Pillar of the Sky

by Cecelia Holland

  The men were all there, working fast, because Moloquin wanted to raise the second stone before they left for the Gathering. They had the stone with its foot over the hole and its head tipped up into the air and its body supported on mounds of earth steadied with logs. On the far side of the hole, they had raised three tall wooden posts, tipped so that their heads all came together in a cross, and over this joint they cast more ropes, so that ropes hung around the great stone like the flying-strings of spiders. When Wahela came, the men were bracing up the stone with their poles, hauling up the stone with the ropes over the posts, trying to force more earth beneath it; Moloquin stood almost in the hole itself, looking up at the work.

  She called him. He would not come; he gestured toward her behind his back to wait for him. She stamped her foot. The stone would always be there, and she wanted to speak with him, just a few words. In her arms, Twig squirmed to be put down.

  “No,” she said. “It is too dangerous here—do you want the stone to fall on you?”

  He looked up at her; he had the wide black eyes of his father, and when he looked at her, solemn and intent, she often had to struggle away the belief that he was Moloquin himself, somehow, locked in a baby’s body. Sometimes she spoke to him at length of things that would have bewildered even Moloquin.

  He pointed to the stone. “Opa,” he said.

  “Yes, there is your father.”

  “Down.” He wiggled again, his fat legs banging against hers. “Down!”

  At that moment, suddenly, the stone slipped. The men shouted, loud enough that Twig clutched his mother’s clothes and pressed himself tight against her breast, and she crouched, instinctively bending her body over him. The men flung themselves at the stone in a fury of activity, flinging ropes around it, heaving their weight against the poles that forced its head up.

  The stone had moved only a little. Its foot still hung over the hole where it would stand, and now, strive as they would, they could not budge it a finger’s breadth. Wahela straightened, smiling. It amused her that the stones sometimes moved of their own will, when they would not move at Moloquin’s.

  “Down!” Twig cried, and he slithered free of his mother’s grasp, landed on his feet, and ran across the beaten grass of the holy place toward his father.

  Moloquin was shouting at the other men; with waves of his arms, he directed the men with the ropes to stand wide to either side of the stone, and he himself joined the swarm around the poles. Halfway to them, Twig stopped. Wahela waited, ready to pounce on him and drag him back if he went closer. The men strained at the poles, but the stone resisted, lying there in the cradle of ropes and earth; strive as they would, the men could not budge it, and they gave up. They fell back, away from the poles, and let the ropes slack, and Moloquin wiped his face on his forearm and walked around the stone once, looking up at it.

  “Wait,” he called, and went to the tools tilted up against the other stone. He took a shovel and jumped into the hole.

  Wahela shrieked. He had leapt down beneath the foot of the stone, and in her mind she saw him crushed, and she started forward, and Twig ran forward also. Twig ran forward to the very edge of the hole, and then the stone began to move.

  The men let out a roar; they leapt to the ropes, to guide the stone. Moloquin bounded up out of the hole, flinging the shovel aside, and the great stone slid down past him into the hole and tipped up on end.

  The ropes snapped tight. The men flung their weight against them. Caught in the net of the ropes, the great stone wobbled back and forth, its shadow swaying over the ground. Moloquin and the others rushed around it, shoveling heaps of earth into the hole—some of the men even leaned against the stone, as if their weight might somehow hold it upright.

  In their midst, at the brink of the hole, Twig stood, looking up at the monster whose shadow swung back and forth over him.

  Slowly the stone settled. The men clustered tight around its foot, beating the earth down, freeing the ropes; their voices rose in an excited triumphant babble. Wahela went forward toward her son.

  Moloquin turned. For the first time he saw the little boy there, and he scooped him up. “What are you doing here?”

  Twig flung up his arm toward the stone. “Mine,” he cried, and Moloquin burst out laughing.

  “Yours, hah? Yours?” He tossed the little boy into the air. The other men turned, laughing, and watched. The little boy grew red in the face; he fell into his father’s arms and struggled to be put down; he pointed to the stone again.

