The Land of Painted Caves - Jean M. Auel [132]
“I knew he belonged to the zelandonia,” the First said, then decided to join in with her rich operatic voice.
Jondalar just stood there, astonished. When the sounds ended, he laughed rather tentatively, but then Zelandoni also laughed, which brought out his hearty animated laughter that Ayla loved and caused her to join in.
“I don’t think this cave has heard so much noise in a long time,” said the One Who Was First. “It should please the Mother.”
As they started out again, Ayla displayed a virtuosity of bird calls, and before very long, she thought she detected a change in the resonance. She stopped to look at the walls, first right, then on the left, and saw a frieze of three rhinoceroses. The animals were only outlined in black, but the figures contained a sense of volume and an accuracy of contour that made them remarkably realistic. It was the same with the animals that were engraved. Some of the animals she had seen, especially the mammoths, were drawn with just an outline of the head and the distinctive shape of the back, some added two curved lines for tusks, and others were remarkably complete, showing eyes and a suggestion of their woolly coats. But even without the tusks and other additions, the outlines were sufficient to display the sense of the complete animal.
The drawings made her wonder if the quality of her whistles, and Zelandoni’s songs, had really changed in certain regions of the cave, and if some Ancestor had heard or felt the same qualities there, and marked them with mammoths and rhinos and other things. It was fascinating to imagine that the cave itself told people where it should be marked. Or was it the Mother Who was telling Her children through the medium of the cave where to look and where to mark? It made her wonder if the sounds they made really led them to places that were closer to the Mother’s Underworld. It seemed that they did, but in a small corner of her mind, she had reservations and only wondered.
As they set out again, Ayla continued her bird whistles. Somewhat farther along, she wasn’t sure, but felt almost compelled to stop. She didn’t see anything at first, but after taking a few more steps she looked on the left side of the broad cave. There she saw a rather remarkable engraved mammoth. It must have been in its full shaggy winter coat. It showed the hair on its forehead, around the eyes and on the face, and down the trunk.
“He looks like a wise old man,” Ayla said.
“He’s called the ‘Old One,’ ” Zelandoni said, “or sometimes the ‘Wise Old One.’ ”
“He does make me think of an old man who can claim many children to his hearth, and their children, and perhaps theirs,” Jondalar said.
Zelandoni started singing again, returning to the opposite wall, and came to more mammoths, many of them, painted in black. “Can you use the counting words and tell me how many mammoths you see?” she said to both Jondalar and Ayla.
They both walked close to the cave wall, holding out their lamps to see better, and made a game of counting out the number word for each one they saw. “There are some facing left, and others facing right,” Jondalar said, “and there are two in the middle facing each other again.”
“It looks like those two leaders that we saw before have met again and brought some of their herd with them,” Ayla said. “I count eleven of them.”
“That’s what I got, too,” Jondalar said.
“That’s what most people count,” Zelandoni said. “There are a few more animals to see if we continue this way, but they are much farther on, and I don’t think we need to visit them this time. Let’s go back and take that other passage. I think you’ll be quite surprised.”
They returned to the place where the two tunnels diverged, and Zelandoni led them into the