The Land of Painted Caves ec-6

by Jean M. Auel

  'When should we start to chant for you?' the First asked.

  Ayla almost forgot about the chanting. 'Probably should have started already,' she said, a slight slur in her voice already.

  The First was feeling the effects of her rather large taste as well, and struggled to keep her control as she signalled the zelandonia to begin chanting. That is a powerful root, she thought, and I only had one drink. What must Ayla be feeling now after all she drank, Zelandoni thought.

  The ancient taste was familiar, and it brought on feelings Ayla would never forget, memories and associations of the other times she had tasted the drink, and of times long past. She felt the cool and damp of a deep forest, as though she were enveloped within it, with trees so huge it was difficult to find a way around and between them as she climbed up the steep side of a mountain followed by the horse. Lichen, damply soft and silvery greyish green, draped the trees, and moss covered the ground and rocks and logs of dead trees in a continuous carpet that ranged in shades from bright true green to deep pine green to rich earthy brownish green and all shades in between.

  Ayla could smell fungus, mushrooms of every size and shape: fragile white wings sprouting from fallen trees, thick woody shelves attached to old stumps, large dense sponge-like brown capped, tiny delicate thin stemmed. There were honey-coloured tight clusters, compact round spheres, shiny red tops with white spots, tall smooth caps that melted to black ooze, ghostly white perfect caps of death, and many more. She knew them all, tasted them all, felt them all.

  She was in a great delta of a huge river, carried by a stream of muddy brown water, breaking through thick stands of tall phragmite reeds and cattails, and floating islands with trees and wolves that climbed them, spinning round and round in a small leather-covered bowl boat, rising up and floating on a cushion of air.

  Ayla didn't know her knees had buckled as she went limp and dropped to the ground. She was picked up by several zelandonia and carried to a resting place that Zelandoni had thought to have brought into the cave for her. The First almost wished she had one as well as she reached for her strong padded wicker stool. She struggled to stay aware, to watch Ayla, and felt a dark tinge of worry start to develop in the back of her mind.

  Ayla was feeling peaceful, quiet, sinking into a soft mist that was drawing her deeper in, until she was surrounded. It thickened around her into a fog that obscured all vision, then became a heavy damp cloud. She felt swallowed by it. She was suffocating, struggled to breathe, gasped for air, then felt herself begin to move.

  She began moving faster and faster, caught in the middle of the suffocating cloud, rushing so fast it took her breath away, left her with no air. The cloud wrapped itself around her, squeezed her, pushing in from all sides, contracting, expanding, contracting, like something alive. It forced her to move with accelerating velocity until she fell into a deep, black empty space, a place as black as the inside of a cave, mindless, terrifying.

  It would have been less terrifying if she had simply dropped into sleep, become unconscious, as it appeared she had to those watching, but she was not. She couldn't move, didn't really have a desire to move, but when she tried to focus her will to move something, even just a finger, she could not. She couldn't even feel her finger, or any other part of herself. She couldn't open her eyes, or turn her head; she had no volition, no will, but she could hear. At some level, she was aware. As though from a distance and yet with great clarity, she could hear the chant of the zelandonia; she could hear the faint murmur of voices from one corner, though she couldn't make out what they were saying; she could even hear her own heart beating.

  Each Donier chose a sound, a tone with a pitch and timbre each one was comfortable with on a sustained level. When they wanted to maintain a continuous chant, several of the Doniers would begin to make their tone. The combination might or might not be harmonic; it didn't matter. Before the first one got out of breath, another voice would join in, and then another, and another at random intervals. The result was a droning interweaving fugue of tones that could go on indefinitely, if there were enough people to provide sufficient rest for those people who had to stop for a while.

  For Ayla, it was a comforting sound that was there, but that tended to fade into the background as her mind observed scenes only she could see behind her closed eyelids, visions with the lucid incoherence of vivid dreams. It felt as though she were wide awake dreaming. At first, she kept gaining speed in the black space; she knew it though the void remained unchanged. She was terrified and alone. Achingly alone. There were no sensations, no taste, no smell, no sound, no sight, no touch, as though none ever existed or ever would, just her conscious, screaming mind.

