by Jean M. Auel
Ayla watched the fire sending flickering sparks up into the night as though trying to reach their twinkling brethren far up in the sky above. It was dark; the moon was young and had already set. No clouds obscured the dazzling display of stars that were so thick, they seemed to be strung together on skeins of light.
Jonayla was asleep in her arms. She had finished nursing some time before, but Ayla was comfortable relaxing by the fire holding her. Jondalar was sitting beside her and a little behind, and she leaned into his chest and the arm that had found its way around her. It had been a busy day and she was tired. There were only nine people of the Cave who had not gone to the Summer Meeting, six who were too sick or weak to make the long walk—she and Zelandoni had looked at all six—and three who had stayed behind to care for them. Some of those who couldn’t make the journey were nonetheless well enough to help with certain chores like cooking and gathering food. The older man Jondalar had been talking with earlier, who was staying for a while to help, had gone hunting and brought down a deer, so they put together a venison feast for their guests.
In the morning, Zelandoni took Ayla aside and told her that she had arranged for the young acolyte to show their Sacred Cave to her. “It isn’t very big, but it is very difficult. You may have to crawl through parts of it, so wear something to climb through caves and cover your knees. When I was young, I went into it once, but I don’t think I could do it now. I think the two of you will manage just fine, but it will be slow going. You are both strong young women, so it shouldn’t take too long, but because it is difficult, you might want to consider leaving your baby here.” She paused, then added, “I will watch her if you like.”
Ayla thought she detected a reluctance in Zelandoni’s voice. Taking care of babies could be tiring, and the First might have other plans. “Why don’t I ask Jondalar if he will. He likes to spend time with Jonayla.”
The two young women started out together, with the young acolyte showing the way. “Should I call you by your full title, a short version of it, or by your name?” Ayla asked after they had walked a short distance. “Different acolytes seem to have different preferences.”
“What do people call you?”
“I am Ayla. I know I’m the acolyte of the First, but I still have trouble thinking of myself that way, and ‘Ayla’ is what everyone calls me. I like it better. My name is the only thing I have left from my real mother, my original people. I don’t even know who they were. I don’t yet know what I’m going to do when I become a full Zelandoni. I know we’re supposed to leave our personal names behind, and I hope when the time comes, I’ll be ready to, but I’m not yet.”
“Some acolytes are happy to change names, some would rather not, but it all seems to work out. I think I’d like you to call me Shevola. It seems more friendly than acolyte.”
“So please call me Ayla.”
They walked further along a trail through a narrow canyon, dense with woods and brush, between two imposing cliffs, one of which held the stone shelter of the people. Wolf suddenly bounded up. He startled Shevola, who wasn’t used to wolves appearing suddenly. Ayla grabbed his head between her hands, roughing up his mane, and laughed.
“So you didn’t want to be left behind,” she said, actually glad to see him. She turned toward the acolyte. “He always used to follow me everywhere I went, unless I told him not to, until Jonayla was born. Now he’s drawn between us when I am in one place and she is in another. He wants to protect both of us, and can’t always make up his mind. I thought I’d let him choose this time. I think he must have decided that Jondalar could protect Jonayla well enough and come to find me.”
“Your control over animals is amazing, the way they go where you want and do what you want. One gets used to watching you after a while, but it is still hard to believe,” Shevola said. “Did you always have these animals?”
“No. Whinney was the first, unless you count the rabbit I found when I was a little girl,” Ayla said. “He must have gotten away from some predator, but he was hurt, and didn’t, or couldn’t, run away when I picked him up. Iza was the healer and I took him back to the cave so she could help him. She was more than surprised, and told me that healers were supposed to help people, not animals, but she helped him anyway. Maybe to see if she could. I suppose the idea that people could help animals must have stayed with me when I saw the little foal. I didn’t realize at first that the animal that fell into my pit trap was a nursing mare, and I don’t know why I killed the hyenas that were after her baby, except I hate hyenas. But once I did, I felt that the foal had become my responsibility, that I had to try to raise her. I’m glad I did. She has become my friend.”
Shevola was fascinated by the story Ayla told with such casualness, as though it were an ordinary thing. “Still, you have control over those animals.”
“I don’t know if I would call it that. With Whinney, I was like her mother. I took care of her and fed her and we came to understand each other. If you find an animal when it is very young and raise it like a child, you can teach it how to behave, the same way a mother teaches a child how to behave,” Ayla tried to explain. “Racer and Gray are her son and daughter, so I was there when they were born.”
“What about the wolf?”
“I set some traps for ermines, and when Deegie—she was my friend—and I went to check them, I discovered that something was stealing them from my snares. When I caught sight of a wolf eating one, it made me angry. I killed her with my sling; then I saw that she was a nursing mother. I didn’t expect it. It was out of season for a wolf to have cubs young enough to still be nursing, so I backtracked her trail to her den. She was a lone wolf, didn’t have a pack to help her, and something must have happened to her mate, too. That’s why she was stealing from my snares. There was only one puppy left alive, so I took him back with me. We were living with the Mamutoi then, and Wolf was raised with the children of the Lion Camp. He never knew what it was like to live with wolves; that’s why he thinks people are his pack,” Ayla said.
