The Caves of Périgord: A Novel

thick,” said the Keeper of the Horses. “Now, watch how I use my two hands together down here, where your tracings meet in the pointed curve. You see, my hands are not quite enough, they gape where the two palms meet. So we take a scrap of deerskin from our pouch like this, and you, youngster, fold it small to fill that gap between my hands and cover up to the traced line. Like that, yes. Now, blow again, and the curve will be properly filled with color.”
    They all stood back, and admired the way the colors now met without blurring. And then, without need for a word, all gathered around the haunch of the bison to repeat the trick where the traces formed another point as the red-brown color dwindled away at the root of the beast’s tail. Again the two hands, again the folded scrap of deerskin, again the gentle blowing, as they panted in the bad and smoke-filled air. Then it was done, and they all staggered back down the narrow passage, clambered up and around the bend in the rock, and out through the great cave into the open air to fill their lungs and clear their blurring eyes.
    “It is done,” said the Keeper of the Horses when their breath had eased. “You are the new Keeper, a full member of the brotherhood. It was decided this day.”
    “All were agreed?” asked Deer.
    “All were agreed, eventually. All admire your talent. And all will be impressed by the way you completed the old man’s work. They are probably clustered around now to look, while we take our air.”
    “Then when will the ceremony take place?”
    “It is not decided, Perhaps the night before the time of mating. That might interest you. A man now, and a Keeper, you will be able to take a woman of your own.”
    Deer studied him cautiously. Little Moon’s father must know that Deer had already made his choice. Would he even have raised the topic if he had not been prepared for the question Deer must now put? Would he have backed Deer so strongly to become a Keeper if he did not think Deer worthy of his daughter’s hand?
    “There is only one maid whom I would take at the mating,” he said, more boldly than he thought he could.
    The man was silent, studying him carefully, a half-smile on his face. He looked down at his hands, still stained with the ocher that Deer had blown in the cave. He rubbed the sides of his palms together, and watched the grains crumble and fall, some of them sparkling in the sunlight. The color bonded him to Deer in a certain way, he thought, Deer’s breath and the liquid from Deer’s mouth, where they had worked together.
    “I seek your Little Moon,” Deer plowed on.
    “You are not alone in that,” said the Keeper placidly. “The Keeper of the Bulls also seeks my Moon.” The shortened name was what they called her in the privacy of the family. The Keeper caught himself; he was treating Deer as if they were already kin.
    “But he is old and….” Deer’s voice trailed off. “Little Moon herself would not take him.”
    “What my Little Moon wants is not the most important thing in this. I have to take the decision, with my woman, and think what is best for us, for the brotherhood of Keepers, for the village. And he is a very powerful man, renowned among the villages up and down the river. It is a great honor for Moon.”
    “She would be a great honor for me,” said Deer simply, hanging his head. Now he knew why her father had done it this way, raising him up with the news that he would be a Keeper, and then casting him down with this warning that Moon would be given to another. A thought came to him.
    “Do you know she has the talent, your daughter?” he said.
    “I know. So does her mother, but women are women. There is no place for them in the cave. The brotherhood would never allow it.”
    “The brotherhood seems suddenly to be allowing a lot of strange new things,” Deer retorted. “Did the brotherhood know of this new thing of the eagle’s head and the bull’s skull? Did the other Keepers support the Keeper of the Bulls in this?”
    “No, and many are troubled by this.”
    “And yet this is the man to whom you would entrust Little Moon?”
    “I have not decided. But one of the new things that you must consider is that I may not have much choice. The Keepers may be disturbed, but the hunters and the fishermen and the flint men—all seem to welcome the new ways, and to welcome the power of the man who brought them.”
    “But you are her father. Nobody would go against your decision