Pillar of the Sky

by Cecelia Holland

  After the Bloody Gathering, when her mother disappeared, Dehra had walked to the northern villages and looked among the People there, but Shateel was not among them. Then she went back to her own village, where her mother had been headwoman. Moloquin had given this village into Bahedyr’s keeping and Bahedyr was hostile to her, but while Joba lived, Dehra was safe in the village.

  Joba did not live long. Day to day she grew weaker, as if parts of her departed for Heaven long before the whole gave way. One night she called Dehra to her as she lay by her hearth in the longhouse, and asked the girl to hold her hand.

  “Grandmother,” Dehra said, “let me cook you a broth.”

  “I need no broth,” said Joba. “You cannot pour a broth over a pile of old bones.”

  “Grandmother,” Dehra said, because she was afraid, “you must fight for your life.”

  “Hah,” Joba said, and gave a feeble laugh. “Fight for what? I have no life here. My life was lived in another place, I have no understanding of this place. The whole world has changed, and I do not belong here anymore.”

  That night she died. In the morning Dehra packed her blanket, her pots, her knives of stone, her second dress into a leather sack, slung the sack over her shoulder and went away to find her mother.

  She did not hope to find her. She thought Moloquin had killed her.

  She went down from her own village, down across the valley, and climbed up the other side and went over the hills to the Pillar of the Sky. There she found Moloquin’s Village spread out along the eastern slope below the sacred precinct, and she circled around it, looking for the longhouses.

  There were no longhouses. Instead of longhouses there were many little dome-shaped huts, some in groups and some separate from the others. There was a sort of a fence around the village, made of rolled brush like the fence around her home village, but it formed no continuous line and the edge of the village was hard to locate.

  Confused, she went into the village and walked through the twisting spaces between the huts. It was midafternoon, and the screams and shrieks of little children burst through the air like flights of birds: a whole flock of children was playing on the midden, throwing stones at one another. She went by a tall hut made of stones, that gave off a heat so intense it wrinkled the air. The woman waiting by it gave her a look of suspicion, and she hurried away.

  She could find no center to this place, no circle of women to welcome her, to give her a place here. Once she heard the rhythmic grinding of the sampo, and with a glad heart she ran toward the sound, but when she rounded a little hut and saw it, she was astonished. She had never seen such a thing. It was huge, sunken down in a pit in the ground, and two men trudged endlessly around and around to move it, leaning on spokes of wood set into the lips of the top stone. There were no women here at all.

  Now she became afraid; she thought, This place is under a spell, and she began to steal along, peering anxiously around her, and taking care not to leave too many tracks or to step on shadows or throw her own shadow over anything else.

  She came to the roundhouse, squatting in the center of all things, and there at last she heard the voices of women.

  “Can you do nothing right? Bah! I shall send you all up to work on the stones. Do it properly!”

  “Yes, Ana-Wahela-el.”

  Dehra crept to the door and peered in, and saw there in the roundhouse yard a great loom set up, such as her mother had used, and many women struggling to weave on it, while another sat perched to one side, a willow withy in her hand. Dehra shrank back, recognizing the woman with the switch from long ago, although she did not know her name.

  She stood just outside the roundhouse and looked around her and thought again, There is a spell on this place. Nothing here was as it should be, and she could find no place in it for her. If her mother was here, Dehra had no way of finding her.

  She went out of the village; she went up toward the Pillar of the Sky.

  As she reached it, the sun was sinking, and the workmen were leaving. They stacked up their tools by the bank, and in groups and files they drifted away toward the village, talking. Dehra walked along the outside of the bank, crouching in the ditch sometimes to avoid being seen, until she came to an opening in the bank.

  Two great stones stood on either side of the opening. She peered around them to look into the holy place. What she saw amazed her, and she drew a little closer, although there were still many people about; she stood between the two stones to look at the Pillar of the Sky.

  It was smaller than Turnings-of-the-Year. Tighter, packed together, the stones fit closely together. It rose up before her in one intense thrust: she looked straight into the center of it, in through the first set of gateways, past the second, higher set, to the great central gate, her gaze carried steadily upward to the tremendous stone hanging there like a threshold of Heaven.

  Around it, the men were raising another circle. They had put up nearly all the upright stones, smooth and shaped like great teeth, their surfaces rising cleanly to a level far above her head; and off to her left, by some feat of magic, they had lifted up more stones to the top of the uprights, making a sort of narrow roof that ran around the upper edge of the building.

  She hung back, although she longed to go closer, to see more. The men were leaving. She told herself that in a moment they would all go and she could walk freely around this place and see it all.

  Magic. There was power at work here, to raise those stones so high. She had sensed it in the village, but this was the center of it. From this place the magic spread like overflowing water, distorting and changing all that it touched. That was why the village had grown so cankered, because it lay so near this point of power.

  She leaned against the stone at the entrance, watching the last of the men go. Her eyes travelled over the building again. The lintels that topped the uprights of the circle, away to her left, were so perfectly shaped that no gap appeared between them; each stone fit exactly against its neighbor. They followed the curve of the circle, every edge even, smooth, and precise.