  An eternity passed. Then, at a great distance, barely discernible, a faint glimmer of light. She reached for it, strove for it. Anything, anything at all was better than nothing. Her striving pulled her faster, the light expanded into an amorphous barely perceptible blur, and for a moment she wondered if her mind might have any other effects on the state she was in. The indistinct light thickened to a cloudiness and darkened with colours, alien colours with unknown names.

  She was sinking into the cloud, falling through it, faster and faster, and then she fell out the bottom. A strangely familiar landscape opened up below her full of repetitive geometric shapes, squares and sharp angles, bright, shining, filled with light, repeating, climbing up. Nothing with such straight, sharp shapes existed in her familiar natural world. White ribbons seemed to flow along the ground in this strange place, reaching straight into the distance, with strange animals racing along it.

  As she drew closer, she saw people, masses of squirming, wriggling people, all pointing their fingers at her. 'Yoooou, yooou, yooou,' they were saying; it was almost a chant. She saw a figure standing alone. It was a man, a man of mixed spirits. As she got closer, she thought he looked familiar, but not quite. At first she thought it was Echozar, but then it seemed to be Brukeval, and the people were saying, 'Yooou, yooou did it, yooou brought the Knowledge, you did it.'

  'No!' her mind screamed. 'It was the Mother. She gave me the Knowledge. Where's the Mother?'

  'The Mother is gone. Only the Son remains,' the people said. 'You did it.' She looked at the man and suddenly knew who he was, though his face was in shadow and she couldn't see him clearly.

  'I couldn't help it. I was cursed. I had to leave my son. Broud made me go,' her soundless voice cried out.

  'The Mother is gone. Only the Son remains.'

  In her thoughts, Ayla frowned. What did it mean? Suddenly the world below took on different dimension, but still ominous and otherworldly. The people were gone, and the strange geometric shapes. It was an empty, desolate, windblown prairie. Two men appeared, brothers whom no one would guess were brothers. One was tall and blond like Jondalar, the other, older one, she knew was Durc though his face was still shadowed. The two brothers approached each other from opposite directions, and she felt great anxiety as though something terrible was about to happen, something she had to prevent. With a shock of terror, she was sure one of her sons would kill the other. With arms raised as though to strike, they drew closer. She strained to reach them.

  Suddenly Mamut was there, holding her back. 'It is not what you think. It is a symbol, a message,' he said. 'Watch and wait.'

  A third man appeared on the windblown steppes. It was Broud, looking at her with a glare of pure hatred. The first two men reached each other, then both turned to face Broud.

  'Curse him, curse him, curse him with death,' Durc motioned.

  'But he is your father, Durc,' Ayla thought with silent apprehension. 'You should not be the one to curse him.'

  'He is cursed already,' her other son said. 'You did it, you kept the black stone. They are all cursed.'

  'No! No!' Ayla screamed. 'I'll give it back. I can still give it back.'

  'There is nothing you can do, Ayla. It is your destiny,' Mamut said.

  When she turned to face him, Creb was standing beside him. 'You gave
us Durc,' the old Mog-ur signed. 'That was also your destiny. Durc is part of the Others, but he's Clan, too. The Clan is doomed, it will be no more, only your kind will go on, and the ones like Durc, the children of mixed spirits. Not many, perhaps, but enough. It won't be the same; he will become like the Others, but it is something. Durc is the son of the Clan, Ayla. He's the only son of the Clan.'

  Ayla heard a woman weeping, and when she looked, the scene had changed again. It was dark; they were deep in a cave. Then lamps were lit and she saw a woman holding a man in her arms. The man was her tall, blond son, and when the woman looked up, to her surprise Ayla saw herself, but she was not clear. It was as though she was seeing herself in a reflector. A man came and looked down at them. She looked up and saw Jondalar.

  'Where is my son?' he asked her. 'Where is my son?'

  'I gave him to the Mother,' the reflected Ayla cried. 'The Great Earth Mother wanted him. She is powerful. She took him from me.'

