A story from the Sheltered Valley
The Horses in the Dark
About 12 minutes
Autumn
The people coming up the river
By the time Oihana saw Ibai, three people had already told her he was coming.
His little cousin saw her first.
“Oihana!”
Elur dropped her bundle in the grass and ran. She hit Oihana around the waist, pulled away to look at her, then hit her again.
“You've got taller.”
“So have you.”
“I'm eight.”
“I know.”
“You weren't here.”
Behind her, people were picking their way up from the river with rolled hides and bundles on their backs. Someone was carrying a sleeping child. Two women had stopped to argue about which ledge they'd camped on before. The drying frames were already crowded, and there was another line of people coming around the bend.
Ibai came up last, carrying Elur's abandoned bundle as well as his own.
He was taller too. His blond hair was tied back now. Oihana had prepared something to say about how long he'd been away, but when he smiled at her she forgot it.
“You've brought everybody,” she said.
“Not everybody. Some of them walked.”
Elur took her bundle from him and immediately put it down again.
Oihana's brother came out from under the overhang. Harkaitz greeted Ibai, took the heavier pack and began asking about the way they'd come. Within a moment they were talking about a fallen tree as though Oihana had never been there.
She waited until they stopped.
“I've got something to show you.”
Ibai turned back.
“A horse,” she said. “Up in the cave.”
Elur looked toward the cliff.
“A real one?”
“On the wall.”
“Oh.”
Then, after a moment, “How big?”
Oihana held her hand above her head.
Harkaitz looked at her.
She lowered it a little.
What she'd promised
“It isn't finished,” Harkaitz said.
They were sorting lamps beside the fire. Ibai had gone back down to help the people at the ford, and Elur had been taken away to eat something.
“It will be.”
“The neck isn't finished.”
“I know which part isn't finished.”
Their horse had a dark back and a red-brown shoulder. It followed a swelling in the limestone that Oihana had noticed while her brother was working nearby. She'd spent two afternoons on it. One ear was still only a mark, and she hadn't decided what to do with the feet.
She'd been looking forward to showing Ibai since the first line.
Harkaitz picked old wick out of a shallow stone lamp.
“He's bringing his aunt.”
“That's fine.”
“And her sister.”
“Fine.”
“And Elur's mother wants to come.”
Oihana looked at him.
“How many people did you ask?”
“I asked Ibai.”
From the other side of the fire, Lorea made a noise into her cloak.
She was laughing.
“You could help,” Oihana said.
“I am helping.” Lorea held up a lamp she'd finished cleaning. “Nobody can see how good your horse is if we leave these here.”
Lorea was their mother's older sister. Her braid was more gray than brown now, and she had a way of looking at a thing for a long time before saying anything about it. When Oihana had shown her the horse's shoulder, she'd come back the next day with a better piece of ochre.
Now she set the lamp down and looked toward the hill.
“I'd like to go farther in.”
“Past the horses?” Harkaitz said.
“If my knees let me.”
Oihana hadn't been past them. She knew there were more pictures. Her brother had told her about a low passage with animals almost on the ceiling, but she couldn't see what was wrong with the part where she'd been working.
Ibai was going to see her horse.
She put another lamp beside Lorea's.
The first animals
Nine of them went up the path.
Elur's mother carried the extra fat. Ibai carried two lamps, both unlit. Harkaitz went ahead with one burning steadily in his hands. Two people from the next camp came with them, and a woman Oihana had met that morning. Lorea walked in the middle with the fourth lamp, taking the steeper parts slowly.
At the entrance, everyone stopped talking at once, then began again more quietly.
Elur took her mother's hand.
The daylight stayed behind them for a while. Oihana could still see it when they reached the first turn. Then Harkaitz went around a shoulder of rock, and the light ahead of him caught a red flank high on the wall.
Ibai stopped.
It was only part of an animal. Its back ran beyond the light. Below it, a dark head faced the other way, its horns disappearing into a crack in the stone.
Harkaitz raised the lamp.
The rest of the red body came clear.
Elur's grip tightened on her mother.
Oihana had walked past that animal before. From here, with everybody stopped beneath it, she could see how large it was. Its belly hung above Ibai's head. A second pair of legs crossed behind the first.