  What man could have done this? Surely it was the work of magic.

  She went into the place. She no longer cared if any of the men were left. The magic had overwhelmed her. She had to go closer to it, to touch it, and so she walked forward, into the midst of the stones.

  The sun had warmed them. She laid her hand on one smooth surface, seeing, from this close, the subtle mix of colors in the stone. She went on, until she stood before the great Gateway, until she stood at the center of the place.

  She had expected to sense some great rush of power, a whirling of forces, but instead as she stood there she felt nothing. Silence: stillness. The Gateway rose up before her, leading her gaze toward the sky. She tipped her head back to look straight up. Then suddenly all the force took her, sweeping up from below through her up toward the center of Heaven, and she understood, although she had no words for it, where she was.

  She flung her arms out, to keep from falling, and as she swayed and lost her balance, she called on names her mother had given her, names of power.

  “Rael, Birdwoman! Help me! Mother—Shateel—” another name, lost in the deeps of her memory. “Ael! Ael!”

  “Ho!” a voice shouted, nearby.

  Dehra fell. Feet ran toward her. Frantic, she started to rise, to flee, but she tripped herself up and fell again.

  “Are you hurt?” A young man dropped to one knee beside her. “Who are you?”

  She gaped up into his face; she had never seen him before. A smooth, pale face, with wide eyes. She said, “I am not hurt. My name is Dehra.”

  “Barakal,” another man called, breathless, the voice failing. “Barakal, do you need me?”

  The young man turned to call over his shoulder. “All is well, Opa-on.” He smiled down at Dehra. “You should be going home, girl—the sun is down.”

 
“I have no home,” she said.

  She stood. The young man smiled at her again, but he was going, returning to his friend. Uncertain, she stood where she was, watching him join an old man, who hobbled, crook-backed, in between two of the stones, and sat down heavily on the ground.

  “I am done, Barakal,” this old man said, and he began to cough, and from his lips a torrent of blood burst.

  Dehra gasped. She took two steps nearer.

  Barakal said, “Rest, Opa-On—you hurt yourself when you do this. Here is some water. I have the blanket and the bear robe—” he raced away, back outside the stone ring.

  Dehra went a little closer, watching the old man. The blood had dribbled down the front of his shirt. Like a baby, he could not keep himself clean. The course of life had come full round in him: like the baby just coming into the world, he was feeble and helpless as he went out of it. Yet he looked at her with a cheerful gaze.

  He said, “Girl, what do you do here?”

  “I am looking for my mother,” she said.

  “Your mother! There are no women here, at the Pillar of the Sky— this is a man’s place, girl.”

  “I am sorry,” she said. “I meant no harm. It is wonderful here.”

  “Yes,” said the old man, and then the young man appeared again, carrying a blanket and a bearskin robe, and fussy as a mother he covered up the old man, tucked the blanket around him, gave him water in a jug to drink, and sat down beside him.

  “Opa-on,” he said, “you have chosen a clear night to die in.”

  The old man chuckled under his breath. “I am a stupid one, my boy. I need a straight path to Heaven.”

  Then again he erupted into his bloody coughing, and the youth Barakal bent over him, tender and kind. Dehra went up beside him and squatted down, her arms around her knees; she longed for such gentleness as these two used toward one another.

  The old man’s fit eased. He laid his hand on Barakal’s arm.

  “She is looking for her mother.”

  Barakal looked at her, his eyebrows rounded. “Her mother. Who is she?”

  “My mother’s name is Shateel.”

  At that, both of the men looked sharply up, and the old man gave a low choked cry that spattered blood on Dehra’s hands. He wiped his lips. “Shateel!” he said, and peered at her. “Shateel’s child!”

  “Did you know my mother?”

  Barakal shook his head. “By name only.”

  The old man said, “I knew her once. Not well. Is she alive still?”

  “She disappeared,” Dehra said. “After the Bloody Gathering.”

  The old man lowered his head slightly. Barakal curved his arm around his shoulders, but he spoke to Dehra.

  “You must ask Moloquin. He knows.”

  Dehra shook her head. “I dare not ask Moloquin.”

  “Then I shall ask him for you.”

  “No, no!” Dehra drew closer, putting out her hand to him, as if he might leap up at once and run to Moloquin. “Do not, I beg you. Do not let him know I am—that I am seeking her.”

  Barakal stared at her, his brow furrowed, his mouth pursed. Then beside him the old man began to cough again, and the youth turned to him, bending over him, murmuring, and thereafter Dehra was of no interest to him. She went away a little, to look at the stones.

  Fergolin leaned his back against a stone. He had moved so that he was facing the northwestern part of the building, the part that was finished. Barakal covered him with a blanket and gave him water to drink, but Fergolin wanted nothing any more.

  The world was fading away. As the light died and the stars began to burn and the canopy of Heaven grew brighter and more vivid above him, so he felt the dross of life falling from him, leaving behind the pure and infinite soul. He had come to the foot of the pathway home.

  Around him Barakal moved, doing this, doing that, a heavy shadow. Even an annoyance, now, the beloved boy: left behind.

