Page 41 of Circle of Days

Shortly before the Midwinter Rite, Joia and Seft went to Stony Valley. The weather was mild, and there was little rain: the drought still had not broken. They arrived in the early dusk of a winter afternoon.

They were both still determined to rebuild the Monument in stone. They understood the difficulties; they just refused to believe the problems were insoluble.

Joia was surprised to see several houses where there had been none last time she visited.

Seft’s second-in-command, Tem, was living here with his partner, Vee, who was Joia’s old friend.

Several other cleverhands had moved here with their families, bringing half a dozen cattle and a few pigs to feed everyone.

The place was now a small village. Joia had not been aware of this. Seft had done it quietly.

Joia and Seft ate with Tem and his family, sitting around a blazing fire. Vee said that Hol, the smelly shepherd at the top of the hill, was grateful to them for burning so much dead wood, saying it allowed more grass to grow for his sheep to graze.

They ate pork stewed with crab apples. Joia said to Seft: “I’m worried about how long it would take to move one stone to the Monument—fifty days, if Ello is right, and I can’t see any flaw in her argument.”

“I’ve been thinking about that too,” he said.

“We might be able to muster two or three teams of volunteers who could work more or less at the same time.”

“That would reduce the problem.”

Joia frowned. “I’m just not sure I could persuade people to volunteer for fifty days. That’s not so much a celebration, more like a punishment.”

Seft nodded. “We’ve been working on some new ideas here. I’ll show you a few things tomorrow morning. I think we can find a way.”

Joia went to sleep full of pork and hope.

She woke up and went outside to a morning of low grey winter clouds, and she saw something she had not perceived yesterday in the dusk.

A hundred or so logs, each about as long as two men, had been laid side by side, forming a kind of path.

At one end was a small sarsen stone already encompassed in a rope bag.

Seft appeared as she was staring at it. “Ello is against us, but her pessimism is useful,” he said.

“When she talked about how long it took to move the farmer’s stone, she drew my attention to the heart of the problem.

It’s the unevenness of the ground. A dragged stone would constantly be stopped when its front edge hit a dip or a bump, or a rock or a puddle, and the front would have to be lifted to get over the obstacle, which would be difficult and take a long time.

So I’ve been thinking of ways to make the ground more even, so that the stone can move faster and not be stopped by minor obstructions. ”

The cleverhands appeared in ones and twos and stood around. Joia realized with a thrill that all these people were committed to building the stone Monument.

Seft said: “By the way, the logs don’t roll. They’re hammered into the soil, to make the pathway stable.”

One of the cleverhands, Jero, said: “Shall we show her, Seft?” Jero did not have Seft’s patience. He was always in a hurry. His father, Effi, had been the same.

But there was no reason to delay, so Seft said: “Yes, go ahead.”

The cleverhands picked up the rope grab lines and got ready to drag the stone.

Joia thought it was about a tenth of the size of the big monoliths, so about the same size as the farmer’s stone.

The wives and older children of the cleverhands appeared to help, and in the end there were about twenty people.

Joia remembered the moving of the farmer’s stone, when she had seen only fourteen midsummers. The farmer’s field had been smoothed out by many years of cultivation, but even so, there had been at least one obstacle.

Tem led the pulling team, and they quickly got the stone moving.

Joia was astonished by how smoothly it ran along the path of logs.

Twice it hit a log that had risen slightly higher than the others, and both times it slowed briefly then crushed the raised edge and went on.

The cleverhands pulled the stone to the end of the path.

“That’s wonderful!” Joia said to Seft. “You’ve solved the problem.”

He shook his head. “This is useful only for short distances. To build a road of logs from here to the Monument would use up all the trees in the Great Plain. Just chopping them down would take years.”

“Couldn’t you use a smaller number of logs, and bring those from behind to the front as the stone was moving?”

“We tried that.” Seft smiled. “The men were exhausted, carrying the logs, working in pairs, running from the back to the front. But the real problem is that when the logs are laid in front of the moving stone they’re not embedded securely, so the stone pushes them out of the way.”

