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 it all in the stream. He withdrew it, dripping, and slowly crushed the chalk into dust, rolling his stone until the whiteness of the chalk had taken on the greenness of the grass. It was a duller green than the grass had been, but it would serve. He sat back on his haunches and looked at the trees above him. They were not a single, simple green, but richer with other shades, flashes of yellow and gleams of white from the reflected sky. As he scraped his new color onto a small, flat stone to take it back into the cave, a part of his mind was already asking what he would do for the blue of the sky, and thinking of the colors in the wildflowers and how they would mix with his chalk.
He had left her early, after the first morning drink from the stream, to search his traps for rabbits, and to use the new thongs they had sliced from the cured hides. Moon wanted the old, supple thongs to sew their winter cloaks of rabbit fur. She had already woven a basket and soon they would fish. And they would have to start to smoke meat for the winter, which meant more reindeer skins to build the smoking tent. He begrudged each moment he spent away from the cave, away from Moon, with whom he felt a fellowship far closer than anything he had known among the Keepers and apprentices. She took his ideas and gave them back to him in different garb, and offered her own plans for the great wall of their cave that spurred his mind into new directions.
It had taken its full shape now, just as he had dreamed. The vast stretch of hillside and grassland covered the whole wall, with its sleepy bear and grazing deer, its horses bending to drink at a riverbank fringed with reeds, its great black bull standing guard over a docile cow, and the ibex perched on the rocky outcrop. This was the world as they knew it, as a cradle and a backdrop for life and movement. It was what they saw, and what they had labored so joyously to depict. There were reeds and trees, the spots of color from the wildflowers, the ripples in the water that spoke of fish, and an evening sky of dusted reds and violets. They had been Moon’s idea, when the blue of the sky had defeated him, the flimsy petals of the purple flowers failing to bring him the color he needed. And her idea was better, he thought. It gave a sense of time, of a day ending, a fleeting moment caught.
Along the passageway into the cave were the smaller sketches they had made, the bull that he had done first to be sure of the proportions, and then her delicate deer and the two horses, one at rest and one prancing. They made a fitting entrance into the great space of the cave beyond, with its large landscape on one side, and on the other, the tableau of him and Moon confronting the stag and doe and fawn. The far end of the cave remained blankly white, and he had not yet seriously applied his thoughts to its possibilities. He had been musing about it the previous evening after they ate, wondering about trying to recapture the moment of the great hunt, the tumbling reindeer, and the boys riding the beasts in their hunger to be men. There was something in it that inspired him, but to recapture what he had seen, rather than what he had felt, would be untrue to his own eye. What he had seen, mostly, was dust, and if he felt that he lived by a single law in the glorious voyage of discovery and exploration that he and Moon were making, it was to be true to what they saw.
And what he had seen was Moon at the stream bank, sitting cross-legged and sketching in the clay, looking up at him from moment to moment, but not to catch his eye nor to smile at him, but with a steady concentration. She was sketching him again, as she had done the first time he had become aware of her talent. He had noted that she was making tiny, carefully chosen lines in the clay, rather than her usual long and fluid strokes. Curious, he had begun to rise to look at her work, but almost sharply she had told him to remain where he was. So he had been content with watching her until she stopped and studied the clay, and then finally looked at him, smoothed out her work, and came laughing into his arms.
And now, as he hung the rabbits on their frame and removed his sack and laid his flint ax in its place by the cave entrance while waiting for his eyes to grow accustomed to the darker interior, he was aware of Moon standing by that far, untouched wall. He became aware, too, of some large, round design taking shape upon it. He swallowed the instant rush of anger and affront, that she had embarked upon the work without the discussion and agreement that had become their custom. He had not asked her about the first line he had drawn on the rolling hill of what became their wall, he recalled. This cave was her work as much as his and he knew the ever-rising level of her skill and the trueness of her eye. In truth, he had nothing left to teach her. He closed his eyes and sat in silence, waiting for them to adjust and to see her work as she was seeing it, and smiling as he thought of her. Weaving, hunting, painting, loving, splashing in the water and tending the fire, skinning the game and sewing the hides into panels for their smoke tent. As brave as a man and as capable, and mistress of all the things that women did. He heard her footsteps approaching, and began to blink.
“No,” she said firmly. “Don’t open your eyes, not yet. Come, let me guide you.” She helped him to his feet and led him down the passage and into the cave. She took him three, then four paces inside until he thought he must be standing almost in the center, with the great landscape to his left and the tableau of him and Moon and the stag to his right. She stopped him with a hand to his chest, and then came and stood behind him and covered his eyes with her hands.
“Open them now,” she said, and withdrew her hands, resting them lightly on his cheeks, and he saw himself for the first time. It was him, just his face and shoulders, as he had glimpsed them in the stillness of a pool of water. His hair, thick and curling over his brow and on his shoulders, his shape. He raised his hand to his own jaw, his mouth, his nose, his cheekbones and found her hand there and pressed it.
“I never thought …” he said, his mouth too dry to speak, his thoughts too confused, his reactions tumbling over each other from shock to fear to admiration. He took a deep breath. “I never thought this could be done. I never knew or dreamed.”