The Land of Painted Caves

by Jean M. Auel

  Then he remembered a troupe of traveling Storytellers a year or so back that had some new and wildly imaginative stories about horses carrying people and a wolf who loved a woman, but he never dreamed there could be any truth in them. Yet, here they were. He hadn’t seen the horses carrying people, but he was beginning to wonder how much truth was in those stories.

  A tall woman, whom Ayla thought looked somehow familiar, came forward and asked Willamar, “Did you say you were expecting to see Jondecam and Kimeran here?”

  “It has been a long time since you have seen them, hasn’t it, Camora?” Willamar said.

  “Yes, it has,” she said.

  “You resemble your kin, especially your brother, Jondecam, but Kimeran, too,” Willamar said.

  “We are all related,” Camora said, explaining to Farnadal, “Kimeran is my uncle, but he was much younger than his sister, who was my mother. When my mother’s mother joined the spirits of the next world, my mother raised him like a son, along with Jondecam and me. Then when the man to whom she was mated passed on to the next world, she became a Zelandoni. It runs in her family; her grandfa was also a Zelandoni. I wonder if he still walks this world?”

  “Yes, he does, in fact, and while age has slowed his step, he is still Zelandoni of the Seventh Cave. Your mother is now the spiritual leader of the Second,” Willamar said.

  “The one who was Zelandoni of the Second Cave before her, the one who taught me to make images, walks the next world now,” Jonokol added. “That was a sad day for me, but your mother is a good Donier.”

  “Why did you think Kimeran and Jondecam would be here?” Farnadal asked.

  “They were supposed to leave shortly after we did and come straight here. We made stops along the way,” the Zelandoni Who Was First said. “I am taking Ayla on her Donier Tour, and Jonokol, too—I should say Zelandoni of the Nineteenth. We never made much of a Tour when he was my acolyte, and he needs to visit some of the Sacred Sites. From here we were all going to travel together to see one of the most important painted caves. It is in the southeast of Zelandonii territory, and then we’ll visit relatives of Kimeran’s mate, Beladora. She is from the Giornadonii, the people who live on the long peninsula that juts into the Southern Sea, south of the eastern Zelandonii territory.

  “As a young man, Kimeran traveled with his sister-mother on her Donier Tour to the northern end of the Giornadonii territory. He met Beladora, mated her, and brought her back with him. The story is similar to Amelana’s,” the First said, indicating the pretty, young woman in their group, “but this young woman’s story is much less fortunate. Her mate now walks in the next world, and she wanted to return to her own people. She misses her mother. She is carrying new life, and would like to be near her mother when her child is born.”

  “That’s understandable,” Camora said, smiling sympathetically at Amelana. “No matter how kind people may be, a woman always wants her own mother with her when she gives birth, especially the first time.”

  Ayla and the First exchanged quick glances. Camora probably missed her people. Even though a woman might find a visitor from another place so attractive that she just had to go away with him, it apparently wasn’t so easy to live with the strangers who were the kin of her mate. Though they might be people from the same territory, with beliefs and customs generally similar, each Cave had its own ways, and a new person was always at a disadvantage in terms of status.

  Ayla recognized that her situation was not the same as the two young women. Although she was called Ayla of the Mamutoi, she had been more of a stranger to them than she had been to the Zelandonii, and they to her. When she left the Clan, she had hoped to find people like herself, but she didn’t know where to look. She had lived alone in a pleasant valley for several years until she found Jondalar, who had been wounded by a lion. Except for him, the Mamutoi were the first of her kind she had met since she lost her family when she was a child of five. She had been raised by the Clan, who were not just people of a different Cave or terrritory, or with dissimilar hair or eyes or skin, or who spoke an unknown language. The people of the Clan were genuinely different. Their language capabilities were distinctive, the way they thought, the way their brains functioned was unusual, even the shape of their heads and to some extent their bodies were not quite the same.

