Before her is the cave, into which the rest of the family vanish one by one. Summer is the last, his face catching the dying light as he takes one final look back at her, expression full of fear. It’s his first Gather and he doesn’t know what to expect. The adults haven’t been forthcoming. It was true at Falcon’s first, too, all those winters ago.
She turns to watch the last rays of sun vanish over the hills. Already the snow has made it to the bottom of the valley, making it more difficult to pass the normal hunting routes. The elk fled north towards the sea, and on a normal year the family would follow them, but this year is a Gather, so instead they go south. For twenty days they climbed. The littlest ones, like Summer, struggled – each step taking them higher and further from the grasslands that had been home.
And now here they are. The cave hasn’t changed. Nothing else is as old as it is. The trees in the forest lose their leaves and grow new ones; the river runs to a trickle in summer and a torrent in spring. But the cave endures. Scrubby mountain plants grow around its edge but they shy away from the mouth – out of respect, says Gran Ash-Bark, because they know the cave is a powerful place.
Shadows rise upon the land and she turns back to the cave, hitches her cloak over her knees, and clambers up over the lip.
When she gets to the top she finds a woman waiting there with a sneer on her face. Wait – it’s Brim from Gorge Family. She has properly grown up since Falcon saw her last, shot up in height and filled out her breasts. She and Falcon are of an age, but Brim is slightly older; last Gather Falcon was still a child, but Brim had just become a woman.
And now Falcon will be joining her.
“I thought you’d gotten lost,” Brim says, holding out a hand. “Maybe that famous sense of direction has finally run dry.”
Falcon scrambles up the final rock without touching Brim’s offered hand. “Maybe your famous ability to listen to the seasons is aslant. We’re right on time.”
Brim laughs. She’s a vixen, but she has her own sense of humour. “Don’t sound so panicked, we didn’t start without you.” Falcon dusts herself off and sets off into the chief cavern. “Do you want a hand with your pack?” shouts Brim behind her. Falcon ignores her.
The chief cavern is alive with fires and with people.
There are more than last time. At Falcon’s first Gather twelve years ago there were a little over one hundred people all in all. This time it must be twice that. Some came from far east when they heard there was good hunting here. And the schism in Birch Family has bedded in – they’re in two camps on opposite sides of the cavern, not talking to each other. But mostly it’s just children. They run from fire to fire squealing at each other and getting in each other’s way. The winters have been kinder than usual, and the spring longer. The Families are growing. Many will leave the Gather with the seeds of more children in their bellies.
The smoke from the fires spirals up into the ceiling and out through a crack through which the first stars are just visible. Shadows dance, making the very walls seem alive. It is packed. But they’ll be here for eight days, until the Gather is done.
Summer runs up to her. “Falcon! Falcon! Can I go play with Bear Family? They have chestnuts.”
Falcon gives him a hug. “You can go play with anyone you like, Summer. It’s Gather.”
He screams. “Falcon! Gather is amazing! Love you.” Then he runs off.
She finds the rest of her family setting out their place. She was short with Brim earlier, but the vixen was right, they are late. As a result they have a less favourable spot downhill of everyone else, where there’s standing water in a puddle by the wall and flies. But it’s sheltered enough and there’ll be water to be had from the stream deeper in the cave. She unloads her pack and goes to talk to her Da.
“Is Raven okay?”
Da looks very tired. “He’s sleeping. This Gather’s taken it out of him. I fear it may be his last.”
Raven is leaning against the wall, where someone had put a fur over him. He is younger than Da but his cheeks are hollow and his mouth slightly open. Da looks upon the man with whom he has led their family for a decade, and then looks at Falcon.
“Falcon, look, you have women’s business with Gran Ash-Bark, don’t you?”
She nods. “It can wait.”
“No. Go do what you need to do. I’ll keep Raven out of trouble.”
She’d been hoping to put it off a little longer, but it seems time has caught up with her. “Okay, Da.”
He hugs her. “You’ll be okay. Your Ma would be so proud.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Our family doesn’t have a Gran, but you’re the closest they have to one. We couldn’t hope for better. Go. Get on.”
Falcon makes her way through the cave to the shaman’s chamber. She sees a few people she knew as a child from past Gathers, like Nock from Vine Family, and Pip and Eel (though she hears Pip being called Pipistrelle and she realises it must have been a child’s nickname she’s known all this time). She greets some of them and they look happy to see her. But with the boys there is now something that wasn’t there before. A caution. Before they were boys, but now they’re men, and at a Gather they’ll be expected to play their part to cement the bonds between families. For most, this will be their first time. Sometimes couples form within a family, but it’s frowned upon, and for the most part they form here, at a Gather. Now, each of them might be wondering if she is willing to choose them.
Falcon tries not to think about it too hard. She has something more important to do first.
