Pillar of the Sky

by Cecelia Holland

  Now he heard the wind murmuring in the fir trees on the hillsides above him. Somewhere high over the tops of the trees, a hawk screamed its piercing sad whistle. Like a man who had been drowning, he raised his head up into the air and breathed life again.

  Grub whimpered and sobbed, blazing with fever. The rug he was wrapped in was soggy with sweat. Moloquin lifted him up in his arms and carried him away, out of the house, into the stockade yard.

  The sun had gone down and the stars were coming out; the air tasted of the sea brine. Moloquin’s arms hurt. He carried Grub down to the wet sand and the lapping margin of the sea, and laid him down in the cool of the water.

  “Grub,” he said, “Grub, they are still here. The spirits are here somewhere, our souls’ souls, and they will protect us, if we take heart.”

  He sat beside the dying boy and watched the stars slip down like tears over the sooty cheek of the sky. Over there somewhere was the rest of the world, other men, other ways of doing things. The millstone was broken, the order of things had fallen into disarray, but the truth of it was that all these apparently disparate things were actually one thing. The millstone should be whole. The people should all be one People. Therefore he was not alone, and he was always home.

  The sea curled up and broke over his feet and swirled around him, foaming around his waist, chuckling on the black rocks scattered on the sand. Behind him, the sea gulls fought over garbage in the midden of Harus Kum’s stockade. Moloquin thought of the stones he had tried to pile up into a pillar on this shore; he remembered how he had felt then, full of awe and amazement and delight, and how his hands had needed to raise up some monument to this new truth he had discovered. He got up and waded around in the surf, looking for the stones, but his pillar was gone. Only chunks of the lumpy black rock remained. The sea had broken up his column.

  That challenged him. He went restlessly up and down the beach, now and then circling back to Grub, to touch him, to speak to him, to call forth the spirits of his ancestors to support him. Sometimes he stopped to watch the slow passage of the stars across the sky. Most of the night he spent searching for some matter to use, to shape with his hands, to make a sign that he had been there.

  There were lots of rocks. The ones that he could move were too small; the ones that were large enough he could not move. He put his shoulder against a black mass and pushed with all his strength and felt the whole world pushing back. With a sigh, he gave up.

  The night yielded to the first scattered sunlight and the stars vanished. The wind hushed. He lifted Grub up out of the cool water and carried him back toward the stockade. The gate was shut and barred, and he laid his friend down on the threshold, climbed over the wall, and opened the gate from the inside. He left both wings of the gate standing wide open, so that Harus Kum would surely know what he had done. Lifting Grub into his arms, he went back inside the house and laid the boy down on the sticky dirty rag against the wall.

  The other people were stirring out of their brutish sleep. Moloquin made sure that Grub was comfortable and then he went out to the storeroom, where the women waited with their baskets and pots for Harus Kum to open the door and let them get the food out.

  Moloquin went past them to the door. Under their astonished eyes, he tried the latch, and found it open: only Harus Kum’s authority barred it from them. He went inside.

  As he entered, the mice squeaked and rustled away from him through sacks of grain. A great cropped naked carcass hung from the rafter. Off to his right was the tub of beer. He found a pot on a shelf on the wall and dipped it down through the thick suds into the liquor, got a handful of meal from an open sack, and went out again.

  Grub was awake when he reached him, his eyelids quivering with the effort of holding them open. Moloquin knelt beside him and held the beer so that he could drink. While he did this, bracing Grub on his hand and his knee, Harus Kum stormed into the house.

  “Brat!” He rushed up to Moloquin and knocked the pot out of his hand. He held the whip, and he lashed Moloquin across the head with it, still coiled in his hand, the butt striking the boy’s forehead hard enough to gash the skin.

  “Stay out of my stores, brat—now get up, and leave him, and go to work.”

  Moloquin squatted there beside Grub; he raised his face, the blood running down either side of his nose.