  There was no doubt that they were people, and there were many similarities between them and the ones they called “the Others.” They hunted the animals in their vicinity, and gathered the food that grew. They shaped tools out of stone and with them made other objects like clothing and containers and shelters. They cared about each other and took care of each other, and even recognized that Ayla was a child when they found her, and though she was one of the Others, they took care of her. But they were different in some ways that, even though she grew up with them, she never fully understood.

  Though she sympathized with the young women who lived far away from their families and missed them, she didn’t fully empathize with them. At least they were living with people like themselves. She was grateful to have found her own kind, and especially to have found a man who cared about her among them. She couldn’t even put into words how much she cared for Jondalar. He was more than she could ever have hoped for. He not only said he loved her, he treated her with love. He was kind, he was generous, he adored her daughter. If it weren’t for him, she would not have been able to be an acolyte, to be a part of the zelandonia. He supported her, took care of Jonayla when she wasn’t home, even though she knew he would rather she was there with him, and he could bring her to unbelievable joy when they shared Pleasures. She trusted him implicitly and completely, and could not believe how fortunate she was.

  Camora looked at the Zelandoni Who Was First. “Do you think something might have happened to Kimeran and Jondecam?” she asked, with a worried frown. “Accidents can happen.”

  “Yes, they can, Camora, but it could also be that they were delayed and didn’t start as soon as they planned. Or something may have occurred at their Cave that made them change their mind and decide not to go. They would have no way of letting us know. We will wait here a few days, if Farnadal doesn’t mind,” she glanced at him and he smiled and nodded, “before we continue on our Journey, to give them a chance to catch up.”

  “Perhaps we can do even more,” Jondalar said. “Horses can travel much faster than people can. We can ride back along the trail they were on and see if we can find them. If they are not too far away, we might. At least we can try.”

  “That’s a good plan, Jondalar,” Ayla said.

  “So they do carry you on their backs, like the Storytellers said,” Farnadal said.

  “Have the Storytellers been here recently?” Ayla asked.

  “No, about a year ago. But I thought someone had just made up some remarkable new stories. I didn’t know they were true,” he said.

  “We’ll start in the morning,” Jondalar said. “It’s too late now.”

  Everyone from the Cave who could was gathered at the bottom of the slope that led up to the ledge where they lived. Ayla and Jondalar had tied riding blankets and carry-baskets that held their camping gear and supplies on all three horses, and put halters on the stallion and young mare. Then Jondalar lifted Jonayla up to Gray’s back.

  Does that little girl control a horse, too? Farnadal wondered. All by herself? She’s so small and a horse is a big powerful animal. And those horses should be afraid of that wolf. Anytime I’ve seen a wolf get close to a horse before, they would shy and run away, or if they thought one was ready to attack, they would try to trample it.

  What kind of powerful magic does that woman have? For a moment he felt a tingle of fear, then he shook himself. She seemed like just an ordinary woman; she talked to the other women, helped with the work, tended to the children. She is an attractive woman, especially when she smiles, and except for her accent, you wouldn’t think there was anything remarkable about her, or even unusual. Yet, there she is leaping up onto the back of
that dun-yellow mare.

  He watched them start off, the man in the lead, the child in the middle, and the woman bringing up the rear. The man was big for the compact horse, which he called Racer, his feet nearly dragged the ground when he sat on the dark brown horse—an unusual color that he had not seen before. But as the animals began a fast trot, the man sat farther back on the horse, pulled up his knees, and hugged the body of the stallion with his legs. The girl sat forward, almost riding the neck of the taupe-colored young mare, her little legs sticking out. Again the grayish-tan horse’s coat was an unusual color, though he had seen it before when he’d made a trip north. Some called the taupe color gruya; Ayla just called it gray, and it had became the mare’s name.

