The Land of Painted Caves - Jean M. Auel [300]
She was in a swirling river, being carried along in its current. Objects floated past, caught in eddies and whirling back-currents that turned faster and faster. She was caught in a whirlpool, turning, turning, round and round. It sucked her down. In a vertigo of spinning motion, the river closed over her head, and everything was black.
She was in a deep, empty, wrenching void, flying; flying faster than she could comprehend. Then her motion slowed and she found herself in a deep fog that glowed with light closing in on her. The fog opened to reveal a strange landscape. Geometric shapes in fluorescent greens, glowing reds, lustrous blues repeated themselves over and over again. Unfamiliar structures rose high in the air. Broad ribbons of white rolled out along the ground, luminous white, full of shapes speeding along it, speeding after her.
She was petrified with fear and felt a tickle probing the edge of her mind that seemed to recognize her. She shrank back, pulled away, feeling her way along the wall as fast as she could. She came to an end as panic filled her. She dropped down to the ground and felt a hole ahead. It was a small hole she could enter only by crawling. She skinned her knees on the rough ground, but didn’t notice. The hole grew smaller; she could go no farther. Then she was speeding through a void again, so fast she lost all sense of motion.
She wasn’t moving; the black around her was. It closed in, smothering her, drowning her, and she was in the river again and the current was pulling her. She was tired, exhausted; the river drew her into the current as it raced toward the sea, the warm sea. She felt a sharp pain deep inside, and felt the warm, salty waters flooding around her. She breathed in the smell of it, the taste of the waters, and felt she was floating peacefully in the tepid liquid.
But it wasn’t water, it was mud. She gasped for breath as she tried to crawl out of the slime; then the beast that was chasing her grabbed her. She doubled up and cried out with pain as it crushed her. She was burrowing though the mud, trying to crawl out of the deep hole the crushing beast had pulled her into, trying to escape.
Then she was free, climbing a tree, swinging from its branches, driven by drought and thirst to the edge of the sea. She plunged in, embraced the water, and grew larger, more buoyant. Finally standing upright, she gazed out at a vast grassland and waded toward it.
But the water dragged against her. She fought to haul herself from the resistant tide; then exhausted, she collapsed. Waves lapping on the shore washed over her legs, pulling her back. She felt the pull, the pain, the grievous, wrenching, tearing pain that threatened to pull her insides out. With a gush of warm liquid, she gave in to the demand.
She crawled a little farther, leaned back against a wall, closed her eyes, and saw a rich steppeland, bright with spring flowers. A cave lion loped toward her in slow, graceful motion. She was in a tiny cave, crunched into a small declivity. She grew to fill the cave as the cave expanded. The walls breathed, expanding, contracting, and she was in a womb, a huge black womb deep in the earth. But she was not alone.
Their forms were vague, transparent; then the shapes coalesced into recognizable forms. Animals, every kind of animal she had ever seen, and birds, and fish, and insects, and some she was sure she had never seen before. They formed a procession, without order or pattern, one seeming to flow into the other. An animal became a bird or a fish, or another bird or animal or insect. A caterpillar became a lizard, then a bird, which grew into a cave lion.
The lion stood and waited for her to follow. Together they went through passages, tunnels, corridors, the walls becoming shapes that thickened