Page 19 of Circle of Days

Joia was walking on the Great Plain just outside Riverbend with her brother, Han.

They both studied the landscape anxiously.

Last year’s hot, dry summer had been followed by a cold, dry winter, and spring was looking no better.

Streams crossing the plain often dried up in summer, then were replenished by winter rain: there was a name for such a stream—a winterbourne.

But this year the winterbournes had stayed dry.

The vast green plain had become a brown desert occupied by thin cattle and scraggy sheep.

Fewer females were giving birth, and fewer young lived to adulthood.

The herd was resilient. Some died, and some survived. It was saddening to see bony carcasses lying on the dusty ground, but some beasts—younger, stronger, luckier—still cropped the few shoots that sprang up in the morning, then sought shade in which to hide from the noonday sun.

The herders butchered the dead ones and boiled their scanty meat.

People hunted alternative food—deer, beaver, and the wild cattle called aurochs—but these were scarce for they, too, were dying of thirst. The wild vegetables and fruit that gave variety to the herders’ diet in good times were now hard to find.

Half-starved children ate worms, and adults looked speculatively at their neighbors’ dogs.

“What can we do?” said Han.

“Nothing,” Joia replied.

Han had grown up. He had seen seventeen midsummers, and soon it would be eighteen. He had enormous feet. He made himself special shoes, with the stitching along the top, instead of at the side like everyone else, saying his way was more comfortable. His friends called him Bigfoot.

He was tall, handsome, and charming, reminding Joia of their father, Olin.

He even had a blond beard. He also had Olin’s fearlessness.

He had never seen a tree he could not climb, a river he could not swim, a wild boar he could not kill before it killed him.

Their mother worried about him, and so did Joia.

His dog, Thunder, was at his heels. Joia remembered Thunder as a puppy. Han had tried to teach the pup to sit, lie down, wait, and come running, but she had refused to learn anything. Remarkably, she had grown into a loyal and obedient dog. She went everywhere with him.

Han worked as a herder. He was too restless to tan leather, like his mother and Neen, or make rope, pots, flint tools, or any of the other things people needed. He liked being out on the open plain, even in bad weather, striding around and keeping the beasts out of trouble.

Thunder was a herder, too. When Han was moving the cattle, or trying to stop them moving where they should not go, Thunder deduced his intentions from his movements and ran ahead of him, turning the beasts the way Han wanted.

She was not unusual. Dogs seemed to be born with some instinctive understanding of herding.

Han said: “How is it for the priestesses?”

Joia hesitated. “Well, we have enough to eat—but, in a way, that’s the problem. People have begun to resent us. They ask why they need priestesses. The spirit has left the Monument, they say, and the priestesses can’t bring it back. They make it sound as if the drought is our fault.”

Han was scornful. “What do they want you to do—jump in the river and drown yourselves, just to save a few bowls of beef per day?”

Joia shrugged. “Perhaps. They’re desperate.”

Han said tentatively: “They don’t like Ello, you know.”

This was not news to Joia. The Second High Priestess was not lovable. “She has a rough tongue. She makes enemies unnecessarily.”

“This is not a good time to make enemies.”

He was right, but Ello would never change. Joia said: “The drought will break. We just don’t know when.”

“It had better be soon.”

Han was right. Joia had already seen that older people were dying, not of starvation exactly, but of the illnesses that came with an inadequate diet.

And more babies were dying before they reached their second midsummer.

They suffered the usual baby illnesses, which most would normally have survived.

Soon it would be the middle-aged and the children, and eventually everyone.

“It’s worse for the farmers,” Han said. “They’re expecting a second bad harvest. And their women have almost stopped conceiving.”

Joia said: “And the woodlanders are in trouble too. The younger hazelnut bushes have all died. Only the old-established plants survive, and they’re giving less fruit.”

There was a silence, then Han said: “Is it possible that the entire plain community could disappear?”

“Yes,” Joia said. “I wouldn’t say this to anyone else, because I don’t want people to panic, but the truth is that if our beasts die, we die.”

“And then the Great Plain will be left to the birds.”

Joia thought over their conversation, then said: “You know a lot about the farmers.”

“Do I?” He offered no explanation.

“At the Midwinter Rite I saw you talking to a farmer girl.”

“Pia. She’s an old friend. We used to play together when we were children.”

