The Land of Painted Caves Read online

  “The Twenty-ninth is a newer Cave,” Sergenor continued. “When they moved to their new shelters, I suspect they all wanted to keep the same counting-word name, because the smaller the counting word, the older the settlement. There is a certain prestige in having a lower counting word and Twenty-nine was rather large already. I suspect none of the people founding the new Caves wanted a larger one. They decided to call themselves Three Rocks, the Twenty-ninth Cave of the Zelandonii, and then use the names they had already given to the locations to explain the difference.

  “The original settlement is called Reflection Rock, because from certain places you can see yourself in the water below. It is one of the few shelters that face north and is not quite as easy to keep warm, but it is a remarkable place and has many other advantages. It is the South Holding of the Twenty-ninth Cave, or sometimes the South Holding of Three Rocks. South Face became the North Holding, and Summer Camp became the West Holding of the Twenty-ninth Cave. I think their way is more complicated and confusing, but it’s their choice.”

  “If the Second Cave is the oldest, then the next-oldest group still in existence must be Two Rivers Rock, the Third Cave of the Zelandonii. We stayed there last night,” Ayla said, nodding as she understood more.

  “That’s right,” Proleva said, joining in.

  “But there is no Fourth Cave, is there?”

  “There was a Fourth Cave,” Proleva replied, “but no one seems to know what happened to it. There are Legends that hint at some catastrophe that struck more than one Cave, and the Fourth may have disappeared around that time, but no one knows. It’s a dark time in the Histories, too. Some fighting with the Flatheads is inferred.”

  “The Fifth Cave, called Old Valley, upstream along The River, is next after the Third,” Jondalar said. “We were going to visit them on our way to the Summer Meeting last year, but they had already left, remember?” Ayla nodded. “They have several shelters on both sides of Short River Valley, some for living, some for storage, but they don’t give them separate counting words. All of Old Valley is the Fifth Cave.”

  “The Sixth Cave has disappeared, too,” Sergenor continued. “There are different stories about what happened to it. Most people think illness reduced their numbers. Others believe there was a difference of opinion between factions. In any case, the Histories indicate that the people who had once been the Sixth Cave joined up with other Caves, so we, the Seventh Cave, are next. There is no Eighth Cave, either, so your Cave, the Ninth, comes after ours.”

  There was a moment of silence while the information was absorbed. Then, changing the subject, Jondecam asked Jondalar if he would look at the spear-thrower he had made, and Levela told her older sister, Proleva, that she was thinking about going to the Ninth Cave to have her baby, which elicited a smile. People started having private conversations and soon split up into other groups.

  Jondecam was not the only one who wanted to ask questions about the spear-thrower, especially after learning about the lion hunt the day before. Jondalar had developed the hunting weapon while he lived with Ayla in her eastern valley and had demonstrated it shortly after he had returned to his home the previous summer. He had held further exhibitions at the Summer Meeting.

  Earlier in the afternoon, when Jondalar was waiting for Ayla to visit Horsehead cave, several had practiced casting spears with throwers they had made, patterned after the ones they had seen him use, while Jondalar gave them instructions and advice. Now a group of people, primarily men but including some women, were gathered around him, asking questions about the techniques of making spear-throwers, and the lightweight spears that had proved to be so effective with it.

  Across the hearth, near the wall that helped contain the heat, several women who had babies, Ayla among them, were gathered together feeding, rocking, or keeping an eye on sleeping ones while they chatted.

  In a separate, more isolated area of the shelter, Zelandoni Who Was First had been talking with the other Zelandonia and their acolytes, feeling just a little annoyed that Ayla, who was her acolyte, had not joined them. She knew she had pushed her into it, but Ayla was already an accomplished healer when she had arrived, and had other remarkable skills besides, including knowing how to control animals. She belonged in the zelandonia!

