The Land of Painted Caves - Jean M. Auel [125]
After they had proceeded deeply enough into the cave that no outside light could be detected and the only way they could find their way was with the light sources they brought with them, Ayla began to feel the cold inside the cave. She had brought a warm tunic with long sleeves and a separate head covering for herself, and an elongated parka with a hood for her infant. She stopped and untied Jonayla’s carrying blanket, but as soon as she was away from her mother’s warmth, she too noticed the cold and began to fuss. Ayla quickly dressed both of them, and when the baby was close to her mother again and felt her warmth, she settled down. The others also put on warmer clothing.
When they started out again, the First began to sing. Both Ayla and Jondalar looked at her, rather surprised. She started with a soft hum, but after a while, though she didn’t use words, her singing grew louder, with greater changes in scale and in pitch, more like tonal exercises. Her voice was so full and rich it seemed to fill the huge cave, and her companions thought it was beautiful.
They had gone about a half mile into the cavern, and were walking three abreast in the large space, with Zelandoni in the middle between Ayla and Jondalar, when the sound of the woman’s voice seemed to change, to gain an echoing resonance. Suddenly Wolf surprised them all and joined in with the eerie howl of wolfsong. It sent a shiver down Jondalar’s back, and Ayla felt Jonayla squirming and seeming to crawl up her back. Then suddenly without saying a word but still singing, the Donier reached out with both hands and stopped her companions. They looked at her and seeing that she was gazing at the left wall, they also turned to see what was there. That was when they saw the first sign that the cavern was more than a huge, rather frightening, empty grotto that seemed to go on forever.
At first Ayla didn’t see anything except some reddish-colored rounded flint outcroppings, which had been a common sight on all the walls. Then, high on the wall, she noticed some black marks that did not look natural. Suddenly her mind made sense of what her eyes were seeing. Painted on the wall in black outline were the shapes of mammoths. As she observed more closely, she saw three mammoths facing left, as though marching out of the cave. Then behind the last one, the outline of the back of a bison, and slightly confused with that, the distinctive shape of the head and back of another mammoth facing right. A short distance and a little higher up was a face with a distinctive beard shape, an eye, two horns, and the hump of another bison. Six animals in all, or enough of an impression to identify that many, had been painted on the wall. Ayla felt a sudden chill and shuddered.
“I’ve camped in front of this cave many times, and I didn’t know these were here. Who made these paintings?” Jondalar asked.
“I don’t know,” Zelandoni said. “No one knows for sure—the Ancients, the Ancestors. They are not mentioned in the Elder Legends. It is said that long ago there were many more mammoths around here, and woolly rhinoceroses, too. We find many old bones and tusks yellowed with age, but now we rarely see the animals. It has become quite an event when they are spotted, like the rhinoceros those boys tried to kill last year.”
“There seemed to be quite a few where the Mamutoi live,” Ayla said.
“Yes, we went on a big hunt with them,” Jondalar said,