The Land of Painted Caves - Jean M. Auel [401]
For Ayla, it was a comforting sound that was there, but that tended to fade into the background as her mind observed scenes only she could see behind her closed eyelids, visions with the lucid incoherence of vivid dreams. It felt as though she were wide awake dreaming. At first, she kept gaining speed in the black space; she knew it though the void remained unchanged. She was terrified and alone. Achingly alone. There were no sensations, no taste, no smell, no sound, no sight, no touch, as though none ever existed or ever would, just her conscious, screaming mind.
An eternity passed. Then, at a great distance, barely discernible, a faint glimmer of light. She reached for it, strove for it. Anything, anything at all was better than nothing. Her striving pulled her faster, the light expanded into an amorphous, barely perceptible blur, and for a moment she wondered if her mind might have any other effects on the state she was in. The indistinct light thickened to a cloudiness and darkened with colors, alien colors with unknown names.
She was sinking into the cloud, falling through it, faster and faster, and then she fell out the bottom. A strangely familiar landscape opened up below her full of repetitive geometric shapes, squares and sharp angles, bright, shining, filled with light, repeating, climbing up. Nothing with such straight, sharp shapes existed in her familiar natural world. White ribbons seemed to flow along the ground in this strange place, reaching straight into the distance, with strange animals racing along it.
As she drew closer, she saw people, masses of squirming, wriggling people, all pointing their fingers at her. “Yoooou, yooou, yooou,” they were saying; it was almost a chant. She saw a figure standing alone. It was a man, a man of mixed spirits. As she got closer, she thought he looked familiar, but not quite. At first she thought it was Echozar, but then it seemed to be Brukeval, and the people were saying, “Yooou, yooou did it, yooou brought the Knowledge, you did it.”
“No!” her mind screamed. “It was the Mother. She gave me the Knowledge. Where’s the Mother?”
“The Mother is gone. Only the Son remains,” the people said. “You did it.” She looked at the man and suddenly knew who he was, though his face was in shadow and she couldn’t see him clearly.
“I couldn’t help it. I was cursed. I had to leave my son. Broud made me go,” her soundless voice cried out.
“The Mother is gone. Only the Son remains.”
In her thoughts, Ayla frowned. What did it mean? Suddenly the world below took on different dimension, but still ominous and other-worldly. The people were gone, and the strange geometric shapes. It was an empty, desolate, windblown prairie. Two men appeared, brothers whom no one would guess were brothers. One was tall and blond like Jondalar, the other, older one, she knew was Durc though his face was still shadowed. The two brothers approached each other from opposite directions, and she felt great anxiety as though something terrible was about to happen, something she had to prevent. With a shock of terror, she was sure one of her sons would kill the other. With arms raised as though to strike, they drew closer. She strained to reach them.
Suddenly Mamut was there, holding her back. “It is not what you think. It is a symbol, a message,” he said. “Watch and wait.”
A third man appeared on the windblown steppes. It was Broud, looking at her with a glare of pure hatred. The first two men reached each other, then both turned to face Broud.
“Curse him, curse him, curse him with death,” Durc motioned.
“But he is your father, Durc,” Ayla thought with silent apprehension. “You should not be the one to curse him.”
“He is cursed already,” her other son said. “You did it, you kept the black stone. They are all cursed.”
“No! No!” Ayla screamed. “I’ll give it back. I can still give it back.”
“There is nothing