Joia recalled a self-assured little girl. At the Midwinter Rite she had seen a young woman, poised and graceful, with an authoritative look, surprising in someone of Han’s age. “I remember,” she said. “She had a horrid little cousin.”

“Stam, yes.”

“So that’s how you know all about the farmers.”

“I suppose so.”

Joia pictured Han and Pia as she had seen them at the Rite. He had been chatting amiably, and the girl had been looking up at him with an expression of deep interest. Joia said: “Will you see her tomorrow?” The Spring Rite would take place then.

“I hope so.”

This looked like a romance—which was bad news. Joia said: “Don’t fall in love with her.”

Straightaway she wished she had not blurted it out. Why couldn’t she have said it tactfully? Too late now.

Han was offended. “I don’t see why not, and I don’t know why you think you have the right to give such instructions.”

That response told her that her advice was too late. If Han had not been in love with Pia, he would have laughed and told Joia she had nothing to worry about. The evasive Why not? meant he had already fallen.

Now that she had started this conversation she had to finish it. “The farmer folk are different from us,” she said. “There, every woman is the property of a man: first her father, then the father of her children. You would never feel at ease in farmer society.”

“Pia could join the herder folk.”

“The farmers hate it when that happens. They feel that something has been stolen from them. They cause trouble, trying to make the woman return to them.”

“Yet it happens.”

Joia shrugged. He was fearless to the point of recklessness, like his father. “I’m just warning you. Trouble lies ahead.”

“Thank you,” Han said surprisingly. “You’re rude, but you speak from love.”

She put her arm around his waist and gave him a brief hug.

A moment later she heard the lowing of a cow in distress. They were herders and they instinctively followed the sound. They came across two people arguing about a cow.

The two were near a tall tree. From a stout branch, a young cow hung upside down, its hind legs tied to the branch with a rope made of honeysuckle vines. Joia could see by its small udders that it was a heifer, a cow that had not yet calved.

Directly under its head was a large pottery jar with a wide mouth. A tall man stood next to the jug, holding in his hand a large flint knife. The scene was commonplace: he was about to slaughter the cow, and the jug was to catch the nourishing blood.

The man looked familiar, and in a moment Joia placed him. He was handsome Robbo, who had been part of her adolescent circle and was now the partner of beautiful Roni. He looked angry.

The other person was a priestess: Inka, once Joia’s teacher, a middle-aged woman with a warm heart. She stood with her long legs apart and one hand on her hip, looking aggressive. She had a heavy stick in the other hand and seemed about ready to hit Robbo with it.

Joia said: “What’s going on?” She had to raise her voice over the noise the cow was making.

Robbo said: “None of your business, so just creep off.”

Han said: “Speak to my sister with respect, Robbo.”

Joia said: “There’s no need for a fight.”

Robbo said: “I don’t want a fight.” He pointed at Inka. “She’s the one with a weapon.”

Inka said: “And you’re holding a knife.”

“To cut the cow’s throat, obviously.”

“Which is the problem.” Inka turned to Joia. “This young fool wants to slaughter a heifer that’s young and healthy enough to calve. It’s a terrible waste, when the plain is dotted with beasts that have died of thirst. I’m not going to let him do it.”

Robbo said: “She has no right to stop me.”

Unfortunately, he was right. There was no rule about who could slaughter cattle or when.

People killed a beast when they needed to eat.

In times of plenty this worked well. All through Joia’s childhood there had never been arguments about meat.

But the good times were over, and Joia was seeing more and more quarrels.

Robbo had not finished. “Anyway, she’s a priestess,” he said. “She does no work, but expects to be fed by the rest of us. The gods have given us no rain, and who is to blame for that if not the priestesses?”

Joia asked herself what her mother would do in this situation. Ani would gently talk Robbo round, probably. So Joia now said: “Robbo, be reasonable.”

Robbo said angrily: “I’ve got two children and a pregnant woman at home, and they need meat. Don’t tell me to be reasonable.”

Joia said: “You should butcher a carcass—there are many on the plain.”

“Children should have good meat.”

“But what will they eat when the cattle are all gone?”

“That’s in the hands of the gods.”

Han said quietly to Joia: “If you want me to knock him down, just give the word.”

“He’s got a knife.”

“I can take him.”