Joia’s euphoria went as quickly as it had come. “So we’re back where we started.”

“Not quite.” At the end of the log path was a different kind of path, made of branches of all sizes plus loose earth.

“This is much easier to put in place, and we could lay something like it all the way to the Monument in a few weeks. But it’s too flimsy.

” He nodded to Tem, who got the hands pulling again.

Joia saw the problem immediately. Where the stone had pushed the logs farther into the ground, here it just shoved the branches aside. The path quickly became disarranged and the stone’s progress was constantly interrupted and stopped. “It’s better than nothing,” Seft said, “but not much.”

“So you would plan to use both kinds of path…”

“But that still wouldn’t be enough to reduce fifty days to five.”

“You don’t look completely defeated. You’ve got something else in mind.”

“You know me too well. I’ve got one more thing to show you. Come with me.”

He led her to a rough shelter that was clearly his workshop. Inside were flint tools of all kinds, antlers for pressure-sharpening blades, a quern for sanding and polishing, and ropes. Four of the cleverhands went behind the workshop and returned carrying something Joia did not recognize.

It was made from the entire trunk of a tall tree, a flat piece of wood longer than the largest stone in Stony Valley.

It was as wide across as a man’s arm was long, and thick.

It was dead straight from one end almost to the other.

Its most noticeable feature was that at one end—undoubtedly the end that had been the base of the tree trunk—it curved upward like the front end of a wickerwork boat.

It had been polished and oiled, so that it gleamed in the weak winter sunshine.

Seft said: “Instead of trying to make the ground more even, we’re going to make the stone more flat.”

Joia did not understand that. “What is it?” she said.

“It’s a runner.”

“Do you put the stone on top of it?”

“Sort of. This is just part of what we’re going to construct.

There will be two runners, joined by cross struts to form the base of a sled.

The base will support a low platform on which the stone will sit.

It all has to be put together very soundly with peg-and-hole joints, using short, thick pieces of wood so that the entire thing doesn’t collapse under the weight.

The curved ends of the runners will enable the sled to be pulled over minor obstructions without stopping. ”

“If this works…”

“We should be able to move a stone from here to the Monument in two or three days.”

Joia did not dare to believe it. It would be very unusual for Seft to make promises he could not keep, but this seemed too good to be true. She said: “I can hardly wait to see the finished thing.”

“You’ll be the first. But you may have to wait awhile.”

Their conversation was interrupted by a striking-looking woman who came down the slope from the shepherd’s house. “I brought you some mutton,” she said cheerfully as she approached, and Joia saw that she had a basket piled with meat.

Joia stared at her. She had a wide mouth that seemed to smile from ear to ear, and her light-brown hair was a mass of curls that shook as she walked. She was about Joia’s age, much too young to be old Hol’s woman.

Seft said: “Thank you, Dee. It’s very kind of your grandfather to send us meat for breakfast.”

So, Joia thought, she’s Hol’s granddaughter, and her name is Dee.

Dee said: “Grandadda says if you ever feel like giving him a piglet he’d be most willing to accept. Pork makes such a nice change from mutton.”

Joia could not keep her eyes off Dee. She seemed to overflow with vivacity and warmth.

“I’ll send him one today,” said Seft. It was important to make friends with the old shepherd.

They had invaded his valley and they needed him to see their presence as a benefit, not a nuisance.

“By the way,” Seft went on, “this is Joia, one of our priestesses.” Dee gave the formal handshake and said: “What an honor, to meet a priestess.”

Joia said: “I’ve been here before but I’ve never met you. I didn’t know Hol had a granddaughter living with him.”

“That’s because I don’t live with him,” Dee said. “He’s too smelly. I have a flock in the next valley with my brother and his wife. I just come over the hill to check on Grandadda now and again.”

“Well, I’m very glad to meet you,” Joia said.

“Likewise.” She put down the basket. “Enjoy the meat,” she said, and she turned and strode away.

“My goodness,” Joia said quietly. “Isn’t she wonderful?”

Seft gave her an odd look and said: “Let’s cook this mutton.”