  “Mine!”

  Moloquin put him down and went toward Wahela. When he reached her, he put his arm around her, but he turned to look at the stone again, not at her.

  She said, “I am going to the Gathering.”

  “Ah?” He let his arm slip away from her. “I am not.”

  “That is why I am going,” she said, and flounced away from him, tossing her head. “Perhaps when I am gone you will come to know how much I am to you.” She reached Twig and lifted him up, protesting, into her arms.

  Moloquin set his hands on his hips. “Perhaps,” he said, and smiled at her. He made no move to stop her; nor did he try to make amends to her by offering her the treasure. She stuck her son on her hip and walked angrily away, back toward the New Village.

  Moloquin sat on the ground between the two upright stones, and one by one those who loved him best came to say good-by to him.

  First Wahela said good-by, in her own way, and took her children off to the Gathering. Next came Bahedyr, who also was going to the Gathering, and who came to ask Moloquin’s opinion on the matter of marriage: Bahedyr intended to find a wife at the Turnings-of-the-Year, and needed his chief’s advice.

  Moloquin said, “Pick an ugly one. She will be grateful to you, and more reasonable about what she wants.” He was thinking of Wahela, beautiful as a thunderstorm.

  Bahedyr laughed, thinking he meant a joke, and Moloquin smiled at him and struck him lightly on the arm. “You will know which one to take,” he said. “You need nothing from me to do that.”

  Bahedyr saluted him and went off, a bundle on his shoulder, his spear in his hand. Next came Hems, squatting down before his friend.

  “I am going back to the Forest Village,” he said. “To see Ap Min.”

  “Be well,” Moloquin said. “Tell her I will see her soon, I hope.”

  As he spoke, he thought of the Forest Village, and his heart grew sore; he wanted that quiet, that peace. Hems touched him with his hand and left.

  Then came a host of others who did not matter much to him, save that they were his People, and they came and told him they were going and some asked his advice on small matters and one by one they left.

  He sat there alone, in the late morning, with the stones behind him, and his thoughts went to his work here. Now, looking back on his first ideas about the Pillar of the Sky, he saw what a foolish boy he had been, knowing nothing of the practical matter, thinking all things might be

  accomplished simply by wanting them. It had taken him two full years to raise two stones here. The People constantly complained and shirked and would not do as he wished; their enthusiasm bloomed in the flush of each triumph and withered away in the first challenge of their strength and will. He was afraid now that he would never finish the building; when he saw them walking away from him, away from the work, his heart grew hard and tight within him, and a weight of doom pressed on his mind, like a shadow cast over him.

  Someone was walking up the slope toward him. He raised his head.

  It was Grela, alone. Her shawl covered her head; in her arms she carried a basket. She reached him and knelt down before him, laid the basket down before him, and pulled back the lid.

  Inside the basket lay the price that Harus Kum had paid Ladon, long before, for two boys, a pile of grain, and the People’s future. Moloquin put out his hand and lifted the belt with its oblong
links and let it drop.

  “This is yours,” Grela said. “You alone have the power of it, and so I am bringing it to you.”

  “Thank you,” Moloquin said.

  She rose, adjusting her shawl over her head. “I want the basket.”

  He tipped the treasure into the grass and held out the basket to her, and she took it away, going off down the slope, not back to the New Village: to join the others, on their way to the Gathering. Moloquin sat there a long while, watching the sun shine on the bronze in the grass.

  The platform in the center of the Turnings-of-the-Year had been rebuilt closer to the ground, so that the fall would be lighter if Moloquin came and chopped it down again. Shateel stood with her People and watched as the chiefs of the three northern villages paraded to the entry; she saw Wahela, in a crowd of her followers, standing a little higher on the embankment, and turned her back.

