The Earth's Children Series 6-Book Bundle

by Jean M. Auel

  “I am also training an acolyte. You’ve met Ayla.” The large woman indicated the young woman who was with her. “You may have heard that Ayla has become my new acolyte and we have begun her Donier Tour. I wanted to make sure she saw your Sacred Places.” The two elder members of the zelandonia nodded to each other in recognition of their mutual responsibilities. “After Jonokol moved to the Nineteenth Cave, I needed a new acolyte. I think he fell in love with that new sacred cave Ayla found. He always was an artist first, but he puts his heart into the zelandonia now. The Nineteenth is not as well as she might be. I hope she lives long enough to finish training him properly.”

  “But he was your acolyte. I’m sure he was well trained before he moved,” the Zelandoni of the Fifth Cave said.

  “Yes, he’s had training, but he wasn’t really interested when he was my acolyte,” the First said. “He was so good at creating images, I had to bring him into the zelandonia, but that was his real love. He was bright and he learned quickly, but he was content to remain an acolyte; he had no real desire to become a Zelandoni, until Ayla showed him White Hollow. Then he changed. Partly because he wanted to make images in there, I’m sure, but that wasn’t all. He wants to make sure his images are right for that Sacred Space, so now he embraces the zelandonia. I think Ayla must have sensed that. When she first discovered the cave, she wanted me to see it, but it was more important to her that Jonokol see it.”

  The Fifth turned to Ayla. “How did you find White Hollow?” he asked. “Did you use your voice on it?”

  “I didn’t find it. Wolf did,” Ayla said. “It was on a hillside buried in brush and blackberry canes, but he suddenly disappeared into the ground beneath the brush. I cut some of it back and went after him. When I realized it was a cave, I came out and made a torch and went back in. That’s when I saw what it was. Then I went to find Zelandoni and Jonokol.”

  It had been some time since the Zelandoni of the Fifth Cave had heard Ayla speak, and her manner of speaking was noticeable, not only to him, but to the other members of his Cave, including Madroman. It reminded Madroman of all the attention Jondalar got when he came back with the beautiful foreign woman and her animals, and how much he hated Jondalar. He always gets noticed, the acolyte thought, especially by women. I wonder what they would think of him if he was missing his two front teeth? Yes, his mother paid reparations for him, but that didn’t bring my teeth back.

  Why did he have to come back from his Journey? And bring that woman with him? All the fuss they make about her and those animals. I’ve been an acolyte for years, but she’s the one who is getting all the special attention from the First. What if she becomes Zelandoni before I do? She didn’t pay much attention to him when they met; she was little more than polite, and she still ignored him. People gave her credit for finding the new cave, but by her own admission, she wasn’t the one who found it. It was that stupid animal who did.

  He was smiling while he was mulling his thoughts, but to Ayla, who wasn’t watching him directly, but observing him closely the way a woman of the Clan would, with indirect glances that took in all of his unconscious body language, his smile was deceitful and devious. She wondered why the Fifth had taken him as an acolyte. He was such a shrewd and canny Zelandoni, he couldn’t have been fooled by him, could he? She glanced at Madroman again and caught him staring directly at her with such a malevolent glare it made her shudder.

  “Sometimes I think that Wolf belongs in the zelandonia,” the One Who Was First said. “You should have heard him in Mammoth Cave. His howl sounded like a Sacred Voice.”

  “I’m glad you have a new acolyte, but I have always been surprised that you have only one,” the Fifth said. “I always have several; right now I’m considering another. Not all acolytes can become zelandoni, and if one decides to give it up, I always have someone else. You should consider that … not that I should tell you.”

