Page 15 of Circle of Days
Cog said scornfully: “You can’t make me go.”
“Yes, I can,” said Ani. She turned away and spoke in a low voice to Keff and Scagga. “If you two go and put out the word, I’ll stay nearby and make sure.”
The other two went away. Ani moved to a nearby place from where she could keep an eye on Cog. She sat down with two older folk, Venn and Nomi, who made needles and pins of bone.
Nomi was upset. “I saw that fight,” she said. “It was cruel. Have you told people not to do business with that horrible miner?”
“Keff and Scagga are doing that right now.”
They chatted for a while. After a few minutes, a man with a leather tunic over his arm approached Cog. Nomi said: “He hasn’t heard.”
“He will,” said Ani.
Sure enough, a bag maker opposite Cog called to the tunic man and said something to him quietly, and he went away.
No one else came to trade with Cog.
After a long wait, he and his two older sons began to put their flints back in the baskets. Soon afterward they went away.
Nomi said to Ani: “Well done.”
Joia loved the evening feast. She liked the poets. They sang about how the world began, when the people first came to the Great Plain, and what the gods did when they interfered in the affairs of humans. The stories transported Joia from the everyday world to the universe of gods and spirits, where anything could happen.
In the beginning, a poet sang,there was no sun.
Joia had heard this one before, sung by a different poet. The story was always the same, but each poet told it slightly differently. However, they all included certain repeated phrases.
The only light came from the pale moon and the flickering stars. So people slept all the dark day long, and looked for food at night, and worshipped the pale Moon Goddess. Life was hard, because they could not see well to hunt game or gather wild fruits.
Joia lay down on her back and closed her eyes, the better to imagine the world of long, long ago.
One day the pale Moon Goddess spoke to a brave man whose name was Resk.
Everyone knew that meant trouble. The gods could be kind, but they were easily offended—a bit like the woodlanders.
Brave Resk told the pale Moon Goddess how difficult life was, and said the people needed more light. The pale Moon Goddess was offended and angry because the people said she was too weak.
Strange things began to happen in the sky.
The pale moon got smaller every night until it disappeared altogether, and only the flickering stars gave light. The people moaned and wept. But the pale moon came back as a thin crescent, and got bigger every night until it was round again, and they rejoiced. However, it waned and waxed like that ever after, as a punishment to the people who had said the light of the pale Moon Goddess was weak.
Brave Resk searched for a solution to the problem. He traveled all over the world.
There followed a long account of Resk’s adventures in three strange countries: a place where it never rained, a place where the rain never stopped, and one where there was always snow.
Then he went to the edge of the world.
The listeners went quiet. The edge of the world was a scary idea.
He knew it was dangerous, but he would not turn back.
Because it was dark, he fell off.
There were lots of gasps, and one person said: “Oh, no!”
But an owl flew beneath him and caught him. And then brave Resk saw a bright light shining underneath the world. At first he did not know what the bright light was.
Several people said: “The kind Sun God!”
