The Land of Painted Caves - Jean M. Auel [280]
“Yes, you’re right,” Jonokol said. “Will you hold mine?” he said to the Watcher.
Jonokol, Jondalar, Ayla, and Willamar literally lifted the First up some of the bigger drops, while the Watcher held up the torches to light the way. She threw one that had burned to almost nothing into one of the hearths that were lined up against the walls. When they reached the painted horses, everyone took a new torch. The Watcher stubbed out the ones that were partially burned and put them in her backframe; then they started back the way they had come. No one said much, just looked again at the animals as they passed by. Before they reached the entrance they noticed how much light found its way deeper into the cave.
At the entrance, Jonokol stopped. “Will you take me back into the large area in that other room?”
“Of course,” she said without asking why. She knew.
“I’d like to go with you, Zelandoni of the Nineteenth Cave,” Ayla said.
“I’m glad. I’d like you to. You can hold my torch,” he said with a grin.
She was the one who found the white cave, and he was the first one she showed it to. She knew he was going to paint on those beautiful walls, although he might want some helpers. The three of them went back into the second room of the Bear Cave while the rest went out. The Watcher took them in a shorter way, and she knew where to take him, to the place where he had looked when they first went into this part of the cave. He found the secluded recess, and the ancient concretion he had seen before.
Taking out a flint knife, he went to the basin-topped stalagmite and in its base, in one accomplished movement, he carved the forehead, nose, mouth, jaw, and cheek, then two stronger lines for the mane and back of a horse. He looked at it a moment, then engraved the head of a second horse facing the opposite way on top of the first one. The stone of this one was a little harder to cut through, and the forehead line was not as precise, but he went back and cut individual hairs of a stand-up mane spaced at consistent intervals. Then he stepped back and looked.
“I wanted to add to this cave, but I wasn’t sure if I should until after the First sang the Mother’s Song deep in this cave,” the Zelandoni of the Nineteenth Cave of the Zelandonii said.
“I told you it was the Mother’s choice, and you would know. Now I know. It was appropriate,” the Watcher said.
“It was the right thing to do,” Ayla said. “Perhaps it is time for me to stop calling you Jonokol and start referring to you as the Zelandoni of the Nineteenth.”
“Perhaps in public, but between us I hope I will always be Jonokol and you will be Ayla,” he said.
“I would like that,” Ayla said; then she turned to the Watcher. “In my mind I think of your name as the Watcher, as the one who watches over, but if you don’t mind, I would like to know the name you were born with.”
“I was called Dominica,” she said, “and I will always think of you as Ayla no matter what happens, even if you become the First.”
Ayla shook her head. “That is not likely. I am a foreigner with a strange accent.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Dominica said. “We acknowledge the First, even if we don’t know her or him. And I like your accent. I think it makes you stand out, as the One Who Is First should.” Then she led them back out of the cave.
All that evening Ayla thought about the remarkable cave. There had been so much to see, to take in, it made her wish she could see it again. People were talking that evening about what to do with Gahaynar, and she kept finding her mind straying back to the cave. He appeared to be recovering from the severe beating he had received. Though he would carry the scars for the rest of his life, he seemed to hold no ill feelings toward the people who had done it. If anything, he seemed grateful not only to be alive, but that the zelandonia were taking care of him.
He knew what he had done, even if no one else did; Balderan and the others had died for not much worse. He didn’t know why he had been spared, except that silently, while Balderan was planning