Luck | Page 8

would want people to tell about
him.
"He isn't like that," he said. "He's gone to the cave as any of us would.
To open himself to a dream. To find his luck, not to be done with it."
"Maybe," said Bead.
Was this why he had been brought to the cave? To save Owl? Thumb
stood and touched one of the birch bark torches to the fire. "I'll find
him" He tucked the other two torches into his belt. "I'll bring him out."
The way the two women were looking up at him almost made him
believe what he was saying. "And then we'll tell him his own story,
again and again, until he understands why we need him."

Some of the people were afraid of the long cave. Most thought it a cold,
forbidding place. Thumb didn't understand this. Yes, it was crushingly
dark. But the cave was ever untouched by the outside. It was always the
same, always itself. In the heat of the summer, it was cool and free of
bugs. When wind screamed off the ice mountains in the winter, it was
the warmest place in the world. Time slowed in its never-ending night.
Dreams lurked at every turn.
The mouth of the long cave was wide and welcoming. It opened onto a
huge, damp room, with a ceiling too high for torchlight to reach. The
mud on the floor was as sticky as pinesap. Before long, black silence
closed around Thumb and all he could hear was the hiss of the torch
and mud squishing beneath his boots.
He walked for some time, picking his way down the path trod by
countless feet. On his right he passed the Empty Ways, a deep and
complicated branch that, for some reason, had never been decorated.
He had once asked Looker why they couldn't paint their dreams in this

untouched section. Looker had cuffed him with the back of his hand.
"This cave belongs to the dead now," said Looker. "Paint here when
you're ready to visit the belly of the earth."
Was Owl hiding in one of the Empty Ways? Thumb called to him but
got no reply. Owl had been to the cave many times. He would find his
way to the Mother's Lodge. To the place of dreams.
Thumb's first torch began to gutter and he lit the second as he came to
the underground river, where the main passage veered sharply to the
right. This was not a true river like that of the people, more like a
stream, but it filled the cave with its gurgle. The ceiling was low here,
and the chalk walls were moist and yielding. After a while, Thumb
came to First Mammoth.
First Mammoth had been scratched in the soft surface of the wall with a
stick, or maybe even a finger. It was about as long as a marmot. Thumb
could have carved it himself in a few minutes, if such had been his luck.
First Mammoth had to be very old. Its lines weren't as sharp as most of
the other carvings. The moisture in the cave had blurred them over
countless summers. A long dead cave bear had once sharpened its
claws on top of First Mammoth, and even its marks had begun to fade.
Thumb switched the torch to his left hand and with his thumb traced
First Mammoth's lines just above the soft surface of the wall.
"I honor you and the one who carved you," he said. "May I meet both
of your souls someday when I leave my body." He tugged the last torch
out of his belt and leaned it against the wall. "Keep my torch safe and
dry, First Mammoth, so I can use it to find my way back to the sun."
A little further on he entered the Council Room, where the cave
branched in two directions. The walls of the Council Room were
covered with wonders. To one side was the chiseled profile of Father
Mammoth, whose eye saw all that happened in the cave. To the other
were three wooly rhinoceros, one so fat that its belly scraped the
ground. Next to them was the Council of Mammoths.

A line of five mammoths marched left. Five more marched right, as if
to cut them off. The two leaders faced each other, eye to eye, their
trunks touching. They had been drawn by rubbing soot stone right onto
the rock, the surface of which was smooth but not flat. Whoever had
created these mammoths had used dips and bulges in the rock to make
them leap from the wall into the mind's eye. As Thumb passed his torch
from one line to the other, the play of light made the mammoths stir.
The first time