The Caves of Périgord: A Novel

archer in plain color. It should not detract from the threat of the stag poised to charge, but balance it and show the story. She took the sharpened stick as he had shown her, to trace the thinner line of the bow.
    “Now you draw the fawn, down on its rump, its forelegs floundering,” said Deer. She looked worriedly at him. She had not expected this, still touched by the mystique of the beasts and the old rule that only men should draw them.
    “Come,” he said, taking her hand. “You remember.” And he led her out of the cave to the stream, where they had spent the morning sketching designs in the smoothed mud with thin twigs. Her last drawing, of the infant deer, was still just visible, where the lips of mud had not quite closed over the grooves.
    “You see how you made the curve of its haunch here, and then used the same curve again for the tilt of its neck to its mother?” he said, pointing with his finger. “That was so good, that is what you must remember.” He led her back into the cave and stood close behind her as she took up the charcoal and began to draw.
    He began to color the stag, that rough but silky texture of the reddish fur, and the whitish yellow at its muzzle and belly. He used moss for the thicker color and dry grass for the thinner wash. The chalk here was even smoother than that at the great cave, and he saw that the dried grass could be used to trail off his colors into thin lines, almost like the grass itself. He closed his eyes again for the image. Yes, the grass. The way the earth had been kicked up by the pawing hoof of the stag, which had sent the grass stirring. He remembered that, and now saw that it was the parted grass and not the hoof itself that had given him the impression of movement and power. Why did they never paint the grass on which the beasts ran? Why did they never do anything but the same images again and again? He bent down to brush his dried grass lightly against the wall by the hoof of his stag, and lifted it quickly away. Almost right. He touched the dried grass to the wall again, and let his hand move a little as he lifted it. Yes, there were the thin wisps, parting before the power of that hoof. He stood back; a little awed by his own boldness. But that was what he had seen.
    And this was his cave, his and Moon’s, where the old rules did not apply. Of course Moon must use her gift here in their cave, and he had found joy in showing her the skills he had learned, a joy that went beyond the wondrous pleasure of her. To watch her talent flower with the new skills of color and brush and charcoal that he had showed her was a happiness that was almost as sharp as the joy he found in her body. And if that old law against women was so plainly foolish, then what was the sense of the rest? There was no need of the ritual of the Keepers, limiting him to one beast, to an endless repetition of form. No law ruled here that said he must paint only beasts and not the land on which they stood, the trees and grass where they grazed, the rivers where they drank, the shape of the hills he had seen rolling away into the distance.
    Suddenly the vision came to him, that the deer and horses and bulls and bears that he itched to paint could take their part in a greater whole. Beasts in their settings, bears in their rocks, deer in their copses, horses in their herds moving delicately and with some secret protocol down to the river to drink.
    Exultant, he crossed to the other wall, and sketched a high line of rolling hill, tumbling into the outcrop of rock where he and Moon had sheltered that first night. And then imagination leaped beyond the constraints of memory and he drew the mouth of a cave that had not been there, and the shape of a bear, lumbering slowly after its long winter sleep, emerging to sniff the air. Then a tree, he thought, a high tall line to balance the bear’s bulk. But trees meant green, and how was he to find the color of green in the earths and clays? An image darted into his mind of children playing by the river, sliding down a long steep slope of grass that tumbled them into a pool, and the smears of green it left on their bodies. There was green in grass. How to obtain it, to make it into a color for the wall? He bent to the floor and picked up a small pebble of chalk, too hard to crumble in his hands. He left the cave, and at the stream, took one of the flat hearthstones and a rounded stone, wrapped the pebble in a handful of fresh grass and then dipped