Pillar of the Sky

by Cecelia Holland

  “Moloquin,” said the little boy. “Have you anything to eat?”

  Moloquin shook his head. “Go to Karelia.” Grub’s constant preoccupation with eating annoyed him. He fastened all his attention on Harus Kum’s camp.

  The tall man was going somewhere. Yesterday he had taken gifts to all the chiefs, which had become the main subject of discussion at every camp in the Gathering. The little objects had gone from hand to hand, admired and criticized; Karelia had shown him some of the cloth, smooth as worn bone to the touch, supple as the wind, before she passed it on to Joba. Surely, all the people said, Harus Kum was a magician to have such wonderful things, and it was a mark of the power of the chiefs of the People that such a great magician should bow to them and give them treasure.

  Now Harus Kum was making himself ready again, putting on a long tunic of red, smoothing his hair and beard with his fingers. The balding man who had carried his basket of gifts to the chiefs in the Turnings-of-the-Year was standing ready at the way out, carrying another basket.

  Moloquin thought of the beads, the great strings of blue beads that had taken Ladon first of all the chiefs into the stone circles. There had been no beads among the gifts Harus Kum had offered to the chiefs the day before, but the blue color, the blue that Rulon had scattered into the dust, that was the same color as the beads, and Moloquin, like Rulon, knew where Ladon had gotten his power.

  Beside him, Grub whispered, “Are you going to the dancing tonight?”

  “Dancing,” Moloquin said blankly. Only the societies danced.

  “Tonight.” Grub edged closer to him; their arms touched. “The girls dance. The men are all gone, or will be: tonight they go to the High Hill, to dance the True Way of Seeking Honor.”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about,” Moloquin said, his gaze returning to Harus Kum.

  Grub sighed. “I can’t go,” he said. “I am too young.” He put his head down on his updrawn knees. “Ladon’s son won’t let me.”

  “He won’t.” Moloquin swiveled his attention toward the younger boy. “Do you want to go?”

  “Oh, yes! The girls will dance, and they say, if one of them likes you, you can dance with her, and then afterward—”

  He put his hand over his mouth, his eyes round. Moloquin laughed.

  “Then you shall go,” he said. “I shall go with you.”

  “Oh,” said Grub, pleased, and he moved up close to Moloquin, pressing his side to Moloquin’s.

  “Look at him,” Moloquin said, nodding toward Harus Kum. “He is pretty as a horned buck. Will he dance?”

  “Him,” Grub said scornfully. “He is not one of the People. What can he know about the way of seeking honor?”

  Moloquin settled his chin in his hands. Harus Kum was coming toward the opening in his enclosure, his underling behind him with a covered basket.

  Grub tugged on his arm. “Come with me, we will go find something to eat, and then watch the Bear Skull masters line up the stars.”

  “I want to watch this. Besides, the sun is up; there are no stars.”

  “They do magic to call them forth, with the stones of the circles. Don’t you want to be in the Bear Skull Society? You have to show them you are ready, or they will not choose you.”

  “They won’t choose me,” Moloquin said. “And I am not for them.”

  “What do you mean?” Grub leaned toward him, his eyes bright. “Have you already been chosen?”

  Moloquin did not answer. He remembered the midwinter sunset, how he had watched the sun above the stones at the Pillar of the Sky; surely that meant something? Was he not now a member of the Green Bough, belonging to the Pillar of the Sky? Yet Brant had never spoken to him again since that evening.

  He had shared some of the lore. He had given Moloquin the heart of the lore, the mystery, the promise of order.

  “Aren’t you hungry?” Grub asked, astonished. He was always hungry.

  “I want to see—”

  Now Harus Kum was finally emerging from his fort, the man behind him with the basket. He caught sight of Moloquin, sunk down there in the grass, and bellowed, and by the way he glared at the boys, Moloquin knew it was time to run. Even now more of the trader’s men were rushing out the gate in the brush fence. Moloquin went swiftly away through the trampled grass.

