Moloquin thought of Ladon’s roundhouse, of the great piles of food in his storerooms. He raised his eyes, looking up into the rafters over his head, where the supplies of his own People were stored. There seemed so little. Now the winter had begun; there would be nothing to eat save what they had gathered. If that wasn’t enough—
He thought, Ladon’s People have much. If we run out of food, we can steal more from them.
If they had to steal from Ladon’s People, then in truth they would still be Ladon’s People. Moloquin sank down, his chin on his hand, his elbow on his knee. Brant was dead; his dream of building the Pillar of the Sky seemed dead also. All his life had closed down around him to one matter: that he should have food enough for his People through the winter.
And after that, if they lived until summer, what then? They would struggle to pack away enough food for the next winter. It was changeless, grim, inexorable. He could strive for years, do all things right for years and years, yet in the end one mistake would wipe them all out. For the first time he saw that the Mill would eventually destroy him.
Now, suddenly, that seemed something to be grateful for—a promise of rest, of deliverance from life. If he could not make his dream come true at the Pillar of the Sky, all else seemed the poor leavings of someone else’s feast.
Late in the night a sound at the door brought him forth from sleep. He stood up, reaching for the bronze axe where it hung on the North Star post. In through the door came Bohodon, crouched down under the burden of a deer slung across his shoulders.
From behind Moloquin, Hems shouted, “Bohodon! Hi, hi, look what he has! Ap Min, wake up, we shall have fresh meat today.”
The others woke too, their voices bubbling up in a sudden froth of sleepy sound. Exhausted, beaming widely, Bohodon trudged heavily into the center of the roundhouse and let his burden slip from his back.
“Aaaah,” he said, straightening.
The others whooped. From all sides they rushed forth, and the little boy Laughter flung himself howling on the deer as if he himself must kill it, and the women cried out Bohodon’s name and the men grunted and humphed and went to Bohodon and slapped him on the back and admired his spear. Moloquin stood quietly by the tree North Star, but he smiled on Bohodon, who had come back after all, and brought meat with him.
Bohodon held out his spear for all to see; with many wide gestures and grimaces he showed them how he had struggled with the deer and killed it. He danced a few steps of the Dance of Hunting the Red Deer, and the men clapped their hands together to make a drumbeat, and the women sang to him in triumph.
Wahela and Taella skinned out the deer and removed the tender innards. The smell of blood filled up the roundhouse. Bohodon raised his spear high and lunged down at the deer with it, and all the men shouted; they surged around the close confines of the roundhouse, full of passion for the hunt.
At last Bohodon faced Moloquin, and their eyes met. The others quieted, holding their breath, their faces bright with expectation. Moloquin himself did not know what would happen next. His axe hung on the tree behind him; had Bohodon chosen, he could have driven his spear through Moloquin’s chest.
Bohodon came forward a few steps, and then abruptly he bent down and he laid his spear at Moloquin’s feet.
The People gave up a roar of delight. The men closed around Bohodon again, touching him, congratulating him, hoping for some of his luck; the women went to build a fire, to cook the deer’s lights.
Moloquin put his hands on Bohodon’s shoulders and smiled into his face, and the hunter went red and stammered something.
“You brought us fresh meat,” Moloquin said, in a low voice. “When the snow fell, and the earth was locked up against us, you brought us food to eat. Therefore we shall not call you Bohodon anymore, but Bahedyr, the Hero.” He put his arm around the man and embraced him.
“Bahedyr,” Hems cried, and shook his fist above his head. “Bahedyr!”
The newly named one whirled around. He caught up his spear and danced around the roundhouse; he danced with the swiftness and leaps of the deer, and crouching low he danced the stalking of the deer. The fire leapt high, lighting up the whole place, lighting the faces of the People. The stew cooking in the belly of the deer simmered and bubbled. Outside was snow and cold, but inside was warmth and food, fire and friendship, and Moloquin, for a while anyway, could put off his longings and his dreams.
In the deep of the winter, Ladon’s son came to Moloquin’s Village.
He came with two other men of Ladon’s People. They had gotten lost in the forest in their search for Moloquin, and had feared death, so when they finally found the tracks of their own kind in the snow, and followed them close enough to see the smoke of the fire, they were too relieved to maintain their dignity; they rushed forward into the village.
It was the middle of the day, and the sun was bright, hanging low in the sky, gilding the leafless tree branches. Moloquin’s People were out of the roundhouse, enjoying the sunshine and the warmth; they had cleared away the snow from around the roundhouse and made a fire. On the frozen surface of the stream, down a little way from the roundhouse, the children were playing with the ribs of a deer tied to their feet, skidding back and forth over the ice. Shateel and Wahela, roasting chestnuts over the fire, saw the newcomers first.
Shateel recognized her husband at once, and stood up. She cast a quick look around her for Moloquin, but he was off chopping wood. She raised her hand, and Ladon’s son and the others trudged up the little slope toward her. From inside the roundhouse, Taella called, “Who is there? Is someone coming?” and looked out.
Shateel put her hand on Wahela’s shoulder. “Go find Moloquin.”