  “You are probably right. I should consider it. I always have my eyes on several people who might make good acolytes, but I tend to wait until I need one,” the First said. “The trouble with being First Among Those Who Serve The Great Earth Mother is that I’m responsible for more than one Cave and I don’t have as much time to devote to training acolytes, so I’d rather concentrate on one. Before I left the Summer Meeting, I had to make a choice between my responsibility to the Zelandonii, and my obligation to train the next Zelandoni for the Ninth Cave. The Late Matrimonial had not yet been performed, but since there were only a few who were planning to mate then, and I knew the Fourteenth could handle it, I decided it was more important to start Ayla’s Donier Tour.”

  “I’m sure the Fourteenth was quite pleased to take over for you,” the Fifth said, with conspiratorial disdain. He was well aware of the difficulties the First had with the Zelandoni of the Fourteenth Cave, who not only wanted her position, but felt she deserved it. “Any of the Zelandoni would. We see the prestige, but the rest of us don’t always see the problems … including me.”

  The abris that hovered around them were shelters of stone scoured out of the limestone cliffs by wind, water, and weather through eras of erosion. At any one time, only some were lived in, but others were available to be used for other things. Some of them were utilized for storage, or as a quiet place to practice a craft, or as a meeting place for a couple who wanted to be alone, or for small groups of young or old to plan activities. And one was usually set aside as a place for visitors to stay.

  “I hope you will be comfortable here,” the Fifth said as he led them into one of the natural stone shelters near the base of the cliff. The space within was quite roomy with a level floor and a high ceiling, open in the front but protected from rain. Near one side wall, several tattered padded cushions were strewn about, and a few lens-shaped dark circles of ash, a couple with some stones around them, showed where previous tenants had made fires.

  “I’ll send over some wood, and water. If there is anything else you need, let me know,” the Zelandoni of the Fifth Cave said.

  “This looks fine to me,” the First said. “Is there anything you think we might need?” she asked her companions.

  Jondalar shook his head and grunted in the negative as he went to untie Racer’s pole-drag to relieve him of his load, and to start unpacking. He wanted to set up the tent inside the shelter so it could air out and not be rained on. Ayla had mentioned that she thought it might rain, and he respected her sense of changing weather.

  “I just want to ask something,” Ayla said. “Would anyone mind if we bring the horses under the shelter? I’ve been noticing clouds building up, and it seems like rain, or something … is coming. Horses like to stay dry, too.”

  Just as Jondalar was leading the young stallion away, the horse defecated, leaving plops of brown, grassy dung on the ground behind him, which gave off a strong horsey odor.

  “If you want to give your horses shelter from rain, go right ahead,” the Zelandoni of the Fifth Cave said, then grinned. “If you don’t mind, I doubt that anyone else will.”

  Several others smiled or snickered as well. It was one thing to look at the animals and those who had the ability to control them with awe, but seeing an animal perform its natural functions took some of the glamour away, made them seem less magical. Ayla had noticed the reserved reactions of the people when they first arrived and was glad Racer had chosen that moment to show he was just a horse.

  Zelandoni collected the padded cushions and looked them over. Some were made of leather, some of woven vegetal fibers like grass, reeds, and cattail leaves, and several showed their stuffing material out of cracked or torn edges, which was likely why they were left in the seldom-used shelter. She banged several against the stone wall to clean them of dust and dirt, then stacked them up near the fireplace near where Jondalar had taken the folded tent. Ayla started to shift Jonayla around to her back so she could help him put up the tent.

  “I’ll take her,” the large woman said, reaching for Jonayla. She watched the baby while Jondalar a
nd Ayla raised their tent inside the stone shelter in front of one of the circles of ashes surrounded by stones and laid out fire-making and burning materials for a quick start whenever they wanted a fire. Then they spread out their sleeping rolls and other equipment inside; Wolf always stayed with them in the tent. Finally they put both pole-drags toward the back of the abri and arranged places for the horses under the shelter in front of them, moving Racer’s recent droppings out of the way.

  Some children from the local Cave stood around watching them but didn’t venture too close, except for one girl, whose curiosity finally got the better of her. She approached the Zelandoni and the baby; the First thought the girl could probably count nine or ten years.

