said. “As the families of the First and Second Caves grew too large for their shelters, some of them, offshoots of both Caves as well as new people who had come into the region, moved farther away, taking the next counting words when they established a new Cave. By the time the group of people from the Second Cave who founded our Cave decided to move, the next unused counting word was ‘seven.’ They were mostly young families—some newly mated couples, the children of the Second Cave—and they wanted to stay close to their relatives, so they moved here, just across Sweet Valley, to make their new home. Even though the two Caves were so closely related, they were the same as one Cave, I think they chose a new number because that’s the way it was done. So we became two separate Caves: Elder Hearth, the Second Cave of the Zelandonii, and Horsehead Rock, the Seventh Cave. We are still just different branches of the same family.”

“The Twenty-ninth is a newer Cave,” Sergenor continued. “When they moved to their new shelters, I suspect they all wanted to keep the same counting-word name, because the smaller the counting word, the older the settlement. There is a certain prestige in having a lower counting word and Twenty-nine was rather large already. I suspect none of the people founding the new Caves wanted a larger one. They decided to call themselves Three Rocks, the Twenty-ninth Cave of the Zelandonii, and then use the names they had already given to the locations to explain the difference.

“The original settlement is called Reflection Rock, because from certain places you can see yourself in the water below. It is one of the few shelters that face north and is not quite as easy to keep warm, but it is a remarkable place and has many other advantages. It is the South Holding of the Twenty-ninth Cave, or sometimes the South Holding of Three Rocks. South Face became the North Holding, and Summer Camp became the West Holding of the Twenty-ninth Cave. I think their way is more complicated and confusing, but it’s their choice.”

“If the Second Cave is the oldest, then the next-oldest group still in existence must be Two Rivers Rock, the Third Cave of the Zelandonii. We stayed there last night,” Ayla said, nodding as she understood more.

“That’s right,” Proleva said, joining in.

“But there is no Fourth Cave, is there?”

“There was a Fourth Cave,” Proleva replied, “but no one seems to know what happened to it. There are Legends that hint at some catastrophe that struck more than one Cave, and the Fourth may have disappeared around that time, but no one knows. It’s a dark time in the Histories, too. Some fighting with the Flatheads is inferred.”

“The Fifth Cave, called Old Valley, upstream along The River, is next after the Third,” Jondalar said. “We were going to visit them on our way to the Summer Meeting last year, but they had already left, remember?” Ayla nodded. “They have several shelters on both sides of Short River Valley, some for living, some for storage, but they don’t give them separate counting words. All of Old Valley is the Fifth Cave.”

“The Sixth Cave has disappeared, too,” Sergenor continued. “There are different stories about what happened to it. Most people think illness reduced their numbers. Others believe there was a difference of opinion between factions. In any case, the Histories indicate that the people who had once been the Sixth Cave joined up with other Caves, so we, the Seventh Cave, are next. There is no Eighth Cave, either, so your Cave, the Ninth, comes after ours.”

There was a moment of silence while the information was absorbed. Then, changing the subject, Jondecam asked Jondalar if he would look at the spear-thrower he had made, and Levela told her older sister, Proleva, that she was thinking about going to the Ninth Cave to have her baby, which elicited a smile. People started having private conversations and soon split up into other groups.

Jondecam was not the only one who wanted to ask questions about the spear-thrower, especially after learning about the lion hunt the day before. Jondalar had developed the hunting weapon while he lived with Ayla in her eastern valley and had demonstrated it shortly after he had returned to his home the previous summer. He had held further exhibitions at the Summer Meeting.

Earlier in the afternoon, when Jondalar was waiting for Ayla to visit Horsehead cave, several had practiced casting spears with throwers they had made, patterned after the ones they had seen him use, while Jondalar gave them instructions and advice. Now a group of people, primarily men but including some women, were gathered around him, asking questions about the techniques of making spear-throwers, and the lightweight spears that had proved to be so effective with it.

Across the hearth, near the wall that helped contain the heat, several women who had babies, Ayla among them, were gathered together feeding, rocking, or keeping an eye on sleeping ones while they chatted.

In a separate, more isolated area of the shelter, Zelandoni Who Was First had been talking with the other Zelandonia and their acolytes, feeling just a little annoyed that Ayla, who was her acolyte, had not joined them. She knew she had pushed her into it, but Ayla was already an accomplished healer when she had arrived, and had other remarkable skills besides, including knowing how to control animals. She belonged in the zelandonia!

The Zelandoni of the Seventh had asked the First a question and was waiting for an answer with a patient expression. He had noticed that the Zelandoni of the Ninth Cave seemed distracted and a bit annoyed. He had been observing her since the visitors had arrived and had seen her irritation grow, and guessed why. When Zelandonia visited each other with their acolytes, it was a good time to teach the novices some of the knowledge and lore they had to learn and memorize, and her acolyte was not here. But, he thought, if the First was going to choose an acolyte who had a mate and a new baby, she had to know her full attention would not be devoted to the zelandonia.

“Excuse me for a moment,” the First said, pulling herself up from a mat on a low stone ledge and walking toward the group of chattering young mothers. “Ayla,” she said, smiling. She was adept at hiding her true feelings. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but the Zelandoni of the Seventh Cave just asked me a question about setting broken bones, and I thought you might have some thoughts to contribute.”

“Of course, Zelandoni,” she said. “Let me get Jonayla; she’s right over there.”

Ayla got up, but hesitated when she looked down at her sleeping baby. Wolf looked up at her and whined, beating his tail against the ground. He was lying beside the infant that he considered to be his special charge. Wolf had been the last of the litter of a lone wolf that Ayla had killed for stealing from her traps, before she knew it was a nursing mother. She had tracked back to the den, found one living cub, and had brought him back with her. He had grown up in the close confines of the Mamutoi winter dwelling. He was so young when she found him—he would have counted perhaps four weeks—that he had imprinted on humans, and he adored the youngsters, especially the young one born to Ayla.

“I hate to disturb her. She just fell asleep. She’s not used to visiting and has been overexcited this evening,” Ayla said.