  The Zelandoni of the Seventh had asked the First a question and was waiting for an answer with a patient expression. He had noticed that the Zelandoni of the Ninth Cave seemed distracted and a bit annoyed. He had been observing her since the visitors had arrived and had seen her irritation grow, and guessed why. When Zelandonia visited each other with their acolytes, it was a good time to teach the novices some of the knowledge and lore they had to learn and memorize, and her acolyte was not here. But, he thought, if the First was going to choose an acolyte who had a mate and a new baby, she had to know her full attention would not be devoted to the zelandonia.

  “Excuse me for a moment,” the First said, pulling herself up from a mat on a low stone ledge and walking toward the group of chattering young mothers. “Ayla,” she said, smiling. She was adept at hiding her true feelings. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but the Zelandoni of the Seventh Cave just asked me a question about setting broken bones, and I thought you might have some thoughts to contribute.”

  “Of course, Zelandoni,” she said. “Let me get Jonayla; she’s right over there.”

  Ayla got up, but hesitated when she looked down at her sleeping baby. Wolf looked up at her and whined, beating his tail against the ground. He was lying beside the infant that he considered to be his special charge. Wolf had been the last of the litter of a lone wolf that Ayla had killed for stealing from her traps, before she knew it was a nursing mother. She had tracked back to the den, found one living cub, and had brought him back with her. He had grown up in the close confines of the Mamutoi winter dwelling. He was so young when she found him—he would have counted perhaps four weeks—that he had imprinted on humans, and he adored the youngsters, especially the young one born to Ayla.

  “I hate to disturb her. She just fell asleep. She’s not used to visiting and has been overexcited this evening,” Ayla said.

  “We can watch her,” Levela said, then grinned. “At least help Wolf. He won’t let her out of his sight. If she wakes, we’ll bring her over. But now that she has finally settled down, I don’t think she’ll stir for some time.”

  “Thank you, Levela,” Ayla said, then smiled at her and the woman beside her. “You really are Proleva’s sister. Do you know how much you are like her?”

  “I know I’ve missed her since she mated Joharran,” Levela said, looking at her sister. “We were always close. Proleva was almost a second mother to me.”

  Ayla followed the One Who Was First back to the group of Those Who Served The Mother. She noticed that most of the local zelandonia were there. In addition to the First, who was the Zelandoni of the Ninth Cave, and of course the Zelandonia of the Second and Seventh Caves, there were also the Zelandonia of the Third and Eleventh Caves. The Zelandoni of the Fourteenth had not come, but she had sent her first acolyte. There were several other acolytes. Ayla recognized the two younger women and a young man, from the Second and Seventh Caves. She smiled at Mejera from the Third Cave and greeted the elderly man who was the Zelandoni of the Seventh, and then the woman who was the daughter of his hearth, the Zelandoni of the Second, who was also the mother of Jondecam. Ayla had been wanting to get to know the Second better. Not many of the Zelandoni had children, but she was a woman who had been mated and had raised two children—and her brother Kimeran after their mother died—and now was a Zelandoni.

  “Ayla has had more experience than most in setting bones, Zelandoni of the Seventh. You should ask her your question,” the First said, settling back down and indicating a mat next to her for Ayla.

  “I know if a fresh break is set straight, it will heal straight—I’ve done it many times—but someone was asking me if anything could be done if a break was not set straight and it healed crooked,” the o
lder man asked immediately. He was not only interested in her response, he had heard so much about her skill from the One Who Was First, he wanted to see if she would be flustered by a direct question from someone of his age and experience.

  Ayla had just dropped down to the mat and turned to face him. She had a way of lowering herself that was particularly fluid and graceful, he noticed, and a way of looking at him that was direct yet not quite, that somehow conveyed a sense of respect. Though she had expected to be formally introduced to the other acolytes, and was surprised to be questioned so quickly, she responded without hesitation.

  “It depends on the break and how long it has been healing,” Ayla said. “If it’s an old break, it’s hard to do much. Healed bone, even if it healed wrong, is often stronger than bone that was not injured. If you try to rebreak it to set it right, the uninjured bone is likely to break instead. But if the break has just started to mend, sometimes it can be broken again and set straight.”

