The Land of Painted Caves - Jean M. Auel [299]
She found herself staring at the moon, less than a quarter last time she looked, but now big and round in the night sky. It seemed to grow larger, filling her vision, and she felt herself being pulled into it faster and faster. She tore her eyes away from the moon and got up.
She walked slowly toward the large, tilted boulder. “That stone is glowing! No, I’m imagining things again. It’s just the moonlight. It’s a different kind of stone from the rest; maybe it just shines more in the light of a full moon,” she said out loud.
She closed her eyes, it seemed for a long time. When she opened them, the moon attracted her again; the large full moon was drawing her in. Then she looked around. She was flying! Flying without wind or sound. She looked down. The cliff and river were gone and the land below was unfamiliar. For an instant she thought she would fall. She felt dizzy. Everything was spinning. Bright colors formed a vortex of shimmering light around her, spinning faster and faster.
Ayla came to a sudden halt and was back on the top of the cliff again. She found herself concentrating on the moon, big and huge, and growing larger, filling her vision. She was pulled into it, and then she was flying again, flying the way she had done when she used to assist Mamut. She looked down and saw the stone. It was alive, glowing with spirals of pulsating light. She was drawn toward it, felt captured by the movement. She stared as lines of energy, emerging from the ground, wound around the huge, perilously balanced column, then disappeared into a corona of light at the top. She was floating just above the glowing rock, staring down into it.
It was brighter than the moon and lighted the landscape around it. No wind blew, not the slightest breeze, no leaf or branch stirred, but the ground and the air around her were alive with movement, filled with shapes and shadows flitting about, fleeting, insubstantial forms darting in random motion, glowing with faint energy akin to the light from the stone. As she watched, their motion took shape, developed purpose. The shapes were coming toward her, coming after her! She felt a tingling sensation; her hair rose straight up. Suddenly she was scrambling down the steep path, stumbling and slipping with fear. When she reached the abri, she ran toward the porch, lit by the moonlight.
Lying beside Marthona’s bed where he had been told to stay, Wolf raised his head and whimpered.
Ayla raced across the porch toward Down River, then down to The River, and followed the path along it. She felt charged with energy, and ran now for the joy of it, no longer chased, but pulled by some incomprehensible attraction. She splashed across the river at the Crossing, and kept going, it seemed forever. She was approaching a tall cliff that jutted out by itself, a familiar cliff, yet totally unfamiliar.
She came to an inclined path and started climbing, her breath tearing from her throat in ragged gasps, but she was unable to stop. At the top of the path was the dark hole of a cave. She ran into it, into a black so thick she could almost grasp it in her hands, then stumbled on the uneven floor and fell heavily. Her head hit the stone wall.
When she woke, there was no light; she was in a long black tunnel, but somehow she could see. The walls glowed with faint iridescence. Moisture glistened. When she sat up, her head hurt, and for a moment she could only see red. She felt as though the walls were racing past her, but she hadn’t moved. Then the iridescence shimmered again, and it was no longer dark. The rock walls glowed with eerie color, fluorescent greens, glowing reds, lustrous blues, pale luminous whites.
She got up and stood next to the wall, and felt the slick cold wetness as she followed the wall, which became an icy blue-green. She was no longer in a