"But, I've never seen him take to anyone so fast," Jondalar said, looking at his mother with awe.

"Nor have I," Ayla said, watching Marthona with the wolf. "Maybe he's just happy to meet someone who's not afraid of him."

As they walked into the shade of the overhanging stone, Ayla felt an immediate cooling of temperature. For a heartbeat, she shivered with a chill of fear, and glanced up at the huge shelf of stone jutting out of the cliff wall, wondering if it could collapse. But when her eyes grew accustomed to the dimmer light, she was astonished by more than the physical formation of Jondalar's home. The space under the rock shelter was huge, much larger than she had imagined.

She had seen similar overhangs in the cliffs along this river on their way here, some obviously inhabited, though none seemed quite as sizable as this one. Everyone in the entire region knew of the immense rock shelter and the great number of people it housed. The Ninth Cave was the largest of all the communities that called themselves Zelandonii.

Clustered together at the eastern end of the protected space, along the back wall and freestanding in the middle, were individual structures, many quite large, made partly of stone and partly of wooden frames covered with hides. The hides were decorated with beautifully rendered pictures of animals and various abstract symbols painted in black and many vivid shades of red, yellow, and brown. The structures were arranged in a west-facing curve around an open space near the center of the area covered by the overhanging stone shelf, which was filled with a confusion of objects and people.

As Ayla looked more closely, what at first had struck her all at once as a melange of rich clutter was resolving itself into areas dedicated to different tasks, often near to related tasks. It only seemed confusing initially because so many activities were going on.