The Land of Painted Caves

by Jean M. Auel

  “First I should tell you, they aren’t animals; they are people. The cave bear is their primary totem—they call themselves the Clan of the Cave Bear,” Ayla said.

  “How can they call themselves anything? They don’t talk,” the Watcher said.

  “They talk. They just don’t talk the way we do. They use some words, but mostly they talk with their hands,” Ayla said.

  “How does one talk with hands?”

  “They make gestures, motions with their hands and with their bodies,” Ayla said.

  “I don’t understand,” the Watcher said.

  “I’ll show you,” Ayla said, handing her torch to Jondalar. “The next time you see a person of the Clan who wants to go into this cave, you could say this.” Then she said the words as she made the gestures. “I would greet you, and I would tell you that you are welcome to visit this cave that is home to cave bears.”

  “Those motions, those hand wavings, they mean what you just said?” the Watcher asked.

  “I’ve been teaching the Ninth Cave and our zelandonia, and anyone else who wants to learn,” Ayla said, “how to make a few basic signs, so if they meet some people of the Clan when they are traveling, they can communicate, at least a little. I’ll be happy to show you some signs, too, but it would probably be better if we wait until we get out of the cave where there is more light.”

  “I would like to see more, but how do you know so much?” the Watcher asked.

  “I lived with them. They raised me. My mother, and whoever she was with—my people, I suppose—died in an earthquake. I was left alone. I wandered by myself until a clan found me and took me in. They took care of me, loved me, and I loved them back,” Ayla said.

  “You don’t know who your people are?” the Watcher said.

  “My people are the Zelandonii, now. Before that, my people were the Mamutoi, the mammoth hunters, and before that, my people were the Clan, but I don’t remember the people I was born to,” Ayla explained.

  “I see,” the Watcher said. “I would like to know more, but now we still have more of this cave to see.”

  “You are right,” the First said. Once it came up, she had been interested in how this Zelandoni would react to the information that Ayla brought. “Let’s continue.”

  While Ayla had been thinking about the bear skull on the stone, the Watcher had shown the others more of the section they were in. Ayla noticed several areas as they walked on, a large scraped panel of mammoths, some horses, aurochs, and ibex.

  “I should tell you, Zelandoni Who Is First,” the Watcher said, “the last chamber along this axis that is going the length of the cave is rather difficult. It requires climbing up some high steps and stooping over to go through a place with a low ceiling, and there isn’t much to see except some signs, a yellow horse, and some mammoths at the end. You might want to think about it before proceeding.”

  “Yes, I recall,” the First said. “I don’t need to see this last place this time. I’ll let the more energetic ones go ahead.”

  “I’ll wait with you,” Willamar said. “I have seen it, too.”

  When the group got back together, they all started to walk along the wall that had been on the right and was now on their left. They passed the panel of scraped mammoths and finally came to the black paintings that they had only glimpsed from a distance. As they approached the first of the images, the Watcher started humming again, and the visitors could feel the cave responding.

  28

  The first images Ayla was drawn to were the horses, though they were by no means the first paintings on the wall. She had seen some beautiful art since she had come to know that visual representations existed, but she had never seen anything like the horse panel on this wall.

  In this humid cave, the surface of the wall was soft. In this place, through chemical and bacterial agents that neither she nor the artists could begin to understand, the surface layer of the limestone had decomposed into mondmilch, a material with a soft, almost luxurious texture, and a pure white color. It could be scraped off a wall with almost anything, even a hand, and underneath was a hard white limestone, a perfect canvas for drawing. The ancients who painted these walls knew it, and knew how to use it.

  There were four horse heads, painted in perspective, one on top of another, but the wall behind them had been scraped clean, which gave the artist the opportunity to show the detail, and the individual differences of each animal The distinctive stand-up mane, the line of the jaw, the shape of the muzzle, an open or closed mouth, a flaring nostril, all were depicted with such accuracy, they seemed real.

  Ayla turned to find the tall man to whom she was mated to share this moment with. “Jondalar, look at those horses! Have you ever seen anything like it? It’s like they’re alive.”

  He stood behind her and put his arms around her. “I have seen some beautiful horses painted on walls, but nothing like this. What do you think, Jonokol?”

  Jonokol turned to the First. “Thank you for taking me with you on this trip. For this alone, the entire Journey would be worth it.” He turned back to the painted wall. “And it’s not just the horses. Look at those aurochs, and those rhinoceroses fighting.”

  “I don’t think they are fighting,” Ayla said.

  “No, they do that before they share Pleasures, too,” Willamar said. He looked at the First and felt they shared the same experience. Although both of them had been here before, seeing the images through Ayla’s eyes was like seeing them for the first time.

  The Watcher couldn’t erase her smile of smug satisfaction. She didn’t have to say, “I told you.” This was the best part of being a Watcher. Not seeing the work herself—she had seen it many times—but seeing the way people responded to it. Most people. “Would you like to see more?”

  Ayla just looked at her and smiled, but it was the loveliest smile she had ever seen. She really is a beautiful woman, the Watcher thought. I can understand Jondalar’s attraction to her. If I were a man, I would be too.

