Martin Walker - The Caves of Perigord

Moon was shrunk far back but defiant in the small cavern, a rock clutched fiercely in her hand, a smear of the Keeper’s blood still on her cheek. Her face eased as she saw him and then brightened. But she held the rock close, and he took his hand from his knife and squatted. Beside her were a small bowl of the dark earth and a thick stick of charcoal.

“I will not go back. Not to him,” she said.

“I know,” he said softly. “I have a bag full of food and tools. I have come to take you with me.”

“The hunters will follow us and bring us back.”

“I think I know a way they cannot follow,” he said. “I will never let them take you to him to be his woman.”

“They may take me, but he cannot have me. He is doomed,” she said.

“The hunter put the moss on his wound. It is not likely that he will die from a bite.”

“No. The Great Mother has come to my aid. She directed me here, and put the darkness into my head. When I woke, she had left me with the knowledge of what I must do. I have doomed him. Look,” she said, pointing at the wall behind Deer’s shoulder.

He turned, and then started back, stunned and frightened, and awed by the evidence of a power in Moon he had never suspected. This was woman’s magic, mysterious and chilling, and his hand moved instinctively to cup his groin. He needed no explanation to understand that what Moon had said must be true. The Keeper of the Bulls was doomed, condemned by the destructive power of his own art.

That was surely him, stretched dead on the ground in his eagle headdress, his arms outstretched and his maleness as cruel as it was assertive, the shape of a bull’s horn. Beside him lay the symbol of the power he had usurped, the beaked club that had guarded him as he had dragged Moon away to rape and subjugation against all custom and her own father’s will. And two more horns were poised to gore him as he lay, by a beast itself doomed from the spear in its guts and the entrails spilling on the ground.

“It began in my head as a bull, but there is a reason I know not why it had to become a bison.”

“It is the last of the bison,” he explained, the meaning clear and terrible to him. “The old man is dead, who was their Keeper. He was the last of the old cave, as the cave and the art and the fellowship of the Keepers used to be before this cruel madness came upon the Keeper of the Bulls. The Keeper of the Bulls was destroying the cave as it had been, the old way dying with a spear in its belly but not yet dead, and strong enough still to kill the evil.”

“What it means,” he said slowly, as much to himself as to her, “is that the cave itself is doomed.”

He took his lamp and peered closer at the terrible painting Moon had made, studying the way she had painted the bison.

“It is in his style,” he said, marveling. “The beard on the chest of the beast and the tuck of its head and the curl of the horns. It could be his work. The spirit of the old Keeper has guided your hand this night.”

“Then he worked with the Great Mother to lead me. I felt her presence and fulfilled her will.”

His lamp guttered and he felt the currents of the air as the wind searched for them, even this deep in the cave.

“We must go from here and travel through the storm. It will protect us from pursuit.”

“The Great Mother sent the storm to aid us,” she said, in simple confidence.

He stretched out his hand toward her, and she smiled as she took it. “I wanted to take your hand earlier this night. I take it now. I take you now.”

Hand in hand, they climbed from the low gallery and down the long chamber of the bulls, looming suddenly around them as the lightning flared nearby, fierce enough to send its brilliance into the dark cave. They paused at the entrance, rocking a little in the gusting wind as the thunder rolled awesomely above them. And although the long fire had long been quenched, they ran to it and leaped across its sodden ashes and stopped and turned to laugh into one another’s faces. For the first time, he took her in his arms and held her, his brow against hers, the rain spilling down their faces.

“Moon,” he said. “My Moon,” and as she nestled against him, the lightning exploded around them and they heard a sharp crack that was louder than the voice of the thunder, and a strange, sharp smell filled their air. Moon shrank into his embrace as they turned to the pillar of fire that rose high above the cave. A great tree on the mountain that seemed still to crackle with the power of the lightning jerked in its place as it split and then toppled, bringing a gathering escort of rocks and stones as it tumbled slowly and then with increasing speed down the slope. Like a great spear, it seemed to plunge into the ground and quiver as it came to rest before the entrance of the cave, and then the avalanche of earth and rocks poured after it. The cave was sealed.

“The Great Mother has done this,” breathed Moon, as Deer stared in disbelief through the driving rain at the tumbling rock fall. He remembered thinking as he saw her frightening drawing that the cave itself must be doomed. The shock of the village, of all the people of the valley, would be terrible. And so would their vengeance. They must get far, far from here.

Shaking himself, he led them down through the fringe of the woods to the river, where Deer rolled a fallen log into the water. He placed his sack upon his head, and the two of them pushed the log deep into the middle of the current where their feet no longer touched the riverbed, and floated fast downstream, leaving no trial for hunters to follow, as the great storm rolled furiously overhead.

Deer knew they had gone farther than he had ever traveled before. The river ran faster than a running man and it had been night when they first entered. And now the rain had finally stopped and the sun was rising high into the sky. Moon had straddled the log just after dawn, her teeth chattering and desperately needing to be out of the water. The first time he had tried to join her, he almost tipped her into the river. But then as the sun broke through the thinning clouds they came to some shallows where the water was less than waist-deep. After guiding it through and keeping the log pointed straight downstream, he was able to stretch out and feel the sun on his back while his straddling legs kept the log from spinning. They had seen spirals of smoke from sheltered fires not long after dawn, where the river had curled in series of long bends and there were caves and ledges in sheer cliffs. Then the river ran wide and more slowly, and there were the familiar conical tents on a broad stretch of sand. He had seen them from afar, so he and Moon had slipped from the log into the water, keeping their heads on the side away from the tents, and there had been no cries of greeting or alarm. There had been no sign of people since then, but many of the storm. Uprooted trees floated with them, some with small animals in their branches. There were others toppled on the banks and the river was brown and full.

It was on another of the long bends that he saw the rolling hills coming close to the bank, and a narrowing where the river raced and a vast tangle of fallen trees seemed to stretch from one side to the other. Once there was a rending sound and perhaps a dozen trees broke away and began rushing downstream at great speed and the water seemed to race toward the spot as if to chase them. He knew enough of the log’s ways to know they could not survive such a rushing of the water and he slipped off and start kicking desperately to steer it toward the shore. His efforts made little difference, and with fear rising like blood to his head he felt the log gather pace. They were saved by the tree that had floated alongside them throughout the morning. It seemed to hit something, and pivoted in the water to slam into the tangle on one side of the gap. Their log went with it, and ground deeply into the dam, spilling them both off, but able to haul themselves from bough to bough and into the shallows where they collapsed on their knees and arms, coughing the water from their lungs and shivering from shock and the river’s cold.