  Not long after they started out, the fast trot speeded up to a gallop. Without encumbrances, like the pole-drags, the horses liked to stretch their legs, especially on a morning ride. Ayla leaned forward low on Whinney’s neck, which was her signal to the horse to go as fast as she wished. Wolf yipped and joined in the sprint. Jondalar leaned forward as well, keeping his knees bent and close to the animal. Jonayla grabbed Gray’s mane with one hand, and with her cheek resting high on the horse’s neck while she squinted to see ahead, she wrapped her other arm around as best she could. With the wind in their faces, the fast ride was exhilarating, and the riders let the horses have their run and delighted in it.

  After they had worked out all the kinks, Ayla sat up somewhat, Jonayla sat lower near the base of Gray’s neck, and Jondalar sat a little straighter and let his legs hang down. They all felt more relaxed and cantered on at a somewhat slower pace. Ayla gave Wolf a signal and said “Search,” which he knew meant search for people.

  There were very few people on earth at that time. They were far outnumbered by millions of other creatures from the very large to the very small, and those humans who were there tended to cluster close together. When Wolf sampled all the smells that were in the wind, he could identify many different animals in various stages of life, and death. He seldom detected the scent of human on the wind, but when he did, he knew it.

  The rest of them also searched, scanning the landscape to see if they could find any sign that people had passed by recently. They didn’t think they would discover anyone so close, sure that the other party of travelers would have sent a runner ahead if they were in any kind of trouble and that close to their destination.

  Around midday, they took a break for a meal and to let the horses graze. When they continued, they scanned the countryside more intently. There was a trail of sorts that they followed: occasional blazes on trees, limbs on brush bent in certain ways, sometimes a small pile of stones tapering from front to back, and rarely a mark on a rock made with red-ocher paint. They searched until sundown, then made camp and set up their traveling tents near an active stream that had begun as a spring on higher ground.

  Ayla took out some traveling cakes made with dried bilberries, rendered fat, and dried meat that had been ground with a pestle into small pieces, and broke them into boiling water, then added some extra dried meat to the soup. Jondalar and Jonayla took a walk in the rather flat meadow nearby, and the child returned with her hands full of onions they had found, mostly by smell. The level ground had been a wetland earlier in the season, the result of the stream flooding, and as it dried it became a suitable place for certain plants to grow. Ayla thought she might take a look at it the next morning to gather more onions and whatever else she might find.

  They started out the next day after their meal, finishing the soup made the night before, which included some additional roots and greens that Ayla had found in her quick exploratory hike around the area. Their second day was as disappointing as the first; they found no sign that any people had passed that way recently. Ayla did see tracks of many animals and began pointing them out to Jonayla, showing her the subtle aspects that indicated the movements of various creatures. By the time they stopped for a midday meal on the third day, both Jondalar and Ayla were feeling some concern. They knew how much Kimeran and Jondecam wanted to see Camora and they knew that Beladora was anxious to visit her family.

  Had the ones they were expecting just not made the trip? Had something come up that caused them to cancel or postpone their planned journey, or had something happened to them along the way?

  “We could go back to Big River and the First Cave of South Land Zelandonii and see if they made the crossing,” Ayla said.

  “You and Jonayla wouldn’t have to make that long trip. I could go and you could return to let everyone know. If we don’t return in a few days, they’ll be worrying about us,” Jondalar said.

  “You are probably right,” Ayla said, “but let’s keep looking, at least until tomorrow. Then we can decide.”

  They made camp late, and avoided talking about the decision they knew they would have to make. In the morning, the air felt damp and they noticed clouds had formed in the north. In the early morning the wind was erratic, coming from every direction. Then it shifted and started blowing from the north, with some strong gusts, which made the horses nervous as well as the people. Ayla always packed extra clothing for warmth in case of shifts in the weather, or if they needed to be up late in the evening.

  The glaciers, beginning in the farthest north and lying like a huge pancake on the curved top of the earth, presented walls of solid ice more than two miles thick only a few hundred miles away. On the hottest days of summer, the nights were usually cool and even the daytime weather could change abruptly. The north wind brought a chill and a reminder that even in summer, winter ruled the land.

