Page 65 of Circle of Days

Seft did not see how that would help. “All right, but…”

“That will prove it can be done.”

He nodded. It made sense. Joia usually made sense.

Ani said: “That may not be enough to change the minds of the elders.”

“Wait,” said Joia. “You haven’t heard it all. It will also tell how many people we need to move a giant stone, and how many days it will take to bring a stone to the Monument.”

“Answering the elders’ questions.” Seft’s hopes lifted. “They might consent to that.”

Ani said: “I sensed that Keff would have liked to consent, but he felt the arguments against were too powerful. He might back this more modest proposal.”

Joia said: “It has to be worth a try.”

And this time the elders consented.

Joia, Seft, and Ani were euphoric for a while, then they started to make plans. They would move the stone after next year’s Midsummer Rite. They had a lot to do in advance.

Joia started the priestesses making ropes. She got an elderly couple of ropemakers, Ev and Fee, to come and show how it was done. They were grumpy but expert.

First the priestesses had to collect honeysuckle vines.

Honeysuckle grew everywhere, on trees and sometimes on houses too.

It could flourish in all kinds of soil provided it got some sunshine.

Its sweet scent and bright yellow flowers made it easy to find.

The priestesses went first to Three Streams Wood, where the plant was abundant.

They enjoyed the outing: it was a change from their usual routine.

Fee showed the priestesses how to cut the vine just above the lowest set of leaves, to ensure that it would regrow quickly. She told them to strip the vine of leaves and branches, leaving the debris on the forest floor to return to the soil, coming home with only the tough, flexible main stems.

To braid the vines together into a rope was a job for two people.

Ev and Fee demonstrated: Ev took three vines by their ends and held them tight, and Fee twisted them.

Both had to pull to keep the vines taut, and this was where tempers frayed.

Fee said Ev was pulling too hard, making it difficult for her to braid the vines, and Ev said that if he didn’t pull hard the rope would be loose and weak.

They must have been quarreling about this for years, Joia thought, hiding her amusement.

Next they would take another three vines, overlap them generously with the first three, and twist again, splicing the two lengths together.

Joia had a long discussion with Seft about how long the ropes should be.

The largest stones were about as long as four men lying head to toe.

The rope would have to be twice that length and a bit more to go all the way around the stone.

Then each grab line had to be long enough for forty people to be able to pull it at the same time without treading on the feet of the person in front and the one behind.

That requirement would quadruple the length of rope needed.

Inside the Monument they made thirty priestesses lie on the ground head to toe—which made the women giggle. As men were slightly taller they added two more. Then they dug lines in the turf to mark the beginning and end of the rope.

When Ev and Fee had two strands that length, each of three vines, they then twisted the two together, this time twisting in the opposite direction. Fee explained that the opposite twist locked the two yarns together.

After that, the process could be repeated any number of times until the rope was of the needed length and thickness.

Once the rope making was underway, with Ev and Fee dropping by daily to make sure the priestesses were maintaining high standards, Seft and Joia decided to go to Stony Valley.

While Joia was getting ready, Ani told her that Scagga was desperate to know more about what was going on at Stony Valley. “He’s looking for something to complain about,” Ani said.

Joia frowned. “I don’t know why he’s so against us,” she said. “Is it just a habit?”

“He’s frightened,” Ani said immediately. “People who bluster like that, and constantly propose aggressive action, do so because they’re scared. They want everybody to be disciplined and work to store up resources for the future, and they’re nervous of anything new. They always see disaster coming.”

“That’s very wise,” Joia said thoughtfully.

“You’ll be wise, if ever you calm down,” Ani said, and they both laughed.

Joia noticed that her mother had a bracelet made of seashells. “That’s new,” she said, pointing.

“A traveler was here yesterday,” Ani said. “I gave him a small piece of leather, enough for a pair of shoes. Do you like it?”

“It’s pretty.”

“The traveler was curious, like Scagga. He asked me why herders had set up camp in the North Hills.”

“How did he know about that?”

“He said everyone was talking about it.”

I might have guessed, Joia thought. Gossip traveled fast on the Great Plain. “What did he say?”