  “Have you ever done it?” the Seventh asked, a bit put off by the way she spoke; it was odd, not like the way Kimeran’s pretty mate spoke, with a rather pleasant shift in certain sounds. When Jondalar’s foreign woman spoke, it was almost as though she swallowed certain sounds.

  “Yes,” Ayla said. She had the feeling she was being tested, something like the way Iza used to ask her questions about healing practices and plant uses. “On our Journey here, we stopped to visit some people that Jondalar had met earlier, the Sharamudoi. Nearly a moon before we arrived, a woman he knew had taken a bad fall and had broken her arm. It was healing wrong, bent in such a way that she couldn’t use it, and it was very painful. Their healer had died earlier that winter, and they did not have a new one yet, and no one else knew how to set an arm. I managed to rebreak her arm and reset it. It was not perfect, but it was better. She would not have full use, but she would be able to use it, and by the time we left, it was healing well and not causing her pain anymore,” Ayla explained.

  “Didn’t breaking her arm cause her pain?” a young man asked.

  “I don’t think she felt the pain. I gave her something to make her sleep and relax her muscles. I know it as datura …”

  “Datura?” the old man interrupted. Her accent was particularly heavy when she said the word.

  “In Mamutoi it’s called a word that might mean ‘thorn apple’ in Zelandoni, because at one stage it bears a fruit that could be described that way. It’s a strong-smelling large plant with big white flowers that flare out from the stem,” Ayla said.

  “Yes, I believe I know the one,” the old Zelandoni of the Seventh Cave said.

  “How did you know what to do?” asked the young woman who was sitting beside the old man, in a tone that sounded full of wonder that someone who was just an acolyte could have known so much.

  “Yes, that is a good question,” the Seventh said. “How did you know what to do? Where did you get your experience? You seem quite knowledgeable for one so young.”

  Ayla glanced at the First, who seemed rather pleased. She wasn’t sure why, but she had the impression that the woman was satisfied by her recitation.

  “The woman who took me in and raised me when I was a little girl was a medicine woman of her people, a healer. She was training me to be a medicine woman, too. Men of the Clan use a different kind of spear than Zelandonii men when they hunt. It’s longer and thicker and they don’t usually throw it; they jab with it, so they have to get close. It’s more dangerous and they were often hurt. Sometimes the hunters of the Clan traveled quite a long distance. If someone broke a bone, they weren’t always able to return right away and the bone would start to heal before it could be set. I assisted Iza a few times when she had to rebreak and reset bones, and I also helped the medicine women at the Clan Gathering do the same.”

  “These people you call the Clan, are they really the same as Flatheads?” the young man asked.

  She had been asked that question before, and she thought by the same young man. “That is your word for them,” Ayla said again.

  “It’s hard to believe they could do so much,” he said.

  “Not for me. I lived with them.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence for a few moments, then the First changed the subject. “I think this would be a good time for the acolytes to learn or, for some of you, to review counting words, some of their uses and meanings. You all know the counting words, but what can you do if there are large amounts to count? Zelandoni of the Second Cave, would you explain?”

  Ayla’s interest was quickened. Suddenly fascinated, she leaned forward. She knew counting could be more complex and powerful than just the simple counting words, if one understood how to do it. The First noted her attention with satisfaction. She was sure that Ayla had a particular curiosity about the concept of counting.

  “You can use your hands,” the Second said, and held up both hands. “With the right hand, you count on your fingers as each word is said up to five.” She made a fist, and lifted each finger in turn as she counted, beginning with the thumb. “You can count another five on your left hand until you get to ten, but that is as far as you can go with just counting. But instead of using the left hand to count the second five, you can bend down one finger, the thumb, to hold the first five,” she held up her left hand with the back facing out, “then count again on the right hand, and bend down the second counting finger of the left hand to hold it.” She bent her index finger on top of her thumb, so that she was holding open both hands, except for the index finger and thumb of her left hand. “That means ten,” she said. “If I hold down the next finger, that means fifteen. The next finger is twenty, and next one twenty-five.”

