Page 166 of Circle of Days

She turned to practicalities. “You can probably smell your dinner.” There was a strong aroma coming from several roasting pits. “Just one rule. You see the stream running north–south along this valley? To the east of the stream we eat and sleep. To the west, we shit and piss. No exceptions! Even if it’s only a midnight piddle, you have to cross the stream. Now rest. Tomorrow we work hard.”

Seft came to stand beside her and they looked at the sled together. “It’s so graceful,” Joia said.

“And strong!” Seft said. “It has to take a great strain.”

“It looks stronger than a house.”

Seft laughed. “It’s a lot stronger than a house.”

“I think it should be guarded, especially at night.”

“Really? Who would damage it?”

“A farmer boy called Narod is among the volunteers, with some of his cronies. He was close to the late Stam, the thuggish son of Troon. They might be here just to enjoy the mission, but let’s not take any chances.”

“I agree. I’ll have half a dozen men sleep next to the sled.”

“Good.”

She left Seft and went to see the cooks, a small group led by Chack’s daughter, Verila. Dee was helping them. She said to Joia: “I suggested they lay the cow hides on the ground for somewhere to put the meat when it’s carved. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Great idea,” said Joia. “Thank you.” She liked people who used their initiative.

She took some meat for herself and found a quiet place to sit on the grass and eat. After a while Dee joined her, taking off her shoes and rubbing her toes. She had shapely feet, Joia noticed.

The evening was darkening and some of the marchers were slipping away in pairs. There was going to be a revel, clearly.

Dee said: “Something I don’t understand. How can you count the days of the year when the highest number is…” She touched the top of her head, for twenty-seven.

“We have a different way of counting. First, every number has a name.” She ran through the first ten numbers on her fingers, saying the names of the numbers up to ten. Then she touched Dee’s little toe. “Imagine that your toe represents the same number as all my fingers together. Then if I touch your toe and hold up one finger, we get the next number after ten. Is that clear so far?”

“How can you remember all the names of the numbers?”

“It’s not that hard. You don’t have to remember the higher numbers, you can make up the names according to a formula. Just as someone who didn’t know your name could call you Hol’s granddaughter.”

Dee picked it up quickly. She said: “If a toe is worth all the fingers, is there something else that’s worth all the toes?”

“Yes! You’ve worked it out without me telling you.”

“But that means you could go on counting, up and up… forever.”

“That’s exactly what I said when they taught me.”

“I have to think about this.”

“I said that, too!”

They sat quiet for a few moments. Night had fallen. Dee lay down, and Joia did the same.

As Joia closed her eyes, she thought how much she liked Dee. She could be a really good friend, long-term, she thought.

Like Seft.

Joia woke up feeling that so far she had not really achieved anything. The stone still lay where it had been since the world was young. True, she had created an army of volunteers and marched them from the Monument to Stony Valley, and that had not been easy. But the really difficult part lay ahead.

Today they had to raise the massive stone upright. Such a thing had never been done before. There were stone circles on the Great Plain and elsewhere, but none featured a stone half as big. The task might turn out to be impossible.

Equally new and difficult was the challenge of mounting the stone on the sled. And regardless of what Seft might say, there was no way of knowing how much weight the sled could withstand. The stone might simply crush it, turning it into firewood.