  But the north wind brought something else as well. In the bustle of striking camp and preparing a meal, no one noticed the shift in Wolf’s posture. But a loud yip that was almost a bark got Ayla’s attention. He was standing, almost leaning into the wind, with his nose high and forward. He had picked up a scent. Each time they started out from camp, she had given him the signal to search for people. The wolf’s highly developed sense of smell had found something, some small whiff brought in by the wind.

  “Look, mother! Look at Wolf!” Jonayla said. She had seen his bearing, too.

  “He’s located something,” Jondalar said. “Let’s hurry and finish packing.”

  They threw things into the pack baskets much less neatly than usual, and tied them on the horses along with the riding blankets, put the halters on Racer and Gray, doused the fire, and mounted.

  “Find them, Wolf,” Ayla said. “Show us which way to go.” She made the Clan hand signals when she gave the command.

  The wolf headed north, but took a more easterly direction than they had been traveling. If what he had scented was the group they were supposed to meet, they seemed to have veered off the infrequently marked trail, or perhaps they had traveled into the eastern highland for some other reason. Wolf moved with single-minded purpose using the ground-covering lope that was common to his species; the horses with Whinney in the lead followed behind. They traveled all morning and past the time when they would normally have stopped for a midday meal.

  Ayla thought she caught a whiff of something burning, then Jondalar called out to her, “Ayla, do you see smoke ahead?”

  She did see a faint trace of smoke rising in the distance and urged Whinney to a faster pace. She was holding Gray’s lead rope, and glanced back at her beloved daughter on the young mare’s back to make sure Jonayla was prepared for the increased speed. The girl smiled at her mother in excitement, which indicated that she was prepared. Jonayla loved riding her horse by herself. Even when her mother or Jondalar wanted her to ride in front on one of their mounts for safety because the trail was rough, or so she could rest and not have to hold on as firmly, the child resisted, though it seldom did any good.

  When they saw a camp with people around it, they slowed down as they approached. They weren’t sure who the people were. Someone else could also be traveling, and rushing into a camp of strangers on the backs of horses could cause distress for everyone.


  23

  Then Ayla saw a man as tall as Jondalar with blond hair. He also saw her. “Kimeran! We’ve been looking for you! I’m so glad we found you,” Ayla said, with relief in her voice.

  “Ayla!” Kimeran said. “Is it really you?”

  “And how did you find us?” Jondecam said. “How did you know where to look?”

  “Wolf found you. He has a good nose,” Ayla said.

  “We went to Camora’s Cave, expecting to meet you there, but they were surprised to see us,” Jondalar said. “Everyone was getting worried, especially your sister, Jondecam. So I suggested we go back on the horses along the trail that I thought you would take, because they can go much faster than people.”

  “But we went off the trail to find a place to make a good camp when the children got sick,” Levela said.

  “You say the children are sick?” Ayla asked.

  “Yes, and Beladora, too,” Kimeran said. “Maybe you shouldn’t come too close. Ginadela got it first. She was hot, feverish, then Levela’s son, Jonlevan, and then Beladora. I thought Gioneran might avoid it, but about the time that Ginadela started to get red spots all over her, he started getting feverish.”

  “We didn’t know what to do for them, except let them rest, make sure they drank plenty of water, and try to cool the fever with wet compresses,” Levela said.

  “You did the right thing,” Ayla said. “I’ve seen something like this before. At the Mamutoi Summer Meeting, when I was spending a lot of time with the mamuti. They are like the zelandonia, the ones who know the spirit world, and are healers. One of the Camps arrived with several people who were sick, mostly children. The Mamuti made them stay at the far edge of the Meeting Camp, and posted several Mamuti to make everyone else stay away. They were afraid most of the people at the Summer Meeting would get the sickness.”

  “Then you should make sure that Jonayla doesn’t play with the children,” Levela said, “and you should stay away.”