Pillar of the Sky

by Cecelia Holland

  But from the crowd came another, a woman, huge and shapeless as a mountain: Joba, the headwoman of her kindred, the mother of Rulon.

  She said, “Is this how our village greets a chief of the People?”

  At her voice all other voices fell silent. She advanced until she stood beside Moloquin, but she gave him no look; she stood there looking into the roundhouse, and she called for her son, she called for Rulon.

  Now here Rulon came, stepping through the door into the sunlight.

  He was no older than Ladon’s son. His hair was oiled and braided and strung with painted feathers and his face was colored like a mask. Over his shoulders he wore a great black bearskin and he carried a club made of the root of a tree, studded with flint spikes. As he walked, he seemed tall as a young tree, and he teetered a little, swaying like a sapling in the wind; he walked on shoes with high soles, to make him bigger.

  He said, “Who comes to make noise in my yard? Ah, it is Ladon’s son, whom my sister spurned for a wild man out of the forest. And who is this you have brought with you?”

  He peered at Moloquin, blinking, as if he did not see very well.

  Moloquin said, “I am the wild man out of the forest. I have come to ask your help, Rulon.”

  From the crowd packed into the yard around them there went up a cry of scorn and anger, and Rulon straightened himself up, brandished his club, and bound his painted face into a mask of outrage. “Address me by my proper dignity, woods-child, or I shall drive you forth like a dog.”

  Moloquin looked around him again; beside him Joba stood with her chin up, her eyes directed straight forward, past her son, into the distance. Moloquin faced Rulon again.

  “Yes, Opa-Rulon-on. You are the chief of a strong, fat People, and have much in your storerooms. My People are starving. We need food, and we have come to you to ask your help.”

  At that Rulon flung back his head and laughed, and all the crowd laughed too.

  “Help! From me? For the People of Ladon, who lorded it over us for so long?”

  The crowd was laughing too. Ladon’s son hung his head, caught in the middle of this mockery, and wished he were far away.

  Moloquin stepped forward, his hands out. “We have babies dying. The old people are dying every day. We have no more food. Ladon himself is dead, and with him the evil is dead also. We ask you only for what you can spare. We will honor you forever for it. In the Overworld your name shall be a glory forever.”

  Rulon threw out his chest and swung his club back and forth, and around him his People hooted and jeered. Someone called, “Stone them!”

  Now Joba flung up her hands. “Stop,” she cried. “Stop!”

  Rulon came forward, stretching out his club before him. “It would be impious to help those whom the Overworld has condemned! Go, and endure your punishment, you have what you deserve.”

  “Ladon is dead,” said Moloquin. “It was Ladon who brought down the wrath of Heaven on his People.”

  “You are all suffering,” said Rulon. “Therefore you are all evil.”

  There was a yell of agreement from those packed into the yard behind Ladon’s son, and he sighed and his head drooped; he saw that Moloquin would get nothing from these people. He put out his hand, to draw Moloquin away, but Moloquin struck his hand down.

  “Rulon,” he said, in a rough voice, “be grateful you have something to give. Someday perhaps you will have nothing also.”

  “Rulon,” his mother cried, in a harsh voice, “will you damn us all? Give heed to him; he speaks with wisdom!”

  Rulon smirked at them both. His hair was braided with strands of dyed flax, red and yellow and green; around his neck he wore beads of shell that clinked when he moved. He said, “You are rude and stupid, Moloquin. You dare to threaten me, when you ought to be begging and cringing at my feet. Yet my mother has asked me to help you, and for the sake of the womb that bore me I shall let you know my generosity.”

  Moloquin said, “Rulon is great; we shall honor him above all others.”

  In his voice Ladon’s son, familiar with him now, heard a tight-gripped anger, and a deep suspicion.

  “Yes,” said Rulon smoothly. “You may take away from my stores all that you yourself can carry, Unwanted One. No man shall help you, and you must carry it all at once, and whatever you drop you must leave where it falls.”