  “He has to be watched over. If he is cared for, maybe he will not die.”

  “I don’t care about him! Get to work.”

  “I care about him,” Moloquin said.

  Harus Kum flung the whip down, and from his belt drew his knife with its short, tapering blade. “Then I shall get rid of him.”

  Grub whined, and put out his hand to Moloquin. Moloquin caught hold of his wrist and held him fast.

  “If you kill him you must kill me too.”

  Harus Kum fingered the blade. “Perhaps that would be wise, ridding myself at once of a thief and a shirker.”

  “Moloquin,” Grub whispered, clinging to his friend’s hand.

  Moloquin said, “Kill us if you want, Harus Kum, we cannot stop you, but if you do not kill us, I shall work for you, as hard as I can.”

  “Are you making a bargain with me, boy? A slave, making bargains with his master?”

  The word he used was in his own language; Moloquin did not understand it. He repeated it awkwardly. “Bargain.”

  Harus Kum kicked at him; when Moloquin shrank away, he kicked at Grub. “Why should I make trouble for myself, killing such as you? Let the fever kill you.” He put the knife away in his belt. “But I am the master here!”

  “Yes,” Moloquin said, his breath suddenly short; he realized that Harus Kum was relenting.

  “Say it.”

  “You are the master.”

  “Again.”

  “You are the master.”

  “Remember it.” Harus Kum went away, strutting.

  Moloquin wiped his bloody face. He had expected to die; he had thought himself ready to die rather than stay here in this strange place. Now, with his life restored, he tingled all over, the blood jumping in his veins, his skin shivering at the touch of the air, and he knew he would do anything to stay alive.

  He looked down at Grub, lying beside him.

  “You saved me,” Grub whispered.

  “No,” Moloquin said. “Harus Kum saved you.”

  He wondered why Harus Kum had not killed them; surely he had meant to. Some spirit had influenced him, some power. The strange word somehow had invoked it. He no longer remembered the word; all he remembered was promising the trader that he would work if he lived.

  It was not to Harus Kum he owed the work. It was to the spirit that had saved him. He bent down where he was, his hands on the floor, his face almost to the floor, and gave it thanks.

  He lay beside Grub and slept; when he woke, the other men had all gone out. The two women were busy around the house, sweeping and cleaning. The young one sang in a sweet, high-pitched voice. Moloquin lay still, his head pillowed on his arm, and listened. His face hurt.

  The women worked up to his end of the room; at the bench against the wall by his feet, the young one dipped beer from a big bowl into a small one. Then Harus Kum came in.

  The women shrank away from him, the older one withdrawing into the shadows of the far wall. The tall man ignored them, going here and there around the place, looking for something. Whatever he sought he could not find, and he flung down what he did find with a run of harsh words. Then he tramped into the back of the room, near Moloquin and Grub, and took a pot of the beer from the bowl beside the younger woman and drank it down, as she cowered away from him, her head lowered.

  In a loud yet mild voice he said something to her that Moloquin did not understand entirely—that nothing he did today was going as he wished—and poked her in the side. She gave a frightened titter, as if he had made a joke. He caught her
around the waist and pulled her against him.

  “No,” she said. “No, please—not here—”

  Harus Kum smacked her on the cheek. “Turn around.”

  “He is awake,” the girl said, looking at Moloquin.

  “Keep still.” Harus Kum turned her around, her back to him, and with one hand on her back he bent her forward over the bench. She held the edge of the bench with her hands, her hair shielding her face, but Moloquin could see that she clenched her teeth. Harus Kum pulled up her heavy garments until her naked buttocks showed. Moloquin held his breath, watching. Harus Kum pulled open his clothes and took out his penis, and bending his knees slightly, he thrust it hard into the girl’s body.

