The Land of Painted Caves (97 page)

“Your hair is wet, mother,” Jonayla said, squirming out of the way.

“I just washed it,” Ayla said, petting the large wolf, who had come to greet her. She took the handsome head between her hands, looked deeply into his eyes, then hugged him with fervor. When she stood up, the wolf looked up at her with anticipation. She patted the front of her shoulders. He jumped up, steadied himself with his paws on her shoulders, licked her neck and face, then took her jaw gently in his teeth and held it. When he let go, she returned the wolf signal of pack membership, taking his muzzle in her teeth for a moment. She hadn’t done that for a while and Ayla thought he seemed pleased.

Proleva let out the breath she’d been holding when Wolf dropped down. That particular bit of wolfish behavior from Ayla was disturbing no matter how many times she saw it. Watching the woman exposing her neck to the teeth of the huge wolf always unnerved her, and made her realize that the friendly, well-behaved animal was a powerful wolf who could easily kill any one of the humans he mingled with so freely.

After she caught her breath and settled her apprehensions, Proleva commented, “Help yourself, Ayla. There’s plenty. This morning’s meal was easy to make. There was a lot left over from yesterday’s feast. I’m glad we decided to make a meal together with the Lanzadonii. I liked working with Jerika and Joplaya, and several of the other women. I feel as though I know them better now.”

Ayla felt a pang of regret. She wished she hadn’t been so busy with the zelandonia; she would have liked to help with the feast. Working together was a good way to get to know people better. Being wrapped up in her own problems didn’t help either; she could have gotten there earlier, she thought, as she picked up one of the extra cups that were set out for those who forgot their own, and dipped a cup of chamomile tea from the large, kerfed wooden cooking box. Tea was always the first thing made in the morning.

“The aurochs is particularly good and juicy, Ayla. They’ve started to put on their winter fat, and Proleva just reheated it. You should try some,” Marthona urged, noticing that she wasn’t taking any food. “Food holders are over there.” She indicated a stack of odd-sized but generally flat pieces of wood, bone, and ivory that were used as plates.

Trees that had been felled and broken for firewood often produced large splinters that could be quickly trimmed and smoothed into plates and dishes; shoulder and pelvic bones from various deer, bison, and aurochs were roughly shaped to a reasonable size for the same purpose. The tusks of mammoths could be chipped off, much like flint, but making much larger flakes that were used for plates as well.

Mammoth ivory could even be preshaped by cutting a circular groove first with a burin chisel. Then, using a solid endpiece of antler or horn with the pointed tip held at just the right angle in the groove of the circle, and with practice and a bit of luck, a blow from a hammerstone on the back of it would detach an ivory flake with the precut shape. But that much work was usually done only for objects meant to be given as gifts or for other special purposes. Such preshaped flakes of ivory with smooth, slightly rounded outside surfaces could be used for more than dishes. Decorative images could be etched on them.

“Thank you, Marthona, but I have to get some things and go to see Zelandoni,” Ayla said. Suddenly she stopped and hunkered down in front of the older woman, who was sitting on a small stool woven together out of reeds, cattail leaves, and flexible branches. “I really do want to thank you, for being so kind to me since the first day I arrived. I don’t remember my own mother, only Iza, the Clan woman who raised me, but I like to think that my real mother would have been like you.”

“I think of you as a daughter, Ayla,” Marthona said, more moved than she would have expected. “My son was lucky to find you”; then she shook her head slightly. “Sometimes I wish he were more like you.”

Ayla hugged her, then turned to Proleva. “Thank you, too, Proleva. You’ve been such a good friend to me, and I appreciate, more than I can say, the way you’ve taken care of Jonayla when I had to stay back at the Ninth Cave, and when I’ve been busy here.” She hugged Proleva too. “I wish Folara were here, but I know she’s busy with the preparations for her Matrimonial. I think Aldanor is a good man. I’m so happy for her. I have to go now,” she said suddenly, hugged her daughter again, then hurried to the dwelling, misty-eyed with the tears she was holding back.

“I wonder what that was all about,” Proleva said.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think she almost sounded like she was saying good-bye,” Marthona said.