Ladon’s son came ahead of the others to the fire. Seeing Shateel, he smiled and reached out his hands to her. He was a grown man now, tall and slender like a birch tree, with long soft muscles in his arms and shoulders, and hair like the dry grass that stuck up through the snow; his skin, which even when he was a boy had always resisted the sun, was now as pale as the snow.
He held out his hands, but Shateel would not take them. She said, “Moloquin is coming, you must talk to him, whatever it is you have come here to say.”
“Where is he?” said one of the other men, and she saw that it was Fergolin, the Bear Skull master, and she was amazed to see him, because he was gaunt as a stick.
Impulsively, she said, “Sit down and eat.” Stooping, she took the chestnuts out of the fire and gestured to them to eat.
They struggled to keep their pride, but she saw how they fell on these few kernels of food, and her heart sickened; she knew that famine had struck Ladon’s People. She went into the roundhouse, to find them more food. When she came out again, her hands full of nutcakes and dried deer meat, Moloquin was there.
He stood on the far side of the fire from Ladon’s son. He stood straight and tall, with the axe over his shoulder, and before him Ladon’s son seemed only a boy still.
He said, “What do you want to say to me?”
Ladon’s son was leaning over the fire, trying to warm himself. He said, “Opa-Moloquin-on, my father is dying.”
“I am not sorry to hear that,” said Moloquin.
Now Fergolin stood, bringing himself up to his full height, and recovering the proud bearing of a Bear Skull master. He spoke in a low voice, and he spoke of hunger.
“There is hardly enough food for each of us to have a handful every day,” he said. “The children cry without stopping, and their mothers are glad that they cry, for when they cease, it is from exhaustion and they die soon afterward. The men have no strength for dancing, and the spirits have crowded in on us; the longhouses are noisy with their murmurings; it is as much a village of the dead as of the living now.”
“How did this happen to you?” Shateel asked.
“The weather was bad,” said Fergolin. “And other things—I know
little of such matters, women’s matters—the fact is, I believe, that Ladon had given away all the stores, and so when this harvest failed, there was nothing to fall back on.”
“Go to Rulon’s People,” Moloquin said. “We have enough here to feed ourselves, but we are only a small village. Go to Rulon.”
“We have come to you,” said Fergolin, “because the headwomen have chosen you to be our chief, now that Ladon is dying.”
“Ah,” said Moloquin.
“The headwomen say that only you can make things right again—that this has come upon us because Ladon tried to overturn the order of such things. You are his sister’s son, and only you can save us.”
Moloquin looked at Ladon’s son. “What do you say to this?”
“They are right,” said Ladon’s son. “I will surely make no trouble for you. I could not bear it, to carry a whole People on my back.”
“We have chosen you,” said Fergolin. “Will you come to be our chief?”
All Moloquin’s People had drawn near enough to hear this, and they hushed, listening for his answer; Shateel saw in each of their faces what she felt herself: that they were near to losing Moloquin, and without him they were nothing. Moloquin frowned. He faced the newcomers for a long time, his expression blank as the ice of the streambed, and as cold.
At last he said, “You drove out my mother Ael, and she died. You let my mother Karelia die, although she warned you against Ladon. For these reasons you must suffer as you are. No, Fergolin, I shall not be your chief. Go back to Ladon’s People and tell them to go to Rulon.”
Fergolin bowed his head; Ladon’s son pressed his fingers to his face. Moloquin looked around him for Shateel, and put out his hand to her.
“Will you speak to this man?”
She said, “I have nothing to say to him.”
“What is that you are carrying?”
She held out her hands, full of food. “I thought to give this to them.”
“Do it.”
She went to the three men and put food into their hands, and saw with a sharp pang of sympathy how their hands were crooked and eaten with cold. Moloquin went into the roundhouse.
“How did you find us?” she asked.
Fergolin chewed the tough dried meat, swallowing the juices in his mouth. He said, “We noticed that Brant lay in the Pillar of the Sky, and so we knew you were not too far away—also, that you were still living, and still of the People, obeying the rituals. Then we came into the forest and searched.”
She said, “I wish you had been spared the search. There is no hope for you here.”
Ladon’s son watched her steadily. Fergolin said, “Our only hope is here. If the spirits have not already determined that we should all die, they will soften Moloquin to us, and he will save us. It is in his hands now.”
“That is a terrible burden to put on anyone,” said Shateel.
“It is in his hands,” Fergolin said again, and leaned closer to the fire.
Inside the roundhouse, Moloquin went to the tree North Star, and he took the bronze axe down from its peg, and he knelt before it. His mind was in a fury with itself, and his body shivered all over with the struggle within his heart.
He wanted to go to Ladon’s People, to enter into his destiny, but he could not bear to go to that village and hear the wail of babies and see people suffering and starving when he could do nothing. He thought, They must suffer for what they have done. Yet he longed so to go there, and to see Ladon, before he died, that it was as if a hand pushed at him.
As he thought this, it became clear to him why he was in such turmoil, and what he must do. He picked up his axe and pressed his forehead to the flat of the blade, then put the weapon in his belt and went outside again.
