He put down the lamps, took off his sack, unpacked it, picked out the caribou shinbone from the other things. He made one scrape with the shinbone at just above head height, revealing a lighter rock under the brown skin: the bare flesh of Mother Earth, very bright compared to the shadows in the corners around him.
This was the wall Thorn had said he was going to paint. For the first time Loon felt a little touch of Thorn behind his ear, and he heard the remembered sound of Thorn’s voice, saying just his ordinary things. Come here, boy. The particular timbre of Thorn’s voice suddenly pierced him, so buzzy and nasal compared to the clear tones he made when he played his flute. There was no other voice like it. Although it was true that no two voices were the same, so that meant nothing. But he would never hear that voice again. He would have to hold on to it.
Loon said to the cave,—Hello, Thorn. Before I start, I want to go look at your painting of the lions on the hunt. Come with me if you like.
He picked up one lamp and stepped down the twisted passage to the end chamber. Now that Thorn was dead, he would have to follow Loon around if he wanted to talk to him. So Loon was free to go where he wanted. Loon could feel that as he walked, could feel how it would irritate Thorn.
Now he stood in the farthest end of the cave, in front of the great lion chase he had watched Thorn paint so long ago. He saw again: it was by far the greatest painting in the cave, maybe the world. Maybe it would always be the greatest painting. The hungry look in the lions’ eyes, the sharp wariness of the bison peering over their shoulders at the great cats; the way the animals moved when you moved the lamp next to the wall; the massed groups, hunters and hunted, both flowing across the wall from right to left, moving even as they were still, moving as you breathed, the lions diving in, the bison bursting out. All these aspects together made this wall more alive than any painting Loon had ever seen or imagined.
He sat there and looked at it, and remembered what he could of Thorn on the night he had painted it. The old man had been very calm and relaxed, almost friendly. No, friendly. He had smoked his pipe and played his flute. He had stopped to eat or take sips of water. He had put his head to the hole in the corner of the floor that breathed and sometimes gurgled, listening for what the cave could tell him. It had taken a long time to paint that wall, but he had never hurried.
The lions moved in place, and yet stayed where they were. The cave breathed in time with Loon’s breaths. Deep below him it sounded like someone was talking. He saw that he wanted to do it like Thorn had done it. He would do what Thorn had done, every mood and move, make it happen again. That was what he would do; and that was what he would teach some boy to do. If you did it right, on it would go.
Loon put the lamp down, sat on his fur patch, took out Thorn’s pipe. Used the lamp flame to light a splinter, squinted and lit the leaf in the pipe’s bowl, breathed in some smoke, held it in his lungs. Exhaled.
The cave exhaled with him. He drank from his water bag. When he was finished looking at Thorn’s lions, he got up, taking some care to be sure of his balance. A little dance in place. He picked up the lamp, walked back to the other lamp, in the big chamber with his empty wall. He set the second lamp down, had a look around. The bison man still humped the human woman, and he approached it to have a look at how it had been drawn. The black triangle of the woman’s baginaren had been very carefully cleft at the bottom by a scratched white line. The door to the next world, clear as a cut on a finger. He had a burin in his pack to use as just such a line scraper. He had charcoal stumps, a bag of charcoal powder, a bowl for mixing, chamois leather patches, some brushes. Two bags of water. The wall scraper shinbone. He had to finish the scraping.
He moved the lamps around until the light on the wall was the way he wanted it. The two together set up crossed shadows, and he wished that he had a third lamp, or even more. Ah yes, he did; in the sack. He found the lamp stone with its indentation, set it up, filled the dip with lamp fat, placed one of the wicks in it, used another splinter to move flame to it. He sat by the lamp a while to make sure it was burning well. It flickered, then burned steadily, the flame still except right there at the wick it enfolded, where it crinkled off the black into existence.
The cave was murmuring a low song. There was a river running under the cave. Its sound seemed to indicate that its water moved slower than water on the surface of the earth.
He took up the shinbone in his right hand and finished scraping the wall clean of its brown nobbling. He saw that a cave bear had reached up and clawed the wall, as if trying to get through to something. The claw scratches were white, and under Loon’s scraping the wall was almost tusk white. Like old yellowed tusk, or the belly of an ibex. Above the scraped section was an arch of stone, and the wall above that was reddish brown.
On the far left of his wall, around a slight curve that way, there was a low hole in the wall. The floor was wetter under the hole.
He took up a charcoal stump, and on the left side of the cleared section drew the backs of a rising line of bulls. That gave him his left border.
He stepped to the lower part of his cleared area and drew the two rhinos he had seen fighting by the creek. He wanted to show the way they had slapped their horns together, in those big horny thwacks that rang across the meadow. It must hurt when horn caught flesh. Both of the rhinos had been bleeding. He drew the lines of their horns right through each other: it was the only way to show it. Round curve of their low rumps, so massive and strong. They were so much faster than they looked. He could suggest that speed if the curves were right. And all the force of the fight was there in their faces and horns. He took his time, smudged with a leather cloth inside the lines of head and horn, to make them blacker. The one on the right had its right foreleg set, and was thrusting up and through the one on the left, catching it in the side of the head. Curve of the muscle swinging from the force of the blow. Scrape with a burin inside the right one’s mouth, open as it grunted. The one on the left had been rocked back by the blow, rounded up by it. Draw the forefeet rounded, show them almost hanging in air. Curves in the rock were shaped nicely to show the weight of the beast thrown back. Dot the eye just over the horn, looking shocked. Give him two front horns; this was a Thorn trick, to show movement. Knocked back by the blow, back into the cave wall itself.
When the rhinos were done he sat down for a while. He had a longer charcoal branch than usual, and as he sat there, he reached out and drew a little bison with it, a three-liner at first, but then he kept pointing the stick into the mass of winter hair between its horns. Just something to do while he rested and looked at the wall above. It was a great wall. It was breathing in and out with his breath, coming closer and then moving away.
The stumping was making things look good and black, so he added another bull to the stack of them on the left side of his wall, blacked it in completely. A little scraping with the burin could remove just enough of the blackened face to suggest an eye. Black eye of a black bull, and yet visible. Under the muzzle of this black beast he drew a horse with a big head, small body. That looked good, black stumped down its chest, legs just lined.
That left the biggest scraped space, to the right of the bulls and above the fighting rhinos. It was a good space, and he sat down next to his sack to look at it for a while.
He refilled his lamps with fat. He drank some water. He inspected his hands; his palms and fingers were black with charcoal. He held the right hand up before him, turned it palm side then backside. Bent little finger. It pulsed blackly, seemed to go away and come back. This living hand. He held it up against the wall, as if to blow an outline. From this distance it covered the space he had left to draw on.