Page 73 of Circle of Days

Making a virtue of necessity, Joia called: “Rest time, everybody.” She looked around.

They were in a scrubby dale with little grazing.

Behind them was a stream they had crossed almost without noticing it.

“Drink some water,” she said. Many of them headed for the stream, others just lay flat, exhausted.

Verila and two of her cousins had been following with baskets, and they now produced smoked pork and handed it round.

Perhaps rest, water, and a little food would restore the volunteers.

Seft placed logs behind the blades of the sled so that it could not move backward. “I’m being cautious,” he said. “I don’t think this could move of its own weight even on a slope a lot steeper than this one.”

“Which is a good thing,” said Joia, “otherwise it might run on ahead of us and crash. We have no way of stopping it.”

“A design fault,” Seft said. “I’m to blame.”

“Don’t fret,” Joia said. “What you’ve done already is astonishing. No one else could have achieved this.”

Seft smiled and nodded. What Joia said was true, and he knew it.

She gave the volunteers plenty of time. When everyone had drunk and eaten and rested, they began to mill around socially, and Joia reckoned they were ready to start pulling again. She called them to the ropes.

They began to pull, but the stone did not move. Joia realized with alarm that restarting would be especially difficult on an upward slope. Neither she nor Seft had thought of that. They had made a bad mistake.

In future she would make sure that any stop took place on a downward slope. But they had to deal with this now, otherwise there would be no future.

“Relax,” she said to the volunteers.

Tem said: “We could run the sled back down the hill and a little way up the opposite slope. Then we’d have a downward start.”

“I hate to go backward,” Joia said. She also thought it would be demoralizing. “We’ll do that as a last resort.”

Tem nodded.

Joia called to the volunteers: “We’ll try rocking again.”

She called all the cleverhands and Verila and Verila’s cousins to the ropes. She and Seft and Tem took hold of ropes. No one was left watching.

She shouted: “Ready… take the strain… pull!… Relax… take the strain… pull!” They got into the rhythm.

When the sled was rocking, she said: “Relax… huge effort this time… pull! And keep pulling!” And the sled inched up the rise.

“Keep it up!” she yelled. “Don’t falter!

” The sled kept moving. Joia stayed on the rope, heaving with the rest, her elation giving her strength, until the sled perched at the crest of the rise.

There she called a short rest. “Well done, everybody,” she said. “With luck we won’t have to pull that hard again.”

Soon afterward they passed the nameless hilltop village they had noticed on their way to Stony Valley.

The people were ready for them this time—Joia wondered how news traveled so fast in apparently empty country—and they came running down the hill.

At first Joia feared they might be hostile, then thought they would hardly dare to confront a couple of hundred people.

In fact they brought water in jars and small gifts of mutton, which the volunteers consumed without stopping. They asked excited questions. A couple of adolescent girls kissed several boys each.

The younger villagers joined in pulling the ropes. Joia wondered how far they planned to come along.

Joia heard Dee say: “These people have never seen anything like this before.”

Joia was worried that all this might somehow delay their progress, but everyone managed to keep going, and eventually they left the village and its people behind.

At noon they emerged from the hills onto the plain.

It had been deserted when they passed through on their way to Stony Valley, but now there were several hundred cattle.

This was a preselected resting place, and more of Chack and Melly’s children and grandchildren were here with cold meat.

The sun was high, and many of the volunteers cooled themselves in a nearby stream.

Seft climbed on top of the giant stone and began to work on the surface, smoothing it by knocking flakes off it with a round stone he held in his hand.

Joia sat in the shade of a low, wide hornbeam tree with her back against its distinctive fluted trunk, to eat cold pork.

Dee sat beside her, her hair wet from the stream, her curls plastered to her head.

They had not spoken since before dawn, when they had chatted in the moonlight about all sorts of things.

Dee said: “This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. As a shepherd you don’t often go long distances. I’ve walked to the Monument, of course, but not pulling a great big stone.”

“I’m finding it hard too,” said Joia.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-seven midsummers.”

“Same as me.”

“We’re young, but most of the volunteers are younger.”

“A few are older.”

“Very strong older people,” Joia said thoughtfully. “What made you join this ambitious mission?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Dee, without meeting Joia’s eye. “To do something different, perhaps.”

Joia thought she was avoiding the question. However, if there was something Dee wanted to keep to herself, Joia was not going to press her.

Seft approached with two strangers. He said to Joia: “These are the herders I met before, Dab and Revo.”

The woman, Revo, said: “And this is Lim.” She was carrying a toddler.

Joia and Dee stood up and made a fuss of the child.

Dab said: “I can hardly believe you’re moving that enormous stone!”

Seft said: “Yes, and now we must move it on.”

The sled was stopped on a slight downward slope, so getting started was less difficult. It was still hot, but the day would cool soon. The volunteers talked a little as they pulled, and Joia even heard snatches of songs.

They came to the East River and followed its bank south until they came to Upriver, where they planned to spend the night in the broad riverside meadow. The cattle were already roasting on spits.

The volunteers dropped the ropes with enormous relief. Some people just lay flat where they were. Others threw off their tunics and cooled themselves in the river.

Joia happened to see Dee’s bare body, and it had a strange effect on her.

She stared, fascinated. She had seen many naked people, and had never taken much interest, but now she could not tear her eyes away.

Dee was slim but muscular, no doubt from pulling stupid sheep out of swamps and other places where they got stuck.

She had lovely round breasts, and Joia could not help thinking about kissing them.

The hair at Dee’s groin was much darker than the fair bush on her head.

This, she realized, was not how one thought about someone who was going to be no more than a good friend.

In the river Dee talked to Bax, the two of them naked in the clear water. Joia felt with annoyance that Bax was not good enough to be Dee’s girlfriend. It was an unkind thought but Joia could not get rid of it. The idea of a romance between Dee and Bax just bothered her.

When night fell, there was not much romantic activity. The volunteers ravenously ate roast beef, then lay down and slept. It had been a hard day.

And they had to do it all again tomorrow.