“All people?” Shevola asked.
“No, not all people, although he has gotten used to large crowds. Jondalar and I, and now Jonayla, of course—wolves love their young—are his primary pack, but he also counts Marthona and Willamar and Folara among his family, Joharran and Proleva and her children, too. He accepts people I bring to him to sniff, that I introduce to him, as friends, sort of temporary pack members. He ignores everyone else, so long as they offer no harm to those he feels close to, those he considers his pack,” Ayla explained to the avidly interested young woman.
“What if someone did try to harm someone that he felt close to?”
“On the Journey Jondalar and I made to get here, we met a woman who was evil, who took pleasure in hurting people. She tried to kill me, but Wolf killed her first.”
Shevola felt a chill, a rather delicious thrill, like she did when a good storyteller recounted a scary tale. Although she didn’t doubt Ayla—she didn’t think the acolyte of the First would make up something like that—nothing like that had ever happened in her life and it just didn’t seem quite real. But there was the wolf, and she knew what wolves could do.
As they continued along the trail between the cliffs, they came to an offshoot toward the right that led up to a split in the stone face, an entrance into the cliff. It was a rather steep climb, and when they reached it they found that a large block of stone partially closed off the way in, but there was an opening on both sides of it. The left side was narrow but passable; the right side was much larger, and it was obvious that people had stayed there before. She saw an old pad on the ground with grass stuffing sticking out where the leather was split on one side. Scattered around it was the familiar debitage of chips and pieces left from someone knapping flint to make tools and implements. Bones that someone had chewed on had been thrown at the wall nearby and fallen to the ground at the foot of it. They went inside and walked a ways into the cave. Wolf followed them. Shevola led them to some ston
es, then slipped off her backframe and propped it up on one.
“It will soon be too dark to see,” Shevola said. “It’s time to light our torches. We can leave our packs here, but drink some water first.”
She started looking into her pack for fire-making material, but Ayla already had her fire-starting kit out, and a small unwoven basketlike shape made of dried shreds of bark pushed together. She stuffed it with some of the quick-burning fireweed fluff that she liked to use for tinder. Then she withdrew a piece of iron pyrite, her firestone, with a groove already worn into it from the many times it had been used, and a fragment of flint that Jondalar had shaped to fit the groove. Ayla struck the firestone with the flint and drew off a spark that landed in the flammable fluff. It sent up a faint curl of smoke. Ayla picked up the bark basket and began to blow on the tiny ember, which caused it to flare up in small licks of flame. She blew again, then set the little basket of fire down on the stone. Shevola had two torches ready and lit them from the small fire. Once the torches were burning, Ayla squeezed the bark shreds together and tamped them down to put out the fire so the bark that was left could be used again.
“We have a couple of firestones, but I haven’t learned to use them yet,” the young acolyte said. “Would you show me how you do that so fast?”
“Of course. It just takes some practice,” Ayla said. “But now, I think you should show me this cave.” As the young woman headed deeper in, Ayla wondered what this Sacred Place would be like.
Some light was coming from the opening that led outside, but without the light from the torches, they would not have been able to see their way, and the floor of the cave was very uneven. Pieces of the ceiling had fallen down and sections of walls had collapsed in. They had to walk very carefully, climbing up and over the stones. Shevola headed for the left wall and then stayed close to it. She stopped where the cave narrowed and seemed to divide into two tunnels. The right side was wide and easy to enter; the other passage on the left side was quite narrow and got smaller. As one looked into it, it appeared to be a dead end.
“This cave is misleading,” Shevola said. “The larger opening is on the right, and you might think that would be the way to go, but it leads nowhere. A little farther along, it divides again and both ways get smaller and smaller, then just end. Here on the left, the cave gets very narrow and small, but once you get past that, it opens out again.” Shevola held up her torch, pointing out a few faint tracings on the left wall. “Those were put there to let someone who isn’t familiar with this cave know that this is the way to go, if they understand what the markings mean.”
“That would be someone in the zelandonia, I suppose,” Ayla said.
“Usually,” Shevola said, “but youngsters sometimes like to explore caves, and they often work out what the markings mean.” After a short distance, the young woman stopped. “This is a good place to sound your sacred Voice,” she said. “Do you have one yet?”
“I haven’t decided,” Ayla said. “I’ve whistled like birds, but I also roared like a lion. Zelandoni sings and it is always beautiful, but when she sang in the mammoth cave, it was unbelievable. What do you do?”
“I sing, too, but not like the First. I’ll show you.” Shevola made a very high-pitched sound, then dropped to a low pitch, then continuously increased her pitch until she reached the first sound. The cave sang back a muted echo.
“That is remarkable,” Ayla said, then whistled her medley of birdsong.
“Now that is remarkable,” Shevola said. “It really sounded like birds. How did you learn to do that?”
“After I left the Clan and before I met Jondalar, I lived in a valley far to the east. I used to feed the birds to entice them to come back, and then started to mimic their calls. Sometimes they would come when I whistled, so I practiced more.”
“Did you say you could roar like a lion, too?”
