The_Circle_of

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The Circle of Stones © Chris Beckett, 1992. First published in Interzone. Not to be reproduced without permission

The Circle of Stones

Ugh! Sometimes it seems the Old Ones have nothing better to do than to count their heart-beats, and carve the number of sleeps they have onto the trunks of trees, so they can computetheir stupid “yeers.” (What is a yeer anyway? Oh they are only too glad to tell you! There was once a faraway world which, unlike ours, went round and round a star. A yeer was the time it took to complete a circle. Don't ask me what that has got to do with anything!)
        They count their heartbeats and their sleeps and they make little marks on the trees, and then they argue and bicker among themselves because Roop's weak and frantic heart beats faster than Gella's sluggish fat one, or because Mitch is so old that he sleeps and wakes out of step with everyone else, but still insists that his own sleeps are the true reckoning, because he is older than us all, and therefore closer to the Beginning.
        Who cares? I go with my cousin Tema to the Big Pool, where the deep-lilies glow in the crystal water. And we dive for oysters together, Tema and I, seeing who can hold breath the longest down there in that mysterious forest among the deep-lilies and the rainbow fish and the tall-weed. And we burst to the surface, laughing and gasping at exactly the same moment under the wide roof of starry sky over the Pool. And hungrily seek each others lips, still gasping, still laughing, though the laughter fades away...
        On the mossy bank under the lantern trees we tear open the oysters, which wheeze and fizz as they die. We feed each other strips of the oozing flesh, and play-fight over the choicest ones, and steal the juices from one another's mouths and tongues. And she laughs huskily at my hunger, and I know that in a hundred heartbeats she will give to me at last her deepest secret, deeper even than the pale fathom-oysters themselves…

#

But then we hear the horn blowing from the Circle of Stones: Parp! Parp! Parp!
        The Old Ones have at last come to an agreement about their computations of the yeers. And they are calling us to the “Any Virsry,” the Any Virsry of the Beginning.
        Cursing, I come away from Tema and stand up, my brain clouding up with red rage as the horn blows again through the forest of lantern trees, as petulant and charmless as the voice of a querulous old man: Parp! Parp! Parp!
        “I hate the Old Ones and everything they stand for!” I snarl to Tema, who is tying her skirt around her waist.
        But although I want to be a man, it seems I am still a child. I am still too afraid of my mother's and my grandmother's anger to refuse to go.
        Tema spits sideways onto the ground and says nothing - I can tell my fear has disappointed her - but she pulls off a stem from a sweet-bush to chew on to take away the oyster smell. Everyone knows why boys and girls dive for oysters, and cousins like Tema and me are not supposed to lie together. Never mind that our precious forefather Tommee is supposed to fathered children on all three of his daughters. Never mind that his grandson Herick is supposed to have lain with every one of his sisters and sister-cousins. That is different, apparently. That was the Beginning!
        Glowering, I lead the way back through the warm lantern trees and Tema follows, slashing about her with a stick and humming a defiant tune.
        The whole wood hums. Each tree gives off not only light but also a faint rhythmic sound as it pumps cool water down into the hot rocks and brings hot water up. Bats and moths flutter and rustle around the shining flowers, drinking the warm nectar, shimmering with the golden flower-dust.
        (What kind of a half-made world depends on a star for warmth and light, like cripple who needs others to bring him meat! Our world is self-sufficient. Our trees give us all the warmth and light we need.)
        Deep in the forest a star-bird calls: “Hooom! Hooom! Hooom!”
       "We could just walk away," I murmur, not loudly enough for Tema to hear me. "We could just walk away into the forest and no one would ever find us."

#

About halfway to the Stone Circle, we run into my second cousin Gerrar and his little brother Jerf, hobbling along on his little twisted feet.. Gerrar is younger than me by a couple of womb-times, his new hairs just beginning to grow. Jerf is just a child.
        “Stupid Any Virsries,” says Gerrar. “Who needs them anyway?”
        I grew up alongside these two. Their mother is my own mother's cousin and she builds her shelter near ours. Gerrar admires me because I am older and cleverer and more daring than he is, and is always trying to emulate me and win my favour, just as his mother, with her ugly hare-lip, is always trying to emulate mine, who is a leader of the women and a favourite of the men.
        Tema knocks a passing gold-bird from the air with a single expert slash of her stick, and we all run forward to stamp the life out of its quivering body.
        “Don't kill! Don't kill without need!” I quaver in a feeble voice, mimicking Mitch, the oldest of the Old Ones. The others laugh. Gold-birds are too bitter to eat and the Old Ones say it is wrong to kill except for food. But, of course, their disapproval is the reason why we like to do it.
        But then comes Redfox, my mother's newest man, with his broad shoulders and his thick red beard.
        “Is that you Johar?” he says. “Your mother’s been looking for you. She says you are to run to her shelter and put on your new kilt for the ceremony.”
        I feel Tema’s eyes on me, and Gerrar’s and Jerf’s.
        “Why should I wear my new kilt if I don’t want to?” I grumble.
         But I run off to my mother's shelter anyway, ashamed and raging inside. It seems that, even though it means being humilitated in front of Tema my cousins, I am still too afraid to defy my mother and her men.
        And yet, what is there to fear?