The messengers stood around the fire, warming themselves. One by one the others of Moloquin’s People had come closer to offer them something to eat—even the children responded to their suffering; Laughter brought them an acorn cake he had been given for his dinner, and the little girl crept nearer and offered up a handful of dead leaves to Fergolin.
The Bear Skull master took the leaves as if they were real food; he gathered the child into his arms and hugged her. Moloquin went forth, and Taella came to him, her face resolute.
“We have given up our day’s food for them—all but the children’s share.”
He nodded to her. “You are my People, I know the great hearts of my People.”
Fergolin looked up at him; he still held the little girl on his lap. Moloquin said, “I shall go with you, back to Ladon’s Village, to see him before he dies.”
Ladon’s son raised his head, his eyes wide. “He spoke of that.”
“Hah?”
“He said that he would not die without seeing you face to face.”
Moloquin nodded, recognizing again the power that drew him toward that deathbed. They had been bound together, he and Ladon, all his life; it was fit that they should close out Ladon’s life together. He said, “I shall get ready, we shall go soon.”
He went into the roundhouse; as he went past Shateel, he gave her such a look that she went after him into the dark warmth of the dwelling. Inside, he took a coat that Wahela had made for him out of squirrel hides, and he filled a pouch with food for the journey. Shateel watched him, alarmed.
She said, “Will you come back?”
He swung toward her, wide-eyed, and put his hand on her arm. “Of course. Are you worried, little goose? How could I leave my People for very long?”
“Yet you could have Ladon’s People, who are much greater than us.”
His hand still lay on her arm; he looked deeply into her face and he tried to smile but could not. After a moment, he said, low, “You are my People. I will never desert you. While I am gone, you must care for everyone. There is a lot of wood already cut, get the boy to haul it in. Keep them from fighting.”
“Why do you give this to me to do? Wahela was angry the last time, and would not obey me.”
His eyebrows rose in round arches. “Yet you did well enough. Don’t complain. Have you told Ladon’s son about your baby?”
“Surely he must be able to see for himself.”
Moloquin gave a little shake of his head. He cast his look around the roundhouse; finally his gaze returned to her.
“Take care of my People,” he said, and gripped her arm so hard it hurt her. Taking the bronze axe, he went out the door.
Ladon’s son had thought the journey through the forest to Moloquin’s Village was hard, but the way back was much worse—Moloquin set such a pace that the others were forever breaking into a trot to keep up with him, and he chose a route that led over hills and across stretches of frozen marsh. Ladon’s son slipped on the ice once and fell hard; when he rose, his back hurt.
He had always hated the forest. Even as a boy he had avoided the trees, loving the open grasslands, where he could see all around him for a long way. Now, plunging along in Moloquin’s tracks, he saw the dim winter-gaunted woods around him as a cage, a construction of demons. Against the pallor of the snowy ground, the trees rose in thin black bars, and wraiths of mist drifted through them, rags of mist clinging like haunted women to the lower branches and rising in plumes from the patches of standing water, edged in crackling bubbly ice. Nothing lived here, yet he felt himself constantly watched and constantly despised.
At night they stopped and built a fire and huddled around it; Fergolin and Muron covered themselves with their coats and fell asleep, looking no more than rotted logs there beside the fire. Ladon’s son shivered. His body was exhausted but his mind leapt and raced, frightened of the deathlike stillness of sleep. He watched Moloquin poke the fire with a stick.
In spite of his new beard and his magic axe, Moloquin was no different, he told himself several times, as if repetition would make it true: he was still a skinny black-haired boy
who said nothing. Still the outcast; still the Unwanted One. The irony of that name bore in on Ladon’s son like the cold winter wind sweeping through the trees. They wanted him now. Even Ladon wanted him now. Ladon’s son sank deeper into his coat, shivering, and his stomach growled for food.
“Here.” Moloquin broke a seed-cake in half and held it out to him.
“No,” said Ladon’s son, stoutly, although his mouth watered at the sight of it.
“Don’t be a fool. I will not carry you if you get too weak to walk. Eat.” Moloquin tossed the piece of cake into his enemy’s lap.
Ladon’s son took it with fingers that trembled; he nibbled at it at first, but hunger seized him and he stuffed it all into his mouth and chewed a few times and swallowed the whole cake, barely softened. Then it was gone. He licked the sweet taste from his fingers until all he could taste was salt.
Moloquin was watching him, his face expressionless. He said, “What happened to you? How did such a numerous village fall into such a situation?”
Ladon’s son licked his lips. He leaned toward the fire and put his hands out to it and laid his gaze on it, because he feared the scorn of Moloquin when he heard the truth.
“Ladon would not move the village. The women told him they needed it moved but he would not, because he would not do as they said, and because he was afraid that if he moved, then people would say he was afraid of you. I don’t think he really was afraid of you, but he was afraid of seeming so.”
Moloquin made a sound in his chest; Ladon’s son stole a glance at him and saw Moloquin looking away, a smile on his lips.
“So we stayed. But the crops would not grow well, they grew thin and weak and bore no fruit, and then, just before the harvest, there was a storm that flattened everything into the mud. When the women managed to harvest there were only a few baskets from each of the gardens.”
Pillar of the Sky Page 33
