The Caves of Périgord: A Novel by Martin Walker Page B

in his judgment, must even be cruel. There was no single horse that came close to the bulls as a single work. But it was in the numbers, in the use of them as balance and as artistic forms that lightened the great brooding weight of the bulls, that Deer felt he recognized the touch of a master. The bulls were power, the horses were grace. But the power of the bulls would be ungainly, even crude, without that lightness of the Horses. The Keeper of the Bulls was painting for himself, Deer suddenly thought, but the Keeper of the Horses was painting for the cave. As the thought formed, he expelled a great gust of air, without ever knowing that he had been holding his breath. He felt lightheaded.
    Then, so unexpected that his skin seemed to jump, there came a touch on his arm. “My father said that I would find you here,” whispered Little Moon. He could barely see her, just the play of shadows from the torches outside the cave and the gleam of her eyes. “He wants you to wait here until morning, when they come out. He will come to see you then.”
    “Why does he want to see me? Did he say?”
    “Just that you should wait for him.” She made no move to go, kneeling quietly at his side, her eyes on the cave.
    “Does he know that we talked, you and I, Little Moon?”
    “I did not tell him,” she said. “I think perhaps my mother did. She asked me, after you had gone, what we had said. And she said that I should know you were disgraced, banished from the cave to work for the women.”
    “Does your mother know that you are here now?”
    He felt, rather than saw, the quick shake of her head. “It doesn’t matter. I am here on my father’s bidding. But I must go back soon.”
    “Not yet,” he said, and ran his hand along the smoothness of her arm. She flinched back, and then relaxed.
    “Do you remember what I told you, that you should wait until I am made a Keeper?”
    “Yes, I remember,” she whispered. “But this is for my father to decide.”
    “He is a good man, Little Moon, and a great worker in the cave, Perhaps the greatest. His beasts love him, and stir with life at his touch.”
    “You should not talk of this with me. The cave is not for women.”
    “Every other cave of every other clan is for women,” he said. “There are women in other clans who do the work of the cave. I have seen them. It is only us who have this law, and only in this cave.”
    “I should like to see it, someday,” she said. “My father says it is a place of marvels.”
    “Then you shall, when I am Keeper. I shall show you. I want to show you my work.”
    “But you are only an apprentice. They have not let you begin yet.”
    “I had passed the last test of the apprentice. I had done my first work, not in the great cave, but far deeper in, where the passage narrows and the floor falls away. That is where the apprentices who are about to be made Keepers do the work that the other Keepers judge. That was where I made my work, my swimming beasts. There is a line of rock within the rock of the cave, a dark and curving line like a river that is in flood. And that was where I plunged my beasts, into this flood as you have seen them swim in the river after winter when the waters rush. They are part of the water, and the water is a part of the rock. They flow together—” His voice broke off. “They are good work, Little Moon, and I would show them to you, my swimming deer.”
    She gasped in shock, her hand leaping to her mouth. “You named them! You must not—you named the beasts.”
    “Only to you, Little Moon, and you will see them. You will see them and know what they are, and inside your head you will think that these are indeed swimming deer and this is indeed a river. And then you will think like me that naming them in your head is the same as naming them in your mouth, and wonder why we have this strange rule that says we only call them beasts or the work.”
    “My father says …” she began, but he interrupted. “This