“Is that yours?” he asked.
“No. Farther along.”
He stayed where he was for another moment.
Then more light came from behind them. Lorea had lit a lamp. A horse appeared low on the opposite wall, its nose so close to Elur that she pulled her head back.
She laughed when she realized what she'd done.
The people behind her laughed too.
They went on more slowly after that.
Her horse
Oihana knew the ledge by the pale split running down its side.
“Here.”
Harkaitz set his lamp down. She knelt beside it and opened the hide around her pigments.
Her horse looked smaller than she remembered.
Ibai came close. He leaned one way, then the other, following the line of its back.
“You used the rock.”
She nodded.
“And its ear's turned.”
“The mare above the bend. The little one.”
He looked back at the picture.
“I remember her.”
Oihana felt herself smile.
Then Elur said, “There are more up there.”
Above the horse, beyond the edge of the lamp's light, black lines climbed toward the roof. Harkaitz lifted another lamp and a row of antlers appeared. There were heads beneath them. One animal crossed the neck of another, and a red shape lay behind both.
The woman from the next camp moved nearer.
“Lift it again.”
Harkaitz lifted it.
Ibai stood up to look.
Oihana stayed beside her open bundle.
She'd imagined him watching while she finished the neck. She'd imagined knowing exactly what to say. Now everyone was looking above her, and her horse was sitting in a little pool of light by their feet.
Lorea crouched beside her.
“Are you coming?”
“I was going to finish this.”
“It'll still be here.”
Oihana turned a small black piece of pigment over in her hand.
Lorea waited.
At last Oihana wrapped it up again.
“Help me stand,” Lorea said.
Oihana held out both hands.
Farther in
The passage lowered. They went through one at a time, with the lamps handed carefully ahead.
Elur didn't have to duck. She was pleased about that until she turned and found that her mother couldn't see her.
“I'm here.”
“Stay here.”
“I am.”
On the wall beside them, a horse's muzzle came out of the dark. Its body ran along the passage, almost close enough to brush with a shoulder. Farther on there were fine lines Oihana couldn't make out until Ibai brought his light near. Then she found a face inside them, and the long sweep of an antler.
She put a hand on his sleeve.
“Look.”
He looked where she pointed.
“Oh.”
They stood bent beneath the low roof, staring.
Ahead of them, Lorea had stopped at a small animal near the ground.
For a while she said nothing.
Oihana crouched beside her. It was an ibex, drawn in a few dark lines. One foreleg stuck out awkwardly. The other was almost lost in a rough patch of stone.
“I did that,” Lorea said.
Oihana looked at her.
“You?”
“I wasn't always old.”
Harkaitz came back with the lamp.
Lorea touched her own knee, not the wall.
“I couldn't get comfortable. Kept trying to finish before my leg went numb.”
“How old were you?” Oihana asked.
“Younger than you.”
Elur got down on her stomach to see the little ibex. Her mother folded the loose edge of her cloak back out of the way.
“I like the leg,” Elur said.
Lorea laughed. Then she asked Harkaitz to hold the light there a little longer.
All the light they had
Beyond the low passage, the roof lifted.
Oihana straightened and stood beside Ibai. Their lamps showed a pale wall rising ahead, then curving away. An enormous dark neck came into the light. Above it was a line she couldn't follow.
Harkaitz moved to the left.
A horn appeared.
He moved again. The head beneath it was longer than his arm.
Someone behind Oihana let out a breath.
Lorea was looking across the chamber.
“There used to be a ledge over there.”
Harkaitz took a lamp across. They watched him go, his face bright underneath and the rest of him nearly gone in the dark.
He found the ledge.
When he set the lamp down, horses appeared along the far wall.
Not one. A whole run of them. Red shoulders, dark manes, heads reaching past one another. Some were clear from nose to tail. Others broke off where the stone changed, then seemed to begin again farther along.
Ibai looked at the lamps in his hands.
“Where do you want these?”
Oihana pointed to a shelf on the other side.
She could see what another light would reach now.
He took one there. She carried the other farther into the chamber, walking slowly until she found level rock. Elur and her mother brought the spare fat. The others found places to stand without blocking the light.
