Pillar of the Sky

by Cecelia Holland

  Rulon’s mother pushed forward, the baby in her arms. “You cannot choose yourself, Moloquin—we choose our chiefs here—”

  “You have chosen me,” Moloquin said, “by your acts, Joba. When Rulon refused me, who came to me and tried to make it right as well as she could? You did, and the other women. You knew then how he had failed. So be it! There is good, and there is evil, and a man must fit in with the good or he is doomed. I am chief here, and you have no choice.”

  The People were all shouting again, their voices hoarse with distress, and a baby wailed—Shateel’s baby. She still faced Rulon, standing to one side of him, and now tears ran down her face. Rulon tore his gaze from her. All his life he had known exactly what to do, and who he was, and what he could expect of everyone else: the whole pattern of his life was known. Now the pattern was broken.

  Moloquin had broken it. Moloquin had violated the faith of the People.

  Rulon drew in a deep breath; his fingers tightened around the haft of the club, so long and heavy he needed two hands to lift it, painted and studded with stones, passed from chief down to chief and never bloodied. The uproar of the People was like a storm in the distance, thunder and lightning in the sky, while he and Moloquin faced each other.

  He said, “Come inside, Moloquin, we shall talk of this. Inside.”

  The clamor of the People died away into a breathless silence. The two women in the center of the circle exchanged a look; Shateel’s face was wet with tears, and her mother’s mouth was grim. Then Moloquin said, “I will go inside and talk with you, Rulon.”

  Rulon coughed out the sudden dryness in his throat. “Come,” he said, and turned and went into the roundhouse.

  Shateel watched him go. She knew at once what he intended, and knew also that Moloquin understood. Now Moloquin stepped forward, to follow her brother through the dark cave of the roundhouse door, and Shateel opened her mouth to call a warning, but she knew not which one to warn, whether to preserve the old way, flawed and failing though it was, or to take sides with a new way, whose risks seemed terrible. While she hesitated, Moloquin went into the roundhouse after Rulon.

  She turned to look again into her mother’s face, and from behind her, from the roundhouse, came a loud shout of surprise and pain, and the thud of a blow.

  The crowd of people in the yard all shouted at once. Shateel fell to her knees, facing the roundhouse. One of them would come out the door, but she dreaded either one.

  Moloquin came out the door. In his hand he held his great bronze axe, and the metal was smeared all over with blood.

  “He turned on me in the dark,” he said to Shateel, and showed her the blade of the axe. “Speak to your mother. Tell her that she and the other headwomen will divide up all of Rulon’s stores, so that everyone shall have what he needs. I will talk to the masters of the societies in a little while, by the foot of the High Hill.”

  She put out her hand and touched the blood drying on the metal; absently she brought her fingers to her lips. Moloquin went on past her, into the silent crowd.

  In the evening, with the masters of the societies of Rulon’s People, Moloquin walked along the foot of the High Hill, and he spoke of the gateways he meant to build at the Pillar of the Sky.

  “The Green Bough Society has no living master.”

  “I am the Green Bough master,” Moloquin said, and no one dared to challenge this.

  He paused before a great stone lying in the grass. “This one. Bring this one.”

  “You mean us to haul these stones to the Pillar of the Sky? It is impossible.”

  “There are stones there.”

  “Small pieces—nothing as large as these.”

  “These stones are here. They did not fall out of the sky here—they were dragged.”

  “It is impossible.”

  “Yet you will find the way,” Moloquin said.

  He turned; the little group of men moved closer together to face him. He walked in among them, forcing them apart so that he could walk between one man and the next, and he looked each one in the eyes as he passed.

  He said, “When the People starved, there were many more than just Rulon who would have been happy enough to see us all die. Will any of you admit to it?”

  He walked back and forth through their midst, while none of them said a word.

  “Then,” he said, “since you will not admit to it, you must know how evil it was. Therefore you know how great a deed you must do to make up for the evil you almost did.”

  They were looking at one another, if they could not look at him. He went away, toward the stones lying by the path up to the top of the High Hill. His hands were trembling.

  He loathed these people. They had stoned him and berated him, and they had scorned Shateel when she humbled herself to save them; above all, they had served Rulon. Even now, when he thought of that moment in the dark roundhouse when Rulon had turned and struck, his soul flared to a white heat; his fists clenched.

  If such a man as that could be the chief, what could the People themselves be like? He went back to them, and his voice struck them like the lashings of a whip.

  “I will have as many stones as I choose brought to the Pillar of the Sky. Move them the way you move large trees for roundhouses—roll them over logs, drag them with ropes—take them down to the river and float them there. If you do not do it—”

  He stopped and shook his head. “Do it,” he said.

  “We shall try,” said the oldest of them, the Salmon Leap master.

  “You shall do it,” said Moloquin. “Now, go.”

  They left him. He walked along by the High Hill a while, admiring the stones.