  She stiffened, but she made no resistance, while the man humped and groaned over her; her head bobbed up and down with each thrust. Moloquin chewed his lips. He had never seen a man treat a woman with so little respect. It filled him with a physical excitement so powerful that his stomach churned and his guts knotted up and his own penis hardened like a staff. Even more thrilling was her submissiveness. His muscles twitched. He wanted to run over there, tear Harus Kum away from her and take her himself, pump his power into her flesh.

  They parted, drawing away, their clothes slipping down over their nakedness. Harus Kum patted her on the backside and went away, but the girl stayed there a moment, bent over the tub, her head down. When she turned, her look went first to Moloquin.

  She saw him watching, and her cheeks turned ruddy. She lowered her head until her hair veiled her, and she went away.

  Moloquin rolled over, facing Grub and the wall, and put his hand on his male part. His hand wasn’t good enough. His mind would not give up the image of her buttocks, like half-moons, with the hard penis thrusting between them.

  She had not wanted him but Harus Kum had taken her anyway. Half of Moloquin recoiled from that. Half of him rejoiced.

  He lay there a while, listening to the women move around the room, bringing in wood for the fire, hauling water, and sweeping. The girl did not sing again. Even with his eyes shut he could make out the heavier steps of Harus Kum when the master came in again, looking for whatever it was he had come to find. At last the door shut on him, and the heavy feet sounded no more inside the house. Moloquin got up.

  He went to the hearth, a raised round of stones in the center of the house; the cask of beer was there, with a pot to dip it up, and on the warm stones a little pot sat, full of grain soaking in water. The individual kernels were swelling and some had already burst, forming a thick milky pudding, and his mouth watered to see it. Harus Kum would be angry if he took it. He considered that a moment, considered also that his face hurt, and at last he sat down on the edge of the hearth and stirred up the pudding and ate it, even the hard kernels that hadn’t burst open yet.

  The girl came by him to dip up some beer and saw what he was doing, and she said something in her own tongue; she frowned at him and shook her head. Above the downturned mouth her eyes were sad. He thought, She cannot say no to him. At that, he determined to do as he pleased, no matter what Harus Kum did to him.

  He went back to Grub again, felt of his face, and shifted the covers around. Grub was sleeping well, his skin cool, his breathing deep and even. He was getting well. Moloquin began to pull the rags of the blanket straighter, and the girl came over and knelt down beside him. By motions of her hands she told him to lift Grub up, and when he did so, she took the rags and shook them and laid them down again, spreading them out over the floor with her hands. Moloquin laid his friend down on the new made bed and covered him.

  The girl rose, turning to go. “Wait,” Moloquin said. He caught her by the wrist and held her, stood up to face her, his lust rising again. She tried to push his hand away. A low whine escaped her; she lifted her face toward him, her eyes bright, her teeth in her lower lip.

  He could do it to her—what Harus Kum had done. She would not stop him. The desperation shining in her eyes stopped him. Like him, she was at Harus Kum’s mercy, and if she had not the will to fight, yet he would not be Harus Kum to her. He let her go.

  She backed away, safe out of his reach, and they stared at each other a while. At last they lowered their gaze. Moloquin turned back to Grub, and the girl went away into the house. In a moment, she began to sing again, but her voice was lower than before, and the song was sad. Moloquin lay down to sleep.

  Moloquin’s face healed, leaving a long red scar, which Harus Kum used as a reminder to keep close watch on him. He expected more rebellion from him, especially when the little boy got well, but to his surprise Moloquin went willingly to his work. The little boy complained and shirked, and Moloquin got furious with him and shouted him to his labors; the other men hung back but Moloquin went at every task Harus Kum gave him as if he had some hidden purpose of his own.

  He ate too much. He learned too fast—before the moon was full again, he could talk to the other men in their language, although they said little to him, and he said little to them. Between him and the other slaves there seemed a half-buried enmity. Harus Kum expected some fighting between them, and even looked forward to it—there was little other entertainment, on those few days when the summer rains kept them all indoors. On those days he watched eagerly as Moloquin, going here or there, went close by Tor and got a nasty warning snarl, and once or twice he even called out some encouragement to one or the other of them, hoping to see some action. Moloquin fought no one. Tor blustered and yelled, his pride affronted, the pride of a slave with nothing of his own except the space around him, and his authority with the other slaves. Moloquin went where he would and did as he pleased.

