by Jean M. Auel
Her dried clotted blood turned to red-ochered soil,
But the radiant child made it all worth the toil.
The Mother’s great joy. A bright shining boy.
Mountains rose up spouting flames from their crests,
She nurtured Her son from Her mountainous breasts.
He suckled so hard, the sparks flew so high,
The Mother’s hot milk laid a path through the sky.
His life had begun. She nourished Her son.
He laughed and he played, and he grew big and bright.
He lit up the darkness, the Mother’s delight.
She lavished Her love, he grew bright and strong,
But soon he matured, not a child for long.
Her son was near grown. His mind was his own.
She took from the source for the life She’d begun.
Now the cold empty void was enticing Her son.
The Mother gave love, but the youth longed for more,
For knowledge, excitement, to travel, explore.
Chaos was Her foe. But Her son yearned to go.
He stole from Her side as the Great Mother slept,
While out of the dark swirling void chaos crept.
With tempting inducements the darkness beguiled.
Deceived by the whirlwind, chaos captured Her child.
The dark took Her son. The young brilliant one.
The Mother’s bright child, at first overjoyed,
Was soon overwhelmed by the bleak frigid void.
Her unwary offspring, consumed with remorse,
Could not escape the mysterious force.
Chaos would not free. Her rash progeny.
But just as the dark pulled him into the cold,
The Mother woke up, reached out and caught hold.
To help Her recover Her radiant son,
The Mother appealed to the pale shining one.
The Mother held tight. And kept him in sight.
The sound resonated. The song echoed back to them, not as strongly as some, the First thought, but with interesting nuances, almost as though it were doubling back on itself. When the First reached a place in the verse she felt was appropriate, she stopped. Silently, the group continued on.
On the right side of the cave they came to a large accumulation of stalagmitic stone along with collapsed blocks. This time the Watcher took them to the left side of the cave at the deepest part of the bears’ sleeping room. Across from the stalagmites and stone blocks was a large rock pendant in the shape of a blade hanging from the ceiling. The stones defined the beginning of a new chamber with a high ceiling in the beginning, but decreasing toward the back. Many concretions hung from the roof and the walls, unlike the bears’ sleeping place, which had no such concretions.
When they reached the hanging pendant, the Watcher knocked her torch against an edge of rock to make it burn cleaner, then held it up so the visitors could see the the surface of the panel. Closest to the bottom, facing left, painted in red, was a spotted leopard! Ayla, Jondalar, and Jonokol had never seen a leopard painted on the walls of a Sacred Site before. Its long tail made Ayla think it was probably a snow leopard. At the end of the leopard’s tail was a thick flow of calcite and on the other side of it was one large red dot. No one understood the reason for the large red dots in this place, or even what the leopard meant, but there was no doubting that it was a leopard.
The same could not be said about the animal above it that faced right. The massive shoulders and shape of the head could almost be mistaken for a bear, but the thin body, long legs, and spots on the upper body made Ayla sure it was a cave hyena! She knew hyenas and they had massive shoulders. The shape of the head in the painted animal somewhat resembled that of a cave bear. The powerful teeth and jaw muscles of a hyena, which could crack the bones of a mammoth, had developed a more powerful bone structure, too, but its muzzle was longer. The coat of a hyena was stiff and coarse, especially around the head and shoulders.
“Do you see the other bear above it?” the Watcher said.
Suddenly Ayla caught sight of another figure above the hyena. In faint red lines Ayla could make out the distinctive shape of a cave bear facing left, in the opposite direction from the hyena, and she began making comparisons.
“I don’t think the spotted animal is a bear. I think it is a cave hyena,” Ayla said.
“Some people think so, but its head is so bear-like,” the Watcher said.
“The heads of the two animals are similar,” Ayla said, “but the hyena in the image has a longer muzzle, and no discernible ears. The tuft of bristly hair on the top of its head is typical of a hyena.”
The Watcher didn’t argue. People had a right to think what they wished, but the acolyte had made some interesting observations. The woman then pointed out another cat that was hidden on a narrow panel on the underside of the hanging stone and asked her what kind of cat she thought it was. Ayla wasn’t sure; there were no distinctive marks on its coat and it was enlongated to fit the space, but it was very catlike—on second thought, maybe weasel-like. There were some other animals that she was told were ibex, but they weren’t as clear to her. They were then led back to the left side of the chamber. At first there were many concretions, but no drawings.
As they continued down the passage they came to a long panel. A calcareous formation had decorated the wall with draperies and strings of red, orange, and yellow that didn’t quite reach the thick conical mounds beneath them. Concretions like rivulets frozen in time seemed to run down the hanging drapes, leaving spaces between them on which strange signs had been painted.
One was a sort of long rectangular shape with lines coming out the sides. It reminded Ayla of a very large depiction of one of those creeping creatures with many legs, perhaps a caterpillar. In a space next to it was a shape that had something like wings on either side of the center. It could have been a butterfly, which was the next stage in the life of a caterpillar, but it wasn’t as carefully done as many of the other paintings, so she wasn’t sure. She thought of asking the Watcher, but doubted if she knew. Whatever she said would only be her guess.