  Ladon was resting; before him lay a whole night’s dancing, the most intricate and taxing dance of the whole year’s cycle, and he had been sleeping nearly all day on the platform in the sun. But to meet Harus Kum he left the platform and the other chiefs, telling them he had matters to attend to in his own camp, and he went into the middle of his camp and had his men put feathered lances there to mark his high seat.

  In the midst of the lances, with his men all around him, he waited for Harus Kum. When the trader came, he gestured to the men around him, and they all turned their backs, so that what Harus Kum and Ladon could say would be between the two of them alone.

  Harus Kum had brought a big basket with him, and he set it down beside him when he sat on the ground before Ladon. Smiling, smooth, the outlander spoke words of greeting to him, but Ladon was impatient; he longed to come to the center of all this, and his fingers tapped on his thigh, his eyes shifted from side to side.

  At last, Harus Kum opened his basket, and he drew forth strand after strand of the blue beads and laid them down before the chief. The blue was very pretty against the black of the bearskin. Ladon pushed at them with his foot.

  “I want more,” he said.

  Had he been speaking with one of his own People he would have sheathed his remark in many words, but Harus Kum understood only the simplest of language.

  The trader turned the basket over, and spilled all the beads in a mound onto the bearskin. Ladon kicked fretfully at them.

  “I want more,” he said again.

  Harus Kum made a sound in his throat. At the corners of his mouth, small lines appeared. When he spoke it was in a louder voice than necessary.

  “Great is mighty Ladon! Ladon, who has so much, whose wealth is the wonder of all the world—”

  His words sounded like a chant, like words spoken to the beat of a drum. Ladon glanced at the blue beads. Heaps of beads like this had won him power over all the People, but Rulon now knew where they had come from; the power was chancy, always chancy, and he had to have more. Just to keep his place he had to have more and more. He raised his gaze to Harus Kum; the trader was like a blank stone, like a chunk of raw flint: if Ladon handled him the right way, would he not show the beauties hidden away within him?

  He said, again, “I want more.”

  Abruptly Harus Kum thrust his face toward him, all the pretty phrases gone. “Then give me more!”

  Ladon grunted. Now at least they had broken through the skin of the business. “What do you want of me, then, outlander?”

  “I want grain,” Harus Kum said. “Cheese. Honey. Onions.” He did not add, I need food to keep me and mine, so that we can use our strength and time for other things than finding food.

  The broad face of the chief showed nothing of his feelings. Only, he raised his head a little, looking down his nose at Harus Kum.

  “What will you give me, if I give you what you wish?”

  Harus Kum licked his lips. There was that in his packs that might serve, but he disliked giving such as that into the hands of these savages. He hemmed a little.

  “I have excellent dyes, and much cloth. I can get much more cloth, too—”

  “No!” Ladon slashed the air with his hand. “Cloth—colors—we have that. I want—I want—”

  As he spoke, the high feeling seemed to swell him like a toad; Harus Kum felt himself threatened, and he slid backwards a little, away from the savage. He said, without thinking, “Perhaps Rulon will help me, for the sake of the beads.”

  At that, Ladon reared up. His face w
as dark with temper. His eyes glittered with malice. His great arms milled the air in furious slashes.

  “Hear me, outlander. Even you should understand this. Rulon is nothing. What does he have? Two longhouses! He can give you nothing! Nothing! I—only I can give you what you want, and if you go to Rulon, I shall see you never leave this place at all! Do you understand me? Only I can help you!”

  Harus Kum’s head sank down between his shoulders; he regretted speaking of Rulon; he should have gone to Rulon behind Ladon’s back.

  “And I will help you,” Ladon said, in a calmer voice. “But you must give me more than a few beads.”

  Harus Kum’s heart jumped; at least Ladon was offering him what he needed. He thought again of the secrets in his packs, but again he shied from giving those things to mere savages.

  He said, “I shall bring you more. Tomorrow.” In the meantime, he would think of something else to offer.