Little by little, they could see more.
A broad red bull filled the curve of one wall. Black animals crossed its back. Reindeer heads rose from a crowded patch of lines, their antlers spreading above the horses. There were marks near the floor, pictures high overhead, a dark body bent around the edge of the rock. Farther away, another red flank caught the light and continued beyond it.
Oihana turned all the way around.
She'd thought the cave was the place where she'd found room for her horse. She hadn't known how much she hadn't seen.
Ibai stood in the middle with his head tipped back. Lorea was beside him. Elur had stopped asking questions.
For a while, nobody spoke.
The small flames trembled. Light moved across the rough stone, losing a leg, finding a muzzle, bringing a dark eye clear. The horses above Harkaitz seemed to go on past the place where he stood.
Then Elur began to count them.
She lost her place almost immediately.
Her mother tried. The woman from the next camp pointed out one they'd both missed. Harkaitz said they were counting the same horse twice.
Soon they were all pointing in different directions.
Lorea sat on a flat rock and laughed until she had to wipe her eyes.
Oihana came back across the chamber and sat beside her.
“Did you make any of these?”
Lorea shook her head.
“Who did?”
“I don't know.”
Oihana looked up again.
Ibai had found another horse.
One more
They went back by the same passage.
This time Oihana stopped beside a head she'd walked past on the way in. She held the light for Ibai, and he showed her another one just above it. They had to be called twice before they followed the others.
At her own horse, she put the lamp down.
“I do want to finish this.”
Ibai took off his bundle.
“Show me where to hold it.”
Harkaitz knelt on her other side. He checked the line beneath the jaw without touching it, then looked at her.
“Here?”
“Yes. Keep that bit thin.”
He nodded and picked up a piece of pigment.
Lorea settled on the ledge with Elur beside her. The others stayed to watch or carried the lamps back toward the entrance. The little room filled with quiet talk.
Oihana worked along the neck. Ibai held the lamp where she asked, moving it when her hand cast a shadow. Harkaitz finished the dark line beneath the jaw.
When she stopped to change pigment, Ibai said, “You made it sound as though you'd done the whole cave.”
“I didn't.”
He looked at her.
“I might have made it sound like a very big horse.”
“A very big horse.”
She began to laugh. He had to set the lamp down until she stopped, because then he was laughing too.
Elur wanted to know what was funny.
“Your cousin talks too much,” Oihana said.
“I know.”
They worked until the neck was finished and the rough place beneath the belly no longer bothered her. She left the far hind leg as a lighter line. She could see it from a step back, and that was enough to find the horse.
Elur stood up beside her.
“The ear's still turned.”
“Yes.”
“I like that.”
Oihana looked at the little mare's head, then at Ibai, who was still holding the light.
“So do I.”
The fires below
Outside, the sky was still pale above the far ridge.
They sat blinking in the daylight. Elur's mother wiped something black from the child's nose and found that it was on her own fingers too. Harkaitz had a dark smear along his cheek. Nobody told him about it at first.
Below them, more smoke was rising from the ledges by the river. People had found places for their bundles. Someone was splitting wood. A child was shouting for Elur to come down.
Elur shouted back that she'd seen more horses than anyone could count.
Lorea asked for a hand on the steep part. Ibai offered one side and Oihana took the other. By the time they reached camp, Lorea had told them twice about the ibex's leg.
That evening, people sat wherever there was room.
Ibai's aunt brought dried meat from their fire. Oihana's mother made a space for her. The woman from the next camp came over to argue about how many bulls there'd been in the big chamber, and Harkaitz drew the turn of a horn in the dust with a stick.
Elur said he was doing it wrong.
He handed her the stick.
Oihana sat beside Ibai with the small sea shell at her neck. She'd fastened it while they were waiting for the food. He'd asked where it came from, and she'd told him about her aunt, and the person who'd given it to her, and how little any of them knew about the sea.
Across the fire, Lorea was leaning forward to see Elur's drawing.
“That's the leg,” she said.
Elur nodded without looking up.
The child's mother started laughing. Lorea tried to object, then laughed too.
Ibai nudged Oihana and passed her the last piece of meat.
She broke it in half and gave some back.
