Page 70 of Circle of Days
Joia woke up feeling that so far she had not really achieved anything.
The stone still lay where it had been since the world was young.
True, she had created an army of volunteers and marched them from the Monument to Stony Valley, and that had not been easy.
But the really difficult part lay ahead.
Today they had to raise the massive stone upright. Such a thing had never been done before. There were stone circles on the Great Plain and elsewhere, but none featured a stone half as big. The task might turn out to be impossible.
Equally new and difficult was the challenge of mounting the stone on the sled. And regardless of what Seft might say, there was no way of knowing how much weight the sled could withstand. The stone might simply crush it, turning it into firewood.
An added worry was Narod and the Young Dogs.
Joia suspected they were biding their time, waiting for an opportunity to sabotage the mission, but she could not stop them in advance.
In the farmer society troublemakers were dealt with harshly, but the herder folk were different, and Joia did not have the authority to send Narod away.
As she got up and pulled on her tunic, it occurred to her that her future held many days when she would wake up anxious and struggle, with others, to do something that had never been done before. She felt both excited and dismayed.
Dee woke up, too, although it was still dark. Joia went to supervise the breakfast, and Dee followed along to help her. With Verila they cut up the remainder of the beef and laid it on the hides. By then a pale light was seeping into the dewy valley.
Seeing Dini, the daughter of Zad and Biddy, Joia asked her to wake up the other children and gather berries.
Joia ate some beef, then went to the stone. Seft was already there, with Tem and other cleverhands, frowning at the stone, contemplating the task in front of them. They did not look unhappy. A challenge such as this energized them.
Joia did not relish the challenge. All she could do was fret about whether they would succeed. Seft had a plan for today, Joia knew. She also knew that he was not sure whether it would work.
The volunteers gathered quickly, some of them munching beef, eager to hear Seft tell them how to achieve the impossible. Seft gave an impression of confidence which, she knew, he did not feel, as he said: “Here’s how we do it.”
Pointing, he went on: “That end of the stone is thicker than the other, and the thicker end will become the base. The thin end is the top. The first thing we’re going to do is dig a hole under the base.
” Using an antler pick, he scratched a rectangle in the earth showing where the hole should be.
“The depth of the hole will be half the height of a person.”
Simple enough so far, Joia thought.
Seft stood facing the long side of the stone and stretched both arms out wide. “So, when we lift the thin end of the stone”—he tilted his body so that his right arm went up and his left arm down—“the thick end will tip gently into the hole.”
The volunteers were nodding. Everyone could understand that, especially with the vivid gesture.
Joia was encouraged by Seft’s plan and, even more, by his air of command.
“So, let’s get working.”
Here we go, Joia thought.
Tem had a stock of antler picks and wooden shovels.
He pointed to two volunteers, who happened to be Zad and Biddy.
He gave the pick to Zad and the shovel to Biddy.
Men were usually better at breaking up the soil, women at shoveling it, no one knew why.
They accepted willingly, Zad giving his typical grin, and began to dig the hole under the thick end.
Seft moved to the thin end. “The stone is partly buried in the soil, so we need to loosen it,” he said. “We can have a dozen or more people working on this at the same time.”
Tem gave out more picks.
“Dig all around until you can see the bottom edge of the stone. Then scrape away the earth under the stone, especially at the thin end, where we need enough space to insert levers.”
They all went to work energetically. Their enthusiasm heartened Joia. With all these eager helpers, she thought, we can do anything.
Anything humanly possible, at least.
At this point the biggest job was the hole under the thick end.
They had to dig directly under the stone so that its end jutted out over the hole.
Tem saw that Zad and Biddy were tiring, and replaced them with another couple.
They finished the job, so that there was a hole into which the thick end of the stone could slide.
Next, Tem picked out five strong men and one woman, a flint miner called Bax. He gave each of them a stout oak lever about as long as they were tall, then stood them in a line at the thin end and told them to shove one end of the lever under the stone as far as it would go.
Joia realized that this would be the first time they tried actually to shift the stone from its place. If we can’t do this, she thought, we can’t do anything.
Tem told them to push forward and upward on their levers until the thin end of the stone lifted clear of the ground.
