Pillar of the Sky

by Cecelia Holland

  “Help me. Help me. Don’t leave me. Help me, Mother.”

  His words did not rise unheard into the air. He knew that they heard him, and so he spoke in a rush of voice, asking them for help, telling them where he had been, and what Ladon had done to him, and why he had spoken as he had at the Turnings-of-the-Year. They had required it of him. He had felt some other being speak through him, when he defied Ladon. It had not been Moloquin’s own doing, but he had been the tool of some other, and now he called to the other to help him.

  The people who had followed Moloquin from the Turnings-of-the-Year watched him now from the bank of the Pillar of the Sky. Some of them had never been there before. Others were afraid of the place and picked grass to make charms against its power. The two children had fallen asleep in the shelter of their mother’s body as she sat on the bank; an older woman drew closer and slid her arm around them, to share the warmth of her body.

  Behind Shateel someone said, “What is he doing?”

  Shateel hugged her arms together. She wished she had brought a blanket, now that the sun was gone down.

  In the little silence after the question nobody said much, or even moved. Then Brant, oldest of them, shifted his feet and raised his head and looked around.

  “He is speaking with the Old Ones. Now, listen to me: if any of you would go back, you must do it at once, because we shall make a camp, and whosoever sleeps in this camp tonight shall be Moloquin’s forever.”

  Shateel did not like that; she was no man’s, not now. But she was cold. She went off with the other women to find wood to make a fire. She had not been friends with either of the women before, but now they all kept close together and spoke like sisters to one another.

  “What shall we eat?”

  “I have some grain,” said Wahela, the young mother. “I was grinding meal when the call came to me, and I took it all up. It is there in my basket.”

  She pointed behind them, up to where the embankment crowned the long slow slope. There the rest of their new people were gathered in the deepening twilight.

  “There is no wood here,” Shateel said. “We should go on, that way—” she pointed away to the east, where the forest began.

  “We shall wait until the chief—until Moloquin tells us to go.”

  “Come this way,” said the older woman, whose name was Taella. Her long hair was streaked with grey, and she had it in long braids that hung down over her shoulders. When she pointed, the braid slid over her arm. “There is a little stream over there, and I know there is brush and a few trees by it.”

  The three women set off together. The stars were coming out, but the wind that climbed the slope to meet them was damp and warm, and Shateel guessed that rain was coming. She thought of the warmth of her own hearth, the shelter of her longhouse, and thought, What a fool I am. Why did I come here?

  “Why did you come?” she asked Wahela, walking on her left.

  The other woman hugged her arms around herself as she walked. Her eyes searched the land around them for wood. “I don’t know. I heard Moloquin’s voice, and something told me to go with him, so I did.”

  She laughed at that, gay as a child.

  Dissatisfied, Shateel turned from this explanation and spoke to Taella. “Why did you come?”

  Taella brushed back her thick braids. She walked on several steps before she spoke. At last her voice came, heavier than Wahela’s.

  “Ladon is unlucky. Many things have happened since Karelia died, all of them unlucky for Ladon, and not the least of it is that Moloquin came back. That is a sign, somehow, that he came back. Whatever luck there is, it goes with him.”

  “You think—”

  “I think nothing,” said Taella sharply. “It is the place of the chief to make decisions and do the thinking. There is the stream.”

  Ahead of them the land buckled into a deep crease, where a little water ran, no deeper than a finger’s breadth. All around out, protected from the wind, grew brush and stunted trees. The women went into these thickets and collected dry twigs to start the fire and looked for bigger branches to keep it going. When they had all they could forage, they piled it up on the dry slope and Taella shook her head.

  “Not enough.”

  They left their gatherings where they had piled them and went on, walking eastward. Shateel was tired, her legs sore from long walking. She was too tired to think much. Suddenly she had the feeling of floating along through the air, her legs aimlessly milling, while around her the wind was full of voices. She could not make out the words, but the voices comforted her. She knew she was cared for. She followed Taella over the crest of another low hill.

  “There!”

  Ahead of them, off to the east a little, was a tall old elm tree, all alone on the open plain. The three women hurried toward it; as they approached it, a host of small birds fluttered like a gust of wind out of the branches. Out of the company of other trees, the elm was dying; many of the higher branches rose up naked and skinned of their bark among the scattered leaves of the summer’s growth. There was dry wood all over the ground around it. They gathered it all up, more than they could carry, and then in a little train they carried it: two of the women hauled the wood between them while the third rested. In this way, bearing more weight than they were able, they made their way back to the Pillar of the Sky.

  Moloquin woke up in the dawn. He had slept all night in the shelter of the North Watcher. As soon as he woke he was stabbed with a sense of guilt. He got to his feet and looked around him.

  Inside the embankment the grass stirred in the wind; the fat black crows lumbered around at the far end, and one flew up to sit on top of a stone and watch him. The first drops of rain touched his face and his hands, borne along on the breast of the wind like a scattering of seeds. He saw no sign of the people who had followed him from Ladon’s camp.

