The Land of Painted Caves - Jean M. Auel [155]
She turned around and looked at Jondalar and the First, and then the Zelandoni of the Fifth. “Those look like man and woman parts,” she said. “Is that what they are?”
The Fifth smiled and nodded. “This is where our donii-women stay, and often where we have Mother Festivals, and sometimes where we have Rites of First Pleasures. It is also where I have meetings with my acolytes when I am training them, and where they sleep. This is a very Sacred Place,” the Fifth said. “That’s what I meant when I said we live in our Sacred Sites.”
“Do you sleep here, too?” Ayla asked.
“No, I sleep in the first shelter, the other side of this one, near the bison,” he said. “I don’t think it is good for a Zelandoni to spend all his time with his acolytes. They need to be able to relax, away from the restraining eye of their mentor, and I have other things to do and people to see.”
As they walked back to the first part of the shelter, Ayla asked, “Do you know who made your images?”
The question caught him a little off guard. It was not a question usually asked by Zelandonii. The people were accustomed to their art; it had always been there, or they knew the ones who were currently making it, and no one had to ask.
“Not the engravings,” he said after pausing to think for a moment. “They were made by the Ancient Ones, but several of our paintings were made by the woman who first taught Jonokol, when she was younger. The one who was Zelandoni of the Second Cave before the one who is now. She was acknowledged as the finest artist of her time, and she was the one who saw the potential in Jonokol even when he was just a boy. She saw potential in one of our young artists too. She now walks the next world, I am sorry to say.”
“What about the carved horn?” Jondalar queried, indicating the phallus-shaped object, which he had also seen. “Who made that?”
“That was given to the Zelandoni before me, or perhaps the one before him,” the Fifth said. “Some like to have it around during Mother Festivals. I’m not sure, it may have been used as a way to explain the changes in a man’s organ. Or it may have been a part of First Rites, especially for girls who didn’t like men, or were afraid of them.”
Ayla tried not to show it in her expression, it wasn’t for her to say, but she thought it would be uncomfortable, perhaps even painful, to use a hard carved object rather than the warm manhood of a caring man, but then she was used to the tenderness of Jondalar. She glanced at him.
He caught her eye and the facial expression she tried to hide, and smiled reassuringly. He wondered if the Fifth was making up a story because he didn’t really know what the image meant. Jondalar was sure it had been symbolic of something at one time, probably having to do with a Mother Festival since it was an erect male organ, but that its exact meaning probably had been forgotten.
“We can go across the stream and visit our other Sacred Places. Some of us also live in them. I think you may find them interesting, as well,” the Zelandoni of the Fifth Cave said.
They walked toward the small stream that divided the valley, and then upstream to where they had crossed before. There were two solid stepping-stones in the middle of the waterway, which they used to get to the other side; then they went back downstream toward the shelter in which they were staying. There were several abris on this side of the stream nestled into the slope of the valley that continued up to a high promontory that dominated the whole region, and served as a good lookout point. They walked to one that was about six hundred feet from where the spring-fed stream flowed into The River.
When they walked under the overhanging stone of the shelter, they were struck immediately by a frieze of five animals: