Page 92 of Circle of Days

Duff said to Yana: “Wouldn’t it be better if I go?”

“No,” Yana said decisively. “We don’t want another fight.” She left.

Pia got a bowl of water for Arp and he drank it all.

Then she sat on the ground beside him. He was at the awkward moment in a boy’s life when he is neither child nor man.

Right at this moment she guessed he needed mothering.

She put her arm around him and hugged him.

It was the right decision. He leaned on her and turned his face to her shoulder.

After a moment, he cried.

Everyone in the farmer community was standing outside Katch’s house well before noon the next day. Pia listened to the chat. It seemed to her that the women were equally divided. Some wanted Shen thrown out as quickly as possible. Others said the farmer community needed strong male leadership.

No one yet knew what Shen had done yesterday evening.

When the sun was high, Shen came out of the house. Katch, behind him, stayed in the doorway.

The crowd went quiet.

Shen stood on the tree stump that Troon had used to make speeches. Duff immediately went and stood beside him. “What are you doing?” Shen said to him.

Duff said loudly: “I’m here to make sure no one gets raped, Shen.”

Shen had no answer to that. Quickly, he lifted his head and spoke to the crowd.

“I have come here as your new Big Man,” he said.

“Troon, the greatest man the farmer folk have ever known, died in a battle with the herders, and I was with him. Fate is cruel. I wish, for the sake of Farmplace, that I had been the one to die, and that he had survived to return here. But it was not to be. With his last breath Troon told me to be his successor as ruler of this community. It was his last command, and I am here to obey it.”

A few people applauded.

Duff gently pushed Shen, forcing him to step down from the stump so that Duff could step up. “I’m not going to say much,” he said. “Someone else is going to speak now. Arp? Come here.”

Arp stepped out of the store next to the house and walked to Duff.

This had been Pia’s idea, and they had planned it last night.

Overnight, Arp’s injury had turned into a spectacular black eye, and every woman in the crowd saw it. Pia heard one say: “Poor child.”

Duff gave Arp his hand and Arp stepped up onto the trunk. Duff said: “Arp, please tell people how you got that black eye.”

Arp repeated what he had said last night, word for word. Some in the crowd wept quietly.

When Arp finished, Duff said: “Laine, please come here.”

Laine now came out of the store, and the women gasped. Her pretty face was a mass of bruises and she walked with a limp. Duff and Arp got down and Duff helped Laine stand on the stump.

She said: “Everything Arp said is true.” She began to cry, and her words came with difficulty. “I’m so ashamed that my little boy should have seen it.” She gave in to her sobs and got down off the stump.

Duff got up again. “I have only two things to say. First, if you make me Big Man, every woman will own her land. Second, no woman shall be forced to partner with a man unless she wants to. So… just say who you want, Shen or Duff.”

Someone shouted: “Duff!”

Several others took up the shout.

Pia surveyed the crowd. No one was shouting for Shen, not even quietly.

The noise rose. There could be no doubt. Duff was the Big Man.

A bloodless takeover, Pia thought. She felt proud.

Shen walked to the house.

Katch, standing in the doorway, did not move.

“Get out of my way, woman,” he said.

“No, I won’t,” said Katch.

The crowd went silent.

Katch said: “And if you strike me, those women will tear you to pieces.”

Pia held her breath. So did many other people. For a long moment no one moved.

Then Shen turned aside and walked away.

By spring all ten upright stones were in place in the center of the Monument, forming an incomplete oval.

It was quite a sight, Seft thought proudly.

It was easy to imagine that the stones were mighty gods, standing in a ring to discuss the things that concerned gods: thunder and floods, eclipses and earthquakes, plagues.

All their tops were level, a technical achievement that Seft was particularly proud of. Each top had a dome-shaped protrusion in its center. When the crossbars arrived from Stony Valley, the challenge would be to make sockets in each so that the pegs would fit exactly.

Seft used the priestesses’ climbing pole to mount the nearest upright. He was carrying the hide of a large cow and a sharp flint knife.

He placed the hide across the upright and its pair, where the crossbar would lie. It was easy to step from one upright to the next: the gap was small.

Tem and Ilian then climbed the pole and stood at the two ends of the hide, keeping it taut and preventing it moving.

Next, where the pegs stood up under the hide, Seft carefully cut two round holes in the leather, so that the pegs came through.

Then he cut the edges of the hide to match the edges of the uprights.

When the crossbar was trimmed to this template, its edge would exactly match the edges of the uprights on which it stood, and there would be a socket exactly over each domed peg.

Seft spent the rest of the morning making a leather template for each of the five pairs of uprights.

It was a good scheme and Seft just hoped it would work.

When he climbed down from the last pair of uprights, he saw two people waiting for him: his brothers, Olf and Cam. “Oh, no,” he said, and he immediately felt depressed.

This time they did not have to tell him how unlucky they had been. Whatever they had done had ended in a fight and both of them had been injured. Olf had his left arm in an improvised sling made of twisted plant fibers, and Cam had lost his front teeth. They were both filthy.

Seft hated to be reminded so vividly of his childhood: the beatings, the scorn, the practical jokes that were never funny and always cruel.

He had escaped from them fourteen midsummers ago, but he could never forget, much as he wished to.