  Now that they had taken in the horses, Ayla could take the time to see the rest, and there was much more to see. The three aurochs to the left of the horses, mingled with the small rhinos, a deer, and below the confronting rhinos, a bison. On the right side of the horses there was an alcove, big enough for one at a time. Inside it were more horses, a bear or perhaps a big cat, an aurochs, and a bison with many legs.

  “Look at that stampeding bison,” Ayla said. “He’s really running and breathing hard, and the lions,” she added, first smiling, then laughing out loud.

  “What’s so funny?” Jondalar asked.

  “See those two lions? That female sitting down is in heat, and the male is very interested, but she’s not. He is not the one she wants to share Pleasures with, so she’s sitting down and won’t let him get close to her. The artist who made them was so good, you can see the disdain in her expression, and though the male is trying to look big and strong—see how he’s baring his teeth?—he knows that she thinks he’s not good enough for her, and is a little afraid of her,” Ayla explained. “How can an artist do that? Get that look just right.”

  “How do you know all that?” asked the Watcher. No one had ever given that explanation before, but as Ayla spoke it seemed entirely right; they did seem to have those expressions.

  “When I was teaching myself to hunt, I used to watch them,” Ayla said. “I was living with the Clan then, and Clan women are not supposed to hunt, so I decided rather than hunt animals to eat, since I couldn’t bring them back and they would go to waste, I’d hunt the meat-eaters that stole our food. I still got in bad trouble when they found out, though.”

  The Watcher had started humming again, and Jonokol was singing many notes of harmony around her tones. The First was getting ready to join in when Ayla stepped out of the alcove.

  “I liked the lions best. I think that frustrated lion would sound like this,” she said, then started the grunting buildup and let out a tremendous roar. It echoed off the rock of the
cave all the way to the end of the passage ahead, then out toward the chamber with the bear skull.

  The Watcher jumped back in shocked surprise and a little fear. “How does she do that?” She glanced at the First and Willamar with an incredulous look.

  Both of them just nodded. “She still surprises us,” Willamar said when Ayla and Jondalar moved on. “If you really listen, it’s not as loud as it seems, but it is loud.”

  On the other side of the alcove was a panel of mostly reindeer, male reindeer. Even female reindeer had antlers, the only deer that did, but they were small. The six reindeer on the panel had well-developed antlers, with brow tines and a full curving backsweep. There were also a horse, a bison, and an aurochs. But she didn’t think all the paintings were done by the same person. The bison was rather stiff, and the horse looked unrefined, especially after seeing the beautiful examples earlier. The person who made it was not as good an artist.

  The Watcher walked to an opening at the right side that led to a narrow passageway that had to be taken single file because of the shape of the side walls and the rock pendants hanging from the ceiling. On the right side was a complete drawing in black of a megaceros, the giant deer whose defining characteristic was a hump on the withers, along with a small head and a sinuous neck. Ayla wondered why these artists showed them without antlers, since that was the defining characteristic to her, and the reason for the hump.

  On the same panel, in a vertical position facing up, was the line of the back and two frontal horns of a rhinoceros, with its double arcs that represented ears. On the left side of the entrance was the shape of the head and back of two mammoths. Farther down the left wall were two more rhinos, facing in opposite directions. The one facing right was complete. It also had a broad dark stripe around its midsection as many rhinos in this cave did. Above it, the one facing left was only suggested by the line of the back and the little double-arc ears.

  Even more interesting to Ayla was the line of hearths along the corridor, likely used to make the charcoal to make the drawings. The fires had blackened the walls near them. Were they the hearths of the Ancients, of the artists who created all the incredible paintings and drawings in this magnificent cave? It made them seem more real, like people, not like spirits from another world. The floor sloped down steeply and there were three abrupt drops of over three feet each along its length. The middle of the corridor had engravings made with fingers rather than black drawings. Just before the second drop in the level of the floor, there were three pubic triangles, with a vulvar cleft at the downward pointed end, on opposite sides, two on the left and one on the right.

  The First was getting tired, but she knew she would never again make this trip, and even if she did, she wouldn’t be able to walk the length of this cave. Jonokol and Jondalar, one on each side, had helped the First down the drops in the level of the floor, and when the floor of the corridor got especially steep. Although it was difficult going for her, Ayla noticed that she made no mention of not going on. At one point she heard the woman comment, almost to herself, that she would never see this cave again.

  The amount of walking she had been doing on the Journey had made her healthier, but she was enough of a healer to know that she wasn’t as well or as strong as she had been in her youth. She was determined to see this very special cave one last time in its entirety.

  The last painted panel in the corridor was just before the last big drop in the floor level. On the right were four rhinoceroses that were partly painted and partly engraved. One was hard to see; two were quite small and had black bands circling their bellies, and had the typical ears. The last was much bigger but incomplete. A large male ibex, identified by the horns that swept back almost the full length of its body, was painted in black on a rock pendant that overlooked the group from its elevated position. On the left side, the wall had been scraped to prepare it for several animals: six full or partial horses, two bison and two megaceros, one of each complete, two little rhinos, and several lines and marks.