The shaman’s chamber is much quieter. The acolytes at the entrance let her through without a word. Soon she locates Gran Ash-Bark in amongst the women. In Falcon’s mind’s eye she’s still a towering boulder of a woman with a frown that could topple a tree. She’s smaller now, but the frown’s still on display.
“Falcon of Feather Family, I see you,” says Gran Ash-Bark, “and I think you have come to see me for one reason only.”
“I brought it,” whispers Falcon.
Gran Ash-Bark nods. “Show me.”
Falcon opens her pack and takes out the bundle. It is bound in leaves and tied with bark twine. She’s had it for three years now, almost since the last Gather, carrying it with the family all this time, through river, under forest canopy and over rock. It still smells, a little, but the smell has faded into the gentle musk of everything else it’s shared the pack with, of herbs, dried meats and body sweat.
Her fingers shiver as she unwraps the twine, but only for a moment. She peels back the leaf and reveals a soft mass of moss. It’s dried out and gone so dark as to be almost black, but the red is still there at its heart. Her own body’s red. She offers it up to Gran Ash-Bark.
Without saying a word Gran takes the bundle and carefully runs one bony finger over the moss, licks it, nods. “Well done. Girls these days keep losing it or forgetting. Then they take another month’s blood and try to pass it off. But you can always tell. A woman’s first blood has particular power.”
“Does this mean… I…” whispers Falcon.
“It does. You’re a woman now. Time for you to take the woman’s path.”
Before him is the cave, into which they are carrying the equipment piece by piece. Floodlights, generators, the huge hulking case of the spectroscope. The cave isn’t picky about its diet, he thinks, but it sure has a voracious appetite.
He sees Dr Ahmed arguing with one of the porters about something or other and makes a mental note to speak to her about it afterwards. She’s had a long day – literally; she has just flown in from Singapore and is six hours ahead – but it’s not the first time she’s snapped at a colleague and she needs to learn to keep it under control. The site is remote and they only have a few days here before the national government starts complaining about them damaging the cave. If they start winding each other up before they’ve even started, they might not even make it that far.
“Joey, they’re ready for you, if you want.” Gin surprises him but he tries not to show it. She’s carrying a keep-cup of something hot (where did she get that?) in one hand and a walkie-talkie in the other.
He says, “Well, let’s not keep the audience waiting, shall we?”
A little into the first cavern they have set up lights which illuminate the walls in glaring, unyielding white. A shame, he thinks. In the Palaeolithic this would have been full of shadows. But here we are shining a torch into it. Rather gauche. Someone, presumably for the interview, has erected a sign with the university crest on it:
The journalist, a stunner, from Madrid, he understands, is waiting with a microphone and checking her watch. “Dr Richardson! Can we begin?”
He grins. “It’s Professor, actually.” Behind him Gin rolls her eyes. “And of course.”
“Professor, my apologies.” She doesn’t sound particularly apologetic. (He can hear Gin saying, “Cultural differences, Joey, keep your handbag on.”) “Ok, we start rolling.” She snaps her fingers at the cameraman. Once the film begins to run her body language changes completely.
“Well, hello, HTV, we are live to you from the most exciting archaeological dig of the century! I am here with Dr Joey Richardson, who is heading up the team. Dr Richardson, what can you tell me about this astounding place?”
Did she do any research whatsoever before arriving here? This isn’t a dig. They aren’t digging for anything. Oh well. Smile and wave. “Of course. So this seems to be a Palaeolithic shelter site. We have evidence of fires, cooked meat, flint arrowheads and fire-starting equipment here. And paintings. Lots of them. Animals, hand-stencils, and what you or I might call abstract art.”
The journalist is definitely losing interest. “Can you tell me a little more about why that’s so special, Doctor?”
“Well, you see, we just don’t have evidence for this many people being in the same place! Maybe one or two hundred. We think at this point in history humans lived in small family units or groups. Maybe ten or twenty people in size. So finding a place where they were living all in one go is really special. Was this a small town or even city? Did they move around? What were their lives like? We hope to answer all these questions and more, in our research.” He grins winningly.
The camera turns back to the journalist. “Thank you, Doctor Richardson, we can’t wait to hear more about your discoveries as they emerge!”
Right on cue, the camera cuts.
The journalist is about to start talking – maybe asking for another take, a more interesting one – when someone comes running into the chamber from deeper into the cave. It’s Harris, one of the PhDs. “Professor! Oh my god. You have to come look.”
Anything to get out of this media purgatory. “What’s going on? Found Cthulhu?”
Harris points to a passage that leads deeper into the cave. “It’s… it’s the shaft.”
They rub tree oil into her skin and then they strap ropes to her thighs and around her shoulders and waist. The cord is coarse against her skin but the oil stops it from rubbing. Then, with each acolyte holding one rope, they set off into the throat.
Here, the very last of the light is extinguished. The darkness presses on the inside of her eyelids. The two acolytes ahead of her know the way by touch and through the rope she feels where they are, their bodies near hers. At one point the roof becomes so low they must crawl, and one by one they drop to their knees to pass. She touches one acolyte’s foot with her hand, its location taking her by surprise – was she not further away? Once she’s through it’s tall enough to stand again and they carry on. The cave goes unimaginably deep.