  Moloquin was not here. Moloquin made trouble for her constantly, simply by not being where he was supposed to be, by not doing what was expected of him, and that Wahela had chosen to be here only made things worse. Glumly Shateel watched as Barlok, so old he drooled, staggered on the arms of his underlings to the way into the ring.

  His People raised their voices in shouts of his name, but Shateel’s People were silent, the People of the New Village were silent, the People of the Forest Village weren’t there at all, and so as Barlok hobbled to the rings, his name rose feebly as a little breeze up toward Heaven.

  Now here came Mithom, striding along like a bear, his body decked with feathers and bits of quartz and amber, his arms banded with rings of leather sewn with colored beads made of porcupine quill; in his right hand he carried a painted club, and in his left a round basket, with a loop in the center to hold it: these were the emblems of his power.

  As he approached his People cheered his name, but once again their voices rose up timidly, and most of the People kept silent.

  Now here came the twin brothers, Eilik and Muon, decked with their painted emblems, their black hair studded with red feathers, their bodies painted with blue and red and green, in their hands the ceremonial spears and arrows, and at the gate into the ring they joined the other chiefs, and like the faint wafting of a little wind through the branches of the trees there rose up the voices of their People, but for the rest, there was silence.

  The chiefs stood there, looking at one another, waiting for the People to make their choice, waiting for the People to proclaim one of them the first, and all they heard was silence.

  Then out of the crowd a woman came, and she wore only a woman’s long dress of woven stuff, and she carried no emblems at all, and she went up among the chiefs, and from all the crowd along the embankment her name rose, bellowed forth from the throats of her People: “Shateel! Shateel! Shateel!”

  Now from the People of the New Village who knew her not at all, but knew Moloquin and knew that she was Moloquin’s wife, there rose the roar of many voices: “Shateel! Shateel! Shateel!”

  She stood there, looking around her, amazed. She had meant only to ask them to enter into the ring together, and now she stood before the four chiefs, magnificent in their panoply, gorgeous in their manhood, and all around her the People raised her name.

  She turned her back on the chiefs, her heart pounding, and wondered what to do. Her name thundered to the skies. Before her the platform stood, stubby and awkward in the center of the ring of stones, and she thought to walk to it, she thought to lead the other men there, but abruptly the shout changed that urged her on.

  “Shateel,” they cried with one breath, and in the next, they bellowed, “Moloquin! Moloquin! Moloquin!”

  Now she understood. She turned away from the platform, from the Turnings-of-the-Year, and she faced the northern chiefs.

  “Go,” she said. “They call for one who is not here; therefore, let the platform stand empty.”

  She walked by them, going back up the embankment, travelling through waves of noise, the cheers of Moloquin’s name. As she walked through their midst, the People turned to watch her and showered her with Moloquin’s name.

  At the top of the bank, she paused and looked back. All the People had turned toward her, turned their backs on the stones and the lesser chiefs. But down there at the entry, Mithom suddenly strode forward into the ring of stones.

  The two brothers rushed in after him, and Barlok’s underlings carried the old man swiftly after. On the embankment, the People clapped and chanted. Moloquin’s name sank slowly down into the rhythms and sounds of other songs and the crowd dissolved into a mass of little crowds, all doing something different. None paid heed at all to the chiefs, who in the center of the Turnings-of-the-Year had reached the platform and there were fighting over who should sit down first upon it. Shateel went away, back to her hearth.

  Wahela had taken Bahedyr into her company, and learning that he sought a wife, she took on herself the task of finding one for him. Because he was of the Salmon Leap Kindred, he had to marry a woman of the Oak Tree Lineage, and Wahela went away to Shateel’s People among whom were many of the Oak Tree.

  Also she wanted to face Shateel and try her power against the other woman’s; it seemed to her foolish and dangerous that a man should have for wife one woman, who never came to him, and for lover another woman, whom he would not name his wife.

  She walked through the Gathering, a pack of her followers on her heels: young women, restless and uncertain, wanting to try the borders of the elders’ world. As she passed, all the People looked up, and her name went on before her, and they crowded close to see her, and with every step she held herself straighter and taller, feeding on their attentions.

