Pillar of the Sky

by Cecelia Holland

  “I—”

  She gawked at him, her face drawn long with new lines, and he saw the uneven color of her face and thought, How ugly she is, and he pushed at her impatiently with his foot. “Get up, Ap Min, you sluggard, get up.”

  She got up, all in a rush of energy, lighter than he would have supposed, but she did not do as he bade her. She ran forth toward the middle of the room, and when he shouted to her she put her hands over her ears. He went after her. There in the middle of the room, where all the men sat, she turned once around in a circle and dashed out the door.

  “Ap Min!” Harus Kum roared. He resolved to beat her until she lost the baby; that would teach her to obey him. Long-striding, he plunged through the room after her, out the door into the yard.

  The rain had ceased, although the earth and the sky still seemed soaked through; water dripped from all the eaves of the house. Ap Min was nowhere to be seen, but from around the corner came the steady thud and crack of an axe on wood, and Harus Kum went toward it.

  In the lee of the house, where the stockade wall came close to it, Moloquin was cutting wood for the fire. At his feet Ap Min groveled.

  Moloquin ignored her. He swung the axe in great, full strokes, throwing wood chips in showers high as his head. Harus Kum went toward his girl-slave, his hand out to snatch her away.

  “No,” she said. She clutched Moloquin’s leg. “No. Help me. No. Please. Help me.”

  Moloquin stopped in his work. He faced Harus Kum, and the look on his face said he had no taste for this. He wiped the hair out of his eyes. Ap Min had her arms wrapped around his leg.

  “What is this?” Moloquin asked.

  “You can see for yourself,” said Harus Kum. “She is heavy with child. She will be of no use to me when she is great or with a baby at the breast. I have a potion, it will get rid of the baby, everything will be as it should be.”

  He reached down to seize her, and she clung tighter to Moloquin and turned her face away. Moloquin did not move; he stared at Harus Kum, his black brows drawn down into a frown.

  He said, “I have seen women working in their gardens until their moment comes on them, and they lie down and bear the baby, and get up again and take the hoe up and go back to work. I see no reason why she might not go on as she is.”

  As he spoke, he swung the axe down, resting the head beside his foot and leaning on the handle, and by coincidence, or some savage art, he had thereby made a sort of fence between Harus Kum and the cowering girl. The master roared.

  “What is this, Moloquin? Do you suppose yourself the ruler here?”

  Moloquin said nothing, but he did not give up the girl at his feet. Harus Kum stooped and took a chunk of wood and made as if to throw it at her.

  “She is mine! You are all mine—you are my slaves, Moloquin— mine!”

  “The child is yours, too,” Moloquin said.

  “What!”

  “The child is yours! You take her whenever you wish—she never asks to lie under you, does she? And then when your pleasure of her bears some fruit, you would have her suffer for your doing.”

  “Moloquin,” Harus Kum cried. “She is only a woman, and a slave at that. Give her to me.”

  Suddenly Ap Min herself took action. As the two men stared at each other, she sprang forward, and with a swipe of her hand she knocked the cup from Harus Kum’s grasp, and the potion splashed to the ground.

  Harus Kum struck at her with his foot. She scrambled away; ungainly, she ran off toward the house, leaving the two men alone.

  Harus Kum grunted. “I shall mix another. I shall have my way, Moloquin. She is only a woman.” Turning, he marched off after Ap Min.

  Only a woman, Moloquin thought, and laughed.

  He stared after Harus Kum; the strong smell of mint reached his nose. As weak and stupid and silly as Ap Min was, at one blow she had struck down all Harus Kum’s designs; she was only a woman, but Harus Kum was only a man.

  There was more to it than that. Moloquin turned back to the work of chopping the wood, but his thoughts winnowed through what had just happened here, and he grounded the axe again and leaned on it, his gaze going once more toward the big house.