They braced themselves and heaved, and nothing happened.
Joia said: “Harder, harder!”
They tried again, grunting with effort. Bax became frustrated and red in the face. The stone did not move.
We’re going to fail right at the start, Joia thought.
Someone in the crowd said: “This will never work.”
That was Narod’s voice, Joia thought in disgust.
Seft was not daunted. “We just need more people lifting.”
Tem chose more big people and gave them levers.
It turned out that the most that could stand side by side without jostling was eleven.
Seft decided it might also help to have levers at the sides of the stone.
They would be less efficient but all the same it might be somewhat helpful. Tem placed four people crosswise.
Joia took over the job of encouraging those wielding levers. She was better at that sort of thing than Seft or Tem. Now she said: “Ready… take the strain… heave!”
The stone seemed to move.
“More, more!” Joia cried. “You can do it, I know you can!”
The stone came up a finger’s breadth, and the watching crowd cheered.
“Keep going, keep going!”
The stone came up the span of a hand. Seft quickly shoved a log into the gap so that the stone could not sink down.
Joia held her breath, fearful that the log would be crushed, but it held, and Seft put in two more.
Under the weight of the stone, they sank a little into the earth.
That would make them stable, Joia realized.
“Well done!” she cried jubilantly. “Now relax.”
They dropped their levers. Some sat down, drained. Bax said: “Gods help us, that was hard.”
Wasting no time, Tem chose another fifteen of the strongest and told them to pick up levers. When they were ready, Seft stood by with another log.
Joia said: “Ready… take the strain… heave!”
The stone moved a fraction.
“Just a bit more, just a bit more!”
They grunted and cursed and became red-faced, and the stone lifted enough for Seft to put in another log on top of the first three, then add more.
The volunteers dropped their levers, and one man said: “I’m done in.”
This is very hard, Joia thought, but we’re doing it.
Another fifteen were deployed.
Soon the top of the stone was above the ground by the length of a forearm from elbow to fingertip. “Look how well you’re doing!” Joia said. “You’re lifting the biggest stone in the world! You’re heroes!”
The exhausted volunteers looked pleased.
The process went on with a change of team each time. Soon Seft was placing short upright lengths of tree trunk in the gap. Joia noticed that at the other end the base of the stone was tilting into the hole. She felt a warm glow of triumph, but told herself it was not finished yet.
Dini appeared with a basket full of strawberries. “Look how many we got!” she said to Joia. “And we ate lots too.”
“Well done!” said Joia. “Take the basket around and offer them to everyone.”
The volunteers ate with relish and congratulated Dini, which made her happy.
Then they ran into a snag.
When the stone was about a quarter of the way to upright, and its thin end was level with the heads of the volunteers, the levers no longer worked as levers. The volunteers found themselves merely pushing at the stone.
To Joia’s surprise, Seft admitted that he had not foreseen this.
Tem said: “We could rope the top of the stone and pull.”
“That might do it,” said Seft. “Especially if we could weight the thick end so that it would slide into the hole sooner.”
Joia was unnerved by their uncertainty. She said briskly: “Well, are we going to try that, or what?”
Seft said: “I’m not sure how we would weight the base.”
Joia said impatiently: “Get ten people to stand on it.”
Seft and Tem laughed, but Seft said: “That could work. They’ll have to jump off before it lands.”
Tem tied a rope around the top of the stone, made it very tight, and knotted it. The priestesses had made the ropes very long so that there would be generous grab lines. Volunteers lined up, holding the rope.
The first to stand on the thick end were two priestesses, Duna and Bet. Another eight people joined them, holding on to one another to steady themselves. Joia frowned. When she had so quickly suggested this, she had not taken into account that the surface of the stone was uneven.
She heard Narod laughing, saying: “This is stupid!”
Joia said: “Ready… take the strain… heave!”
The stone moved, but not as expected. The thin end did not rise and the thick end did not drop into the hole. Instead, the stone slid laterally.
The volunteers jumped off, but one of them slipped. It was Duna. She landed in the hole with the stone still inching across the gap above her. Joia saw that the stone was going to crush her. She screamed at those pulling the rope: “Stop, stop, stop!”