will be a good place to stay.
Certain that he had found what he wanted, Tao spent four days filling his cave with dried grass, firewood and kindling. Kala gave him a bearskin robe and a tallow lamp made from a large cockleshell filled with animal fat and a wick made of peat moss. She showed him how to dry cat-tail roots and bur-reed tubers for cooking. She wrapped live embers in a handful of wet grass, placed them in a hollow bone and gave them to him for his fire.
When his cave was ready, Tao went down to the little stream that ran through the willow wood and found a bank of yellow clay. He scooped out some of the clammy substance, rolled it into long pieces and let them dry in the sun. He picked oak twigs and burned them in the fire to make sticks of charcoal.
This done, he stepped back and looked around his little cave. With his chunks of clay and charcoal and a handful of moss for a wiper, he was ready to become a maker of images. He had no picture or sketch to work from. He would have to draw from memory.
He picked up a stick of dried clay. It felt good in his hand and he made a mark on the gray wall. It showed up bold and sharp.
I will draw a horse, he thought. Even though no one else will see it, I will know what I have done and I will feel good.
He started with the head, drawing the long face and the square jaw. Next he sketched in the ears and the gentle curve of the neck. He worked quickly, trying to see in his mindâs eye how the horses looked when he saw them out in the valley. With firm strokes of the chalk he drew in the muscular body, the shoulder, the arched rump and the tail.
Then he tried to draw the legs. His hand hesitated. Did the front leg bend just below the body, or farther down? He could not remember. The hind legs were even more difficult. He thought they slanted toward the tail, then bent forward at the knee. But where was the knee? He wasnât sure. He went on, his hand moving across the wall. When he was finished he stepped back. Itâs not right, he thought. The legs are all wrong.
Impatiently he rubbed it out with a handful of moss and started again. This time he drew the body first, adding the legs and the long, sweeping tail. But when he drew the head, it was too big for the body. He shook his head peevishly. âItâs no good,â he said. âIt looks more like a bear.â
He tried again and again, but each time it only seemed to get worse. He tried drawing a row of heads, then a row of bodies, but they didnât match. He shook his head in frustration and threw the chalk against the wall, where it broke in a hundred pieces. âIâll never learn,â he said.
He sat on the cold floor, brooding for a while. Then he picked up another piece of chalk and tried again. All day long he drew horsesâsmall horses, running horses, all kinds of horses. He forgot to eat the ground plums Kala had given him, he forgot to make his drink of birch tea. The harder he tried, the more trouble he had. He dropped his chalk and lay down on his bearskin rug, tired, angry, and discouraged, and he fell asleep.
When he awoke the next morning it was quiet. He looked around. There was no smell of Kalaâs fire, no sound of voices. Then he remembered he was alone, and he was hungry. He climbed down the cliff and made his way across the valley. When he reached the river he turned west and continued on until he came to the Slough.
The trees and vines were green with new leaves. The black loam was thick with uncoiling ferns, and the dank bottomland smelled sweet and earthy. He stopped for a moment and looked around to be sure no one had seen him, then he pushed on through the thickets and into the Slough. He had long forgotten about evil spirits and demons, and he stopped at the stream to feast on watercress and mussels. No longer hungry, he went down into the glades, where he hoped to catch a rabbit or even a young pig.
He was searching around the clumps of dwarf oaks