  These would not fail him. If he set these stones in well-dug holes, they would stand forever. Chalk will hold anything, the old man had said. Moloquin stopped and sat down on a stone lying beneath a little green tree.

  Someone was coming toward him, walking up from Rulon’s Village. It was twilight, and the last of the sunshine was slowly fading into a dusky mist, and the figure coming toward him seemed to form out of the mist. Then he saw that it was Shateel.

  He stood up. She came at once toward him; she had left the baby behind, and her arms swung free at her sides.

  “It has been done,” she said. “There is enough for all. No one shall hunger, not for a while.”

  He took hold of her hand. “Sit down here with me. I have something I want to tell you.”

  She sat down beside him on the stone. He could not find a way to begin with her; instead, he stared down at his hands, and the silence grew long and uncomfortable between them.

  At last she turned to him and said, “My brother struck at you?”

  He nodded. “He was unused to the work. Otherwise he would have killed me at once.”

  “There are many who are saying you gave him no chance.”

  “I don’t care what they say.”

  “What have you done here? Have you thought of that yet? Do you mean to rule all the People in both these villages and in ours too?”

  He faced her. “You think I cannot do it?”

  “I don’t see why you would want to.”

  “Shateel.” He took hold of her hand. “Do you never wonder about the world—why it is as it is? Once it must have been perfect—no one hungered, no one suffered—you can see the perfection still in the pieces of it. Yet now see how it lies in ruins around us! Everywhere, people strive and die, suffer and die, and there is no justice, no order—”

  She frowned at him, her face vivid with her argument. “I see an order in everything, from the tree’s green life to my own baby. What do you mean?”

  “I mean to make it right. Here, at least, I mean to see justice done among people. Yes, I will rule them all, and more besides, if the chance comes to me. Who can do it better?”

  “I think you tempt the Overwor
ld with your pride, Moloquin.”

  He still held her hand, and she made no effort to free it; now he tightened his grip.

  “I mean to marry you. It will make it easier for Rulon’s People to accept me.”

  “Yes,” she said, “I can see that. Do you mean it to be a marriage merely for the sake of their sense of things? I have no interest in a sham.”

  “No,” he said. “I have always wanted you. And that will be no obstacle to you, you are too young to give up your life yet, to live like a grey widow. You have the heart to rule, married with me you shall rule as much as I.”

  “What about Wahela?”

  At that, he let her go. “I will not give up Wahela. But she is different from you. Between her and me there is something else, we will keep it so.”

  “We shall see how that goes,” said Shateel.

  She leaned toward him, her hand on his arm; chaste as the stones, they kissed, and he put his arm around her shoulders.

  “You are too powerful to fade away into the corner, Shateel.” He leaned toward her, speaking into her ear, his voice quick with his visions. “I need you. I have work enough for fifty of us. I mean to make of all the villages one People, as once there must have been only one People. You can see it, can’t you—in the stars at night, in the stories, in the dances and the lore—once there was one People, and they knew one Truth, and so what they did was great. I mean to make us great again.

  She put her fingers over his mouth. “Moloquin. Be quiet, now, do not put so much into the world, but look and see what you might take out of it.”

  He caught her by the wrist. “Pagh. I cannot imagine what it is like, to look at the world and not want to change it. Well then, come along, wife. I am eager for the marriage bed.”

  She followed him, ready for him, for his smaller, human hungers.

  Three

  THE GATEWAY

  The people of Rulon’s Village cut logs, and they pried up the first of the great stones by the High Hill, digging it out of the grass where it had lain so long, and worked the rollers under it. They made rope, and with the rope, and with men pushing, they moved the stone over the land to the river, and it took them well into the spring simply to reach the river with the first stone.

  At the river’s edge, they built a frame of wood for the stone. They sewed up the skins of pigs and goats and filled them with water and thrust them under the frame, so that the stone floated up off the bottom of the river, and wading along beside it, and pulling with ropes on either bank, they brought the first great stone down the river to the place it came nearest to the Pillar of the Sky.

  There, they brought the huge stone onto the bank, and worked the rollers under it again, and with ropes and pushing and groaning and saying many prayers, and giving much to the spirits to make them strong also, they hauled the stone up across the plain to the Pillar of the Sky. Altogether it took them from the time Moloquin laid the task on them until the Midsummer Gathering to bring the first stone to the Pillar of the Sky.

  Moloquin did not go to the Gathering. Most of the People went but Moloquin stayed at the Pillar of the Sky, where he was digging up the old ring of stones, and many of those who loved him stayed with him.

  He had ordered the People of Ladon’s Village to move their longhouses up to a site on the far side of the Pillar of the Sky, and there they raised their new roundhouse, and built a fence around the village; there they cut down the brush and the trees, burned them, and dug up the ground to make new gardens. From these gardens he charged them to keep all those fed who worked at the Pillar of the Sky.

  At the place of work itself, outside the embankment, he and the men of the Forest Village built another roundhouse, and there at night they ate and told stories and slept; but everything they ate, and all their goods, came from the other villages. All they did at this place was work to build Moloquin’s gateways.