At length the acolytes before her stop and they have come to the lip of the shaft.
“Approach,” says a voice. She recognises it as Gran Yellowfeather, from one of the eastern families. She steps forward and hands steady her.
“Here are the tools,” says another voice, Gran Water-in-the-Marsh, she thinks, and into one hand is thrust something small, hard and slightly warm. Bone. She turns it around and gets a feel for how it’s balanced. It’s light, hollow – the wingbone of a raven, maybe.
“Here is the blood,” says another unseen person whom she doesn’t recognise. Into the other hand now she receives the bowl of ochre. She doesn’t know what colour it is but the Grans will have chosen whatever is auspicious. She pinches some with the hand holding the bone and it clumps under her fingers.
She has used these tools many times outside the cave. Her hands know their use better than she does. Spit in the ochre and rub it into skin or onto bark; or suck ochre between your teeth and blow it through the bone, spraying the surface with an even coat. Draw the bison or elk out from the rock and so will they emerge into the world.
But how is she meant to do that in the dark, when for all she knows she might be drawing monsters?
A voice very close to her ear whispers, “Ready”?
She jumps – almost – but steadies herself and replies, “Ready.”
Gently, without spilling the ochre, she is lowered over the edge. Her toes curl about the lip of the rock but the ropes hold as she knew they would. She holds on to the lip as long as she can but then the ropes lengthen a little more and she lets go. Now she is floating in midair, turning slightly – she thinks? – and all about her is dark.
One of the Grans she doesn’t recognise calls down the shaft and her voice is very far away:
“Now you must paint what you see.”
Falcon blinks. She blinks again. There is no difference between when her eyes are shut and when they are open. Blackness presses on her. She hears herself say,
“But I see nothing.”
“Look harder. You will see Goddess most clearly when you look with your mind, not your eyes.”
Falcon floats in the black. She stares into the darkness with both eyes wide open and still there is nothing there to see. She wills there to be a light, any light, even just the faintest flicker of a flint in the next cavern, to anchor her to the world. But all she sees is nothing. Reams and reams of it. Sweeping forests of it, oceans of it.
She wonders, if she is unable to paint, whether they will let her out. If she can’t see Goddess and just scrawls something randomly with both hands. But they’ll know. They’ll keep her down here. Who’s to say if they’ll let her out at all? She’s heard stories of girls who went down the woman’s path and never came back. Did they fail as she will now fail? Maybe the Grans have already left. Maybe they tied the ropes to a stalagmite and crept out, quietly as mice. She can’t hear anything but the sound of her own uneven breathing. The darkness goes on forever and she is floating in an endless night sky devoid of stars.
She reaches out into the emptiness and her fingers brush rock.
Paint what you see.
She closes her eyes, breathes deeply, and opens them again. She knows there is rock in front of her. She can’t see it, but it’s there. She traces the rock with her fingertips, gets to know the landscape. Below and to the right, a flat section smooth as skin and curved inwards like the small of a child’s back. To the left, a ridge that runs top to bottom and forks a little above her head. To its right, a rough patch jutting into an overhang. As she brushes her hand against it little flecks of sand flutter from the rockface and drift to the ground. They glimmer as she watches them fall.
Watches? But it’s pitch black.
Before her – below her – the landscape shifts.
She is looking outwards and downwards over a great valley. The earth is very far away, but with her predator eyes she can make out every trace of it. There, a copse of long-limbed trees. There, the trees thin and scatter into pebbles on the shore of a great river, clear as crystal with glacier meltwater that still thinks it is ice. She runs a hand/wing through it and it’s cold, comes away wet. Swoop upwards and over a herd of elk that are drinking in the ford. The sound of rushing water on their legs. One takes fright and now the whole herd is away, moving as one. Ah – there it is, emerging from the shrubland on the other side: a he-bear, shaggy with youth and hungry.
Away, away. Dive upwards on a thermal and curve around, describing a great arc in the sky. She can see as far as the distant hills now, the colour that distance is, further than her hands/talons can reach, though she might stretch. River, rock, forest, sky. The world is full of shapes and the shapes swim. They sing an order in things, in space and in time. She backs away a little in the hope she might catch a glimpse of it in its entirety, but it’s only so slightly out of view.
The world is smiling at her as though she has humoured it with a joke that she did not herself understand.
She draws a line around the horizon and sees its shape, that of the face of Goddess, illuminating everything –
Soon they will call out to her again and then the ropes will be tightened and they will pull her up, out of the shaft, back towards the light. She will return to the chief cavern as a woman and she will pick her first sex-partner. She’ll start to forget what it looked like, the thing Goddess showed her in the shapes in the dark, but she’ll wonder:
Further reading: In Our Time: Cave Art