  Only a woman. Harus Kum rejoiced in the forge, in the power of the forge; yet he saw no value in the forge of her belly. Making great of his own power, he made nothing of hers. Yet what was his creature, compared to hers? Did his things of bronze breathe and think and run?

  Now his mind leapt into the center of it; he saw suddenly that all this art of Harus Kum’s was only an imitation of the real power, the only true power, which was to pass life on from soul to soul.

  All morning, as he went about the small necessary tasks of the morning, he had been dreaming of the axe in the forge, the bronze glowing and ready in the forge, his hands longing to take hold of the hammer. Now that passion shrank in him. He saw himself at that work, not an omnipotent creator drawing forth being from nothing, but the same little boy who had sat on the ground in the longhouse, squeezing the clay through his fingers.

  Yet he had some power in him, vigorous as any woman’s, some passion that longed for a challenge great enough to prove itself. He thought, for the first time in a long while, and with a new and unquenchable lust, of the stones of the Pillar of the Sky.

  In the afternoon he went into the forge, and while he waited for Harus Kum, he drew out the axe from the bucket of water where it had rested through the night, laid it on the anvil, and stared at it. With his forefinger he traced the wide smooth curve of the blade; at the end, where the curve was still blunt and unforged, he traced the shape into the air.

  Harus Kum opened the door. “Come out. There is a storm coming, can you not sense it?”

  “Come work the bellows.” Moloquin reached for the hammer; a quick eager energy coursed through him.

  “I will not,” said Harus Kum. “I have seen lightning strike a forge, I helped to draw out the bodies, what was left of them.”

  “Then I shall do it alone,” Moloquin said, and he went to the bellows and pumped them until their blast made the hot coals roar.

  Without Harus Kum to help him, the work was slower. Before he had the bronze hot enough to work, the rain began to strike the thatch over his head, and the wind rose. All around him the air crackled, and his hair stood on end; he felt the attention of spirits on him, the whole great Overworld watching him, and when the first thunder rolled over the sky, he raised the hammer and beat on the bronze.

  He had never felt such a strength in his arm as he felt now. With each blow the bronze axe sang, and as it sang it yielded to him, giving itself to him, a pure and holy power. The thunder rolled across the sky, and like the flickerings of some celestial forge the lightning flashed. He stopped and worked the bellows again and brought the bronze back to its season, and when he took the hammer again in his hand, his mouth opened and he began to sing, in tune with the thunder and the hammer that shaped the bronze.

  He commanded the metal, and the metal obeyed him; the power of the heavens shaped it, the thunder and the lightning, forge of Heaven.

  The storm was passing. The unnatural strength was leaving him, and the song left his lips. There on the anvil the axehead lay, beautiful and potent, ruddy as the rising sun, curved like the sun, and impulsively, before it cooled, he scratched a little rayed sun in the center of the blade.

  Harus Kum came in. “You are lucky you are alive.”

  “I am finished,” Moloquin said. He dropped the axehead into the bucket and hung up the hammer, and he went out of the forge.

  Harus Kum waited until Moloquin left and leaned over the bucket; the axe hissed quietly in the bottom of the water. With the tongs and a piece of cloth he lifted it out.

  The king loved such things, and this was worthy of a king. The edge would never hew up a living tree, but it would cleave a skull, or lay open a chest, or take an arm off
, as long as the man who carried it had the strength to lift it up.

  He saw the crude little sun, and grunted, amused. His pupil had great skill, but he knew nothing of the craft of decoration. Harus Kum drew a larger sun with his finger on the flat of the blade. He would incise it and fill the cuts with wire, burnish the whole with a deer’s legbone, buff the bronze until the glow seemed to begin deep within the metal. Take it across the sea. Lay it at the feet of the king, and be welcomed home forever more.

  At that he could not but smile; he felt lighter, buoyant, half able to fly. He dropped the axe back into the bucket and went into the house.