  Toward the time of the equinox, another of the great stones arrived from Rulon’s Village, the men groaning and complaining. These were the two largest stones that Moloquin had chosen; he had made them bring them first because in his heart he was afraid that if they had brought smaller stones first, and learned how hard the work was, they would refuse even to try to move the bigger stones. These stones were so huge that with all the men of the village working at them they only travelled a few paces a day over the land, and they left a trail behind them in the grass, a track of mud and pulped green, like a great scar, visible from all around. Now they lay side by side in the high grass of the Pillar of the Sky.

  The harvest began. Moloquin went from one village to the next, to see the harvest brought in, to see that all would be enough. He took his family with him, walking from the Forest Village, where Wahela had raised her garden and borne him a son, up to the New Village, where Ladon’s son stood in Moloquin’s place and did the chief’s business when Moloquin was not there, and from there to Rulon’s Village, where Shateel lived and kept things as Moloquin wanted them.

  While he was there, the men of this village all came to him, and they told him they were tired of dragging stones around.

  He sat in front of the roundhouse and listened to them, his face impassive. The men lined up in orderly rows, as if they were dancing, and Shateel came and heard what they said, standing a little to one side of them all.

  “You cannot make us do this work,” said the leader of the men, the old Salmon Leap master, whose name was Ruak, the Speaker. “We must do our own tasks, those given us by our ancestors, the dances that preserve the village and the study of the ancient lore. We have no time for hauling stones around.”

  Moloquin said, “What you are doing with the stones is more important than the dances.”

  Ruak said, “You are our chief, or so you have said, and we have tried to accept you. But you do not live in our village. You do not lead the dances. You do not come to the Gathering and make us proud when we see you among the other chiefs. We might as well be a leaderless People as have you for our chief.”

  Moloquin said, “I am leading you to do what will overshadow all the other things you have ever done.”

  “We see nothing but what is before us, and we are ashamed.”

  Now Moloquin stared at Ruak a moment, his face bland and smooth as a baby’s. He turned toward Shateel and beckoned to her to come forward.

  “Wife,” he said, “why are my people unhappy? Is there food enough for them to eat?”

  “There was a very great harvest this year,” said Shateel, “as you know well, husband.”

  “Are they set upon by wolves or demons?”

  “No, they are safe in the village.”

  “Then why do they complain to me?”

  She went closer yet; her eyes shone. He had come into the village late the night before, and she had joined him in the roundhouse, and they had enjoyed each other all night long.

  She said, “They are only ordinary men, husband. They do not see what you see at the Pillar of the Sky, only work, and work that means nothing.”

  He faced the men again; he said, “Once before you denied me, and you know what happened then. Have you no faith in me still? Now listen to me, I shall keep my patience, because you are my People and I love you. But my patience is short, and the Pillar of the Sky is very dear to me. You have taken the two biggest stones. Those you must haul next are smaller, and I shall gather up all the men out of the New Village and send them to you, to make it easier.”

  An outcry rose from the men, and they all shouted at once, Moloquin raised his hand and they went on shouting, and he took the bronze axe from his belt and held it up, and they stilled.

  He said, “You will do as I say, or I shall go to the New Village, where people even now remember that when they were hungry you denied them, and I shall gather up all the men there and bring them here and lay waste to your whole village.”

  At that they stilled
utterly. They looked from one to the next, and all looked at Ruak, but the old man simply turned and walked out of the roundhouse yard. The rest followed him, their heads down.

  Shateel came to her husband and put her hand on his shoulder. “You are so harsh with them, they will never learn to love you.”

  “They are stupid,” he said. “They will not do it willingly, they force me to threaten them.”

  “They will mutter against you when you are gone.”

  “They will haul my stones to the Pillar of the Sky,” he said, “which is all that matters to me.”

  Still she looked down at him, her face troubled and her hand stroking slowly at his shoulder. He watched her a moment, thinking of the night before. She had no such wild passion as Wahela, but they made a good mating. She was exciting in other ways. He always knew what went on in Wahela’s mind, and usually he cared very little, but with Shateel he could only guess, and all she thought amazed him.

  Now he said, “What disturbs you, wife?”

  “There is much that is different from the old ways,” she said. “We can pretend that it is the same, but all has changed, and it makes everyone tremble a little. No one knows how it will turn out.”

  “Do they love you here?”

  “They love me here,” she said. “At first for my mother’s sake. Now for my own. I have been a good headwoman. You saw how great the harvest was.”

  He took her wrist and pulled her down beside him, and they sat together on the threshold of the roundhouse. Little by little, the men were coming back, avoiding Moloquin with their looks. They went in and out of the roundhouse, and the pair by the door made room for them. Some of the men came out to the yard with stones to work, and others brought their masks and worked at them, and still others sat talking and doing nothing.

  It offended Moloquin that they did nothing. He kept his teeth together, he reminded himself to be patient, but he meant to show these people what work was.