Page 86 of Circle of Days

Joia wanted to do anything and everything to please Dee.

Her fingertip found a small damp place, something that happened sometimes when she touched herself.

She wanted to push her finger inside. It would be shockingly intimate, and that was what excited her.

She had never even done it to herself. But she sensed that Dee wanted her to do it.

So she did, and Dee gave a quiet moan of pleasure.

She had the strangest feeling that she was no longer in the familiar real world. She and Dee were doing the oddest things. Yet Dee liked what they were doing, and as for Joia, she had never felt this good before, ever. She hoped this was not a dream.

Dee put a hand over Joia’s and pressed, then began to move her hips rhythmically.

The motion was the same as that of the girl who had lain on top of her at the revel.

But that girl had closed her eyes, whereas Dee looked lovingly at Joia as she moved.

She seemed to be in a trance, concentrating.

On impulse, Joia kissed her, and the kiss had an immediate effect, as if Dee had been waiting for just that.

Dee gave a low cry, one that might have been pain or delight, and froze for a long moment; then she slumped, saying: “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

As Dee caught her breath, Joia said: “That was so lovely.”

“It’s not over yet,” Dee said. “Lie on your back.”

She knelt between Joia’s legs and began to kiss her body. Surely, Joia thought, she won’t kiss me down there; but she did. Joia was glad she had bathed in the river that day, then she had the thought that Dee would not have cared anyway.

Dee seemed to know Joia’s body better than Joia did herself.

Everything Dee did was just firm enough, in just the right place, for just the right length of time.

She was shocked to feel Dee’s tongue inside her, and she thought: Do people really do this?

She stopped asking questions and, reaching down, buried her fingers in Dee’s hair, feeling her head move from side to side and up and down.

Losing herself in sheer delight, she heard herself cry out, and then, slowly, the sensation faded, and she felt as if she were waking from a dream.

Slowly she returned to normal, and after a while she said: “So that’s what all the fuss is about.”

Joia woke up full of optimism. Another day and a night had passed without an assault by the farmers.

That morning, raising the first stone and roping it to a sled seemed less challenging than it had last year.

Then they had been working out how to do it as they went along.

Today they knew what to do at each step.

To Joia’s delight the stone was ready to go by midmorning.

“I was right,” she said triumphantly. “It can be done.”

Joia and Jara led the first team off. Seft’s embedded-log track eased the first climb, and they soon passed out of Stony Valley.

Boli was in the first team. Seft had suggested having a quickrunner with each team, so that teams could communicate.

Dee was also in the team, just because Joia wanted her. She was her old self again, loving and talkative. As they walked, Joia said: “What happened last night… that was what you wanted.”

“Oh, you noticed?”

Joia giggled, but she had a serious question. “Why didn’t you just tell me that?”

“Because then you would have faked it.”

Joia was taken aback, but had to admit that Dee was right. She would have done anything Dee asked, regardless of her own feelings. And subservience was not what Dee wanted. She had doubted whether Joia loved her sexually.

And now she knew, Joia thought with a private smile.

They pulled the sled between two hills—like Dee’s breasts, Joia thought, her mind now moving along new paths—and came to the plain at midday.

As they followed the straight line of the track through the grazing herd, Joia was astonished to see a girl of about three midsummers, alone, wearing nothing but a pair of tiny shoes, crying.

She ran to her and picked her up. “Are you Lim?” she said, remembering the baby that Revo had carried.

She stopped crying long enough to scream: “I want Mamma!”

She had probably wandered away from her mother and got lost in the herd. Revo was somewhere out there, frantically searching for her. Joia scanned the herd, but she could see no one.

The sled was still moving, and she walked alongside it, carrying Lim. She hoped Revo would see or hear the volunteers. Two hundred people and a giant sled made a lot of noise. She kept scanning in all directions.

Then she suffered a shock. The track had been vandalized in the night. The volunteers dropped their grab lines and the sled stopped.