He had made himself a new and different life, and he was proud of that, but he still hated the old memories.

Cam looked at the giant stones and said: “What are they?”

“We’re rebuilding the Monument in stone.”

“What for?”

“You wouldn’t understand.” Seft sighed. “Why have you come here?”

“We were attacked by farmers,” Cam said. “They beat us and took everything we had—food, tools, everything.”

That was unlikely. All able-bodied farmers had died in the stampede almost a year ago. Unless Olf and Cam had been beaten up by women and old men, their story was a lie. But Seft did not challenge it. He did not care what the truth was. He said: “Why have you come to see me?”

“We’re hungry and we have no food and nothing to trade. All our flints were stolen.”

“Come with me,” Seft said reluctantly. He led them out of the Monument, then along the track to Riverbend, then showed them a visitors’ house.

“You can sleep here,” he said. “You can eat with my family. But that’s all.

We eat outside, so you’ll have no reason to go into my house.

” He was going to ask them what their long-term plan was, but of course they would not have one. They rarely planned beyond suppertime.

He noticed that both of them were barefoot. “Ani will give you some leather to make shoes.”

Cam said resentfully: “Why don’t you want us in your house?”

“Because you stink. And because with three growing children there’s no room for you. Stay here until sundown, then come for supper. And if you want something to do in the meantime, go to the river and bathe.”

He left them and went to his own house to tell Neen that his brothers were back again. “You sent them away immediately, of course,” she said.

“I put them in a visitors’ house.”

She was furious. “I don’t want them anywhere near me or my children.”

“I told them they’re not allowed inside our house.”

“Gods, they’re liars and thieves and bullies, surely you don’t need to be told that?”

“I know, but they’re starving. I told them they could eat with us.”

“I really wish you had not done that.”

“I’ll make sure they don’t bother you.”

“And what will happen on the day after midsummer, when you go to Stony Valley to fetch the crossbars for the Monument?”

Seft was taken aback. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Well, think of it now.”

He was inspired. “I know,” he said. “I’ll make them volunteer.”

Joia had hoped to see Dee at the Autumn Rite, the Midwinter Rite, and the Spring Rite, and each time she had been disappointed. But Dee had promised to return, so surely she would come at midsummer.

Joia had been thinking about what she would say to Dee for the whole of the past year.

She realized she had to be prepared to make some sacrifice.

After much agonizing she had decided to tell Dee that she would resign from the priestesshood soon after the Midsummer Rite, when the five central triliths would have been completed in stone.

That would be her legacy, and she would leave Seft and Sary to continue the rebuilding of the rest of the Monument.

Joia would go to the North Hills with Dee, and they would be shepherdesses together.

She told herself that this would be idyllic: just the two of them in a little house. Dee would teach her how to care for sheep and nurture the lambs born every spring. They would have no worries. Joia would no longer move giant stones or argue with the elders or cause wars.

She knew she would miss the camaraderie of the priestesshood and the excitement and fulfillment of rebuilding the Monument. She had got used to thinking of the Monument as her life’s work. But she would have to put that behind her in order to live with the one she loved.

The only problem was that it would break her heart.

She had rehearsed her speech many times, lying awake at night and wishing she were back in Stony Valley with Dee by her side.

As things turned out, she never delivered it.

The traders began to arrive two days before the Midsummer Rite and, to Joia’s delight, Dee appeared with a flock of hoggets.

She was even more beautiful than Joia remembered, her hair like a tree in autumn, her smile like the rising sun. They hugged and kissed, and Joia had a feeling that everything was going to be all right.

Dee and her brother tethered their sheep, then Dee and Joia sat on the outside of the earth bank to talk. Dee said: “I spent the whole winter thinking about the future and our lives together.”

“So did I,” said Joia. She was nervous of what would come next. She knew only too well how Dee could shatter a loving moment with a devastating announcement.

“I know what I want to do,” said Dee, “and I hope you approve.”

That was ominous. “Tell me, tell me!”

Dee sighed. “I want to be a priestess.”

Joia gasped. It was the last thing she had expected. “But that’s wonderful!”

“Is it? Will you let me?”

“Of course! I can’t think of anything better!”

“But will I be all right as a priestess, do you think?”

“I know you will. Firstly, all the priestesses like you. Secondly, you always understand what I’m saying when I talk about the days of the year and the numbers. Most people can’t grasp it, and that includes a few priestesses who still can’t count properly.”

“I really want to learn all about it. I’m bored with sheep.”

“You will learn, and quickly. Oh, Dee, I can’t tell you how happy this makes me. I was ready to come and live with you in the North Hills and be a shepherdess.” Joia became serious for a moment. “And I would still do that, if you wanted me to. I had really made a resolution.”

“I’m so touched that you would give up everything for me. But it won’t be necessary.”

Joia lay flat on her back. It felt like resting after an all-day walk. She realized that she had been tense for a year. This was the first time she had relaxed. The sun on her body was sensual, and she wanted to make love.

She said mischievously: “Did you know that priestesses have to do what the High Priestess tells them?”

Dee grinned. “I might be a disobedient priestess.”

“No, you won’t. You’ll be lovely.”

“So we’ll be together from now on?”

“For ever and ever.”

“Or at least until we die.”

“Yes. Until we die.”