  Suddenly, Ayla heard the crowd, and saw the strange geometric shapes. 'The Earth Mother grows weak,' the voices chanted. 'Her children ignore Her. When they no longer honour Her, She will be ravished.'

  'No,' the reflected Ayla wailed. 'Who will feed us? Who will care for us? Who will provide for us, if we don't honour her?'

  'The Mother is gone. Only the Son remains. The Mother's children are no longer children. They have left the Mother behind. They have the Knowledge; they have come of age, as she knew someday they would.' The woman still wept, but she wasn't Ayla anymore. She was the Mother, weeping because her children were gone.

  Ayla felt herself being pulled out of the cave; she was weeping, too. The voices became faint, as though they were chanting from a great distance away. She was moving again, high above a vast grassy plain, full of great herds. Aurochs were stampeding, and horses were racing to keep up with them. Bison and deer were running, and ibex. She drew closer, began to see individual animals, the ones she had seen when she was called to the zelandonia, and the disguises that they had worn during the ceremony when they had given the Mother's new Gift to Her Children, when she recited the last verse of the Mother's Song.

  Two bison bulls running past each other, great aurochs bulls marching toward each other, a huge cow almost flying in the air, and another one giving birth, a horse at the end of a passage falling down a cliff, many horses, most in colours, browns and reds and blacks, and Whinney with the spotted hide over her back and across her face, and the two stick-like antlers.

  Chapter 40

  Zelandoni was not with Ayla on her arcane inward Journey, but she sensed it, and felt herself pulled toward it. Perhaps if she had consumed more of the drink, she might have been drawn in with Ayla and become lost in the enigmatic landscape induced by the root. As it was, she did lose control of her faculties for a period of time, and had her own difficulties.

  The zelandonia weren't quite sure what was going on. Ayla appeared to be unconscious, and the First seemed close to it. She wasn't exactly dozing off, but she would slump down, and her eyes would glaze over as if she were gazing into some unseen distance. Then she would rouse herself and say things that didn't always make sense. She did not appear to be in control of the experiment, which was unusual in itself, and she definitely was not in control of herself, which made them all nervous. Those who knew her best were most alarmed, but they did not want to spread their concern among the rest.

  The First shook herself awake, as if by an act of will. 'Cold … cold …,' she said, then slumped over again and her eyes glazed. The next time she jerked herself awake, she shouted, 'Cover … fur … cover Ayla … cold … so cold. Get hot …' Then she was gone again.

  They had brought a few warm coverings with them, just because it was always cool in a cave. They had already put one on Ayla, but the Eleventh decided to add another one. When she happened to touch the young woman, she was surprised.

  'She is cold, almost as cold as death,' she said.

  'Is she breathing?' the Third asked.

  The Eleventh bent over and looked closely, noticed a slight movement of her chest and felt a faint sigh of air from her barely open mouth. 'Yes, she's breathing. But it's shallow.'

  'Do you think we should make some hot tea?' the Fifth asked.

  'Yes, I think so, for both of them,' the Third said.

  'A stimulating tea or a soothing one?' said the Fifth.

  'I don't know. Either one could react with that root in an unexpected way,' the Third said.

  'Let's try to ask the First. She's the one who should decide,' the Eleventh said.

  Her companions nodded. The three of them surrounded the large woman who was sitting on her stool, slumped over. The Third put her hand on the First's shoulder and gently nudged her, and then a little harder. Zelandoni jerked awake. 'Do you want hot tea?' the Third asked.

  'Yes! Yes!' the First said, loudly again, as though shouting helped her stay awake.

  'Ayla, too?'

  'Yes. Hot!'

  'Tea to stimulate or soothe?' the Eleventh asked, also speaking loudly. The Zelandoni of the Fourteenth Cave walked over, frowning with concern.

  'Stimul … No!' The First stopped, straining to concentrate. 'Water! Just hot water!' she said. She shook herself again, trying to stay awake. 'Help me up!'

  'Are you sure you can stand?' the Third asked. 'You don't want to fall.'

