The Caves of Périgord: A Novel

a man’s shape, thighs emerging from the river, the waist curved and the weight of the chest and shoulders taut to take the weight of the log and the skin, filling in the river. The head was just a suggestion of shape, and a few swift curls of hair. There was no face, no identity, but it was him, as he had been just a few moments ago. Him in the river, as caught by her. Caught. No, that was not the word she had used, the word she had learned from her father. Captured. She had captured his spirit. Indeed she had. He admired her work, the curve of thigh and back, the suggestion of hair. The water was just three quick lines, scored deeper where they began and then becoming shallower, in a way that suggested both movement and direction. There was a curl of wave by his forward thigh that he liked. A man in the river. Him.
    Guiltily, he looked up at the village, and then splashed water over her sketch with his foot and smoothed the clay clean again. As he went to his work, he thought that his spirit did not feel caught, but that he would like to be captured by Moon. She had seen something in him and been moved by it, and had depicted it. But then, the sketch had already disappeared, taken by the river. Would it be so easy to capture her? A few hasty lines in clay? It could not be so easy, or everyone would do it. But that way she had balanced the curve of his thigh against the curl of the water, that was good. He could use that. She had the talent, Little Moon. She should be working in the cave, but women never did. He had never asked himself why not before. But then he had never seen a woman draw before. He had never seen a drawing of himself before. Looking up to the cave and feeling eager to begin, Deer felt as if the world had suddenly been reinvented and he was bursting with possibilities.

    The Keeper of the Horses was becoming angry. All the other Keepers were agreed save the Keeper of the Bulls. There was a gap amid the ranks after the old man’s death. They needed a new Keeper, and Deer had done his part in the hunt and was now a man. He was the obvious choice, the most talented of the apprentices, and had been chosen by the old man himself. Had he not told the Keeper of the Horses that the boy should have his own lamp after his death?
    “Why do you object?” he repeated, angrier still by the way the Keeper of the Bulls had perched himself on this rock above the other Keepers, looking down upon them rather than sitting with them in the circle, as was the custom. The Keepers were all equal. The man was becoming insufferable, as if he were trying to become leader. They were a brotherhood, bonded by the great work of the cave. There were no leaders or followers among them, only Keepers and apprentices. And the cave itself was ritual enough, without this new business of skulls and eagles and great ceremonies that rested on clever tricks. He had taken the other Keepers up the hill to show them the pit and the brushwood where the eagle had been caught and then released.
    “The boy is still young,” objected the Keeper of the Bulls.
    “He is a man. He killed his beasts,” said the Keeper of the Ibex, who had been more offended than any of them when he saw the eagle’s pit, aware that he had been fooled. “We all saw him kill them well, leaping from back to back like a mountain goat. Deer is no boy any longer.”
    “We nearly banished him from the cave,” came the next objection. “We only just decided to let him back in. Perhaps that was a mistake.”
    “You know as well as I do that the old man stumbled on his own. He felt very bad about blaming Deer. That was why he took the boy under his wing, made him his special apprentice, taught him all that he could, left Deer his lamp,” said the Keeper of the Horses, striving to keep his voice reasonable.
    “The old man made his choice,” said the Keeper of the Ibex. “He made Deer his heir. He passed on his lamp. You know what that means. We cannot go against a Keeper’s final wish.”
    “The old man was wandering in his own head. He was not what he had been,” said the Keeper of the Bulls, his voice sullen at not getting his own way. “He even left his work unfinished.”
    “Deer is finishing the coloring of the two bison. He has a master’s touch that boy, and the old man knew it and welcomed Deer’s completion of the work.”
    “So let him finish that work. The boy has shown a certain talent with his deer, but as apprentice he must complete his