  In the camps of Shateel’s People, fewer came to see. Some of the looks cast at her were dark and full of anger. She felt here that a cold wind blew in her face, and when she sat down at the hearth where Shateel sat, combing her daughter’s hair, Wahela knew what belly the black wind blew out of.

  She sat down across the fire from Shateel and tucked her hands into her lap. Behind her stood her own daughter, a gawky half-grown girl, holding Twig on her hip.

  “I bring you greetings, Shateel,” Wahela said. “It has been long since we saw your face around our fires.”

  “I have been doing as Moloquin bade me,” Shateel said. In her long hand the comb was like a row of teeth that she stabbed into the child’s hair.

  Wahela said, “You must be doing his work very well, since I see your People are fat and joyful, and they called your name with the fervor of those who love their chief.”

  “I am not their chief,” Shateel said, and the comb jerked through the child’s long fair hair.

  “Well,” Wahela said, “strange things are happening to all of us. I am here because a man of my People, who is of the Salmon Leap Kindred, desires a wife.”

  “Oh? Who? Bahedyr?” Shateel began to laugh—when she laughed, she looked much younger and her eyes sparkled. Wahela wanted her solemn at once.

  “This is no occasion for merriment, surely? Have you knowledge of marriageable girls of the proper kindred among your People?”

  “Oh, yes, many,” said Shateel. “I shall speak to their mothers. Bahedyr must make himself beautiful, and appear often at the Turnings-of- the-Year, and wear the red feather very prominently. Let the girls and their mothers see him, and we shall await their decision. Tell me about Moloquin.”

  Caught off her guard, Wahela had no time for anything but the truth. “He spends every day at the Pillar of the Sky, he cares for nothing but the stones.”

  Shateel said calmly, “He has never cared much for people.”

  Now Wahela cast her lure into the stream, to see if the fish jumped. “Perhaps if you would come to see him more, he would warm to the pleasures of marriage.”

  “I understand you give him the pleasures of marriage very well already. Is that his child? Let me see.”

>   Now she was stretching forth her arms toward Twig. Wahela nodded, and her daughter let the little boy down to the ground, but he was reluctant to go to a stranger. Instead he went up to his mother and wormed his way into the circle of her arm.

  Leaning around to look into her face, he babbled a long string of nonsense, and his mother laughed at him.

  “See—he does not know you.” She gathered the little boy up, cooing to him. “See, Twig, this is your father’s wife.”

  He pressed himself against his mother and favored Shateel with a disapproving look. Shateel laughed.

  “Ah, he is much like his father.”

  She turned her head away as she spoke; Wahela knew she wanted a child of Moloquin. Wahela said, “Small wonder your marriage is barren, since you never see each other—do you think babies come on the spring breeze?”

  Twig turned toward her again, and again he babbled out his nonsense. Wahela shushed him with her hand over his mouth.

  Shateel was frowning. “What is that he said—something of a stone falling?”

  Wahela made the child sit down in her lap; it occurred to her, a little late, that Twig’s insistent babble did have something to do with a stone—with the great stone he had seen raised at the Pillar of the Sky; he had not stopped talking of it since then. It annoyed her that Shateel had understood this while she, his mother, had not.

  “Have his stones fallen?” Shateel asked.

  “Moloquin has raised two stones only,” said Wahela, and sniffed. “It is an arduous and painful work and there seems no point to it. No, neither of them has fallen. The child saw one stone put into the hole, and his head is full of it now.”

  “Wise child,” Shateel murmured, and stretched her arms out. “Twig, come to me, I am your mother too, in a way.”

  Twig squirmed around and pressed his face to his mother’s shoulder. Wahela laughed. “You have no craft with children, Shateel.”

  Shateel shrugged, her face bland, and returned to combing her daughter’s hair. Satisfied, Wahela made her farewells and went back to her own camp.