  The People shouted, gratified by this; but Joba sat down where she was, and drew her shawl over her face.

  Ladon’s son said, “That will hardly give a mouthful to each of us.”

  “It is enough,” Rulon said, “to gain me some honor, and teach you not to come begging. Do you accept?”

  Moloquin stood still a moment, his back very straight. Unwillingly Ladon’s son remembered the sleek, well-fed faces of the people at Moloquin’s Forest Village. They had all they needed. Moloquin could turn and walk away from this insult, spurn Rulon, and go. Ladon’s son bit his lips, wondering how much a single man could carry: not much. Moloquin stood there, his head flung back, glaring at Rulon, until the other chief began to frown and raised his club again.

  “Take it, woods-child, or go.”

  “I will do it,” Moloquin said. “Show me what I may have.”

  Rulon’s face smoothed out, delighted, and he stepped back with a gesture. “Come.”

  Moloquin started forward, and Ladon’s son with him. Rulon put out his hand to stop him. “You stay. Only this great and mighty chief will carry what I choose to give him. Come, great and mighty chief.”

  He went in through the door, and Moloquin followed. Ladon’s son put his hand to his mouth, his gaze on the roundhouse door. His stomach churned. Almost against his will he thought that he and Moloquin at least would eat well this day. Behind him the crowd was stirring and shifting, and he glanced once over his shoulder and saw them ranging themselves along the way through the village, from the gate into the roundhouse yard out between the two longhouses. In their hands they had small stones and clods of dirt, and as he watched, they stooped to pick up more.

  Ladon’s son gritted his teeth. He knew what was about to happen.

  After some time Moloquin came out of the roundhouse, bent double under a great burden of baskets. Even the waiting mob gasped at the sight of him, half-buried under his load; it seemed impossible for a man to walk so weighted down, so bent over. Ladon’s son started forward, remembered he could not help, and stopped, his heart pounding.

  Moloquin started out through the gate in the fence, and there before him the People stood, packed tightly together on either side of the way through the village. When Moloquin stepped out between these two mobs, his foot slipped in the mud, and his whole great burden swayed and tipped. The people on either side raised handfuls of stones and dirt and let fly at him.

  Ladon’s son ran forward, his hands out, trying to deflect the hail of rocks. A piece of stone struck him in the face and a dirt clod hit his mouth so that there was mud all over his tongue and earth between his teeth. He staggered, bowed over, trying to shield Moloquin with his body, struggling blindly through the pelting rain of stones and dirt.

  He heard Moloquin gasp with pain, and twisting back he saw the chief’s footsteps slow and his knees bend, weakening. Yet Moloquin let nothing fall. Bent over with his back level to the ground, his arms spread wide to support the towering load, he trudged away through the village.

  Stones rattled off the baskets. Someone threw a stick that banged Moloquin behind the knee and nearly buckled his leg. Ladon’s son went before him, to shield him from some of it, but Rulon’s People merely waited until Moloquin was past them, and cast their stones at his back. Even so he kept on. He took each step deliberately and carefully, and when he reached the edge of the village, and the screaming mob and their stones were behind him, he had dropped nothing—not a root, not a bean—into the mud of Rulon’s Village.

  The hoo
ting and the stones were behind them now. In the high grass at the edge of the village, Moloquin let go his burdens and let them slip to the ground and straightened with a sigh. He said, “It is not enough.”

  Ladon’s son lifted one of the baskets; the weight startled him. “Enough for a while,” he said. The basket was full of unmilled grain, and he plunged in one hand and took out a handful and was about to eat it when he thought of Moloquin and raised his head.

  “Eat,” said Moloquin, who was squatting now, the baskets in a circle around him, and staring out across the meadow toward the High Hill, where the goats of Rulon’s People were grazing on the lower slopes.

  “Someone is coming,” said Ladon’s son.

  The other man twisted, looking over his shoulder. The village lay behind them, its edge marked in the low wall of debris and brush. From the village two women were walking, one several paces behind the other, carrying jars in their hands.

