The Caves of Périgord: A Novel

“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