Page 4 of Circle of Days

“Yes, I’ll look out for you.” This annoyed Seft. Who was this Enwood, to promise to look out for Neen? Enwood went on: “I plan to be there early to get a good view. You should do the same.”

Enwood wanted a rendezvous. Neen said: “If I wake up in time.” It was neither agreement nor refusal. All the same, Seft was bothered by the tone of intimacy he detected in both their voices.

There was a moment of silence, and Neen said: “Seft has been helping me wash the dinnerware.”

Enwood gave Seft a cool look. “Nice,” he said. “See you tomorrow.” He strode away.

Seft was disturbed by the encounter. “Who was that?” he said as they resumed walking.

“Oh, just a friend.”

Seft suspected that Enwood was the man Joia had referred to when she had said He likes her, for sure. Whether she likes him, I couldn’t say. “He’s handsome,” he said.

“Not as handsome as you.”

Seft was surprised. He did not think he was handsome. But he did not really know. He hardly cared about it. He could not remember the last time he had looked at his reflection in a pond.

It was dark now, and the stars were out. Seft felt that Enwood had spoiled his intimacy with Neen. He said: “Well, what are we going to do now?” It came out more abrupt than he had intended.

She seemed not to notice. “What would you like to do?”

The answer came to him immediately. “It’s not cold. I’d like to sit with you under the stars, just the two of us. Would that be all right?”

“Yes,” she said.

He smiled. It’s all right again, he thought.

They reached the house. Han was inside, tying the dog up for the night. Pia and Stam had gone back to their family. Joia was already asleep. Ani was taking her shoes off.

Neen said to her mother: “We’re going to sleep out tonight.”

“I hope it doesn’t get cold,” Ani said.

“We’ll be fine.”

“I’m sure you will.”

Neen took Seft’s arm and they walked away.

He said: “Where shall we go?”

“I know a place.”

They went to the river, then turned along the bank until they left the houses behind. They came to a sheltered grove with leafy trees, and Neen said: “How’s this?”

“Perfect.”

They sat down close to a thicket.

Seft said: “Your life is perfect. All your family love you. You have plenty of food. The herders have so many cattle that no one could count them. You live like gods.”

“You’re right,” Neen replied. “The Sun God smiles on us.” She lay back.

It seemed like an invitation. Seft leaned over and kissed her.

He had not done much kissing and he was a bit vague about what was expected, but she led the way. She put her hands to his head and then kissed his lips and his cheek and his throat, stroking his hair at the same time. It was the most delightful thing that had ever happened to him.

Desperate to touch her body, he put his hand on her knee and moved it slowly up her leg.

He had seen naked women, usually when they were bathing in the river.

They did not care about being seen, but it was considered rude to stare.

Nevertheless, he had a pretty good idea what they looked like with their tunics off.

However, he had never touched a naked woman. Now he did for the first time.

“Gently,” Neen said. “Stroke it gently.”

She kissed him while he touched her, and after a little while he noticed that she was panting. Then she said: “I can’t wait.”

She rolled him onto his back, pushed up the skirt of his tunic, and straddled him. As she sank down on him, he said: “Oh! It’s lovely!”

“It is with the right person,” she said; and after that, neither of them said anything coherent for a while.

It was still dark when Seft woke up. There was no birdsong—it was too early—but he heard the lapping of the nearby river. He felt Neen beside him, her soft warm body pressed against his, with a leg and an arm thrown over him. He was cold, but he did not care. He hugged her.

She stirred and opened her eyes. Looking at him, she stroked his cheek. “My sister says you look like the Moon Goddess,” she murmured.

He smiled. “What does the Moon Goddess look like?”

“Pale and beautiful, with a mouth made for love.” She kissed his lips.

He said: “I suppose we’re a couple now.”

She sat upright. “What do you mean?”

“That we’ll live together and raise our children.”

“Wait,” she said with a little laugh.

He frowned, puzzled. “But after last night…”

“Last night was wonderful, and I adore you,” she said. “And I want to do it again tonight. But let’s not rush into our future.”

He did not understand. “But you might be pregnant!”

“Probably not, after only one night. Anyway, that’s in the hands of the Moon Goddess, who rules over everything to do with women. If she wants us to have children, so be it.”