  The girl, too, annoyed him, ruffling the serenity of his passing, making him worried. Shateel’s daughter! What had happened to Shateel? What had happened to all of them? He remembered how, when he heard of the Bloody Gathering, he had looked up at the sky, wondering why no star had warned him of this catastrophe.

  Before him the white radiance shone, drawing him closer; yet now, disturbed by these annoyances, he struggled a little, resisting it. He thought again of the girl, of Barakal, of Shateel who had vanished, of the People whose lives had been overturned, of the stars that had not warned him. His flesh was heavy and dull around him, opaque to the truth. His flesh connected him to the troubles of the People. And why had the stars not given him a sign?

  Barakal came again, with water. He tried to turn aside, but he was weak, and to allow the youth his moment of seeming to help, he let a few drops into his throat. Now all his flesh quaked, dissolving in the radiance, and the blood burst from its channels and flowed forth in a river from him.

  Barakal sat beside him, and encircled him with his arms, and leaned his young head on Fergolin’s shoulder, and wept. He held only the old man’s flesh. Only the cage. The soul was freeing itself, bit by bit; the soul was spreading out its wings; the soul was trembling on the brink of flight.

  Now he knew why the stars had not told him that Moloquin would overthrow the whole order of things. As he stood poised on the beginning of the pathway, he saw that Moloquin changed nothing. There was no catastrophe. Whatever Moloquin did might cause loud noises and small calamities for a while, but in the end, all would be as it had to be, as it had been before. There was no real change. The corruption of order that seemed like change, the evil of change, would always fail.

  Understanding that, he saw the blazing light before him grow brighter yet, swallowing up all his vision, the summoning voice of Heaven. His flesh was dying, falling away from him, and he was leaving it behind. Leaving behind with it the illusion of freedom. Leaving also the illusion of being separate. The illusion of being—

  Barakal held the old man all through the night, although Fergolin was dead before the moon rose.

  For a while, the girl moved around the Pillar of the Sky, and then she found some place to shelter and she too was still. The night rolled over them.

  With Fergolin in his arms, he sat there, staring blindly into the face of Heaven, and struggled with his soul. He held the old man tight, as if he could keep him from the pathway; his soul struggled to follow, as if feet of flesh and blood and bone could tread that sacred road of light.

  Why? His mind hammered at the thing with words, and yet the thing would not become words. Would not dissolve into ideas. Why are we given life, given youth and strength and understanding, just to have it all seep away? Like a stone, the thing. Like a stone that he battered with his mind and could not wear at all, not so much as a trickle of dust. He put his face against the dead flesh and wept.

  The moon rose, horned with envy, its face corrupted with its fierce desires. It passed away overhead. He could not sleep. When his mind quieted, the thoughts rose again, irresistible, thrusting up above the surface: Why? Why did Fergolin have to leave me? Why must I die too? Then all his mind was a tossing, seething tumult, all his feelings loosed, pain and rage, terror and love and reverence, set free to struggle together, and he could not sleep at all, his mind and body at the mercy of his passions.

  So when the sun appeared again, Barakal was awake, and his mind was worn down from the long struggle, worn so smooth no passion could fix itself to its surface. Then, when the sun rose, he was like a still pool of water, that gave back exactly what it saw.

  The sun came up behind him. He felt its warmth and saw the first light streaking up through the sky, and he crept away from Fergolin’s empty and horrible body and turned. The Great Gateway was between him and the brightest part of the horizon, and he moved until the Gateway framed it. There was thick fog all along the horizon. The light
streamed up into the sky, but the sun herself was only a pale disk through the grey.

  She reached the thinning edge of the fog, and suddenly the light brightened, her full power burst through, and he flinched back, throwing his arm across his face. Before his eyes, the disk shone a moment longer, a perfect circle.

  Straightening, his arm falling to his sides, he cast his eyes around him and saw the circle of the uprights, with the lintel-beams closing their tops, and that too he saw was a perfect circle.

  Yet it was not finished. He saw the shape although it was not even there before him, because the circle showed itself in every part; it was there complete in every part. Because he saw part of the curve, he saw it all.

  At once he saw that this was true of all circles.

  He had lived here all his life, seen every stone rise, known his place all his life, and yet he had never wondered deeply about it. He walked forward into the center of the building, wondering how Moloquin had known where to put the stones.

  He did then what he had seen Moloquin do, long ago. He sank down on his haunches and drew a circle with his finger in the dust.

  With his finger he had merely to trace the outline, but Moloquin could not have done that. Moloquin had to do something else, because the circle of Pillar of the Sky was so large. Yet it was in all other ways like the circle that Barakal had drawn in the dust. Then Barakal saw that the circles both began the same, with a point at the center, and grew larger by expanding steadily in all directions, and he knew that a man might measure a circle by knowing how far it was from the center to any point on the edge.

  He stood up, shaking. He had been given some knowledge, some understanding: the Pillar of the Sky had spoken to him, as it had before. It seemed small, useless knowledge, but he was shaking from head to foot; he knew this was power, somehow, this lore. Why had he been given this powerful understanding? He raised his eyes from the circle at the dust of his feet, looked long at the stone curve suspended in the sky, and turned his gaze to the horizon.