The Land of Painted Caves - Jean M. Auel [402]
When she turned to face him, Creb was standing beside him. “You gave us Durc,” the old Mog-ur signed. “That was also your destiny. Durc is part of the Others, but he’s Clan, too. The Clan is doomed, it will be no more, only your kind will go on, and the ones like Durc, the children of mixed spirits. Not many, perhaps, but enough. It won’t be the same; he will become like the Others, but it is something. Durc is the son of the Clan, Ayla. He’s the only son of the Clan.”
Ayla heard a woman weeping, and when she looked, the scene had changed again. It was dark; they were deep in a cave. Then lamps were lit and she saw a woman holding a man in her arms. The man was her tall, blond son, and when the woman looked up, to her surprise Ayla saw herself, but she was not clear. It was as though she was seeing herself in a reflector. A man came and looked down at them. She looked up and saw Jondalar.
“Where is my son?” he asked her. “Where is my son?”
“I gave him to the Mother,” the reflected Ayla cried. “The Great Earth Mother wanted him. She is powerful. She took him from me.”
Suddenly, Ayla heard the crowd, and saw the strange geometric shapes. “The Earth Mother grows weak,” the voices chanted. “Her children ignore Her. When they no longer Honor Her, She will be ravished.”
“No,” the reflected Ayla wailed. “Who will feed us? Who will care for us? Who will provide for us, if we don’t Honor Her?”
“The Mother is gone. Only the Son remains. The Mother’s children are no longer children. They have left the Mother behind. They have the Knowledge; they have come of age, as she knew someday they would.” The woman still wept, but she wasn’t Ayla anymore. She was the Mother, weeping because her children were gone.
Ayla felt herself being pulled out of the cave; she was weeping, too. The voices became faint, as though they were chanting from a great distance away. She was moving again, high above a vast grassy plain, full of great herds. Aurochs were stampeding, and horses were racing to keep up with them. Bison and deer were running, and ibex. She drew closer, began to see individual animals, the ones she had seen when she was called to the zelandonia, and the disguises that they had worn during the ceremony when they had given the Mother’s new Gift to Her Children, when she recited the last verse of the Mother’s Song.
Two bison bulls running past each other, great aurochs bulls marching toward each other, a huge cow almost flying in the air, and another one giving birth, a horse at the end of a passage falling down a cliff, many horses, most in colors, browns and reds and blacks, and Whinney with the spotted hide over her back and across her face, and the two stick-like antlers.
40
Zelandoni was not with Ayla on her arcane inward Journey, but she sensed it, and felt herself pulled toward it. Perhaps if she had consumed more of the drink, she might have been drawn in with Ayla and become lost in the enigmatic landscape induced by the root. As it was, she did lose control of her faculties for a period of time, and had her own difficulties.
The zelandonia weren’t quite sure what was going on. Ayla appeared to be unconscious, and the First seemed close to it. She wasn’t exactly dozing off, but she would slump down, and her eyes would glaze over as if she were gazing into some unseen distance. Then she would rouse herself and say things that didn’t always make sense. She did not appear to be in control of the experiment, which was unusual in itself, and she definitely was not in control of herself, which made them all nervous. Those who knew her best were most alarmed, but they did not want to spread their concern among the rest.
The First shook herself awake, as if by an act of will. “Cold … cold …,” she said, then slumped over again and her eyes glazed. The next time she jerked herself awake, she shouted, “Cover … fur … cover Ayla … cold … so cold. Get hot …” Then she was gone again.
They had brought a few warm coverings with them, just because it was always cool in a cave.