  He was relieved at that. He hoped they had all gone back to the People.

  Picking up his axe, he put it into his belt and walked across the circle, going between two slowly falling stones, and climbed the bank. There they were, huddled together on the lee slope, and his heart sank to see them, unsheltered and unfed, waiting for him to do something.

  Yet as he stood there watching them, he saw that the women were building a fire. Already the bright flames crackled in the midst of a heap of tinder, and another pile of wood waited beside it. He watched a while longer, seeing how they had made a camp here, spread out their few blankets and put their baskets around, rolled the high grass back into a little fence; somehow they had gotten some food, and were sharing it among them; he saw how the children had crept into the laps of the men for warmth and shelter from the wind, and how the men protected them with arms and curved backs, and his spirit bounded upward like the flames. He was not alone in this. The women would make their homes, whether under his leadership or Ladon’s or Rulon’s or any man’s; they would lay out their hearths wherever they were. He could depend on the women. He went down among them to the warmth of the fire.

  The rain fell all day long. Moloquin led his People away to the east, toward the forest.

  When they came to the edge of the trees, his People faltered, and wanted to go back; they were afraid of the forest. Moloquin went on ahead of them, thinking they would follow him, but when he looked back, they were still standing in the open, in the late sunlight, watching him leave them. He broke into a run into the forest.

  He had never understood why the People were so frightened of the woods. His baby-memories were of climbing trees and stealing eggs from the nests of birds. Now he ran through the forest, shouting and laughing, jumping over the brambles and stroking the great trees as he passed. His steps drew him even deeper into the woods. The oaks towered up over him, enormous placid beings, their branches chuckling and rasping in the light wind. Walking along at their feet, he felt safe again.

  His People wait
ed for him at the edge of the forest. His People would not come after him into his home.

  Disconsolate and angry, he roamed through the woods for a while, thinking that he would leave them where they were. If they had no heart for it, let them go back to Ladon. But he could not draw his mind from them; he knew they were hungry, and they had left their homes for his sake, because of words he had spoken. So he went here and there, gathering nuts and berries, catching a turtle and a few lizards and a snake, and carried them back through the woods in a bowl of bark.

  When he came out of the forest, they were still there. They had made another camp and sat huddled around it. When he appeared, they greeted him with dark looks, but he went in among them and spread out the tidbits he had found, and their faces opened with delight and gratitude. They cooked the turtle in its shell, and skinned the lizards and snakes; the children ate the berries, smearing their faces red.

  He said, “You must not be afraid of the forest. Until we can plant, there is more to eat in the woods than on the plain, and the trees will shelter us.”

  “They are full of demons,” said one of the two strange men who had followed him from the Gathering. “I can hear them talking even from here.”

  Even as he spoke, the wind rose, bringing to their ears the murmurs and cries of the forest. Moloquin said, “What is your name?”

  “Bohodon, of the Salmon Leap Society.”

  “There are no societies here,” Moloquin said. He looked at Brant, silent on the far side of the fire, and turned to Bohodon again. “What is your lore?”

  Bohodon was a short, square-set young man with the beginnings of a scruffy black beard. His eyes were full of mistrust. He did not answer Moloquin’s question until the stirrings and mutterings of the other People, and their harsh looks at him, forced him to open his mouth.

  “I do not have much of the lore. I learned a little of stonecraft. I—”

  His dark mistrustful look changed; suddenly he seemed much younger, a mere boy, and he dropped his gaze.

  “I did not like it. That was why I left. I did not belong in the Red Salmon.”

  Brant said, mildly, “What of your mask?”

  “I cut no mask,” the youth muttered, and raised his face again, red to the ears. “I—I—I failed. The tree refused me. I could not cut on it. My tools broke.”

  Moloquin kept silent; he thought, All who could not do with Ladon and the other chiefs have come to me. All the failures. He turned away from Bohodon.

  The third of the men among his new followers was watching him expectantly. Moloquin said, “Who are you?”

  “My name is Kayon.”

  This was a youth of Bohodon’s age, with rough brown hair. Moloquin said, “Did you belong to a society?”

  “None would accept me.”

  Moloquin stared at him a moment, striving with his temper. He had called these people; he deserved what came to him. Again his gaze slipped sideways, toward Brant. Among Ladon’s People, he knew, Brant was considered a dull fool, and yet Moloquin knew differently.

  His attention shifted to all the men. There was Hems, who was no oak tree among men, but he did well enough. Maybe these other two would prove different from their first impressions. But he had no faith in that; they looked like lumps of earth to him. He sighed.

  “I mean to go into the forest. I grew up there, and I know of a place—a good way from here, two days’ walk with the children—where we will find a good place to live. There is water, wood, food, a place to plant. I am going there. Any who wishes may follow me.”

  Bohodon looked over his shoulder into the forest; Kayon drew his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. The old woman Taella leaned forward to look into Kayon’s face.

  “Do not be a silly boy. Falter, and you will fail again. Take heart, go forward, and perhaps you will find your way in life.” She turned toward Moloquin. “I will go with you. I am only an old woman, but I have two hands to help and two feet to carry me and lore enough to make a new village.”

