The Land of Painted Caves by Jean M. Auel
The little meadow’s lush grass often enticed various grazers, but the high walls of the sides eased to a comfortably climbable slope, especially for hoofed animals, some three hundred feet back, which made it not quite suitable for a hunting trap without extensive construction of fences and corrals. Such work had been started once, but never finished. Only part of a rotting back fence remained of the effort.
The area was known as the Women’s Place. Men were not restricted, but since it was used primarily by women, few men outside of the zelandonia visited the site. Ayla had stopped there before, but it was usually to bring a message to someone, or she was with someone who was on the way to some other place. She had never had occasion to stay long. Usually she had come from the direction of the Ninth Cave, and she knew that when entering the small meadow with Grass River at her back, on the outside of the wall on the right was a small cave, a temporary shelter and sometime storage place. Another small cave penetrated the same limestone wall just after rounding the corner into the enclosed valley.
Of much greater importance were two caves, narrow winding fissures that opened out of a small rock shelter that was at the back of the meadow somewhat raised from the level of the floodplain floor. Those caves at the rear of the valley had contributed to the reluctance to make the site into a hunting site, though it would not have mattered if it had been ideally suited to the purpose. The first passage, on the right, wove its way within the limestone wall back toward the way they had come until it came out at a small, narrow exit not far from the first small cave in the right wall. Though it had many engravings on its walls, it and the rock shelter where it started were used primarily as a place to stay while visiting the other cave.
No one was there when Ayla, Jondalar, and Zelandoni arrived. Most people had not yet returned from their summer activities, and the few who stayed at their living sites had no reason to visit. Jondalar unhitched the pole-drags from the horses to give them a rest. The women who used it kept the area generally neat and orderly, but it was visited often and was well used, and a Women’s Place was inevitably a children’s place as well. When Ayla had visited before, the usual activities of ordinary living were apparent. There had been wooden bowls and boxes, woven baskets, toys, clothing, and racks and posts for drying or making things. Implements of wood, bone, antler, or flint were sometimes lost or broken, or carried off by children and ended up kicked aside or left in the cave, unnoticed in the dark. Food was cooked, trash piled up, and, particularly when the weather was bad, was disposed of inside the cave, but, Ayla had learned, only in the right-hand cave.
Some things were still around. Ayla found a log with a trough dug out of it that had obviously been used to hold liquid, but she decided to use their own utensils to make tea and soup. She gathered some wood and, using an existing black depression filled with charcoal, started a fire and added cooking stones to heat water. Some logs and chunks of limestone had been dragged close to the fireplace by previous occupants, and Zelandoni took the stuffed pads from her travois and placed them around to make the seating more comfortable. Ayla nursed, then put Jonayla down on her blanket on the grass while she ate, and watched the baby fall asleep.
“Do you want to come along, Jondalar?” Zelandoni asked when they had finished. “You probably haven’t seen it since you were a boy and made your mark inside.”
“Yes, I think I will,” he said.
Nearly everyone made a mark on the walls of this cave at some time, occasionally more than once, although the males of the community were usually children or young adolescents when they made theirs. He remembered the first time he went inside by himself. It was a simple cave with no passages leading off to get lost in, and youngsters were allowed to find their own way. Generally, they went in alone or at most in pairs to make their own private marks, whistling or humming or chanting along the way until the walls seemed to answer back. The marks and engravings did not symbolize or represent names; they were a way that people told the Great Earth Mother about themselves, how they defined themselves to Her. Often they only made finger tracings. It was enough.
After they finished their meal, Ayla wrapped her infant securely to her back and they each lit a lamp and started into the cave, Zelandoni in front and Wolf bringing up the rear. Jondalar recalled that the left cave felt exceedingly long—it was more than eight hundred feet deep, winding through the limestone—and that the beginning of the fissure was fairly easy to enter, and unremarkable. Only a few markings on the walls near the entrance indicated that someone had been there before.
“Why don’t you use your bird whistles to speak to the Mother, Ayla,” the First said.
Ayla had heard the woman humming, not loudly but very melodically, and hadn’t expected to be asked. “If you would like me to,” she said, and began a series of bird calls, the ones she thought of as softer evening sounds.
About four hundred feet from the entrance, halfway in, the cave narrowed and the sounds resonated differently. That was where the drawings started. From this point on, the walls were covered with drawings of every kind. The two walls of the winding subterranean passage were marked with almost uncountable, often undecipherably superimposed and intermingled engravings. Some were isolated and many that could be interpreted were very well made. Adult women frequented the cave most often and, consequently, the more accomplished, refined engravings were usually made by them.
Horses predominated, shown at rest and with lively movement, even galloping. Bison were also very prevalent, but there were many other animals: reindeer, mammoths, ibex, bears, cats, wild asses, deer, woolly rhinoceroses, wolves, foxes, and at least one saiga antelope, hundreds of engravings in all. Some were very unusual, like the mammoth with its trunk curled back; the head of a lion that utilized a naturally embedded stone for the eye was strikingly rendered; and a reindeer bending down to drink was outstanding for its beauty and realism, as were the two reindeer facing each other. The walls were fragile and didn’t lend themselves well to painting, but were easy to mark and engrave, even with fingers.
