The Land of Painted Caves - Jean M. Auel [129]
North, I think we’re heading north now, she said to herself. She had been trying to pay attention to the direction they had been moving since they entered the cave. There had been a few slight turns in the passageway, but they had traveled essentially west. This was the first major change in direction. Ayla looked ahead and saw nothing beyond the light of the torch held by Zelandoni, except the dark, yawning intensity found only in subterranean depths. She wondered what else there was farther on in this cavernous hollow.
Jondalar’s torchlight preceded him around the edge of the wall that changed their direction. Zelandoni waited until they were all together, including Wolf, before she spoke. “A little ways ahead, where the ground levels out, there are some good stones to sit on. I think we should stop there and have something to eat and fill our small waterbags,” she said.
“Yes,” Ayla said. “Jonayla has been moving around waking up, and I need to feed her. I think she would have been awake some time ago, but the darkness and movement while I walked have kept her quiet.”
Zelandoni started humming again until they reached a place where the cave resonated with a different sound. She sang with more tonal clarity as they neared a small side tunnel on the left. She stopped where it opened out.
“This is the place,” she said.
Ayla was glad to unload her haversack and spear-thrower. They each found a comfortable stone and Ayla took out three mats woven of the cattail leaves to sit upon. As soon as she moved her infant to her breast, Jonayla was more than ready to nurse. Zelandoni took three stone lamps out of her pack, a decorated one made of sandstone, which Ayla had seen her use before, and two of limestone. The stone of all of them had been shaped and abraded into small bowls with straight handles formed on a level with the rim. The First also found the carefully wrapped package of wicking materials and extracted six strips of dried boletus mushroom.
“Ayla, where is that tube of tallow you had?” the woman asked.
“It’s in the meat parfleche in Jondalar’s backframe.” Ayla said.
Jondalar took out the food packages and the large waterbag that he had been carrying on his back as well and brought them to Ayla. He opened the rawhide meat container and she pointed out the intestine stuffed with clean white grease that had been rendered from the hard fat near the kidneys, which gave it a little more body. He brought it to the Donier.
While Jondalar refilled the small waterbags they had with them from the large one he carried, Zelandoni put some globs of the tallow into the bowls of each of the three stone lamps, and used her torch to start them melting. She then laid two dried mushroom wicks into the pools of melted fat in each of the lamps so that more than half the length of each absorbent strip was in the liquid fat, leaving two small ends sticking out over each rim. When she lit them they sputtered a bit, but the heat drew the fat into the wicks and soon they had three additional sources of light, which made it seem quite bright inside the absolute darkness of the cave.
Jondalar passed out the food that had been cooked during their morning meal for their trek inside the cave. They put pieces of roasted red deer meat into their personal eating bowls, and used their cups for cold broth with cooked vegetables from another waterbag. The long pieces of wild carrots, small round starchy roots, trimmed thistle stems, shoots from hops, and wild onions were quite soft and required little chewing; they drank them into their mouths with the soup.
Ayla had also cut up some meat for Wolf. She gave it to him, then settled down to eat her own food while she finished