  “I’d like to hold the baby,” she said. “Could I?”

  “If she’ll let you. She has a mind of her own,” the woman said.

  The girl held out her arms to her. Jonayla hesitated, but smiled shyly at her, when she moved closer and sat down. Finally Jonayla let go of Zelandoni and crawled to the stranger, who picked her up and put her on her lap.

  “What’s her name?”

  “Jonayla,” the woman said. “What’s yours?”

  “Hollida,” the child replied.

  “You seem to like babies,” Zelandoni said.

  “My sister has a baby girl, but she went to visit her mate’s family. He comes from a different Cave. I haven’t seen her all summer,” Hollida said.

  “And you miss her, don’t you?”

  “Yes. I didn’t think I would, but I do.”

  Ayla saw the girl as soon as she approached, and noticed the interaction. She smiled to herself, remembering how much she had wanted a baby when she was younger. It made her think about Durc and she realized that he could probably count about the same number of years now as the girl, but in the Clan he would be considered much closer to adulthood than the girl obviously was. He’s growing up, she thought. She knew she would never see her son again, but she couldn’t help thinking about him sometimes.

  Jondalar noticed the wistful expression on her face while she was watching the girl play with Jonayla and wondered what was going through her mind. Then Ayla shook her head, smiled, called Wolf to her, and walked toward them. If the girl is going to spend time with Jonayla, Ayla thought, I’d better introduce her to Wolf so she won’t be afraid of him.

  After all three adults had unpacked and were settled in, they walked back to the first stone shelter. Hollida was with them, walking with the First. The rest of the children, who had been watching, raced ahead. When the visitors neared the shelter of the Zelandoni of the Fifth Cave, several people were in front of the large opening in the stone wall, waiting. Their coming had been announced by the children before they arrived. It also appeared a celebration was planned; several people were cooking at hearths in this one location. Ayla wondered if she should have changed out of her traveling clothes, and worn something more suitable, but neither Jondalar nor the First had changed. Some people emerged from the shelter to the north, and from the ones on the other side of the valley when they passed by. Ayla smiled to herself. It seemed obvious that the children had let the others know they were coming.

  The area of the Fifth Cave suddenly made her think of the Third Cave at Two Rivers Rock and Reflection Rock of the Twenty-ninth Cave. Their living areas were spread out on residential terraces, one over another, in commanding walls of cliffs, with protective overhangs to shelter the interior spaces from rain and snow. Here, instead, there were several shelters closer to ground level on both sides of the small stream. But it was the close proximity of the several locations where people lived that made them one Cave. Then it occurred to her that the entire Twenty-ninth Cave was attempting to do the same thing, except that their living places were more widely dispersed. It was their mutual hunting and foraging area that brought them together.

  “Greetings!” the Zelandoni of the Fifth Cave said when they neared. “I hope you find your place comfortable. We are going to have a community feast in your honor.”

  “It isn’t necessary to go to so much trouble,” the One Who Was First said.

  He looked at the First. “You know how it is; people love to have an excuse for a celebration. Your coming is a particularly good excuse. We don’t often have the Zelandoni of the Ninth Cave who is also the One Who Is First as a visitor. Come inside. You said you wanted to show your acolyte our Sacred Places.” He turned to address Ayla. “We live in ours,” he said, as he led them in.

  The inside of the stone shelter made Ayla stop short with surprise. It was so colorful. Several of the walls were decorated with paintings of animals, which was not so unusual, but the background of many of them was painted a bright red shade with red ocher. And the renderings of the animals were more than outlines, or drawings; most of them were infilled with color, shaded to bring out the contours and shapes. One wall in particular caught Ayla’s attention. It was a painting of two exquisitely portrayed bison, one of them obviously pregnant.

  “I know most people carve or paint the walls of their abris, and may consider the images sacred, but we think of this entire space as sacred,” the Zelandoni of the Fifth Cave said.