“I asked him what he had heard. He said no one knew what the herders were up to.”

“Did you enlighten him?”

“No. I told him to come to the Midsummer Rite, when all will be revealed.”

“Well done! That’s what we want. Lots of curious people at the Rite.”

Next day, Seft and Joia set out along the riverside path. “The great advantage of following a riverbank is that there are no hills,” Seft said.

The path was well-trodden, but rough in places.

“The ideal would be a trackway of poles laid flat and hammered into the earth, but that would take too long and use more timber than we could get. Anyway, we don’t really need it here on level ground.

Perhaps we’ll do it farther along, when we have to divert away from the river, and there are some uphill stretches.

Here we’ll put down rough branches, which will get trodden in and be better than nothing. ”

“The stones are awfully wide,” Joia said. “Parts of this path are too narrow for them to pass.”

“We’ll have to widen it by cutting back the vegetation,” Seft said. “We can spread the debris on the path to level the surface.”

“But in a few places the path is narrowed by rising ground on the side away from the water.”

Seft nodded. “We can dig out the ground. And the earth we remove can be spread on the path to smooth it. It will be a lot of work, but we’ve got a year.”

Joia was pleased that he had gone so far in working out the details. But there was more to come.

Seft halted at a point where the river widened into a small lake.

“We’ll need stopping places, especially on the way back, when we’re dragging a stone and the volunteers will need rests.

And it makes sense to pick them out in advance, so there will be no need for time-wasting discussions on the journey.

This place is about a quarter of the way to Stony Valley.

And we must get Chack and Melly to start thinking about how to feed our volunteers.

They can’t haul giant stones if their bellies are empty. ”

“Chack and Melly will like this,” Joia said. “It will be a change from just catering the feasts. And they love a challenge.”

They walked on to the village of Upriver, which Seft said was roughly halfway. They rested in a large meadow alongside the river. “Our crowd of volunteers can pause here,” he said.

“Two hundred of them,” Joia said. “Yes, I think there’s room.”

A little north of the village Seft turned away from the river, heading northwest across a corner of the Great Plain.

“Last time I was here there was a large herd,” Seft said.

“I talked to two of the herders. They told me they often moved the cattle here for new growth, but it’s a little early in the year for that.

” He smiled, remembering the encounter. “The woman, Revo, was pregnant. I suppose she has a baby by now.”

After a while the landscape changed to hills, and Seft stopped again at a place where a stream emerged from a valley.

“Here, where the plain ends, is about three-quarters of the way. After this it gets more difficult. We’ll be traveling in the other direction when we move the stones, so the hard part will come first.”

“That’s good,” Joia said. “The volunteers will be fresh.”

They reached Stony Valley at the end of the day.

The village had grown. Under Tem’s direction the cleverhands had stockpiled timber.

They had particularly cut lengths of stout oak, about as long as a person is tall, to use as levers when raising the half-buried stones from the ground.

Soon they would collect the antlers that the red deer shed, and store them for digging.

“I’ve got something to show you,” Seft said to Joia, “but it had better wait until tomorrow.”

“Good,” she said. “I’m looking forward to sleep, after today’s long walk.”

They all ate together. When they had finished, but were still sitting in a circle, Seft said: “The first big task is to clear the riverside pathway. We’re going to be using it a lot even before we start moving stones.

We need to bring the ropes the priestesses are making, and later Chack and Melly will bring supplies of food plus cooking utensils.

The more we use the path, the smoother it will become. ”

Seft was putting his heart and soul into this project, Joia realized as she lay down to sleep. Yet he could not succeed without her. She had to summon the volunteers and motivate them. If she failed, the whole enterprise would collapse.

From where she lay she could look up the slope to where the shepherd lived. She wondered if she would see a gleam as the setting sun was reflected off a head of bushy fair hair. But it did not happen, and she went to sleep.

Next morning Seft showed Joia the sled.

It stood behind the houses, a huge object as big as several houses put together. It was hidden by a cover made of the skins of a small herd of cows. Seft and Tem together pulled the leather off.