  “Good,” Ladon said. His rage left him, and with it his noble bearing; he sank down again, his eyes half-shut. “Go. Tomorrow we shall speak again.”

  Harus Kum bubbled over with compliments and praises. With a gesture he got Tor to collect the basket and the rejected beads. Ladon now seemed asleep, his eyes drooping, his vast body slumped down on the bearskin. Bowing and murmuring, Harus Kum went away.

  In the deep twilight, without a drum, without flutes, without a voice to summon them, the girls of the People gathered at the Turnings-of-the-Year.

  No one knew how this had started. The elders of the People frowned on it and some tried to prevent it, keeping their daughters in, threatening and complaining. Still from the beginning of time the girls had come here, on this day, and gathered inside the rings, and danced.

  Shateel had done it before. This time when she came into the ring and clasped hands with the other girls, it was different, because this was the last Midsummer’s Night that she would be unmarried.

  That thought blazed in her mind like a star. Soon she would be married, and her long fretful dissatisfying childhood would be over: she would be a woman, and have a woman’s power and a woman’s joys.

  The other girls all knew. She wore her hair now in a long plait with flowers twined in it, and flowers wrapped together into a garland around her waist, and so everyone knew that soon she would be married. Therefore they said nothing to her. They belonged still to the green unfulfilled world of childhood, but Shateel stood on the threshold of her own life.

  She clasped a hand on either side and swayed back and forth in the dance, smiling to herself. Soon she would be her mother’s equal, no longer to be chided and scolded and ordered around; soon she would have a man of her own.

  The girls swayed from side to side in their circle, broke the grip of hands to turn, swung back, and caught hands again. Some clapped and some sang. Slowly they found a rhythm, and their feet fell into step with it; here and there a bit of a song made itself felt, and their voices picked it up. Like the winddrift of thistledown that gathered in a sheltered place, so the bits and pieces of their ritual formed together by accident and chance.

  Now the boys were coming.

  Shateel kept her eyes shut. As she stepped from side to side, she let her body follow, curving, bending back and forth, and her knees bent with each step, dipping down. Her hair began to fall out of its plait; she felt the soft touch on her cheek, and her head fell forward a little and her hair swung around her. She swayed and twisted, stooped and straightened, turned and turned, and all the while she saw nothing but the promise of her wedding day to come.

  But now the boys were there.

  The boys gathered on the bank outside the rings of stone. They stood there watching the girls in their dance, and now and then one of them would slip down to the ditch, cross over, and try to join the circles of the girls. The girls would not accept them. Laughing, they slapped at the outstretched hands and pushed the boys away. Only, now and then, they pushed the boys forward, not back—into the circles, not away to the ditch, and then they danced around the boy in the center of the circle, laughing and kicking out at him.

  So, slowly, as the night went on, more and more of the boys got inside. There they too made a ring, joining hands; they faced out, and the girls faced in. Shateel opened her eyes at last, and saw before her a strange boy’s face.

  She shivered. Somehow she had expected to see the face of her betrothed. She shut her eyes again, but the dance had left her behind; she had to look to see where she was. Opening her eyes, she found him there before her again, that same boy, dark as her betrothed was fair, thin and raw as he was sleek.

  They danced face to face, step to step, while impatiently she waited for the rings to turn, to bring her to her beloved. The rings would not turn; still she was face to face with the strange dark boy, with his impudent stare. She kicked at him, and whirled away, putting her back to him.

  Even so, for a long moment, she seemed to see his face in the dark air before her.

  The dance turned her forward again, and to her relief, he was gone. The ring of boys was circling past her. She and the girls stepped sideways, bending, swaying, turning to their right, as the boys on the inside turned the other way, and they passed by her swiftly now, never looking at her. Then there he was, her betrothed, Ladon’s son, smiling at her. In his hair was the red feather, that meant he sought a wife.

  They had not met yet. They were not supposed to meet until their hands were joined together before the chiefs. But she knew him, and he knew her, and she stretched her hands toward him, glad, and he took her hands in his own and they went away from the circles, out past the stones, out to the ditch.