Joia looked at the branches scattered widely over the grassland and felt despair.

The damage had not been done by the cattle: it was too thorough, too complete.

Troon had done it. He had not changed his mind, after all.

He was still on the attack. Now, with all the regular challenges of moving giant stones, Joia had also to deal with sabotage by enemies.

Then she saw the bodies.

There were two dead people, a woman and a man, and Joia had a dreadful feeling that she knew who they were. She turned Lim away so that she could not see.

Seft turned the bodies over. It was clear how they had died: both had multiple wounds—piercings from arrows, cuts from sharp flints, and crushing injuries from clubs. They must have tried to stop the farmers destroying the track.

This had been their punishment.

They were Dab and Revo. Tears came to Joia’s eyes and overflowed. They had undoubtedly led peaceful lives, minding cattle, but their time had been brutally cut short, and now they were gone, and their bodies were lifeless.

And Lim had no mother, no father.

Dee appeared and took Lim from her. “You have to decide what to do about the track,” she said.

Joia pulled herself together.

She considered moving the stone without a track, dragging it over the bare ground.

The hardest part of the journey was over, and from now on the way was mostly flat.

All the same, progress would be slow, and she would certainly fail to keep her promise of nine stones in ten days.

No, she decided, it was better to spend time mending the track. That should be quicker in the long run.

There were two hundred people in this team. With luck they could get the stone moving again before sundown.

She set them to work. She told them to pick up all the strewn branches and replace them in the track. She sent half a dozen people to search for logs for the pyre. There were a few bushes on the plain, dry now after the warm spring, and they, too, would serve for firewood.

Once that process was underway she talked to Jara about where the farmer army might be now. It had been here, where they stood, but had gone. “Perhaps they’re heading home,” she said optimistically. “Troon might feel he has made his point.”

“I doubt it,” Jara said. “They’ve killed two herders, and they’ve inflicted some damage that looks as if it can be repaired by the end of today.

That’s not going to satisfy a man like Troon.

” She looked around the rolling landscape.

“They’ll be west of here, so that they can retreat home if things go wrong for them; but they’re not far away, so they can attack again quickly.

They’ll be hiding in a shallow valley behind a ridge, watching for a favorable opportunity. ”

Joia was chilled by that thought.

She said: “The second team should have left Stony Valley by now. They could be here by sundown, barring accidents. That will give us another two hundred people, making four hundred in all.”

“I don’t understand your numbers.”

“It’s more than double the number the farmers are expecting, and probably double the size of their force. We have a huge advantage.”

Jara nodded. “But the herder society is unused to violence. We hardly ever fight, even when we should.” She was thinking of the time when Troon seized the Break, and the herders had done nothing about it, Joia guessed. “Farmers are violent people. Think what they did to the woodlanders.”

Joia said: “So what can we do to protect our people?”

Jara had clearly been thinking about this, for she had her answer ready. “This part of the route, between the twin hills and Upriver, needs to be patrolled day and night.”

Joia was calculating. “If, say, twenty people were spread evenly across that distance, each could shout to the one ahead or the one behind, and so an alarm could be sounded along the whole stretch.”

“That sounds right,” said Jara. “But we’ll double the number and send them in pairs, so that they can stop one another falling asleep.”

Joia did not want the guards to get hurt. “Tell them that if they see the farmers they should give the alarm, then run away. They mustn’t try to fight the farmer army alone. They’ll be slaughtered.”

“I’ll tell them that, and I’ll send them out right away, in case the farmers are already on the move.”

“Good.”

Jara went off and Joia looked around for Dee. She found her kneeling down, mending the track, with the dubious help of Lim, who had stopped crying and was bringing small pieces of vegetation to her.

Joia said: “I want to talk to you.”

Dee got to her feet. “That sounds ominous.”

Joia said seriously: “For some people, there is only one love. I’m like that. My mother told me I just have to wait for the right one. Now I’ve found you.”