There were also many parts of human figures, including masks, hands, and various silhouettes, but always distorted, never as clearly and beautifully drawn as the animals, such as the disproportionately large limbs on the seated figure, shown in profile. Many engravings were incomplete and buried in a network of lines, various geometric symbols, tectiform signs, and undefined marks and scribbles that could be interpreted many ways, sometimes depending on how the light was held. The caves were originally formed by underground rivers, and at the end of the gallery there was still a karstic area of active cave formation.
Wolf ran on ahead into some of more inaccessible parts of the cave. He came back carrying something in his mouth and dropped it at Ayla’s feet. “What is this?” she said as she bent to pick it up. All three of them focused their lamps on the object. “Zelandoni, this looks like a piece of a skull!” Ayla said. “And here is another piece, a part of a jaw. It’s small. I think this may have been a woman. Where did he find these, I wonder?”
Zelandoni took them and held them in the light from the lamp. “There may have been a burial in here, long ago. People have lived near here for as long as anyone can remember.” She saw Jondalar make an involuntary shudder. He preferred to leave things of the spirit world to the zelandonia, and she knew it.
Jondalar had helped with burials when he was required to do so, but he hated the duty. Usually when men returned from digging burial holes, or other activities that brought them dangerously close to the spirit world, they went to the cave called the Men’s Place, on a highland across Grass River from the Third Cave, to be scrubbed and purified. Again, women were not prohibited from the Men’s Place, but like a fa’lodge, it was mostly male activities that took place, and few women, outside of the zelandonia, went there.
“The spirit is long gone from these,” she said. “The elan found its way to the world of the spirits so long ago that only pieces of bone are left. There may be more.”
“Do you know why someone was buried in here, Zelandoni?” Jondalar asked.
“It is not what we usually do, but I am sure this person was put in this Sacred Place for a reason. I don’t know why the Mother decided to let the wolf show them to us, but I will put these back farther on. I think it is best to return them to Her.”
The One Who Was First went ahead into the twisting darkness of the cave. They watched her light weaving ahead, then disappear. Not long after, it reappeared, and soon they saw the woman returning. “I think it’s time to go back,” she said.
Ayla was glad to be leaving the cave. Besides being dark, the caves were always damp and chilly once you moved past the opening, and this one felt close and confined, but maybe it was just that she’d had her fill of caves for a while. She just wanted to go home.
When they arrived at the Ninth Cave, they found that more people had come home from the Summer Meeting, though some were planning to leave again soon. They had brought with them a young man who was smiling shyly at a woman seated near him. His hair was light brown and his eyes were gray. Ayla recognized Matagan, the young man of the Fifth Cave who had been gored in the leg by a woolly rhinoceros the year before.
Ayla and Jondalar had been returning from their period of isolation after their Matrimonial when they saw several young men—inexperienced boys, really—who were baiting a huge, full-grown rhino. The youngsters had been sharing one of the bachelor fa’lodges, some for the first time, and were full of themselves, sure they would live forever. When they saw the woolly rhinoceros, they decided to hunt it themselves without going to find an older, more experienced hunter. They were thinking only of the praise and glory they would get when the people at the Summer Meeting saw their kill.
They were really quite young; some had barely gained hunter status, and only one of them had even seen hunters baiting a rhino, though they had all heard of the technique. They didn’t know how deceptively quick the huge creature could be, or how important it was to keep focused and not allow their attention to stray for a moment. That was all it had taken. The rhino had shown signs of tiring, and the boy hadn’t kept his attention closely enough on the animal. When it came for him, Matagan was unable to move fast enough. He was badly gored in the right leg below the knee. The injury was severe, with the lower part of his leg bent sharply backward and the jagged broken bones sticking out of the profusely bleeding wound. He would likely have died if Ayla hadn’t happened to be there and, from her training in the Clan, knew how to set a broken leg and staunch the bleeding.
When he did survive, the fear was that he might never walk on that leg again. He did walk, but there was permanent damage and some paralysis. He could get around fairly well, but his ability to crouch down or stalk an animal was severely curtailed; he would never be a really good hunter. That was when discussions began about him becoming an apprentice to Jondalar to learn flint-knapping. The boy’s mother and her mate, plus Kemordan, the leader of the Fifth Cave, Joharran, Jondalar, and Ayla, since he would be staying with them, had finally settled everything at the Summer Meeting before they left. Ayla liked the youngster and approved of the arrangement. The boy needed to have a skill that would give him respect and status, and she remembered when they were traveling, how much Jondalar had enjoyed teaching his craft to anyone willing to learn, especially youngsters. But she had hoped for a day or so of rest and quiet alone in her home. She took a deep, silent breath and walked over to greet Matagan. He smiled when he saw her coming, and hurried to scamble to his feet.
“Greetings, Matagan,” she said, reaching for both of his hands. “In the name of the Great Earth Mother, I welcome you.” She looked him over closely in her inconspicuous way, and noted that he seemed rather tall for his age, though he was still young and had not reached his full height. She hoped his injured leg would continue to grow to match the length of his good leg. It was hard to tell how tall he would be, but his limp could get worse if his legs became unequal in size.