  Ayla was amazed. She comprehended the idea immediately, though it was more complex than the simple counting words Jondalar had taught her. She remembered the first time she learned the concept of calculating the number of things. It was Creb, the Mog-ur of the Clan, who had shown her, but essentially he could only count to ten. The first time he showed her his way of counting, when she was still a girl, he placed each finger of one hand on five different stones and then, since one arm had been amputated below the elbow, he did it a second time imagining that it was his other hand. With great difficulty, he could stretch his imagination to count to twenty, which was why it had shocked and upset him when she had counted to twenty-five with ease.

  She didn’t use words, the way Jondalar did. She did it with pebbles, showing Creb twenty-five by placing her five fingers on different stones five times. Creb had struggled to learn to count, but she understood the concept with ease. He told her never to tell anyone what she had done. He knew she was different from the Clan, but he hadn’t understood how different until then, and he knew it would distress them, especially Brun and the men, perhaps enough to drive her out.

  Most of the Clan could count only one, two, three, and many, though they could indicate some gradations of many, and they had other ways of understanding quantities. For example, they didn’t have counting words for the years of a child’s life, but they knew that a child in his birthing year was younger than a child who was in his walking year or his weaning year. It was also true that Brun didn’t have to count the people of his clan. He knew the name of everyone and with just a quick glance, he knew if someone was not there, and who it was. Most people shared that ability to some degree. Once they were with a limited number of people for a period of time, they intuitively sensed if someone was missing.

  Ayla knew that if her understanding of counting upset Creb, who loved her, it would disturb the rest of the Clan even more, so she never mentioned it, but she hadn’t forgotten. She used her limited knowledge of counting for herself, especially when she lived alone in the valley. She had marked the passing of time by cutting marks on a stick every day. She knew how many seasons and years she had lived in the valley even without having counting words, but when Jondalar came, he was able to tally the marks on her sticks and tell her how long she had been there. To her, it was like m
agic. Now that she had an idea how he had done it, she was hungry to learn more.

  “There are ways to count even higher, but it is more complicated,” the Second continued, then smiled, “as with most things associated with the zelandonia.” Those watching smiled back. “Most signs have more than one meaning. Both hands can mean ten or twenty-five, and it’s not hard to understand what is meant when you are talking about it, because when you mean ten, you face the palms out; when you mean twenty-five, you turn the palms inward. When you hold them facing in, you can count again, but this time use the left hand, and hold the number with the right.” She demonstrated and the acolytes mimicked her. “In that position, bending down the thumb means thirty, but when you count and hold to thirty-five, you don’t hold the thumb down; you just bend the next finger down. For forty, you bend down the middle finger, for forty-five the next; for fifty the small finger of the right hand is bent, and all the other fingers on both hands are out. The right hand with bent fingers is sometimes used alone to show those larger counting words. Even larger counting words can be made by bending more than one finger.”

  Ayla had trouble bending just her little finger and holding that position. It was obvious that the rest of them had more practice, but she had no trouble understanding. The First saw Ayla grinning with amazement and delight, and nodded to herself. This is the way to keep her involved, she thought.

  “A handprint can be made on a surface like a piece of wood or the wall of a cave, even on the bank of a stream,” the First added. “That hand sign can mean several different things. It may mean counting words, but it may mean something else entirely. If you want to leave a handprint sign, you can dip your palm in color and leave the mark, or you can place your hand on the surface and blow color on and around the back of it, which leaves a different kind of handprint. If you want to make a sign that means a counting word, dip the palm in color for the smaller ones, and blow color on the back of your hand to show the larger ones. One Cave to the south and east of here makes the sign of a large dot using color on only the palm, without showing the fingers.”