“Is mother going someplace, ’Thona?” Jonayla asked.

“I don’t think so. At least no one has said anything to me.”

   Ayla stayed in the summer dwelling for a while making preparations. First she cut out a roughly circular shape from the belly of the skin of the red deer she had brought with her to the Summer Meeting. She had found the soft buckskin hide the day before folded up on her sleeping roll. When she asked Jonayla who had cured the deer skin, she was told, “Everybody did.”

Cordage, fibrous rope, twine, thread, tough sinew, and strips of leather thong, in various sizes, were always useful and easy to make without having to think about it, once the techniques were learned. Most people busied themselves making things when they were sitting around talking or listening to stories, out of materials that were collected whenever they were found. So there was always some cordage around for anyone to use. Ayla got some strips of leather thong and a long piece of thin, flexible rope that were hanging on pegs pounded into posts near the entrance. After she had cut off the belly part into a circular shape, she folded the rest of the hide, then coiled up the rope and put it on top. She measured out a length of the leather thong around her neck, added additional length, then threaded it through the holes she cut around the edge of the leather circle.

She seldom wore her amulet anymore, not even her more modern one. Most Zelandonii wore necklaces, and it was hard to wear a lumpy leather pouch and a necklace at the same time. Instead, she usually kept her amulet in her medicine bag, which she customarily wore attached to a belt or waist thong. It wasn’t a Clan medicine bag. She had thought about making another one several times, but never seemed to find the time. Releasing the drawstring that held her medicine bag closed, she searched inside and pulled out the small decorated pouch, her amulet, that was full of odd-shaped objects. She undid the knots and poured the strange collection of objects into her hand. They were the signs from her totem that signified important moments in her life. Most of them were given to her by the Spirit of the Great Cave Lion after she had made a critical decision as a sign that she had made the right choice, but not all.

The piece of red ocher that was the first object to go into the bag was worn smooth. It was given to her by Iza when she was accepted into the Clan. Ayla put it into the new amulet. The piece of black manganese dioxide that was given to her when she became a medicine woman was also worn down just from being inside the small pouch with the other objects for so long. The red and black material that was often used for coloration had left its residue on the other objects in the pouch. The mineral objects could be brushed off, such as the fossil cast of a seashell, the sign from her totem that her decision to hunt was proper for her, even though she was female.

He must have known even then that I would need to hunt if I was going to survive, she thought. My Cave Lion even told Brun to let me hunt, although then, only with the sling. The disk of mammoth ivory, her hunting talisman that had been given to her when she was declared the Woman Who Hunts, had absorbed color that couldn’t be brushed off, mostly red from the ocher.

She picked up the piece of iron pyrite and rubbed it against her tunic. It was her favorite sign; it was the one that told her she had been right to run away with Durc. If she hadn’t, he would have been exposed without anyone thinking any more about it, since he had been judged deformed. When she took him and hid, knowing she could die as well, it made Brun and Creb stop and think.

The colored dust clung to the clear quartz crystal but didn’t discolor it; that was the sign she found that told her she had made the right decision to stop looking for her people and stay in the valley of horses for a while. It always bothered her when she saw the black manganese stone. She picked it up again and held it in her closed fist. It held the spirits of all the people of the Clan. She had exchanged a piece of her spirit for it so that when she saved someone’s life they incurred no obligation to her, since she already had a piece of everyone’s spirit.

When Iza died, Creb, the Mog-ur, had taken her medicine woman stone from her before she was buried so she would not take the entire Clan to the spirit world with her, but no one took her stone when Broud cursed her with death. Goov had not been Mog-ur for very long, and it came as such a shock to everyone when Broud did it; no one remembered to get the stone from her, and she forgot to return it. What would happen to the Clan if she still had the stone when she passed to the next world?

She put all of her totem’s signs into the new pouch, and knew she would keep them there from then on. It felt right for her Clan totem signs to be in a Clan amulet pouch. As she pulled the drawstring tight, she wondered, as she often had, why she had never been given a sign from her totem when she decided to leave the Mamutoi and go with Jondalar. Had she already become a child of the Mother? Had the Mother told her totem she didn’t need a sign? Had she been given a more subtle sign that she didn’t recognize? Or—a new and more frightening thought came to her—had she made the wrong decision? She felt a cold chill. For the first time in a long time, Ayla clutched her amulet and sent a silent thought asking for his protection to the spirit of the Great Cave Lion.

