Page 10 of Circle of Days
He immediately felt that the timber rings were the important ones. By comparison, the outer stone ring seemed haphazard and careless. Seft wondered whether it was older and had been erected by less skilled folk.
The crowd was now surprisingly quiet, feeling the holiness of the place. Seft sensed a mood of tense anticipation. He had been here before, and had seen the priestesses perform the Spring Rite, but this was clearly a more important occasion, and the crowd was much bigger. Midsummer was the end of the old year and the beginning of the new. Everyone was one midsummer older today.
People knew that everything that kept them alive came from the sun, so they worshipped it.
Most of the crowd were herders—most of the population of the Great Plain were herders. But there were a few farmers, who worked the fertile soil in the river valleys and could be identified by their tattoos. The women usually had bracelet tattoos on their wrists, and the men neck tattoos. However, he could not see any male farmers, and he recalled Ani’s conversation with Pia last night, and the way Ani had looked troubled by the absence of the farmer men.
Also absent were the woodlanders, but Seft knew why. They had gone on their annual pilgrimage, following the deer into the Northwest Hills, where there was fresh summer grass.
People were still coming in when dawn broke in the eastern sky. There was no cloud, and as the silver light strengthened, it seemed to bless the heads of the multitude.
At last the priestesses appeared, about thirty of them, dancing two by two, wearing leather tunics like everyone else’s but longer, down to their ankles. Their feet were bare.
One of them carried a drum, a hollowed-out log that she beat rhythmically with a stick, making a surprisingly loud, clear sound.
They all did the same movements, swaying to the side and back, like tall grass blown by the wind. Seft was fascinated. He had never seen people dancing that way, all moving together like a school of fish.
They sang as they danced. One with white hair, perhaps the High Priestess, would sing a line that sounded like a question, then the others would respond all together. They stepped in and out of the outer circle, winding through the posts, weaving like reeds in the hands of a basket maker. They seemed to address the wooden uprights individually, as if each meant something different. Seft had a feeling they were counting as they sang, but the words they used were not familiar.
The dance was not sexy. Well, not very sexy. Swaying women were always sexy to Seft, but in this dance that was not the main point.
The outer circle of bluestones, which was just inside the earth bank, played no part in the Rite, which took place around the two timber rings: the circle, and within that the incomplete oval. The priestesses made their way around the circle, then did the same around the oval, the missing part of which was oppositethe entrance—again, facing northeast. This was where the dance ended: in the gap.
The priestesses sank to the ground, still in a long line of pairs. They sang louder as the upper rim of the sun inched up over the horizon. Seft was almost directly in line with the sunrise, and he saw that the orb was coming up exactly between two timber uprights of the circle. Clearly the Monument had been carefully designed that way. The uprights and the crossbar formed a frame, and Seft realized, with a feeling of awe, that this was the archway through which the Sun God came into the world.
The crowd went quieter and the priestesses sang louder as the red disc rose in the sky. Although the sun came up every day, here and now its appearance seemed a special event, as the crowd gazed in a holy trance.
The sun was almost completely up. The song of the priestesses grew even louder. The lowest edge of the sun’s curve seemed to linger below the horizon, as if reluctant to lose contact; then at last it came free, and a fragment of light appeared between it and the earth. The song reached a climax, then song and drum suddenly stopped. The crowd broke out into a triumphant roar, so loud it might have been heard at the edge of the world.
Then it was all over. The priestesses marched two by two through the gap in the earth bank and disappeared into their houses. The people in the crowd began to stand up, stretch their legs, and chatter to one another as the tension seeped away.
Seft and Neen remained sitting on the grass. He looked at her. “I feel sort of… knocked over,” he said.
She nodded. “That’s how it takes you, especially the first time.”
He looked at the people crowding out through the gap. “I’d better return to my family—but I’ll see you again, won’t I?”
She smiled. “I hope so.”
“Where shall we meet?”
“Would you like to have dinner with my family?”
“Again? Are you sure your mother won’t mind?”
“Sure. Herders like to share. It makes meals more fun.”
“Then I accept. Yesterday’s dinner was wonderful. I mean, the food was delicious, but most of all I liked that…” He hesitated, not sure how to express what he had felt. “I liked that you all love one another.”
“That’s normal in families.”
He shook his head. “Not in every family.”
“I’m sorry. Escape to us again tonight.”
“Thank you.”
They stood up. Seft said reluctantly: “I’d better hurry.”
