Page 74 of Circle of Days
Joia smiled. She did not think she was beautiful.
Duna said: “Any of us would have sex with you if you wanted.”
Joia’s heart sank. She knew what was coming next. She hadhad this conversation before, more than once. Duna was about to declare her love.
She acted quickly to divert the conversation. “Let me tell you something,” she said. Duna’s hand had wandered to her knee, and she gently took it off. “My mother has been a widow for seventeen midsummers. When my father, Olin, died, everyone told her she should look around for another man she could love. She never did.”
“Why not? It’s what most women would do.”
“She says that some of us love only one person in a lifetime. My father was that one, for her. She can’t bring herself to want anyone else. Another man would always be a disappointment, no matter how lovable he was, just because he wouldn’t be Olin. So she has remained single—even on the night of the revel.”
“Such love!”
“She says she’s a one-man woman. I’m like her. I’m not sure if it’s a man or a woman I’m waiting for, but I know I haven’t yet met the one for me. And when I do, I’ll be happy.”
Bez and Fell set out with high hopes. With the help of the priestesses they might save the tribe.
Fell was wearing a necklace he had made from the teeth of the bear they had killed. The four huge curved fangs were particularly striking.
Bez had made the trip across the Great Plain twice before. He always marveled at how the herders worked all the time, men and women and children too. The farmers were worse. What was the point, when there were deer in the woods and nuts on the trees?
The deer and nuts were scarce now, but the herders and farmers were no better off than the woodlanders. Bez was shocked to see the skinny corpses of cattle that had died of thirst or starvation, dotting the Great Plain; casualties of the battle with the weather.
“Herders have all kinds of rules about sex,” Bez said conversationally as they walked. “They can’t go with their aunt or their half sister or their brother.”
“What’s the point of such rules? Why don’t they just go with any willing man or woman, as we do? What’s the harm?”
Bez shook his head. “You know, sometimes herder women want to have sex with woodlanders.”
“Oh! Disgusting! They’re so ugly, with their pointy noses and their pale eyes.”
“And they have skinny legs like deer.”
They both laughed.
On the first evening they did what Bez had done on previous trips: they walked into one of the little herder settlements, looked for someone who was cooking, and sat down by their fire. Sooner or later, Bez expected, they would be handed bowls just as if they belonged here.
That had never worked with the farmers and now, they found, it no longer worked with the herders. The man cooking explained to him: “It’s the drought. We have rations, only just enough for ourselves. If we share, we go hungry. I’m sorry.”
Next morning they found some wild onions, which they ate while walking. In the evening Fell’s new dog killed a month-old roe deer fawn and dragged it proudly to him. They cooked it that night and shared it with the dog.
Woodlanders rarely hurried, and it was noon on the third day when they reached the Monument.
At the times of the Rites the place was busy, with people trading outside the earth bank, but now it seemed deserted. Probably everyone was at the nearby village of Riverbend, the largest settlement on the plain. But the priestesses should be here. Bez led the way to the village where they lived.
He felt nervous. This would be such an important conversation, and he had to make himself understood in the herder language. No one among the herders or farmers could speak the woodlander tongue. He knew that the most important of the priestesses was called the High Priestess, and he decided he would speak to her.
The priestesses were not in their houses—few people lived inside in warm weather, houses were for winter—and Bez and Fell found a cluster of women sitting on the ground in the middle of the little settlement. All were wearing the long tunics that marked them as priestesses. Bez and Fell were wearing the short tunics that most herders and farmers wore. They had put them on for the trip: in summer they normally wore nothing but leather loincloths.
Bez was glad to have found the women so quickly.
They went quiet when they saw the woodlanders. One woman sitting with her back to Bez and Fell turned around and screamed with fright; but the others laughed at her, and after a moment she joined in the merriment.
They quieted down, and a small but confident woman said: “Hello. Do you need something?”
Bez said carefully: “May the Sun God smile on you.”
“And on you,” she replied.