  In the night Moloquin awakened. He lay there a moment and let the sounds of the night reach his ears: the wind in the thatch, the low hiss of the fire, the snores of the other sleepers, the scurryings of the mice who sneaked in under the darkness to steal food. He let his mind wake up. Putting out one hand, he shook Hems beside him.

  His friend woke with a grunt and a half-blurted question. In the dark Moloquin put one hand over Hems’ mouth and leaned over and whispered in his ear, and Hems was at once silent and ready.

  They put on such clothes as they had, and on stealthy feet they crossed the house toward the door. There Hems stayed, and Moloquin went off in another direction, around the edge of the room, stepping over the sleepers on the floor, until he came to the straw where Ap Min lay.

  He knelt down beside her and touched her hand and her face, and she too woke, going rigid and fearful at his touch.

  Leaning down, he spoke into her ear. She clutched his hand. For a long moment she made no answer. Then at last she whispered, “Yes,” and she too rose up from her bed, put on her only garment, and followed him through the darkened house.

  They opened the door and went out to the moonlight, pale and treacherous. Hems and Ap Min started toward the stockade gate, but Moloquin veered off and circled around to the back of the house.

  The forge was locked up, to keep the slaves out. Moloquin tried the door, and when it would not open, he went around to the back, to the window. A piece of hide covered it. With two blows of his hands at the corners of the frame, Moloquin knocked the window free, and he leaned in, stretching his arm in through the opening, in past the racks of tools, past the low bench where Harus Kum sat when he worked small objects, down to the bucket at the foot of the anvil. Then he drew forth the great axe, dripping and shining in the moonlight. He put it under his shirt, against his chest, cold as it was, cold and wet, and he went after his friends.

  The stockade gate was also locked, as usual, but with the edge of the axeblade Moloquin forced the latch. He and Hems pulled the gate open. With Ap Min between them, they went out, nor did they look back, but went on into the east, after the moon.

  Shateel went early in the morning to the river and took up the reeds she had left to soak there overnight. As she walked back to the village the sun was just rising and the air was thick with the new light and the competing shadows. She held the reeds out to one side, so that they would not drip on her, and when she came to the yard in the middle of the long- houses, she went at once to her place, where her mat was, and sat down with her work.

  The other women were just waking, just getting their children up, just beginning the day. Shateel knelt on her mat, her eyes downcast, and spread out the soaked reeds before her. With her fingernails she slit them into thin strips.

  Now the doors of the longhouses opened, and out came the other women, their families bustling around them, into the sun.

  They ignored her. After a year in the longhouses of Ladon’s people, she was still a stranger. She worked at the reeds, keeping her gaze ever contained to the space of her mat, while the others clattered and hurried around her. When she had the reeds split, she chose the longest, and set about twining them together to form the spines of her basket. One by one, the other women set themselves to their day’s tasks. Some of them got tools and baskets and water jugs, and went in a noisy herd up toward their gardens. Others sat down in a mass beside Shateel, and set to work with clay, or with reeds, or with their spinning, and with their tongues.

  “Look! She is still doing it wrong.”

  “That is how those other people do it.”

  “But she is one of us now, and should make her baskets in our way. It is the proper way. Our baskets are better than those of the other people.”

  “Perhaps she is too stupid to learn our way.”

  “Perhaps she is.”

  Then they laughed. Shateel paid no outward heed to them and went on twining the reeds together, making the bottom of the basket as her mother had taught her. She thought that the other women knew she was listening and spoke as they did to draw her into defending herself against them.

  She told herself it did not matter. Soon the Midsummer Gathering would begin, at the Turnings-of-the-Year, and there she would go to her mother and tell her that she wanted to come home again.

  She had gathered the reeds carefully, choosing only sound long pieces, and soaked them well and split them properly, and the basket was making up swiftly and well as she worked. She finished the flat, tight bottom of the basket, and curved the spines upward for the sides, and wound the straw in through them, giving each third strand a half-twist to keep it flat through the curve of the basket. As she worked, a song welled up into her throat, but she did not give it voice. Here they sang no songs she knew. All they sang here was the Song of the Sampo.

