Karne watched them go off one day eagerly discussing the day’s work plan and realized he was feeling like a grown man watching two children going off to play. The boat had been so important to him at one time, but that enthusiasm seemed a hundred moons ago now, when he was a child. He smiled to think that he had once thought he could only find the answers to all his questions about life and death and the gods by sailing away across the sea. He knew now that the answers to life’s mysteries lay wherever one happened to be. It was only a matter of the acuteness of one’s vision whether one could see them or not.
Although he was forced reluctantly to agree with Maal that they should not push Kyra any further than she was able to go, he was determined to continue learning from Maal himself.
Fern too had much to teach, although he learnt from her more by watching and being with her than by discussing things with her. She was not so good at putting things into words as Maal, but the way she lived her life was a lesson in itself.
Sometimes he went to see her when the others were not there and always found her quietly, gently, going about her daily work tending the plants. She seemed to sense everything they needed and would never allow herself to be too tired or too harassed to give it to them. She paced herself steadily through the day. Karne noticed that with admiration. There were never moments in her orderly life, as there were in his, of rush and bother as too much to be done became bunched up into too little time. He noticed that when she was tired or overworked and beginning to get tense, she would stop what she was doing immediately and sit cross legged and still, her head tipped slightly back and her eyes closed. When he found her like that the first time, there was such a stillness about her he thought she had somehow fallen asleep sitting up. But she was not asleep and after only a few moments of this kind of intense rest, this sinking into the still point at the centre of her nature, she was refreshed and would rise up gracefully to start work again.
‘Are you not lonely always by yourself?’ he asked her one day as they sat together.
‘I am never by myself,’ she said, smiling, ‘and I am certainly never lonely.’
He believed her. Around her trees and bushes and plants were sweetly growing, long tendrils of creeper reached down from the trees to stroke her as she passed. He could feel the love and peace all around, the feeling of companionship. She sat in the centre of a green world and light both radiated from her and to her. In some ways she looked as though she herself was of the plant world. The stillness with which she sat, the quiet gleam of her red-gold hair, her eyes the colour of dark wood flecked strangely with the gold of sunlight, her skin nut brown and her body slim, supple and lithe like a young sapling. Living alone she worked hard, doing all the chores normally shared out among a family. She needed no wood for cooking, as she ate only plant material and that fresh and uncooked, but for the winter she had to gather wood and break it into reasonably sized pieces for her small hearth. She took only branches that were already dead, and chopped them with a fine flint axe her father had left her. All summer she worked on the wood little by little, so that when the cold winds came howling down from the north she was well prepared. When her house needed mending she mended it. When the earth needed digging she dug it.
Karne sometimes felt she had the strength of a boy and yet the beauty of a woman’s shape. He felt totally at peace with her as though her thoughts flowed in unison with his. He never sensed as he did with other people that he was cut off, isolated within his own skin, unable to communicate.
* * * *
As time passed Kyra gradually became less pale. She seemed to have decided to regard the whole experience as a bad dream, but nevertheless she was determined not to put herself in the position of having such another one. It was a great relief to her that she was no longer expected to ‘travel,’ and Karne found her almost irritating in the way she put the whole thing from her mind and in some way returned to childhood. She played with the younger children noisily and enthusiastically, avoiding him and refusing to visit Maal and Fern. Indeed she was so unlike herself he began to wonder if her mind had been affected already, as Maal said it might be if they continued with their experiments.
Chafing at the inactivity and lack of progress, he decided, as they could no longer rely on her for any help and they must be sure at least that Maal’s secret chamber was ready for him when he needed it, that Fern and he must proceed with the work on it by themselves. They started digging on a day after rain when the earth was fairly soft.
‘We will have to gather stones to line the chamber and keep them hidden somehow,’ Karne said.
Luckily, the woods were very deep and lush with undergrowth and it would not be difficult to keep things hidden.
Fern wove a kind of raft of vines and branches which could be lowered over the hole they were making so that it would totally disappear from view when they were not actually working on it. Not many people came to the woods as a rule, but one could not be certain they would not. Children sometimes came to gather berries for themselves and their families a little later in the year. The wild berries were still unripe although those in Fern’s garden were already edible.
‘Maal seems to be avoiding us,’ Karne remarked one day. ‘Have you noticed?’
‘I am worried about him,’ Fern said. ‘He seems very low in spirit.’
‘He even looks older. I hope he will not need this chamber until we are ready.’
‘How is the work on the other tomb? You never mention it.’
‘The stones are all collected and the digging has started, but I am not involved in that. I did enough collecting the rocks. Half of them had to be brought from the hills. It was no easy task!’
‘But should you not still be working there?’ Fern asked.
‘Why? I have enough to do here and in the fields.’
‘But,’ said Fern a trifle anxiously, ‘surely it is essential one of us should know exactly how it is constructed? Remember we have to fetch Maal out of there, probably in the dark.’