“In the name of Doni, I greet you, Ayla,” he replied, the polite greeting he had been taught to use.
Jonayla, tied to her mother’s back with the carrying blanket, squirmed to see to whom she was talking. “I think Jonayla wants to greet you, too,” Ayla said, loosening her blanket and shifting her around to the front. The baby sat wide-eyed in her mother’s arms looking at the young man; then suddenly she smiled and held out her arms to him. Ayla was surprised.
He smiled back. “Can I hold her? I know how. I have a sister a little older than her,” Matagan said.
And he’s probably homesick and lonesome for her already, Ayla thought, as she handed Jonayla to him. It was obvious that he was comfortable holding a baby. “Do you have many brothers and sisters?” she asked.
“I guess so. She’s the youngest, I’m the oldest, and there are four in between, including two born together,” he said.
“I think you must be quite a help to your mother. She is going to miss you. How many years do you count?” she said.
“I’m a thirteen-year,” he said. He became aware of her unusual accent again. When he had first heard the foreign woman speak, the year before, he had thought her accent was quite strange, but when he was recovering, especially when he woke up after the accident and was in so much pain, he grew to look forward to that accent because she invariably brought some relief. And although the other Zelandonia also checked on him, she came regularly, and stayed to talk to him and straighten his bedding to make him comfortable, as well as giving him medicine.
“And you have reached your manhood and had your rites last summer,” a voice behind Ayla said. It was Jondalar, who had been hearing the conversation as he approached them. The style of Matagan’s clothing, the patterns that had been sewn on them, and the beads and jewelry he wore told Jondalar that the youngster was considered a man of the Fifth Cave of the Zelandonii.
“Yes, last summer at the Meeting,” Matagan said. “Before I was hurt.”
“Now that you are a man, it’s time for you to learn a skill. Have you done much flint knapping?”
“Some. I can make a spear point and a knife, or reshape one that is broken. They aren’t the best, but they work,” the boy said.
“Perhaps the question I should ask is, do you like working the flint?” Jondalar said.
“I like it when it goes right. Sometimes it doesn’t.”
Jondalar smiled. “Even for me, sometimes it doesn’t,” he said. “Have you eaten?”
“I just finished,” Matagan said.
“Well, we haven’t yet,” Jondalar said. “We just got back from a short trip to see some of our neighbors and find out if they suffered any injuries or damage from the earthquake. You know that Ayla is acolyte to the First, don’t you?”
“I think everyone knows that,” he said, shifting Jonayla around to lean against his shoulder.
“Did you feel the earthquake?” Ayla asked. “Was anyone in your traveling party hurt?”
“We felt it. Some people were knocked down, but no one was really hurt,” he said. “I think everyone was scared, though. I know I was.”
“I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t be afraid during an earthquake. We’ll get something to eat; then we’ll show you where you can stay. We haven’t set anything up special, yet, but we’ll work it out later,” Jondalar said as they headed toward the other side of the shelter where people were gathered.
Ayla reached for Jonayla.
“I can hold her while you get some food,” Matagan said. “If she’ll let me.”
“Let’s see if she will,” Ayla said, turning toward the firepit where the food had been set out. Suddenly Wolf appeared. He had stopped for water when they reached the Ninth Cave, and then found that someone had put some food in his bowl. Matagan’s eyes opened wider with surprise, but he had seen the wolf before and he didn’t seem overly frightened of the animal. Ayla had introduced the wolf to Matagan the year before when she was taking care of him, and the animal sniffed the young m
By the time they finished eating, it was getting dark. There were always some prepared torches ready for lighting near the main fire where the group often gathered and Jondalar took one and lit it. They all had traveling gear with them—backframes, sleeping rolls, traveling tents. Jondalar helped Ayla with some of hers, while she carried the baby, but Matagan seemed to be able to handle his own, including a sturdy staff that he sometimes used to walk with. He didn’t seem to need it all the time. Ayla suspected he had used it on the long walk from the Sun View, the place of the Summer Meeting, to the Ninth Cave, but probably could get by just fine for shorter distances.
When they reached their dwelling, Jondalar went in first, lighting the way, and held open the drape across the entrance. Matagan went in next, followed by Ayla.
“Why don’t you set up your sleeping roll here in the main room near the fire for now. We’ll work out something better tomorrow,” Jondalar said, suddenly wondering how long Matagan would be living with them.
Part Two
18
“Matagan, have you seen Jonayla and Jondalar?” Ayla called out when she saw the young man walking with a limp, coming out of the addition that had been built next to her dwelling. There were three youths living there now: Matagan; Jonfilar, who had come from the west, near the Great Waters; and Garthadal, whose mother was the leader of his Cave, and had traveled with him from far to the southeast because she had heard of Jondalar’s skill.
After four years, Matagan was the most senior of Jondalar’s apprentices and had gained so much proficiency that he was helping the man train the younger ones. He could have gone back to the Fifth Cave, or almost any other Cave, as an experienced flint-knapper in his own right, but by now he thought of the Ninth Cave as his home and preferred to stay and work with his mentor.