spoken, a finger was bent; the left hand indicated the number of fives counted. The left hand, held palm facing out, with all the fingers and thumbs bent at the knuckles, counted not five, the way she had taught herself when she first learned to count and the way Jondalar had once taught her the counting words, but twenty-five. She had learned this way of counting in her training, and the concept had astounded her. It made the counting words so much more powerful when used like that.
It occurred to her that the large dots could be a way of using the counting words, too. One hand print could be counted as five; one large dot made with only the palm of the hand could mean twenty-five; two would be twice twenty-five, fifty; and so many on the wall in one place would be a very large number, if one understood how to read it. But as with most things associated with the zelandonia, it was probably more complex than that. All signs had more than one meaning.
As they were walking around the room, Ayla saw a beautifully made horse, and behind it two mammoths, one superimposed on the other, with the line of their bellies drawn as a high arch, which made Ayla think of the massive arch outside. Was the arch supposed to represent a mammoth? Most of the animals in this chamber seemed to be mammoths, but there were many rhinoceroses, too; one in particular captured Ayla's attention. Just the front half was engraved and it seemed to be emerging from a crack in the wall, emerging from the world behind the wall. There were also a few horses, aurochs, and bison, but no felines or deer. And while almost all of the images in the first part of the cave were made with red paint — the red ochre from the floor and walls — the images in this part were white, engraved with fingers or another hard object, except for some made with black on the right wall at the end, including a beautiful black bear nearby.
They looked interesting and she wanted to go see them, but the Watcher led them around the left side of the large crater in the middle of the room toward another section of the cave. The left wall was hidden by a rocky mass of big blocks that she could barely make out in the light of the torches, which reminded her to knock off the excess burned ash from her torch. The light flared up and she realised that she would need to light another torch soon.
The Watcher began humming again as they approached another space defined by a much lower height. So low that someone had climbed up on the blocks and drawn a mammoth with a finger on the ceiling. On the right was the head of a bison, quickly done, followed by three mammoths, then several more drawings on rock pendants hanging from the ceiling. Ayla could see two big reindeer drawn in black and shaded to give them contours and, less detailed, a third one. On another part of the pendant, two black mammoths faced each other, but only the forequarters of the one on the left were made. The one on the right was filled in with black, and it had tusks — the only tusks she had seen on the mammoths in this cave. There were other drawings on pendants farther back, quite a distance above the floor; another mammoth engraved in left profile, a big lion, and then, surprisingly, a musk-ox identifiable by its down-curving horns.
Ayla had been so involved in trying to see the animals on the pendants in the back that it wasn't until she heard the First join in that she realised the Watcher, the First, and the Zelandoni of the Nineteenth Cave were singing to the cave again. She didn't join in this time. She could make bird and animal sounds, but she couldn't sing. But she did enjoy listening.
Suddenly something caught Ayla's eye, something that made her shiver, and gave her a frisson of not exactly fear, but recognition. She saw a cave bear skull, by itself, on top of the horizontal surface of a rock. She wasn't sure how the rock had found its way to the middle of the floor. There were a few other smaller rocks nearby and she assumed they had fallen from the ceiling, though none of the other rocks had a squared-off flat top surface, but she knew by what means the skull had found its place on the rock. Some human hand had put it there!
As she walked toward the rock, Ayla had sudden memories of the cave bear skull Creb had found with a bone forced through the opening formed by the eye socket and the cheekbone. That skull had great significance to the Mog-ur of the Clan of the Cave Bear, and she wondered if any member of the Clan had ever been in this cave. This cave would certainly have held great meaning for them if they had. The ancients who made the images in this cave were certainly people like her. The Clan didn't make images, but they could have moved a skull. And the Clan was here at the same time as the ancient painters. Could they have come into this cave?
As she drew closer and looked at the cave bear skull perched on the flat stone, with its two huge canine teeth extended over the edge, in her heart she believed that the ancient who had put it there belonged to the Clan. Jondalar had seen her shake, and walked toward the centre of the space. When he reached the stone, and saw the cave bear skull on the rock, he understood her reaction.
'Are you all right, Ayla?' he asked.
'This cave would have meant so much to the Clan,' she said. 'I can't help but think they knew about it. With their memories, maybe they still do.'
The rest of them were now crowded around the stone with the skull.
'I see you have found the skull. I was going to show it to you,' the Watcher said.
'Do any of the people of the Clan come here?' Ayla asked.
'The people of the Clan?' the Watcher said, shaking her head.
'The ones you call Flatheads. The other people,' Ayla said.
'It's strange that you should ask,' the Watcher said. 'We do see Flatheads around here, but only at certain times of year, usually. They frighten the children, but we have come to a kind of understanding, if you can reach an understanding with animals. They stay away from us, and we don't bother them if all they want is to go into the cave.'
'First I should tell you, they aren't animals; they are people. The cave bear is their primary totem — they call themselves the Clan of the Cave Bear,' Ayla said.
'How can they call themselves anything? They don't talk,' the Watcher said.
'They talk. They just don't talk the way we do. They use some words, but mostly they talk with their hands,' Ayla said.
'How does one talk with hands?'
'They make gestures, motions with their hands and with their bodies,' Ayla said.
'I don't understand,' the Watcher said.
'I'll show you,' Ayla said, handing her torch to Jondalar. 'The next time you see a person of the Clan who wants to go into this cave, you could say this.' Then she said the words as she made the gestures. 'I would greet you, and I would tell you that you are welcome to visit this cave that is home to cave bears.'
'Those motions, those hand wavings, they mean what you just said?' the Watcher asked.
'I've been teaching the Ninth Cave and our zelandonia, and anyone else who wants to learn,' Ayla said, 'how to make a few basic signs, so if they meet some people of the Clan when they are travelling, they can communicate, at least a little. I'll be happy to show you some signs, too, but it would probably be better if we wait until we get out of the cave where there is more light.'
'I would like to see more, but how do you know so much?' the Watcher asked.
'I lived with them. They raised me. My mother, and whoever she was with — my people I suppose — died in an earthquake. I was left alone. I wandered by myself until a clan found me and took me in. They took care of me, loved me, and I loved them back,' Ayla said.
'You don't know who your people are?' the Watcher said.
'My people are the Zelandonii, now. Before that, my people were the Mamutoi, the mammoth hunters, and