‘I had not thought of that.’ Karne was silent. He had stopped work and was frowning as he thought about the problem.
‘In fact, not only that, but I should find a way to make it easier for us to open it. We will never be able to move the great stone that seals the entrance. We will have to work in from the side or back somehow.’
‘Could you make a tunnel?’
Karne strode about restlessly. A tunnel would be the answer, but he was appalled at the amount of work involved, and all of it in secret. As it was he was beginning to ache with tiredness, and in the morning when light came he could scarcely bring himself to rise and start the day.
‘I cannot do it by myself,’ he said despairingly.
‘I will help you,’ Fern said, ‘we will work at night. I am sure Kyra will help as well.’
‘Kyra!’ he said bitterly.
He had told Fern about the way Kyra was behaving.
‘You must not judge her too harshly, she is very young and has been under great strain.’
‘She is fourteen. That is not so young. She behaves like a small child.’
‘She is trying to protect herself. She is frightened.’
‘How will behaving like a child protect her?’
‘People do not ask children to face danger and responsibility. If she can convince us she is too young to do the things we want her to, she will not have to do them. I think she is trying to convince herself as well, which is not easy.’
‘Why would she do that?’
‘So that she will not feel guilty.’
Karne sighed. Fern was right, of course. But it was most irritating that Kyra was the only one of them who could be asked to ‘travel’ and she was too afraid to do it.
‘If it were I,’ he thought with fierce pride, ‘I would do it without a second thought! I would give anything to have a chance at it!’
* * * *
Kyra agreed to help with the tunnel and indeed seemed to have recovered enough of
her old spirit for her mother to leave her alone again. She would still not think about spirit travelling, but with Maal’s tomb she was prepared to help. The one in the woods was almost ready and Fern insisted she could finish it off herself. Maal had instructed them in its construction and it was of a much humbler size than the official one. Because of Fern’s knowledge of earth currents and channels they dug with the grain of the earth, and the digging was easy. It was almost as though the earth was helping them. Worms loosened the next layer of soil for them overnight and it was ready to dig in the morning.
But on the open hillside beside the clump of trees, Maal’s official tomb was not so easy to construct. It was on no natural channel of energy and the soil seemed heavy and lifeless to dig. Many men and boys were engaged all day in digging with antler picks and hollowed hardwood shovelling logs. The boys carried the soil away in leather buckets, putting it aside to be replaced as the mound over the stone chamber when the priest was laid to rest.
Thorn came occasionally to check on progress and once Wardyke came and told them angrily to work harder. It was as though he was impatient to see it finished.
Very early in the morning before anyone else was stirring Karne, Kyra and Fern would creep out of their homes and meet at the tomb. They were digging a tunnel and it was hard and painful work. They were lucky in that the clump of trees beside the mound hid the entrance.
Time went by. Maal returned to them and lifted their spirits when they were ready to collapse, answering their questions and teaching them many things. No more was said of ‘travelling’ but much was said of growing in strength within themselves so that they would be strong enough to overthrow Wardyke by themselves if it became necessary.
One day Karne had yet another good idea.
‘If you had help,’ he said to Maal, ‘would you be able to break through the barrier at the circle?’
Maal thought about it.
‘Maybe,’ he said.
‘Well then,’ cried Karne triumphantly, ‘all we have to do is give you some help to get through the barrier and you will be able to travel to the Lords of the Sun!’
Maal looked doubtful still, but Karne, Kyra and Fern looked jubilant. It certainly seemed to be the solution to the problem.
But how best to give the help?
Kyra thought of something.
‘You know that day,’ she said, ‘the day Wardyke arrived and I thought I heard you calling me to help but I did not know what to do?’
‘Yes,’ Maal said.
‘I had the feeling Wardyke was trying to drive you from the circle but that he was not succeeding when he was by himself. It was only when Thorn joined him that he began to gain control.’
‘That is so. That is why I was calling to you. If you had joined your powers to mine, we might have been able to withstand them at that point.’
Karne was fascinated.
‘But could you do it now?’ he said. ‘I mean the two of you together.’
‘It is possible,’ Maal said slowly.
‘That would be a way!’ Fern cried.
‘But you would do the travelling!’ said Kyra anxiously, half questioning, half stating fact.
‘Yes, I would do the travelling.’
‘But together you could probably pass through the barrier. Particularly as it is not designed for Kyra at all,’ Karne insisted.
Maal began to look really interested.
‘This may be possible,’ he said with growing confidence.
Karne smiled with relief.
‘That is decided then!’ he said firmly. ‘When do we start?’
Maal laughed.
‘Impatient as ever, Karne! It is not as easy as you think. Kyra and I have much work to do together before we can attempt it. We may get only one chance to reach the circle and cannot afford to bungle it.’
Kyra began to look anxious.
‘I will not have to go within the circle?’ she asked, still worried.
‘I will try to avoid it,’ Maal said soothingly.
