The Land of Painted Caves - Jean M. Auel [144]
“If I had just heard that, I don’t think I’d go into that cave. It sounds like there is a cave lion inside.”
Just then Wolf decided to respond to Ayla’s lion roar with his own sound, and howled his wolfsong. The cave resounded that back as well.
“Is that wolf a Zelandoni?” the young acolyte asked with surprise. “It sounded like he was using a sacred voice, too.”
“I don’t know if he is. To me he’s just a wolf, but the First has made similar comments when he does something like that,” Ayla said.
They started into the narrowed space, Shevola first, followed by Ayla, and then Wolf. It wasn’t long before Ayla was thinking how glad she was that Zelandoni had told her to dress for clambering around in a cave. Not only did the walls of the cave narrow, but the level of the floor rose and the ceiling lowered. It left such a small, cramped space to work their way through, they couldn’t even stand upright in it, and in some places they had to get on their knees to go forward. Ayla dropped her torch going through the narrow section, but managed to pick it up before it went out.
Progress became easier after the cave passage opened out, especially when they could walk upright again. Wolf, too, seemed happy to be beyond the tight space, even though he could go through it much more easily, but they still had some narrow sections to squeeze through. In one area the wall on the right had crumbled into a scree slope of loose dirt and small stones, leaving barely a level path on which to put their feet. As they carefully picked their way through, more stones and pebbles rolled down the rather steep grade. They both crowded closer to the opposite wall.
Finally, after another narrowing of the passage, Shevola stopped, held up her torch, and faced the right. Wet, shiny clay partially covered a small section of the wall, but it became part of the medium of expression. A sign was engraved on it, five vertical lines and two horizontal lines, one of which crossed all five of the upright lines, while the second only went about halfway across. Next to the sign was an engraving on stone of a reindeer.
By now Ayla had seen enough paintings, drawings, and engravings to have developed her own sense of those she considered good and those she thought were less well done. In her opinion, this reindeer was not as well made as some others she had seen, but she would never say anything like that to Shevola or the rest of the Cave, or anyone else. It was a private thought. Not so long ago, just the idea of drawing anything resembling an animal on a cave wall was unbelievable. She’d never seen anything like it. Even a partial drawing of a shape that suggested an animal was astonishing and powerful. This one, particularly by the shape of its antlers, she knew was a reindeer.
“Do you know who made this?” Ayla asked.
“There’s nothing in the Elder Legends or Histories, except general references that could be alluding to almost any cave markings, but there are a few hints in some of the stories that are told about our Cave that suggest it could have been an ancient one of West Holding, perhaps one of the Founders,” Shevola said. “I like to think it was an Ancestor who made them.”
As they continued farther into the cave, the difficulties lessened only slightly. The floor was still very rough and the walls had projections that they had to watch out for, but finally at about fifty feet into the long, narrow space, Shevola stopped again. On the left side of the passage they came to a narrow room, and on the right wall of it was a projection near the ceiling where there was a panel of several engraved figures at an inclination of about forty-five degrees from the horizontal. It was the principal composition of the cave, consisting of nine engraved animals on a limited surface area,