  After them came another, and behind her yet another. They walked out to where Moloquin sat in the midst of Rulon’s charity.

  “I am sorry,” said the first. “I threw no stones.” She set down her jar at Moloquin’s feet and went back again toward the village. One by one the others reached Moloquin, each with her token of food, and each the same words.

  “I am sorry. I threw nothing.”

  They left their little gifts and went back again, and Moloquin stared after them a long while.

  Ladon’s son picked up the first jar and sniffed eagerly at it. “Oh, delicious. Oh, my tongue, my belly.” It was meat, cooked with water and herbs, a rime of fat congealing on the surface as it cooled. He began to gobble it.

  Moloquin said, “Be careful you don’t make yourself sick.” He got slowly up to his feet and began to lift baskets to his shoulders. Ladon’s son could not stop pushing meat into his mouth, although his stomach already strained full. He watched Moloquin carry the baskets away toward the river; now, when he could choose, he carried only a few of the baskets at one time.

  Carrying the charity of Rulon between them, they made their way back to the river, and then down along the bank toward their own village. Ladon’s son was exhausted. Even the good food in his belly seemed like a poison to him now and weighed him down. He struggled to carry many baskets but his fingers stiffened and he dropped it all; under Moloquin’s furious nagging he labored along under a lesser burden and soon was out of breath and had to rest.

  Moloquin called him a fool, a weakling, a woman, and they had to leave some of the supply behind, carry the rest on ahead a way, and stop while Moloquin went back again and Ladon’s son rested, and in this way they went back along the river, dragging the salvation of their People along with them.

  They came up from the river past the Pillar of the Sky, and at the sight of the crows and their feastings, Ladon’s son lost the last of his strength. He sank down under his burden and sat in the grass.

  “Go on,” he said. “Go on without me.” He turned his eyes longingly on the place of the dead.

  “No,” Moloquin said. “Get up, it will take me all the longer without you. Get up. I need you. I need you, curse you!”

  He struck Ladon’s son full in the face as he said it, and the fair man recoiled. He flung up a fist between them.

  “How dare you strike me!”

  “Get up,” said Moloquin, “or I will pound you harder yet.”

  Ladon’s son lurched forward, his fist aimed at Moloquin, and he fell forward onto hands and knees. Then, looking past Moloquin, he saw someone ahead of them, coming across the plain.

  “Who is that?”

  Moloquin wheeled. Down the plain, there were figures stumbling toward them, waving their arms. They were men from the village. Ladon’s son cried out and raised his hand, and panting and cheering, they struggled up the long gradual slope toward Moloquin and Ladon’s son.

  When they saw all the food that Moloquin had won them, they gave an outcry of triumph. Each man seized as much as he could carry and hurried away toward the village. Ladon’s son also, seized with a new energy, carried a basket along with them.

  Moloquin followed after, his hands empty. He knew that what he had brought would keep them hardly long enough to get their strength back. Something else had to be done. He had won very little from Rulon, and at a great cost; soon he would have to go back again.

  Walking back to the village, he let his mind work over some methods he could face Rulon with again and have what he wanted, and give Rulon a little back also.

  The crowd of men who had taken the burden of the food were now almost lost in his sight. They had run on ahead of him, they had turned their backs to him; he could hear their voices, faint and distant, but that too was fading. Suddenly he felt alone in the whole world, as if the village had forgotten him. He walked along, tired and hungry, thinking of Rulon and paying little heed to anything, when a drumbeat reached his ears.

  Surprised, he stopped and raised his head. The drums pounded closer. There ahead of him, coming up across the grey wintry plain, were his People, dancing and singing and clapping their hands together.