‘I am not going within the circle!’ Kyra was alarmed now and made this announcement with great force.
‘Of course you will not,’ Karne said hastily. ‘Maal will do all the work. You will just have to help him through the barrier.’ And then to Maal he said, ‘You do believe you can do it together, do you not?’
‘Our two wills together will make it possible,’ Maal said with great conviction.
Kyra looked somewhat pacified.
‘All right,’ she muttered. ‘As long as I do not have to do the ‘travelling’ or go within the circle.’
‘That is understood,’ Karne said firmly.
Chapter 10
The First Challenge
While Maal was training Kyra to project her will and mind to join with his, and Karne and Fern were working secretly upon the tunnel, new settlers began to come to their valley.
At first one or two families arrived, were greeted with great warmth by the community and soon made to feel at home. But within weeks others came, and what had once been a very close-knit and related group of homesteads became an untidy and sprawling collection of disparate elements. The strangers were everywhere, taking over land that since the ancient times had been common grazing land. They put up their homes, which were no more than badly built shacks, wherever they wished with no regard to the harmonious flow of village life.
The original villagers began to grumble.
‘They seem to have no sense of the flow of the earth spirit,’ Fern said. ‘All the other sites for homes were chosen carefully by Maal or my father, so that they fitted into the rhythm of the land. But these people just put their houses anywhere, making everything ugly and disorderly. It is no wonder they look so restless and dissatisfied!’
The original villagers at last bestirred themselves to have a meeting at the meeting stone. It was a mystery to them why so many settlers had come at one time. Over the years families had arrived from other communities and settled in, but never more than one at a time.
These people seemed to move in hordes, and be rough and noisy. They carried themselves with such arrogance and confidence that the milder mannered villagers found it impossible to stand up to them. They arrived and moved in as though they had a right, and each villager in his turn refrained from saying anything because he thought it was his own ignorance that made him unaware of the reasons for their arrival. It seemed to have been arranged in some way. But no one could make out how, or by whom.
At the meeting some of the Elders were present, but Wardyke and Thorn had been away for three days and no one knew where they were or when they would return. It was a measure of the desperation of the villagers that they had dared to call a meeting without the sanction of their two formidable leaders.
Faro was in charge and he was particularly angry as the strangers had put up their untidy shacks close to his home and were encroaching on the land he had always thought was his. No one actually owned land in the community, they all knew the earth belonged to the gods and the earth spirits, but certain parts of it were by long-standing custom used by certain families. When a family cared properly for the land no one questioned their right to use it, but if a family, as had happened from time to time in the past, misused or neglected the land, it was taken by common consent from them and given to the community until such time as the offending family proved itself worthy again to be trusted with the care of it.
The strangers were certainly misusing the land. Their rubbish was never returned to the earth to fertilize the new crops as Fern’s father had taught them, but left lying about in untidy, smelly heaps. They killed animals wantonly, ate only a little of each, and threw away the rest, again to rot within sight of the dwellings. The winter was not far off and the meat should have been cured and hung for the long cold months ahead when no grain grew in the frosty earth and most of the animals had moved south or gone to sleep. The strangers seemed to be making no provision for the winter. This made the villagers uneasy. Wh
ere were they going to get their food in winter? Where their wood and furs? The villagers feared the strangers were not above taking what they needed from their more circumspect neighbours, by force if necessary.
Some villagers had even seen the strangers killing birds, and everyone knew that birds who flew so close to the sun and the moon were sacred, friends of the spirit-gods and not to be harmed in any way.
It was time indeed to meet and talk about what could be done.
Many of them felt they should have waited till the return of Thorn and Wardyke, but many others were too impatient to wait. A new family of settlers had moved in that very day and were chopping down trees most wastefully at the edge of the south pasture.
‘strangers have always been welcomed in our community and before this time we have never regretted our hospitality,’ Karne’s father said.
‘They do not follow the ancient laws.’ Someone else spoke. ‘Not one has called a meeting of the Elders to ask permission to live within our community. They have taken land no one has agreed that they should have.’
‘They do not seem to have a leader. There is no one among them elected to speak for them.’
‘Thorn has been seen talking to them,’ a nervous little man spoke up.
He had been one of those opposed to the calling of the meeting without Thorn’s approval.
‘But that is not the way,’ Karne’s father said. ‘A full meeting of the Elders should settle land rights. Not just the word of one Elder.’
‘Or a priest,’ someone else muttered bitterly.
It seemed to Karne not all the villagers were as pleased with Wardyke as they had at first been. It might be time for Maal’s return.
‘Should we not call for Maal’s help here,’ he said suddenly and with boldness. It was not usual for the young to talk at meetings and Karne had never spoken before. Heads turned to look at him in surprise, but no objection to his speaking was raised. He was tall, nearly sixteen, and without their noticing had become a man. It was more what he had said that called for objection.
The Tall Stones Page 9