  'Help me up! Need to stay awake. Ayla needs … help.' She started to fall off again, and shook herself violently. 'Help me stand. Get hot … water. Not tea.'

  The Third, Eleventh, and Fourteenth all crowded around the hugely corpulent woman who was the First Among Those Who Serve The Mother, and with some effort got her up on her feet. She wavered drunkenly, leaned heavily on two of the Zelandoni, and shook her head again. She closed her eyes and her expression took on a look of intense concentration. When she opened them, she was gritting her teeth with determination, but had stopped swaying.

  'Ayla's in trouble,' she said. 'My fault. Should have known.' She was still having difficulty concentrating, thinking straight, but being up and moving around did help. The hot water did, too, if only to warm her. She felt cold, a deep, bone-chilling cold, and she knew it wasn't just being in the cave. 'Too cold. Move her. Need fire. Warmth.'

  'You want us to move Ayla out of the cave?' the Fourteenth said.

  'Yes. Too cold.'

  'Should we wake her?' the Eleventh asked.

  'I don't think you can,' the First said, 'but try.'

  First they tried gently shaking her, then not so gently. Ayla didn't stir. They tried talking to her, then shouting, but they couldn't rouse her.

  Zelandoni of the Third asked the First, 'Should we continue chanting?'

  'Yes! Chant! Don't stop! It's all she's got!' the Zelandoni who was First shouted.

  The higher-ranked zelandonia gave a few instructions. Suddenly there was a flurry of activity as several people rushed outside and hurried to the zelandonia lodge, some to stir up a fire for hot water, others to get a litter to carry the young woman out of the cave. The rest renewed the chanting with fervour.

  Several people were near the zelandonia lodge. A meeting of the couples planning to tie the knot at the Late Matrimonial had been planned later in the day, and a few of them had started to gather. Folara and Aldanor were among them. When several zelandonia came rushing toward the lodge, Folara and Aldanor looked at each other with concern.

  'What's wrong? Why is everyone is such a hurry?' Folara asked.

  'It's the new Zelandoni,' a young man answered, one of the newer acolytes.

  'You mean Ayla? zelandoni of the Ninth?' Folara asked.

  'Yes. She made a special drink using some kind of root, and the First said we have to get her out of the cave because it's too cold. She's not waking up,' the acolyte answered.

  They heard a commotion, and turned to look. A couple of strong young Doniers were helping the First back from the cave. She was having difficulty keeping her balance and finding her footing without stumblin
g. Folara had never seen Zelandoni so unstable. A wave of apprehension washed over her. The One Who Was First was always so completely self-assured, so positive. Even with her great size, she always moved with confidence and ease. It had been bad enough for the young woman to watch her mother weakening. It was utterly frightening to see someone she had always thought of as an unshakable force, a bulwark of security and strength, suddenly show such debility.

  About the time that the First reached the lodge, another group of zelandonia appeared on the path leading down from the new cave carrying a litter, piled high with furs. As the procession approached, Folara and Aldanor could hear the distinctive interwoven sounds of zelandonia chanting. When the litter passed by, Folara looked at the young woman she had come to know and love, her brother's mate. Ayla's face was pasty white, and her breathing so shallow, she didn't seem to be moving at all.

  Folara was horrified, and Aldanor could see her alarm. 'We have to get mother, and Proleva, and Joharran,' she said. 'And Jondalar.'

  Although it was difficult, and even a little embarrassing, the walk down to the lodge from the cave had helped to clear Zelandoni's head. She dropped down on her large, comfortable stool gratefully and was glad for the cup of hot water. She hadn't dared to suggest a herb or medicinal to counteract the effects of the root, not when she wasn't thinking clearly, for fear its reaction in combination with the root might make the effects worse. Now that her head was more clear, though her body was still feeling the effects of the powerful root, she decided to experiment on herself. She added some stimulating herbs to a second cup of hot water, and sipped it slowly, trying to judge if she could feel anything. She wasn't sure if they helped, but at least they didn't seem to make things worse.

  She stood up, and with a little assistance, went back to the bed, recently vacated by Laramar, where they had put Ayla. 'Have you tried to give her hot water?' she asked.