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She decided to try to find out and took off her pack to get out the small axe Jondalar had made for her She found it at the botto through the long woody ste that allowed her to see, not the ground, as she had expected, but a dark, empty space Now, she was curious

She worked at the vines soh for her to force her way through it with only a few scratches The ground sloped down into as obviously a cave with a coh the hole she hadwords to name her steps When she reached thirty-one, she noticed that the slope leveled out and the corridor had widened Faint daylight still filtered into the cave from the entrance, and with eyes adjusted to the near darkness, she saw that she had entered a er area She looked around, then made a decision and headed back outside

“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 sh 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 ed to snap off a section of a branch Her hand felt sticky, and she smiled when she looked at the branch and saw soood enough torch without additional ot it lit

She collected sos and bark from the dead pine, then walked to the ot 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 tile 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 cli she hadtorch, she proceeded down the rather slick ra her steps with the counting words This tiround leveled out; with a torch to show the way, her stride was longer The wide entry gallery opened onto a large, roundish, U-shaped rooht her breath

The walls, glinting with crystallized calcite, were nearly white, a pure, clean, resplendent surface As shetorch sent ani 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 froe 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 iht 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 hite and curved, but the lower area was a narroisting 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 so them back to this cave

Ayla had seen many caves, most filled with beautiful stone icicles suspended fro down the walls and corresponding deposits of stalag to meet them froh it was a limestone cave, a layer of impermeable marl had formed that blocked the calcium carbonate-saturated drops of water and kept themites Instead the walls were covered with calcite crystals, which grow very little, leaving large panels of white covering the bumps and dips of the natural relief of the stone It was a rare and beautiful place, the most beautiful cave she had ever seen

She noticed the light of her torch di up an accu the flaainst any wall to dislodge the burned wood and refresh the fire, but that usually left a black mark In this place she felt constrained to be careful; she couldn’t just knock off the charcoal and mar the unblemished white walls She chose a place in the darker stone area, lower down Soround when she rapped the torch against the stone, and she had a e to clean it up There was a sacred quality to this place; it felt spiritual, otherworldly, and she didn’t want to desecrate it in any way

Then she shook her head It’s only a cave, she thought, even if it is special A little charcoal on the ground won’t hurt it Besides, she noticed that the wolf didn’t hesitate toevery few feet, proclai with his scent that this was his territory But his scent marks didn’t reach the white walls

Ayla walked back to the camp of the Ninth Cave as quickly as she could, excited to tell people about the cave It was only when she arrived, and noticed several people were hauling away dirt fro and several others were preparing food to go into it, that she re e for food to cook, to find an animal to hunt or some edible plant food, and in her exciteotten all about it She noticed that Marthona, Folara, and Proleva had taken out an entire haunch of a bison froe pit

The first day they arrived, e pit all the way down to the level of the permafrost to preserve the part of the meat, which they had hunted before they left, that had not been dried The land of the Zelandonii was close enough to the northern glacier for perround was permanently frozen year-round In winter the soil became as hard as ice, frozen solid all the way to the surface, but in su depths fro on the surface cover and the adown to the frost kept it fresh longer, though ed a little, and soh

“Marthona, I’m sorry,” Ayla said when she reached theot all about it It is the most beautiful cave I’ve ever seen, and I wanted to show it to you, and everyone”

“I never heard of any caves nearby,” Folara said “Certainly not any beautiful ones How far is it?”