As they continued, the wall became less extravagantly decorated. The Watcher started softly humming again. There was some resonance, but not much until they came to an area with overhanging rock. There clusters of red dots had been made. It was followed by a frieze of five rhinoceroses. There were other signs and animals in the area. Seven heads and one complete catlike animal, perhaps lions, plus a horse, a mammoth, a rhinoceros. Several positive images of handprints, plus dots forming lines and circular figures. Farther on were more signs and a sketch of a rhino in black.
Next they came to another blade of rock, a kind of partition on which were more signs, a partial outline of a mammoth in black with a red negative hand stencil inside the line of the body, and another on the flank of a horse. To the right of them, two clusters of large dots. On the other side of the panel of hand stencils was a drawing in red of a little bear. There was also a red deer and some other marks, but the bear was the predominant figure. It was drawn very much like the other red bears they had seen, but it was a miniature version. The panel marked the beginning of a small chamber straight ahead. As they looked in they could see that it had little headroom.
“I don’t think we need to go in here,” the Watcher said. “It’s just a very small space without much in it, and we’d have to stoop or crouch once we were inside of it.”
The First agreed. She had little desire to squeeze herself into a tiny space, and as she recalled, there wasn’t much in it. Besides she knew what was coming and was more anxious to see that.
Instead of going straight ahead to visit the small chamber, the Watcher turned left, then followed the right wall. The next chamber was about five feet lower than the one they were in. The floor was slanted down, the ceiling was high in places and low in others, and the walls and ceiling had many concretions. There was some evidence that cave bears had been there—paw prints, cl
aw marks, and bones. Ayla thought she saw the hint of a drawing some distance away, but the Watcher just walked through, not bothering to point it out. The space felt like an entryway to something else.
The entrance to the next chamber was low. In the center of the next room was a sinkhole, a depression that was about thirty feet around and over twelve feet deep. They passed around the right of it on a floor of brown earth.
“When did the floor collapse?” Jondalar asked. The floor underfoot seemed solid enough, but he wondered if it could happen again.
“I don’t know,” the Watcher said, “but I do know it was after the Ancients were here.”
“How do you know that?” Jondalar asked.
“Look above the hole,” she said, pointing to a smooth, bladelike pendant of rock descending from the ceiling over the hole.
Everyone looked. Because the surfaces of most of the walls and descended ceiling rocks in this chamber were coated with a soft layer of light brown clay-like material, vermiculite—a chemical alteration of the mineral constituents of the stone that softened the surface—the images were white. Drawings, engravings of a sort, could be made with a stick, or even a finger, displacing the brown-colored surface clay and leaving a pure white line underneath.
Ayla noticed that there were many white drawings in this room, but on the overhanging rock she could clearly see a horse, and an owl with its head turned around so that its face could be seen over its back. It was something owls were known to do, but she had never seen a drawing of it; she had never seen any owl drawings in any cave.
“You are right. That had to be made by the Ancients before the floor collapsed,” Jondalar said, “because no one could reach it now.”
The Watcher smiled at him, and enjoyed the incredulity in his voice. She pointed out several more of the finger-etched drawings in the large room. She took them around to the other side of the circular depression, the left wall. Although it was filled with hanging pendants of stalactites and stalagmitic pillars and circular pyramids built up on the floor, it was not difficult to move around in the room, and most of the decorations were at eye level. Even at a distance, the light from their torches showed many white engravings, some scraped to produce a white surface. Standing in the middle of the room they could see mammoths, rhinoceroses, bears, aurochs, bison, horses, and a series of curved lines and sinuous fingermarks drawn over bear claw marks.
“How many animals are in this room?” Ayla asked.
“I have counted almost twice twenty-five,” the Watcher said, holding up her left hand with all her fingers and her thumb bent at the knuckles, then opening her hand and closing the knuckles again.
Ayla remembered the other way to count with fingers. Counting with hands could be more complex than the simple counting words, if one understood how to do it. The right hand counted the words, and as each word was spoken, a finger was bent; the left hand indicated the number of fives counted. The left hand, held palm facing out, with all the fingers and thumbs bent at the knuckles, counted not five, the way she had taught herself when she first learned to count and the way Jondalar had once taught her the counting words, but twenty-five. She had learned this way of counting in her training, and the concept had astounded her. It made the counting words so much more powerful when used like that.
It occurred to her that the large dots could be a way of using the counting words, too. One handprint could be counted as five; one large dot made with only the palm of the hand could mean twenty-five; two would be twice twenty-five, fifty; and so many on the wall in one place would be a very large number, if one understood how to read it. But as with most things associated with the zelandonia, it was probably more complex than that. All signs had more than one meaning.