  The biggest step down followed: a thirteen-foot progression of uneven terraces caused by flowing water and depressions in the fill dirt of the cave floor, with big bear nests dug into it. Jondalar, Jonokol, Willamar, and Ayla all helped the First get down. It would be just as difficult getting her up again, but they were all determined. Rock pendants hung from the ceiling, their fine, light surfaces reflecting the light from the torches, but they were not decorated. The right wall had very little art, but it did have some.

  The Watcher started humming again, and the First joined her, and then Jonokol. Ayla waited. They faced the right wall first, but for no reason that Ayla could understand, it didn’t resonate well. One panel had three black rhinoceroses—one complete with a black band around its middle, another that was just an outline, and a third that was just a head—three lions, a bear, the head of a bison, and a vulva. She had the feeling they were telling a story, perhaps about women, and she wished she knew what it was. They turned around and faced the left wall. Now the cave sang back.

  At a quick look, the first part of the left wall seemed to be divided into three major sections. Very near the beginning of the space were three lions side by side facing right, shown in perspective by the line of the back. The biggest one farthest away was about eight feet long, painted in black and showing his scrotum so there was no doubt about his gender. The middle one was made with a red line, and also showed he was male. The one closest was smaller and female. As she looked at the drawing, Ayla wasn’t sure about the middle one. There wasn’t a third head, and it may have been there for perspective, and therefore it was just a lion couple. Though simple, the lines were very expressive. Above their backs, she could faintly make out three engraved mammoths made with a finger. Lions predominated in this part of the cave. To the right of the lions was a rhinoceros, and to the right of that were three more lions facing left that seemed to be staring at the other lions and two rhinos, which gave a certain balance to the panel.

  All the paintings in this section were located at a level that could be reached by a person standing on the ground, except for one mammoth engraved high up on the wall. Many of the paintings were on top of bear claw markings, but there were also a few claw marks on top of them. So bears had visited after the people left.

  There was a niche in the center of the next section. To the left of it were faded red lions and dots superimposed by black lions. Then a section with a rhino with multiple horns, eight in perspective, so that it appeared to be eight rhinos side by side and many more rhinos. To the right of the rhino panel was the niche, and painted inside it was a horse. Two black rhinos and a mammoth were painted above it, and impressions of animals emerging from deep in the rocks, the horse coming out of the niche, a massive bison coming from a crack, from the Other World, then mammoths, and a rhinoceros.

  The section to the right of the niche had primarily two animals, lions and bison—lions hunting bison. The bison were crowded together in a herd on the left side, and the lions were straining toward them from the right, as though waiting for a signal to pounce. The lions were beautifully fierce, as she knew they should be; the Cave Lion was her totem. To Ayla, this was the most spectacular chamber in the whole cave. There was so much, she could not absorb it all, but she wanted to. The big panel ended at a ridge that formed a kind of second niche, a shallow one, with a complete black rhinoceros emerging from the world of the spirits. On the other side of the niche a bison was drawn with its head on one wall, seen full face, and its body in profile on another wall perpendicular to it, very effective.

  Below the bison was a triangular cavity with two lion heads and the forequarters of another lion facing right. Above the lions was a black rhinoceros with streaks of red showing wounds and blood coming out of its mouth. Beyond that a wide rock pendant showed the place where the ceiling descended until it was perpendicular to the right wall. Three lions and another animal were painted on its internal surface, but visible from the chamber. Just before the c
eiling descended, a protrusion of rock stood out and descended vertically, ending in a rounded point. It had four faces all richly decorated.

  “To understand it fully, you need to see all the way around it,” the Watcher said, showing Ayla the full composite figure: the forequarters of a bison on top of human legs with a large vulva between them, shaded black, with vertical engraving at the lower point. It was the bottom of a woman’s body with a bison head above, and a lion around the back of the pendant. “The shape of that pendant has always looked to me like a man’s organ.”

  “It does, doesn’t it,” Ayla agreed.

  “There are a couple of small rooms that have some interesting paintings,” the Watcher said. “If you like, I’ll show you.”

  “Yes. I’d like to see as much as I can before we have to leave,” Ayla said.

  “You can see here, behind the male pendant, there are three lions. And after the bleeding rhino, there is a little corridor that leads to a beautiful horse,” the Watcher said, leading her to show the way. “And here is the big bison at the end of the panel. Inside this area is a big lion, and some little horses. The area across the way is very hard to get into.”

  Ayla walked back toward the beginning of the chamber to where the First was resting on a stone. The rest of the visitors were nearby.

  “Well, what do you think, Ayla?” the woman asked.

  “I am so glad you brought me here. I think this is the most beautiful cave I have ever seen. It’s more than a cave, but I don’t know a word for it. When I lived with the Clan I didn’t know you could see something in real life and make something that looked like it out of something else.” Ayla looked around for Jondalar, and smiled when she saw him. He came closer and stood with his arm around her, which was what she wanted. She needed to share this with him. “Then when I went to live with the Mamutoi and saw the things Ranec could make out of ivory, and others could make using leather and beads, and sometimes just a stick making marks on a smooth floor of dirt, I was amazed.”