  Harus Kum wanted to break him; he knew there could be only one master and all the others must be slaves, or the master was no master at all. So he gave Moloquin more work than the others, sent him into the hollows of the stream banks to hammer out the deeper ores, ordered him here and there on errands. Moloquin did it all. Harus Kum came to rely on him to do what the other slaves could not. He began to need Moloquin.

  One day, while the slaves sat listless in the blazing summer sun, their noon meal devoured, their beer gone, and waited for the master to whip them back to work, Harus Kum saw Moloquin wading in the stream. Before he could shout orders, the boy came to him, holding out his hand.

  “See these—look.”

  In the cup of his hand he held several pebbles from the streambed. Harus Kum frowned down at them, impatient, unwilling to be lured into any lengthy discussions, but he saw that Moloquin had not chosen the rocks at random but had gone out and found interesting things. He held the boy’s hand into the sunlight, to examine his finds.

  “Hunh. This—” he picked out a little green-blue pebble. “This is a sort of ore, if we could find enough of it, we would have much more work to do. This—”

  His forefinger rolled over a little bit of white stone. “This is only quartz. I crush this and mix it with copper and soda to make those blue beads your People love so well.”

  “But look.” Moloquin turned it, and showed him a thin line of some other stuff through it. “What is that?”

  So they sat down together on the gravel bed of the stream and talked over a handful of rocks. When Harus Kum at last returned to his senses, he saw that the other slaves were still lounging on the grass, and the sun was halfway down the sky. Moloquin had seduced him into an afternoon’s laziness. He roared. He got out his whip and lashed around him, and they all went back to work.

  Thereafter, Moloquin brought him new pebbles nearly every day. Harus Kum struggled to remain uninterested, but he loved rocks, he loved scrabbling around in streambeds for chunks of ores and bits of quartz. More even than that, he loved showing off his knowledge, and when Moloquin sat at his feet and drank in every word he said, he could not stay aloof.

  Moloquin never stopped working. As long as they were safely away from Harus Kum, and given whole days to spend in this soft little
inland valley, Grub felt no inclination to work at all. He did everything slowly, and sat down often, smiling around him at the trees and open meadows that were so much like his old home, all ringing with the strokes of Moloquin’s axe.

  He did not call himself Grub any more, but Hems, the name the other slaves had given him, a name in the language of Harus Kum’s people. With the other slaves he could talk freely now, having learned a good deal of their words, and even when he was alone with Moloquin, he spoke that other language.

  Still, the sight of the meadow filled him with a longing for his old home, and when he spoke now, it was in the old speech.

  “Moloquin, why do you work so hard? Remember when we were in Ladon’s Village, how we used to do nothing but play all day long?”

  Behind him the rhythmic thud of the axe broke for a moment. “Grub,” Moloquin said, “you have no memory.”

  “Don’t call me Grub, please, Moloquin, I am Hems now.”

  A grunt was his answer. The strokes of the axe picked up again, heavy, booming blows, duller than the sharp crack of a hammer against stone. Grub—Hems—turned to watch. Moloquin was hewing down an oak; the tree stood at the very edge of the meadow, a gaunt grey skeleton in the midst of the lush green summery foliage. Something had eaten all the bark off the trunk from the ground up to about the height of Moloquin’s shoulder, and that had killed the tree. Moloquin was hewing it down in the middle of the band of exposed wood.

  Hems got up, stretched, and walked away across the flat floor of the narrow little valley in which they were camped. Their campsite was behind him, in a little cave at the bottom of the steep hill that marked the far margin of the valley. The stream curled away from him into the sunlight, chuckling over the stones of its bed.