Page 202 of Circle of Days

Dee moved again, and took Joia’s hand and placed it on her pussy. Joia had never touched anyone’s other than her own, and she found the experience strange. She moved her hand a little, experimentally, and Dee said: “Yes.”

Joia wanted to do anything and everything to please Dee. Her fingertip found a small damp place, something that happened sometimes when she touched herself. She wanted to push her finger inside. It would be shockingly intimate, and that was what excited her. She had never even done it to herself. But she sensedthat Dee wanted her to do it. So she did, and Dee gave a quiet moan of pleasure.

She had the strangest feeling that she was no longer in the familiar real world. She and Dee were doing the oddest things. Yet Dee liked what they were doing, and as for Joia, she had never felt this good before, ever. She hoped this was not a dream.

Dee put a hand over Joia’s and pressed, then began to move her hips rhythmically. The motion was the same as that of the girl who had lain on top of her at the revel. But that girl had closed her eyes, whereas Dee looked lovingly at Joia as she moved. She seemed to be in a trance, concentrating. On impulse, Joia kissed her, and the kiss had an immediate effect, as if Dee had been waiting for just that. Dee gave a low cry, one that might have been pain or delight, and froze for a long moment; then she slumped, saying: “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

As Dee caught her breath, Joia said: “That was so lovely.”

“It’s not over yet,” Dee said. “Lie on your back.”

She knelt between Joia’s legs and began to kiss her body. Surely, Joia thought, she won’t kiss me down there; but she did. Joia was glad she had bathed in the river that day, then she had the thought that Dee would not have cared anyway.

Dee seemed to know Joia’s body better than Joia did herself. Everything Dee did was just firm enough, in just the right place, for just the right length of time. She was shocked to feel Dee’s tongue inside her, and she thought: Do people really do this? She stopped asking questions and, reaching down, buried her fingers in Dee’s hair, feeling her head move from side to side and up and down. Losing herself in sheer delight, she heard herself cry out,and then, slowly, the sensation faded, and she felt as if she were waking from a dream.

Slowly she returned to normal, and after a while she said: “So that’s what all the fuss is about.”

Joia woke up full of optimism. Another day and a night had passed without an assault by the farmers.

That morning, raising the first stone and roping it to a sled seemed less challenging than it had last year. Then they had been working out how to do it as they went along. Today they knew what to do at each step. To Joia’s delight the stone was ready to go by midmorning. “I was right,” she said triumphantly. “It can be done.”

Joia and Jara led the first team off. Seft’s embedded-log track eased the first climb, and they soon passed out of Stony Valley.

Boli was in the first team. Seft had suggested having a quickrunner with each team, so that teams could communicate.

Dee was also in the team, just because Joia wanted her. She was her old self again, loving and talkative. As they walked, Joia said: “What happened last night… that was what you wanted.”

“Oh, you noticed?”

Joia giggled, but she had a serious question. “Why didn’t you just tell me that?”

“Because then you would have faked it.”

Joia was taken aback, but had to admit that Dee was right. She would have done anything Dee asked, regardless of her own feelings. And subservience was not what Dee wanted. She had doubted whether Joia loved her sexually.

And now she knew, Joia thought with a private smile.

They pulled the sled between two hills—like Dee’s breasts, Joia thought, her mind now moving along new paths—and came to the plain at midday. As they followed the straight line of the track through the grazing herd, Joia was astonished to see a girl of about three midsummers, alone, wearing nothing but a pair of tiny shoes, crying.

She ran to her and picked her up. “Are you Lim?” she said, remembering the baby that Revo had carried.

She stopped crying long enough to scream: “I want Mamma!”

She had probably wandered away from her mother and got lost in the herd. Revo was somewhere out there, frantically searching for her. Joia scanned the herd, but she could see no one.

The sled was still moving, and she walked alongside it, carrying Lim. She hoped Revo would see or hear the volunteers. Two hundred people and a giant sled made a lot of noise. She kept scanning in all directions.

Then she suffered a shock. The track had been vandalized in the night. The volunteers dropped their grab lines and the sled stopped.

Joia looked at the branches scattered widely over the grassland and felt despair. The damage had not been done by the cattle: it was too thorough, too complete. Troon had done it. He had not changed his mind, after all. He was still on the attack. Now, with all the regular challenges of moving giant stones, Joia had also to deal with sabotage by enemies.

Then she saw the bodies.

There were two dead people, a woman and a man, and Joia hada dreadful feeling that she knew who they were. She turned Lim away so that she could not see.

Seft turned the bodies over. It was clear how they had died: both had multiple wounds—piercings from arrows, cuts from sharp flints, and crushing injuries from clubs. They must have tried to stop the farmers destroying the track.

This had been their punishment.