  Jondalar had visited the Fifth Cave several times and had admired the wall paintings of their stone shelters, but he had never thought of them any differently than he did the paintings and engravings inside the shelter of the Ninth Cave, or any other cave or abri. He wasn’t sure if he understood why this shelter should be any more sacred than any other, though it was more highly colored and decorated than most. He just assumed that it was the style that the Fifth Cave preferred, like the ornate tattoos and hair arrangement of their Zelandoni.

  The Zelandoni of the Fifth Cave looked at Ayla with the wolf standing alertly at her side, then at Jondalar and the baby, who was tucked contentedly into the crook of the man’s arm, looking around with interest, then at the First. “Since the feast is not yet ready, let me show you around,” he said.

  “Yes, that would be nice,” the First said.

  They walked out of the shelter and into another one that was immediately to the north. It was essentially a continuation of the first one. And it was also decorated, but in a very different way, which created the sense that they were two different shelters. There were paintings on the walls, like the mammoth that was painted in red and black, but some walls of this cave were deeply engraved and some were both engraved and painted. Other engravings intrigued Ayla. She wasn’t sure what they meant.

  She approached a wall to look more closely. There were some cuplike holes, but other oval carvings with a second oval around them and a mark like a hole extended into a line in the middle. She saw a horn core on the ground nearby that had been carved into a shape that appeared to be a man’s organ. She shook her head and looked again, then almost smiled. That was exactly what it was, and when she looked at the oval shapes, it came to her that they might represent female organs.

  She turned around and looked at Jondalar and the First, and then the Zelandoni of the Fifth. “Those look like man and woman parts,” she said. “Is that what they are?”

  The Fifth smiled and nodded. “This is where our donii-women stay, and often where we have Mother Festivals, and sometimes where we have Rites of First Pleasures. It is also where I have meetings with my acolytes when I am training them, and where they sleep. This is a very Sacred Place,” the Fifth said. “That’s what I meant when I said we live in our Sacred Sites.”

  “Do you sleep here, too?” Ayla asked.

  “No, I sleep in the first shelter, the other side of this one, near the bison,” he said. “I don’t think it is good for a Zelandoni to spend all his time with his acolytes. They need to be able to relax, away from the restraining eye of their mentor, and I have other things to do and people to see.”

  As they walked back to the first part of the shelter, Ayla asked, “Do you know who made your images?”

  The question caught him a little off guard. It was not a question usually ask
ed by Zelandonii. The people were accustomed to their art; it had always been there, or they knew the ones who were currently making it, and no one had to ask.

  “Not the engravings,” he said after pausing to think for a moment. “They were made by the Ancient Ones, but several of our paintings were made by the woman who first taught Jonokol, when she was younger. The one who was Zelandoni of the Second Cave before the one who is now. She was acknowledged as the finest artist of her time, and she was the one who saw the potential in Jonokol even when he was just a boy. She saw potential in one of our young artists too. She now walks the next world, I am sorry to say.”

  “What about the carved horn?” Jondalar queried, indicating the phallus-shaped object, which he had also seen. “Who made that?”

  “That was given to the Zelandoni before me, or perhaps the one before him,” the Fifth said. “Some like to have it around during Mother Festivals. I’m not sure, it may have been used as a way to explain the changes in a man’s organ. Or it may have been a part of First Rites, especially for girls who didn’t like men, or were afraid of them.”

  Ayla tried not to show it in her expression, it wasn’t for her to say, but she thought it would be uncomfortable, perhaps even painful, to use a hard carved object rather than the warm manhood of a caring man, but then she was used to the tenderness of Jondalar. She glanced at him.

  He caught her eye and the facial expression she tried to hide, and smiled reassuringly. He wondered if the Fifth was making up a story because he didn’t really know what the image meant. Jondalar was sure it had been symbolic of something at one time, probably having to do with a Mother Festival since it was an erect male organ, but that its exact meaning probably had been forgotten.