The Land of Painted Caves - Jean M. Auel [269]
He lit up the darkness, the Mother’s delight.
She lavished Her love, he grew bright and strong,
But soon he matured, not a child for long.
Her son was near grown. His mind was his own.
She took from the source for the life She’d begun.
Now the cold empty void was enticing Her son.
The Mother gave love, but the youth longed for more,
For knowledge, excitement, to travel, explore.
Chaos was Her foe. But Her son yearned to go.
He stole from Her side as the Great Mother slept,
While out of the dark swirling void chaos crept.
With tempting inducements the darkness beguiled.
Deceived by the whirlwind, chaos captured Her child.
The dark took Her son. The young brilliant one.
The Mother’s bright child, at first overjoyed,
Was soon overwhelmed by the bleak frigid void.
Her unwary offspring, consumed with remorse,
Could not escape the mysterious force.
Chaos would not free. Her rash progeny.
But just as the dark pulled him into the cold,
The Mother woke up, reached out and caught hold.
To help Her recover Her radiant son,
The Mother appealed to the pale shining one.
The Mother held tight. And kept him in sight.
The sound resonated. The song echoed back to them, not as strongly as some, the First thought, but with interesting nuances, almost as though it were doubling back on itself. When the First reached a place in the verse she felt was appropriate, she stopped. Silently, the group continued on.
On the right side of the cave they came to a large accumulation of stalagmitic stone along with collapsed blocks. This time the Watcher took them to the left side of the cave at the deepest part of the bears’ sleeping room. Across from the stalagmites and stone blocks was a large rock pendant in the shape of a blade hanging from the ceiling. The stones defined the beginning of a new chamber with a high ceiling in the beginning, but decreasing toward the back. Many concretions hung from the roof and the walls, unlike the bears’ sleeping place, which had no such concretions.
When they reached the hanging pendant, the Watcher knocked her torch against an edge of rock to make it burn cleaner, then held it up so the visitors could see the the surface of the panel. Closest to the bottom, facing left, painted in red, was a spotted leopard! Ayla, Jondalar, and Jonokol had never seen a leopard painted on the walls of a Sacred Site before. Its long tail made Ayla think it was probably a snow leopard. At the end of the leopard’s tail was a thick flow of calcite and on the other side of it was one large red dot. No one understood the reason for the large red dots in this place, or even what the leopard meant, but there was no doubting that it was a leopard.
The same could not be said about the animal above it that faced right. The massive shoulders and shape of the head could almost be mistaken for a bear, but the thin body, long legs, and spots on the upper body made Ayla sure it was a cave hyena! She knew hyenas and they had massive shoulders. The shape of the head in the painted animal somewhat resembled that of a cave bear. The powerful teeth and jaw muscles of a hyena, which could crack the bones of a mammoth, had developed a more powerful bone structure, too, but its muzzle was longer. The coat of a hyena was stiff and coarse, especially around the head and shoulders.
“Do you see the other bear above it?” the Watcher said.
Suddenly Ayla caught sight of another figure above the hyena. In faint red lines Ayla could make out the distinctive shape of a cave bear facing left, in the opposite direction from the hyena, and she began making comparisons.
“I don’t think the spotted animal is a bear. I think it is a cave hyena,” Ayla said.
“Some people think so, but its head is so bear-like,” the Watcher said.
“The heads of the two animals are similar,” Ayla said, “but the hyena in the image has a longer muzzle, and no discernible ears. The tuft of bristly hair on the top of its head is typical of a hyena.”
The Watcher didn’t argue. People had a right to think what they wished,