Ayla smiled. “Yes, and whinny like a horse and howl like a wolf, and even laugh like a hyena. I started trying to make the sounds of many animals, because it was fun, and challenging.” And something to do when you are alone, and birds and animals are your only company, she thought, but didn’t say out loud. Sometimes she avoided mentioning things just because it would have required too much explanation.
“I know some hunters that can make pretty good animal sounds, especially to entice them closer, like the call of a male red deer and the bawl of an aurochs calf, but I’ve never heard anyone make a lion roar,” Shevola said, looking at her with a hopeful expression.
Ayla smiled, took a deep breath, then faced the cave opening and started with a few preliminary grunts, the way a lion did. Then she let out a roar, like one Baby used to make after he reached maturity. It may not have been as loud as the roar of a real lion, but it had all the nuances and intonations and sounded so much like a real lion roar that most people who heard it believed it was real, and therefore believed it was louder than it actually was. Shevola paled for a moment at the sound, and then when the cave echoed it back, she laughed.
“If I had just heard that, I don’t think I’d go into that cave. It sounds like there is a cave lion inside.”
Just then Wolf decided to respond to Ayla’s lion roar with his own sound, and howled his wolfsong. The cave resounded that back as well.
“Is that wolf a Zelandoni?” the young acolyte asked with surprise. “It sounded like he was using a sacred voice, too.”
“I don’t know if he is. To me he’s just a wolf, but the First has made similar comments when he does something like that,” Ayla said.
They started into the narrowed space, Shevola first, followed by Ayla, and then Wolf. It wasn’t long before Ayla was thinking how glad she was that Zelandoni had told her to dress for clambering around in a cave. Not only did the walls of the cave narrow, but the level of the floor rose and the ceiling lowered. It left such a small, cramped space to work their way through, they couldn’t even stand upright in it, and in some places they had to get on their knees to go forward. Ayla dropped her torch going through the narrow section, but managed to pick it up before it went out.
Progress became easier after the cave passage opened out, especially when they could walk upright again. Wolf, too, seemed happy to be beyond the tight space, even though he could go through it much more easily, but they still had some narrow sections to squeeze through. In one area the wall on the right had crumbled into a scree slope of loose dirt and small stones, leaving barely a level path on which to put their feet. As they carefully picked their way through, more stones and pebbles rolled down the rather steep grade. They both crowded closer to the opposite wall.
Finally, after another narrowing of the passage, Shevola stopped, held up her torch, and faced the right. Wet, shiny clay partially covered a small section of the wall, but it became part of the medium of expression. A sign was engraved on it, five vertical lines and two horizontal lines, one of which crossed all five of the upright lines, while the second only went about halfway across. Next to the sign was an engraving on stone of a reindeer.
By now Ayla had seen enough paintings, drawings, and engravings to have developed her own sense of those she considered good and those she thought were less well done. In her opinion, this reindeer was not as well made as some others she had seen, but she would never say anything like that to Shevola or the rest of the Cave, or anyone else. It was a private thought. Not so long ago, just the idea of drawing anything resembling an animal on a cave wall was unbelievable. She’d never seen anything like it. Even a partial drawing of a shape that suggested an animal was astonishing and powerful. This one, particularly by the shape of its antlers, she knew was a reindeer.
“Do you know who made this?” Ayla asked.
“There’s nothing in the Elder Legends or Histories, except general references that could be alluding to almost any cave markings, but there are a few hints in some of the stories that are told about our Cave that suggest it could have been an ancient one of West Holding, perhaps one of the F
ounders,” Shevola said. “I like to think it was an Ancestor who made them.”
As they continued farther into the cave, the difficulties lessened only slightly. The floor was still very rough and the walls had projections that they had to watch out for, but finally at about fifty feet into the long, narrow space, Shevola stopped again. On the left side of the passage they came to a narrow room, and on the right wall of it was a projection near the ceiling where there was a panel of several engraved figures at an inclination of about forty-five degrees from the horizontal. It was the principal composition of the cave, consisting of nine engraved animals on a limited surface area, perhaps thirty inches by forty-five inches. Again, clay on the wall became part of the medium.
The first image on the left was partly carved in the clay; the rest were incised into the stone, probably with a flint burin. Ayla noticed that there was a fine transparent covering of calcite on the frieze, an indication that it was already old. The projection was colored in part with a natural pigment of black manganese dioxide. The fragility of the surface was extreme; a small section of the carbonate material had flaked off, and another looked as though it would soon detach from the rest of the rock.
The central subject that dominated the frieze was a magnificent reindeer, with the head raised and antlers extended back, and carefully drawn details like the single eye, the line of the mouth, and the nostril. The flank was marked with nine cuplike holes parallel to the line of its back. Behind it, facing in the opposite direction, was another partial animal, probably a deer, or perhaps a horse, with another line of engraved holes running across the body. On the far right of the panel was a lion, and between them a series of animals, including horses and a mountain goat. Under the chin of the central figure, and utilizing the same line as the neck of the reindeer, was the head of a horse. In the lower part of the panel, below the main figures, was an engraving of another horse. In all, Ayla used the counting words to tally nine fully or partially drawn animals.