  Startled, he stopped and watched them come. Slow, frail, they danced toward him in two columns, one of men and one of women. When they reached him, they surrounded him, singing to him. He stood motionless, unsure what to do, and said nothing; in their midst he was still not one of them. Then the men came close around him and lifted him on their backs and carried him away down to the village. The women sang and danced around them all, and they said his name, over and over, all adorned with words of respect and honor and awe; they called him Opa-Moloquin-on, and Ullahim-Moloquin, and Lemmanion-Moloquin, words he had never heard before, and they held up their little starving children to see him, and they spread their hands before him in tokens of honor and love. They set him down in the center of the village, they put him down to sit on a pile of animal skins, and they brought him food to eat in beautiful bowls and jars, and they all lay down before him and called him Moloquin, the Unwanted One, their chief.

  In the morning Moloquin went to Ladon’s son and told him, “Bring me all the men who are strong enough to travel and maybe fight.”

  At that Ladon’s son lost his smile; his face smoothed into a look of worry. “Fight. Whom are we to fight?”

  “Ah, you fool,” Moloquin said to him. “Do you think what we have brought will last very long? Soon they will be starving again. Do as I say.” And when Ladon’s son did not move, he went on, “Am I not the chief?”

  “Yes,” said Ladon’s son, and some of the worry left his face; he went and did as Moloquin told him.

  Moloquin waited on the upland between the village and the forest where the old gardens lay, all tumbled with weeds and the shucks and husks of the ruined crop. He sat with his arms over his knees and looked around him and wondered if they dared to plant these fields again; he realized he knew nothing of such matters as the raising of plants, and he slapped his thigh with annoyance. He knew nothing at all; how could he be a chief? He had saved them for a moment from the abyss, but the abyss was still there, waiting.

  It was always there. In the most prosperous times, they lived on the edge of extinction.

  He pressed his fists together, thinking of the Pillar of the Sky. Thinking of the rounds of stones he meant to raise there. Thinking also of the stones that lay along the foot of the High Hill.

  When I have raised my gateways at the Pillar of the Sky, he told himself, then something of the People will remain forever. Even if every soul dies, yet there will never really be an end to us.

  Now, up the grassy frost-bitten slope came Ladon’s son and the other men, nearly all the grown men and some of the older boys too, walking in files. They came up the slope from the longhouse toward Moloquin.

  Here and there, in the hollows of the land, the snow lay deep and crusted. The sky was losing its color as the sun went down. Tonight th
ey would eat well, tell stories and dance, as in old times. Let them think the old times were still on them; Moloquin meant to change all that, now that he was chief.

  In three files they came toward him, and sat down before him at a respectful distance. Moloquin took his axe from his belt; he pulled off the case of deerskin and laid the axe down on the crisped grass between him and the other men.

  He said, “I want you to make ready to go with me to Rulon’s Village. There I will face him and call him to judgment for the evil he did me and you, and you shall be there to help me if he is too foolish to regret what he did and make the proper amends.”

  At that all of them went pale, and some stammered, and some only looked down at the ground. Among them Fergolin, the Bear Skull master, said, “Do you mean to fight, Opa-Moloquin-on?”

  “We do not fight against our own kind,” said another man.

  “Pagh,” said Moloquin. “You grew up in the boys’ band; I fought many times against the boys’ band, and most of you gave blows then. I saw you fighting one another then. This is no different. Did Ladon’s son tell you what happened to us in Rulon’s Village? Do you think that Rulon gave me willingly what I brought and with words of peace and kindness?”

  Now they were looking at Ladon’s son, who shook his head. “Rulon refused us. He gave us a handful, as you throw a bone to a dog. He—” then his eyes met Moloquin’s, and he stopped and looked down, flushing.

  “He gave me all that I could carry on my back,” said Moloquin to the men. “And when I carried it out, burdened down like a woman, they stoned me and made mock of me. All this I endured, for your sake, and now, for my sake, you will obey me.”

  That reached them; that drew them together and firmed their purpose. They sat straighter, and the looks they passed from man to man were burning and full of resolve. Still they seemed frightened, and he lowered his voice and shook his head.

  “You are like rabbits. Believe me—you are too stupid and weak to know what to do. I know what to do. Do as I say, and all will be well.”