“But…” He was bewildered. “Does this have something to do with Enwood?”

She stood up. “Listen. Can you hear what I can hear?”

He stood silent and picked up the sound of a distant crowd of people walking and talking.

“Everyone’s getting up,” said Neen. “They’re all going to the Monument.”

Seft was confused, but he did not know what to say, how to get her to unravel the mystery.

He followed as she led him to the river, where they drank the cool fresh water and washed quickly.

Then they returned to the village and joined the crowd heading west. Everyone was chattering excitedly, looking forward to the big event.

Neen’s house was empty: her family had already left. She went inside and came out with two pieces of cold cooked mutton. She gave one to Seft and they chewed on them as they walked.

Seft consoled himself with the thought that she had said they would spend another night together. That meant she was serious about him. And perhaps they would talk some more about becoming a couple, and he might begin to understand her thinking.

Outside the village, everyone followed the straight southwest path.

Cattle resentfully moved aside as the crowd spilled over the edges of the beaten track.

People talked quietly and trod softly, as if fearful of waking a sleeping god; but all the same their collective noise sounded like a river tumbling over rocky falls.

The path led straight to the entrance to the Monument. People were sitting inside facing the entrance, the way they had come, which was the direction of the rising sun at this time of year. A priestess was kicking the pigs out.

The circle was filling up. In the crowd Seft and Neen could not pick out Ani and Joia and Han. Neen suggested going to the far side and sitting on the ridge of the earth bank, from where they would see everything.

The circle was about a hundred paces across.

Just inside the bank was a ring of upright stones, spaced more or less evenly, each a little taller than a tall man.

There were too many for Seft to count. Their surfaces had not been shaped or smoothed.

The rock had a bluish tinge, and Neen told Seft that they were called bluestones.

In the middle was a wood circle, and this was completely different.

Seft looked harder and made out a large ring of tree trunks, taller than the bluestones.

The timber uprights were joined together at their tops by lintels, or crossbars, which made a continuous circle that was perfectly level.

In contrast to the bluestones, these timber structures had been cut to exact sizes, and the surfaces had been rubbed smooth.

The carpenter in Seft admired the work, but wondered how sturdy it was.

If a crazed cow charged one of those tree trunks, how much of the circle would fall down?

No doubt everyone was careful to keep cows out of the holy place.

Within that circle Seft made out a second, smaller ring, an oval of freestanding pairs, each pair having a crossbar but detached from the others. These were just as carefully made but taller.

He immediately felt that the timber rings were the important ones. By comparison, the outer stone ring seemed haphazard and careless. Seft wondered whether it was older and had been erected by less skilled folk.

The crowd was now surprisingly quiet, feeling the holiness of the place.

Seft sensed a mood of tense anticipation.

He had been here before, and had seen the priestesses perform the Spring Rite, but this was clearly a more important occasion, and the crowd was much bigger.

Midsummer was the end of the old year and the beginning of the new. Everyone was one midsummer older today.

People knew that everything that kept them alive came from the sun, so they worshipped it.

Most of the crowd were herders—most of the population of the Great Plain were herders.

But there were a few farmers, who worked the fertile soil in the river valleys and could be identified by their tattoos.

The women usually had bracelet tattoos on their wrists, and the men neck tattoos.

However, he could not see any male farmers, and he recalled Ani’s conversation with Pia last night, and the way Ani had looked troubled by the absence of the farmer men.

Also absent were the woodlanders, but Seft knew why. They had gone on their annual pilgrimage, following the deer into the Northwest Hills, where there was fresh summer grass.

People were still coming in when dawn broke in the eastern sky. There was no cloud, and as the silver light strengthened, it seemed to bless the heads of the multitude.

At last the priestesses appeared, about thirty of them, dancing two by two, wearing leather tunics like everyone else’s but longer, down to their ankles. Their feet were bare.

One of them carried a drum, a hollowed-out log that she beat rhythmically with a stick, making a surprisingly loud, clear sound.

They all did the same movements, swaying to the side and back, like tall grass blown by the wind. Seft was fascinated. He had never seen people dancing that way, all moving together like a school of fish.