The shelters of stone - Jean M. Auel [289]
“Ayla, are you all right?” Zelandoni said.“You’re shivering.”
27
I’m fine,” Ayla said. “It’s just cool in here. I should have brought something warmer.” Wolf, who had been exploring the new cave, had appeared at her side and was pushing against her leg. She reached down and felt his head, then kneeled down and hugged him.
“It is cool, and you are pregnant. You feel things more,” Zelandoni said, but she knew there was more to it than Ayla was saying. “You know about the meeting tomorrow, don’t you?”
“Yes, Marthona told me. She will be coming with me, since I have no mother of my own to come,” Ayla said.
“Do you want her to come?” Zelandoni asked.
“Oh, yes. I was grateful that she offered. I didn’t want to be the only woman there without a mother, at least someone who is like a mother,” Ayla said.
The First nodded. “Good.”
People were getting over their first feelings of awe at the new cave and were beginning to move around in it. Ayla saw Jondalar walking the length of the large room with purposeful strides, and smiled. She knew that he used his body to measure, she had seen him do it before. The width of his clenched fist was one measurement, the length of his hand another. He used his open arms to gauge spaces, and he often paced off distances by naming his steps with the counting words. That was why she had started doing it. He looked into the gallery at the back, holding his torch high, but didn’t enter.
A cluster of people were watching him. Tormaden, the leader of the Nineteenth Cave, was talking to Morizan, the young man from the Third Cave. They were the only two people who were not from the Ninth Cave. Willamar, Marthona, and Folara were standing next to Proleva and Joharran and his two closest advisers and their mates. Dark-haired Solaban and his pale blond mate, Ramara, were talking to Rushemar and Salova, who was holding little Marsola on her hip. Ayla noticed that neither Proleva’s son, Jaradal, nor Ramara’s son, Robenan, was with them and guessed that the two boys who played together had gone off to do something at the main camp. Jonokol was smiling at Ayla as she walked toward them with Zelandoni and the wolf. Jondalar came back and joined them.
“I would guess this room is the height of three tall men to the ceiling,” he said, and about the same or a little more across, about six of my strides. Probably the length is something short of three times that much, around sixteen steps, but I have a long stride. The darker stone of the lower part of the walls comes to about here,” he held his hand about mid-chest height, “that’s about five of my feet, one after another.”
Jondalar had judged the distances fairly well. He was six feet six inches tall, and the white walls, which began at the middle of his chest, were around five feet up and went all the way to the nineteen-foot ceiling. The room was about twenty-two feet across and fifty-five feet in length, with some water pooled in the middle. The space was not large enough to hold everyone at the Summer Meeting, but more than enough to hold an entire Cave, except perhaps the Ninth, and certainly big enough for the entire zelandonia.
Jonokol walked to the middle of the room and stared up at the walls and ceiling with an entranced grin. He was in his element, lost in his imagination. He knew that these beautiful white walls hid something spectacular that wanted to come out. He wasn’t in a hurry. Whatever was done with them had to be exactly right. He was beginning to get some ideas, but he needed to consult with the First, to meditate with the zelandonia, to reach inside those spaces and find the imprint of the other world that the Mother had left there. She had to tell him what was there.
“Should we explore those two passageways now, or come back later, Tormaden?” Joharran asked. He wanted to go farther now, but felt that he should defer to the leader within whose territory the cave was.
“I’m sure some people of