The shelters of stone - Jean M. Auel [191]
Though she couldn’t see it, she was sure the flat opal side was against her palm, which meant that the triangular ridge on the side opposite was in his. As she concentrated on it, the stone seemed to be warming, matching their body heat, adding to it, feeling as though it were becoming a part of them or they a part of it. She remembered the chill she’d felt when she first entered the cave, and that the cold intensified as they got farther into its depths, but at the moment, sitting on the padded leather and dressed in her warm clothes, she did not feel cold at all.
Her attention was caught by the fire in the lamp; it made her think of the pleasant heat of fire in a hearth. She stared at the small flickering flame, became fixated on the bit of incandescence to the exclusion of everything else. She watched the small yellow light as it fluttered and trembled. With every breath she took, she seemed to control the flame.
As she watched closely, she saw that the light wasn’t entirely yellow. To keep it still while she studied it, she held her breath. The small fire was rounded in the middle, with the brightest yellow part starting near the end of the wick and tapering up to a point. Inside the yellow was a darker area that began below the end of the wick and narrowed into a cone as it rose up within the bit of fire. Below the yellow, at the bottom where the flame began, the fire had a hint of blue.
She had never looked at the fire of an oil lamp with such intensity before. When she started breathing again, the lambent fire seemed to be playing with the lamp, moving to the meter of the music. As it danced over the glossy surface of the melted tallow, its light reflecting from the fuel, the flame grew more radiant. It filled her eyes with its softly glowing luminescence until she could see nothing else.
It made her feel airy, weighdess, carefree, as though she could have floated up into the warmth of the light. Everything was easy, effortless. She smiled, laughed softly, then found herself looking at Jondalar. She thought about the life that he had started growing inside her, and a sudden flood of intense love for him welled up and overflowed. He could not help but respond to her glowing smile; as she watched him begin to smile back, she felt happy, loved. Life was full of joy, and she wanted to share it.
She beamed at Mejera and was rewarded with a tentative smile in return, then turned to Zelandoni and included her in the beneficence of her happiness. In a dispassionate corner of her mind that seemed to have distanced itself from her, she seemed to be watching everything with a strange clarity.
“I am getting ready to call Shevonar’s elan and direct him to the spirit world,” the One Who Was First interrupted her singing to say. Her voice sounded far away, even to her own ears. “After we help him, I will try to find the elan of Thonolan. Jondalar and Ayla will have to help me. Think about how he died, and where his bones are resting.”
To Ayla, the sound of her words was full of music that grew louder and more complex. She heard tones resonating from the walls all around her, and watched as the huge donier seemed to become a part of the reverberating chant she sang again, a part of the cave itself. She saw the woman’s eyes close. When she opened them, she seemed to be seeing something that was far away. Then her eyes rolled back, snowing only whites, and closed again as she slumped forward in her seat.
The young woman whose hand she was holding was shaking. Ayla wondered if it was from fear or if Mejera was simply overwhelmed. She turned to look at Jondalar again. He seemed to be looking at her and she started to smile, but then she realized that he, too, was staring into space, not seeing her at all but something far away inside his mind. Suddenly,