  Beside her, the two young women nodded together. “We shall go also.”

  The two little children sat nearest the fire, and the little boy, whose face was all sticky with the juice of the berries, said, “I shall go too, Moloquin.”

  Moloquin laughed. “Well, then I am happily followed.” He glanced again at Bohodon and Kayon, thinking, If these two should give up, none will think it anything but the course of their lives, and he shrugged, as if some burden lightened on his shoulders. He got up, and with the help of the others he set some branches into the earth, to make a sort of shelter. There they slept the night, and in the morning they went on, into the forest.

  They walked in a long line, Moloquin first, going a little way ahead to find the trail. He tried at first to mark the path with his axe, but its work against Ladon had destroyed its power, and instead he used bent twigs and small rocks. The People came willingly enough where he led them.

  As he walked, he found things for them to eat—some lily bulbs, a few hazelnuts—and left them on the path for them who came after. They were travelling through stands of pine, drying marshes, and occasional patches of oak where the ground was crunchy with acorn mast. The rain was still coming down, and made a sort of music in the branches of the trees. He could hear the People exclaiming now and then, when they saw or heard something that alarmed them, but as the day wore on, their fears lessened, and they paid less attention to the quiverings and outcries of the forest. They learned quickly to recognize the food that Moloquin found, and to forage for themselves as they walked along. The children ran ahead at first, full of vigor, but in the afternoon they tired and the men took turns in carrying them on their backs.

  In the evening, they stopped in a grove of old trees and made a shelter of branches and brush, and there they slept the night. Their makeshift dwelling did not keep the rain out, and by the coming of the sun they were all wet, downcast and very hungry, and there was no food. The children cried for food but there was nothing to give them. Moloquin led them off again, on through the woods, and they followed after, gnawing on sticks now, scrambling uselessly after squirrels, overturning logs for the grubs and snails. The rain dripped down steadily; they trudged dispirited through the mud and the brambles after Moloquin, deeper into the forest.

  In the late morning they found a nut tree and the women gathered nuts in Wahela’s basket. Shateel piled them up also in a tuck of her skirt. When they set off again, she ate as she walked, straining her legs to keep up with Moloquin.

  She tried not to think about her home, her mother, the husband she had left, or her garden in Ladon’s Village. The garden especially hurt her to remember, the tender green, the opening buds, which now the deer alone would eat, while her belly cramped and the children whined from hunger.

  Did Moloquin know where he was going? Ahead of her was his straight, bare back, deeply grooved down the spine, leading her away from everything she had ever known. The forest oppressed her. Pressed thick and close around her, the trees obstructed her view; how could they find anything, if they could not see far? Once, pausing to drink at a little stream, she made a mark on a stone, pointing the way back the way they had come, in case she had to find her way home again by herself.

  In the late afternoon they climbed up a steep slope and around through a stand of pines, and walking down an old deer trail they came into a ghost forest.

  At the sight of the dead trees, white and gaunt in the midst of the exuberant summer foliage, all the women wailed. The grove covered the whole foot of the hillside; the grass and brush had grown up high as Shateel’s waist in the sunlight. As they reached the edge of this meadow two red deer bounded away toward the living forest, crashing through the undergrowth.

  The men chased them, shouting. Moloquin did not. Moloquin went into the grove of dead trees, went from one tree to the next, putting his hands on them, as if he knew t
hem.

  Shateel drifted nearer to him, wondering what he was doing. He was a strange man and she was a little afraid of him, certainly unwilling to talk to him, and now he was behaving very strangely, pawing the trees, leaning against them, and now, suddenly, giving off a yell that raised the hair on the back of her neck.

  He ran up through the grove again, back toward his People, and now he brandished something at arm’s length over his head. “I found it! She left it here—it was here all the time—”

  Shateel looked at the two women beside her and found them looking at her, wary of this madman. He ran into their midst and held out his hands. He held a stone axehead, crudely made. Shateel had seen axes as beautiful as flowers, the work of masters of stonecraft; whoever had made this axe had known very little of the work. Moloquin raised it to his lips suddenly and kissed it.

  “The hut is here somewhere,” he said, his voice trembling with intensity, and he whirled and ran off, down the slope, in among the dead trees.

  Taella murmured, “This is very strange.”

  “He is mad,” Shateel said. “Why did we come? He is mad, we shall all die here—”

  Suddenly she felt herself suffocating in the forest, the dense growth all around her smothering her, stopping up the breath in her throat. Taella struck her firmly on the arm.

  “Keep your wits, girl. This is not like other villages, no one here will take up your burdens if you let them fall.” Throwing back her long grey braids, she started away down the slope after Moloquin.

  Shateel struggled for breath. The others were passing her, going in a ragged file after their leader. She tamed herself. She had come along, after all, through her own choice; she had no one to blame but herself if things went ill for her. Abruptly she took some oblique pleasure from that, some reassurance. She followed the others down toward the low ground.