  “Shateel,” he said, once, breathlessly.

  She smiled at him. He was handsome with his yellow hair, his smooth body, and she wanted all the other girls to see her with him and envy her. She put her arms around him, to keep him close to her. Soon, soon, she thought, and then: why not now? They went over the ditch together, saying nothing to each other. With their hands clasped together there was nothing that needed to be said. Climbing up over the bank, they went down the far side, toward the protection of the trees along the little stream, and there, in the grass, she made her own ritual with Ladon’s son, and passed by her own rites into womanhood.

  Moloquin danced only one round, facing the girls, until the crowd inside the stone circle made him uneasy, and he went away, up over the bank, through the half-deserted camp to Karelia’s fire. The dancing made him tremble all over, even his insides seemed to tremble, to go on quivering long after his feet stopped dancing.

  Karelia said, “What did you see there?”

  “Girls,” he said, and was at once so ashamed that he buried his head in his arms. Karelia touched his hair.

  “My boy,” she said, stroking him. “My silly boy. Will you marry soon, and leave me behind?”

  “I will never leave you,” Moloquin said, and put his arm around her waist and held her tight. When he shut his eyes and held her against him, some overpowering memory took new life from the touch, from the warmth and closeness of her body, a memory of belonging. He turned his face against her body, his eyes shut.

  He said, “Tell me a story,” and Karelia told him a tale of Rael the Birdwoman, who learned the speech of animals and trees, and could understand the murmuring of streams and the cry of the wind. Moloquin sat within the circle of her arm, his gaze on the fire, longing for such an understanding as Rael’s; in the red flames he thought he saw faces, eyes, and flowing hair, and into his mind leapt the memory of the girls at Turnings-of-the-Year, their hair, their faces, their shining eyes. His belly churned with a new hunger. Eat their eyes, their hair, their soft mouths. Soft against his cheek the arm of his mother Karelia. He stroked his cheek against her arm, lazy, the story flowing into his ears. Beneath the whisper of her voice, he thought he heard the wind cry, as Rael heard it, full of words.

  He startled, sitting up.
There was a voice out there, screaming in the wind.

  “Ana, do you hear that?”

  “What?” Karelia lifted her head; she had been lost in her story, she blinked and looked around her like one awakening from deep sleep.

  “That.” Moloquin sprang up, every hair on his body standing on end, as again the wind brought a thready screech of terror to his ears. “Someone—”

  Karelia gasped. She had heard it too. She scrambled to her feet and with a loud voice, a bellow that amazed him, she shouted to the women at the nearby fires.

  “Come! Help—help—”

  She started toward the screaming. Moloquin kept by her, his hand on her arm, uncertain, and she turned to him.

  “Go—go quickly—some evil is there—”

  He burst into a run, cutting between fires, in the direction of the screams, and she and the other women labored after him.

  Now the screams came louder, more distant, and there were words in them. Out there someone—a woman—was shrieking for help. Moloquin lengthened his stride. At the edge of the camp was a line of willow trees, choking a little streambed, and he fought his way through this dense cover, splashed over the stream, and came into a grove of close-growing trees.

  The women crashed through the brush after him. Before him, under the dark branches, bodies thrashed and wrestled on the ground.

  “Help! Help me—”

  She who screamed was tangled up with some others on the ground before him. He raced toward her, and as he approached, two men parted themselves from the thrashing close-clutched bodies and wheeled to run. Moloquin flung himself on the nearer of them and bore him down under him, and an instant later, the women ran into the glade.

  They howled. The screaming that had drawn them disappeared into a general uproar. Moloquin got up, and the man he had dragged down scrambled to his feet and tried to run, but the women were on him at once. In the darkness Moloquin could see nothing clearly. He backed away, panting; he saw the man he had stopped vanish into a crowd of women, who set to beating him with their fists, kicking him as he fell. Then Karelia came into the glade, and she had a torch in one hand.