  Samp-po, sam-po,

  Li la li la li li la la

  Let what comes come

  Let what goes go

  Sam-po, sam-po

  All will come again with time

  Sam-po, sam-po

  All will go again with time

  La li la li la la la

  Although she strove against it, she loved the sampo song; its wisdom had kept her patience for her, kept her head bowed and her eyes downcast for her all this long year, when she had thought she could endure no more.

  She sat near the door to the longhouse, where the old women sat with the mill in their midst, and the younger women sat around them at their crafts. The gardens were all planted. Shateel had spent the whole spring at work in the soil her husband had given to her, when they brought her to this place. It was away up the slope, almost at the edge of the forest, where years before the trees had been girdled of their bark, and the year before she came they had been burned down. In this soil she worked until her back ached and her hands were ingrained with dirt; she turned the whole garden over, as well as she could, and put in seeds.

  This work she had loved, although she knew, as they all knew, that in its baby year the garden would give her very little for her work. If she had stayed with her own people when she married, she would have had a piece of earth familiar to her, but just as young, and the tools she had brought with her from her mother’s house were familiar to her, and the work was the same as she had done with her mother. With her baskets she had carried the water up from the river and watered the seeds, and she had even slept up there, stealing out of the longhouse after dark, and sleeping on the ground beside her garden, until the little green shoots pushed up through the soil and opened their leaves to the sun.

  Now there was less to do. She would go up there in the afternoon and pull the weeds, take more water to the baby plants, and perhaps work the ground beyond her garden, as if she meant to plant there in the next year. But next year she would work the land her mother worked.

  She folded the end of a straw down into the work and picked up another from her pile. The other women were gasping and sighing over a basket made by the fat woman Grela, whom they all believed was the best at making baskets. Shateel had seen many many better baskets among her own people; these people simply did not know what good baskets were. Unaccountably now her eyes were filling with tears.

  “Shateel,” said one of the women. “Here, girl, look.”
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  Unwillingly, she raised her head. They were all smiling at her, their eyes sharp and bright, probing at her. Waiting for a weakness, to bring her down. One held out Grela’s basket.

  “Here, girl, see?”

  “Yes,” she said, making no move to take the basket into her own hands. “It is very fine.”

  “Here, girl, take it! Take it and look closely. See how tight the work is?”

  “Yes,” she said, not taking the basket, and she lowered her head and put her gaze back on her own hands and worked.

  “See?” They murmured around her, their voices like the flutter of wings. “See? She does not care.”

  She cared. She loved her own home, her own people. She would go soon back to her own home, and let Ladon’s son find another wife.

  In the afternoon, Ladon’s son went up from the roundhouse toward the longhouse where his wife lived. He brought a fox fur as a present for her. As he went, strutting a little, the people who saw him called out to him, and he raised his hand in answer.

  Now that he was married everyone treated him very well. They still called him by his father’s name, but Ladon was so mighty a man that perhaps that was only to be expected. He had been accepted into the Bear Skull Society, the most important of all societies, and spent most of each day memorizing the lore and learning his place in the dances and making his mask. When the Midsummer Gathering began, Ladon’s son would dance with the men for the first time.

  He was making the eyes of his mask out of quartz. He was very proud of it.

  It was a long walk now from the roundhouse to the first of the longhouses. In the spring the women had moved all four of the longhouses closer to their gardens, the ground around the roundhouse being exhausted and choked with weeds. Paths wound through these abandoned gardens like braids, winding in and out, and the boys’ band hunted mice and picked berries there. The nettles were high, where the ground was damp, and where the ground was drier the spiny burdock and thistles made an impenetrable mass of spikes and thorns. Ladon’s son wondered why it was that nothing fit to eat would grow where the weeds grew so rampant.