When she left the temporary dwelling, Ayla was carrying a folded-up buckskin hide, a leather rucksack lumpy with the objects it held, and her Clan medicine bag. There were several more people around the campfire, and she waved to them as she left, but it wasn’t the usual beckoning, “come-back” motion with her palm facing inward, toward herself, which commonly signified a temporary separation, acknowledging that she would see them soon. She had raised her hand, palm facing out, and moved it slightly from side to side. Marthona frowned at the signal.

As she started walking upstream along the small river, a quicker way toward the cave she had found a few years before, Ayla was beginning to wonder whether she should go through with this ceremony. Yes, Zelandoni would be disappointed, and so would the rest of the zelandonia who were preparing to assist, but it was more dangerous than they realized. When she agreed to the ceremony the day before, she had been so depressed, she didn’t care if she got lost in the black void, but she was feeling better this morning, especially after her bath in The River, and seeing Jonayla, and Wolf, not to mention Marthona and Proleva. She wasn’t as ready to face that terrifying black void now. Maybe she should tell Zelandoni that she had changed her mind.

She hadn’t thought about the danger she was facing while she was making her preliminary preparations, but she had felt uncomfortable about her inability to perform all of the rituals in the proper way. That was a very important aspect of Clan ceremony, unlike the Zelandonii, who were more tolerant of deviation. Even the words of the Mother’s Song varied slightly from Cave to Cave, which was a favored topic of discussion among the zelandonia, and that was the most important Elder Legend of all.

If such a Legend had been a sacred part of Clan ceremonies, it would have been memorized and recited in precisely the same way every time it was repeated, at least among the clans that had regular direct contact with each other. Even those clans from distant regions would have had a version that was very close. That was why she could communicate in the sacred sign language of the Clan with the clans in this region though it was a year’s travel away from the clan she grew up with. There were minor differences, but it was amazingly similar.

Since it was a Clan ceremony she would be performing, using powerful roots prepared according to Clan procedures, she felt everything should be done as close as possible according to Clan tradition. She believed it was the only way she could hope to maintain any control, and she was beginning to have doubts if even that would help.

She was walking past the wooded area with her mind deep in thought, when she nearly bumped into someone coming out from behind a tree. She was startled to find herself practically in Jondalar’s arms. He was even more surprised and at a complete loss about what to do. His first impulse was to finish what the accident had started and put his arms around her. He’d been longing to do it for so long, but catching a glimpse of her shocked expression, he jumped back, assuming somehow that her surprise meant revulsion, that she didn’t want him to touch her. Her reaction to his instant avoidance was that he didn’t want her, couldn’t stand to be near her.

They stared at each other for a long moment. It was the closest they had been since she found him with Marona, and in their hearts, each yearned to prolong that moment, to broach the emotional distance that seemed to separate them. But a child running down the path they were on distracted them. They looked away for a moment and then couldn’t quite look back.

“Uh, sorry,” Jondalar said, aching to hold her but afraid she would rebuff him. He was so completely at a loss, he was looking around wildly, like an animal caught in a trap.

“Doesn’t matter,” Ayla said, looking down to hide the tears that were just too ready to flow these days. She didn’t want him to see how terrible it made her feel to think that he couldn’t stand to be close to her, that he couldn’t wait to get away. Without looking up, she started walking again, hurrying before her overflowing eyes gave her away. Jondalar had to fight his own tears as he watched her almost running along the path in her hurry to get away from him.

Ayla continued along what had become a faint path toward the new cave. Although it was likely that every one of the entire family of Zelandonii people had been inside the new cave at least once, it wasn’t used often. Because it was so beautiful and so unusual with its nearly white stone walls, it was considered a very spiritual, very sacred place, and still rather inviolable. The zelandonia and Cave leaders were still working out the appropriate times and ways to use it. Traditions hadn’t been developed yet, it was too new.