The shelters of stone - Jean M. Auel [283]
“I wonder how many people know about this cave, Wolf?”
She used her axe to widen the opening a little more, then went out and scanned the area. A short distance away, but surrounded by prickly briars, was a pine tree with needles that were brown. It appeared to be dead. With the small stone axe, she hacked her way through the tough woody vines a short distance, then tested a low branch to see if it was brittle enough to break. Though she’d had to hang on it with all her weight, she finally managed to snap off a section of a branch. Her hand felt sticky, and she smiled when she looked at the branch and saw some dark blobs of pitch. The pitchy branch would make a good enough torch without additional materials, once she got it lit.
She collected some dry twigs and bark from the dead pine, then walked to the middle of the rocky dry streambed. She got her fire kit out of her backpack and, using the crushed bark and twigs as tinder, and her firestone and a striking flint, she soon had a little fire started. From it, she lit the pine branch torch. Wolf watched her, and when he saw her heading back toward the cave, he raced ahead over the pile of rocks and wriggled his way in as he had the first time, under the hole Ayla had cut through the tangle of blackberry vines. Long before, when the dry bed was the river that had created the cave, the roof had extended farther out, but it had since collapsed, creating the pile of rubble that was in front of the present opening in the side of the hill.
She climbed the rocky mound and eased through the opening she had made. With the light from the flickering torch, she proceeded down the rather slick ramp of moist sandy-clay soil, again naming her steps with the counting words. This time it took only twenty-eight steps before the ground leveled out; with a torch to show the way, her stride was longer. The wide entry gallery opened onto a large, roundish, U-shaped room. She held the torch high, looked up, and caught her breath.
The walls, glinting with crystallized calcite, were nearly white, a pure, clean, resplendent surface. As she moved slowly into the cave, the light from the flickering torch sent animated shadows of the natural relief chasing each other over the walls as though they were alive and breathing. She walked closer to the white walls, which started a little below her chin—about five feet up from ground level—with a rounded ledge of brownish stone, and extended up in a curve that arced inward to the roof. She would not have thought of it before her visit to the deep cave of Fountain Rocks, but she could imagine what an artist like Jonokol might do in a cave like this.
Ayla walked around the room next to the wall, very carefully The floor was muddy and uneven, and slippery. At the bottom of the U, where it curved around there was a narrow entrance to another gallery. She held the torch up and looked inside. The upper walls were white and curved, but the lower area was a narrow twisting corridor and she decided not to enter. She continued around, and to the right of the entrance to the gallery at the back there was another passageway, but she only looked inside. She had already decided that she would have to tell Jondalar and some others and bring them back to this cave.
Ayla had seen many caves, most filled with beautiful stone icicles suspended from ceilings or stalactite draperies hanging down the walls and corresponding deposits of stalagmites growing to meet them from the floors, but she had never seen a cave like this. Although it was a limestone cave, a layer of impermeable marl had formed that blocked