Dee smiled. “That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

“And now that I’ve found you, I’m not going to lose you.”

“I’m glad.”

“So I want you to go home.”

Dee was taken aback. “Why?”

Joia pointed across the plain. “Because the farmer army that killed Lim’s mother is on the plain, somewhere west of here, not very far away.

There will be fighting. You told me that your home is a short distance from here.

Go there, please, and be safe with your brother and his woman.

And we’ll meet again when the danger is past.”

Dee shook her head. “I love you for saying that, but you haven’t thought enough about what it means to be a couple.

From now on we do everything together: wonderful things, like last night, and dangerous things, such as we’re doing now.

” She looked solemn. “If I’m going to die, I need you to be with me when it happens; and if you’re going to die, I want to hold you as you take your last breath. ”

Joia had a choked feeling. It was a few moments before she could speak. She wanted to argue but she could not. Dee was right. Living together should include dying. She had not thought of it that way. She took Dee’s hand. “I used to think I was wise,” she said ruefully.

They stood like that for a moment, then Dee went back to mending the track.

A long stretch had been destroyed, and it took until late afternoon to repair. Joia decided to resume moving the stone for what was left of the day. At the same time she sent Boli, the quickrunner, to Upriver to tell the cooks there to bring food as the volunteers would not reach there today.

Before leaving, they cremated Dab and Revo. Dee took Lim behind the stone so that she could not see. Joia and the others stood around the pyre and sang the song for the dead. They had to leave before the bodies were consumed: they could not spare the time.

The sled made good progress in the cooling afternoon, and they stopped when the sun went down. Joia looked back across the plain and was pleased to see the second stone catching up with them.

The food arrived from Upriver. The patrolling lookouts were called in, and fresh people took over. Dusk turned to night.

Joia and Dee lay wrapped in each other’s arms, with Lim alongside them. “I don’t think I can sleep,” Joia said. “I’m too nervous, wondering where the farmers are.”

“Me, too,” said Dee. “I think I’m too nervous for sex.”

“That’s how I feel.”

They held each other close. They could hear the volunteers all around them, shuffling and murmuring, and the cattle grunting and lowing.

Joia touched Dee’s hair. A full moon rose.

They kissed a little, and eventually they did have sex, after all.

It was different this time. Joia no longer felt embarrassed about her ignorance, and did just whatever occurred to her.

Dee responded to her relaxed mood by being more spontaneous.

In the end they did sleep.

Joia woke up with a frightened start, again, then realized the farmers were not there, and tried to stop her heart thumping.

They had breakfast, then two teams of volunteers heaved on the ropes and pulled two sleds, each bearing a giant stone, away across the plain.

Forty people stayed behind, twenty from each team, to maintain the day and night patrol.

Their strength was missed, but the hardest terrain was behind them, and the depleted teams managed.

Joia, Dee, and Jara did not leave with the stones. Dee passed Lim to Sary, who was thrilled to take charge of her and carry her to safety at the Monument. “Do you think we might keep her?” Sary said with bright eyes.

“Perhaps,” said Joia. “We’ll talk to the other priestesses.”

“Just think,” said Sary. “We could raise her, all of us. She would have many mothers.”

Joia could not give thought to this right now. “I don’t know,” she said. “We’ll discuss it later.”

Joia and Dee walked with Jara back along the track as far as the two hills.

There they met the third team, which had started from Stony Valley that morning.

They returned with that team across the plain, and to Joia’s surprise and relief they saw no sign of the farmers.

They left the third team not far from Upriver, and returned again for the fourth.

With the fourth they stopped halfway across the plain and waited for Seft and Tem and the fifth team. This meant they had two teams, four hundred people, in case the farmers attacked.

However, Joia felt hopeful. There had been no trouble in the past day and night. Perhaps there would be no more.

Joia and Dee had supper, lay down, made love, and fell asleep.