As they were walking around the room, Ayla saw a beautifully made horse, and behind it two mammoths, one superimposed on the other, with the line of their bellies drawn as a high arch, which made Ayla think of the massive arch outside. Was the arch supposed to represent a mammoth? Most of the animals in this chamber seemed to be mammoths, but there were many rhinoceroses, too; one in particular captured Ayla’s attention. Just the front half was engraved and it seemed to be emerging from a crack in the wall, emerging from the world behind the wall. There were also a few horses, aurochs, and bison, but no felines or deer. And while almost all of the images in the first part of the cave were made with red paint—the red ocher from the floor and walls—the images in this part were white, engraved with fingers or another hard object, except for some made with black on the right wall at the end, including a beautiful black bear nearby.
They looked interesting and she wanted to go see them, but the Watcher led them around the left side of the large crater in the middle of the room toward another section of the cave. The left wall was hidden by a rocky mass of big blocks that she could barely make out in the light of the torches, which reminded her to knock off the excess burned ash from her torch. The light flared up and she realized that she would need to light another torch soon.
The Watcher began humming again as they approached another space defined by a much lower height. So low that someone had climbed up on the blocks and drawn a mammoth with a finger on the ceiling. On the right was the head of a bison, quickly done, followed by three mammoths, then several more drawings on rock pendants hanging from the ceiling. Ayla could see two big reindeer drawn in black and shaded to give them contours and, less detailed, a third one. On another part of the pendant, two black mammoths faced each other, but only the forequarters of the one on the left were made. The one on the right was filled in with black, and it had tusks—the only tusks she had seen on the mammoths in this cave. There were other drawings on pendants farther back, quite a distance above the floor: another mammoth engraved in left profile, a big lion, and then, surprisingly, a musk-ox identifiable by its down-curving horns.
Ayla had been so involved in trying to see the animals on the pendants in the back that it wasn’t until she heard the First join in that she realized the Watcher, the First, and the Zelandoni of the Nineteenth Cave were singing to the cave again. She didn’t join in this time. She could make bird and animal sounds, but she couldn’t sing. But she did enjoy listening.
She welcomed him back, Her lover of old,
With heartache and sorrow, Her story She told.
Her dear friend agreed to join in the fight,
To rescue her child from his perilous plight.
She told of Her grief. And the dark swirling thief.
The Mother was tired, She had to recover,
She loosened Her hold to Her luminous lover.
While She was sleeping, he fought the cold force,
And for a time drove it back to the source.
His spirit was strong. The encounter too long.
Her fair shining friend struggled hard, gave his best,
The conflict was bitter, the struggle hard pressed.
His vigilance waned as he closed his great eye,
Then darkness crept close, stole his light from the sky.
Her pale friend was tiring. His light was expiring.
When darkness was total, She woke with a cry.
The tenebrious void hid the light from the sky.
She joined in the conflict, was quick to defend,
And drove the dark shadow away from Her friend.
But the pale face of night. Let Her son out of sight.
Trapped by the whirlwind, Her bright fiery son,
Gave no warmth to the Earth, cold chaos had won.
The fertile green life was now ice and snow,
And a sharp piercing wind continued to blow.
The Earth was bereft. No green plants were left.
The Mother was weary, grieving and worn,
But She reached out again for the life She had borne.
She couldn’t give up, She needed to strive,
For the glorious light of Her son to survive.
She continued the fight. To bring back the light.
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br /> Suddenly something caught Ayla’s eye, something that made her shiver, and gave her a frisson of not exactly fear, but recognition. She saw a cave bear skull, by itself, on top of the horizontal surface of a rock. She wasn’t sure how the rock had found its way to the middle of the floor. There were a few other smaller rocks nearby and she assumed they had fallen from the ceiling, though none of the other rocks had a squared-off flat top surface, but she knew by what means the skull had found its place on the rock. Some human hand had put it there!
As she walked toward the rock, Ayla had sudden memories of the cave bear skull Creb had found with a bone forced through the opening formed by the eye socket and the cheekbone. That skull had great significance to The Mog-ur of the Clan of the Cave Bear, and she wondered if any member of the Clan had ever been in this cave. This cave would certainly have held great meaning for them if they had. The Ancients who made the images in this cave were certainly people like her. The Clan didn’t make images, but they could have moved a skull. And the Clan was here at the same time as the Ancient Painters. Could they have come into this cave?
As she drew closer and looked at the cave bear skull perched on the flat stone, with its two huge canine teeth extended over the edge, in her heart she believed that the Ancient who had put it there belonged to the Clan. Jondalar had seen her shake, and walked toward the center of the space. When he reached the stone, and saw the cave bear skull on the rock, he understood her reaction.
“Are you all right, Ayla?” he asked.
“This cave would have meant so much to the Clan,” she said. “I can’t help but think they knew about it. With their memories, maybe they still do.”
The rest of them were now crowded around the stone with the skull.
“I see you have found the skull. I was going to show it to you,” the Watcher said.
“Do any of the people of the Clan come here?” Ayla asked.
“The people of the Clan?” the Watcher said, shaking her head.
“The ones you call Flatheads. The other people,” Ayla said.
“It’s strange that you should ask,” the Watcher said. “We do see Flatheads around here, but only at certain times of year, usually. They frighten the children, but we have come to a kind of understanding, if you can reach an understanding with animals. They stay away from us, and we don’t bother them if all they want is to go into the cave.”