#

“Remember!”
        It is old Mitch, with his white hair and straggly beard, standing in the middle of the Circle, with Gella and Roop on either side of him.
        The rest of us are forbidden to step inside the Circle, so we fill up the space in the clearing between it and the surrounding trees, a great crowd of us - children, newhairs, mothers, grandmothers, men... Everyone is here, all the people of Eedan, all the people in the world.
        “Remember!” creaks old Mitch again. But, like nearly a third of the assembled people, he has a harelip and can't properly pronounce his words. “Rememfer!” is what he really says in his reedy little voice, “Rememfer!” -and the spit flies out into the air.
        “One hundred and twenty yeers it is,” says Gella in her wheezy heavy voice, “One hundred and twenty yeers by our special calculations, since our Tommee and our An-Gella came to Eedan ...”
        “In a boat they came,” goes on Roop, when Mitch has nudged him irritably in the ribs, “in a wonderful boat that could be rowed between the stars. Something went wrong with the boat and they came to rest on Eedan.”
        “Perhaps the sky was leaking in!” I whisper to Tema - and she giggles. What drivel they expect us to believe! My grandmother glares at me across the Circle.
        “Rememfer!” goes Mitch, “Rememfer!” - and he coughs juicily.
        “In a round boat they came,” says Gella, staring around with those anxious bulging eyes that make her look as if she has just swallowed a frog, “and this Circle marks the place where they came to land.”
        The three of them start to hobble painfully slowly around the Circle of white Stones, ritually brushing each one with a bundle of twigs. They call this “keeping the memory alive.”
        A little child wails and is hissed at to be silent. Gerrar farts. Newhairs and children secretly laugh. Even some of the adults have to stop themselves smiling. Everyone is bored. Even our grandmothers and their men are bored, though they wear a mask of respect.
        Round and round the fifteen Stones go the Old Ones, while we all stifle yawns, and Gerrar's fart wafts slowly through the clearing. (You can see the faces wrinkling up, one after another.) Then the Old Ones return to the centre once again and Gella pokes Roop, who looks cross, but resumes the story.
       “There were five people in the boat, and three of them tried to return in it to the world they came from. But the Three died. They drowned in the sky.”
        “Rememfer!” mumbles Mitch. A pair of lantern bats flitter across the clearing. The trees here have been pruned to eoncourage them to grow more flowers and so give off more light, so there are many moths and flutterbyes for the bats to feed on.
        Tema looks at the bats and licks her lips and gives me a little secret oyster-smile, which goes through me like a knife of pain and joy.
        “But Tommee and An-Gella stayed in Eedan,” says Mitch, “and they lay together and made three daughters: Susa, Jene and Bernia.”
        “Arid when their new hairs grew and their blood began to flow,” says Gella, “Tommee laid with his daughters, because there was no other man.”
        “Rememfer!”
        “Remember that he only lay with them because there was no other man,” says Gella sternly. “A man should not lie with his daughters, nor with his sisters, or even his first cousins,” and for a moment she looks straight over at me and Tema.
        How does she know? In spite of myself, I squirm. They have power over me, still, damn it, they have power. They can make me afraid, they can make me ashamed, however much I hate them for it.
        “And Tommee said we must remember that a man should not lie with his daughters,” says Roop, with his shifty watery eyes darting about, “nor yet his sisters, nor even his cousins, if there are others to lie with.”
        “And Susa gave birth to two daughters who lived: Kait and Rubi. And Jene gave birth to three daughters: Ali, Vere and Zena,” says Mitch.
      “And Bernia gave birth to two daughters, Lee and Kerra, and to Herick, who is called our Second Father,” says Gella. “For, no less than Tommee, he is the father of us all.”
        I yawn, and Gerrar yawns in imitation of me.
        “And Herick lay with his sisters and his sister-cousins,” says old Mitch, “and the children of those unions were Jannard and Mairi and...and...”
        A look of panic comes over that wrinkled old hare-lipped face... He has forgotten! The chain that holds his precious yeers together is broken! The whole world is crumbling.
        And then he smiles. Of course, of course.
        “The children of those unions were Jannard and Mairi and Mitch ...”
        The older people laugh affectionately with him. The child he had forgotten was himself. My mother laughs, and then glances at me and makes a cross face because I am not even bothering to smile.
        So I laugh. But I laugh harshly - a laugh at, not a laugh with. And Gerrar and Tema do the same.
        Unexpectedly old Mitch notices the mocking bark of us newhairs and turns upon us, his eyes wide with his distress. Never before have the Old Ones departed from their rote at an Any Virsry , but he does now, and Gena and Roop stare at him in amazement.
        “You mock, newhairs, you mock our memories. But think of this! I am a great-grandfather to you, and though I am old I stand before you now. I am real whether you like it or not. And when I was young like you, I had a great-grandfather, and he was old too, but I saw him, just as you see me. And my great-grandfather was Tommee. I saw him, I touched his skin, and he came from another world beyond the stars!”
        Tears of frustration and grief and helplessness are running down his face. He knows that it is up to us whether we keep his stories alive or let them die.
        “I saw and touched Tommee,” old Mitch almost sobs, “Think of that before you laugh, newhairs! Think of that! “
        He is a frail old man, who will soon die. (They say he is a hundred womb-times old, though he measures his own age only in yeers ). His distress is so palpable that I have to look away in shame, though I hate myself for my weakness. Some of the younger
ones around me weep with remorse.
        Gella takes up the genealogy: “The children of those unions were Jannard and Mairi and Mitch and Roop and Lu and Gella and...”
        On and on they go through the generations. And when at last they have finished that, they begin the “remembering of things,” the long list of “Rememfer this and rememfer that,” which Father Herick is supposed to have begun: how that stupid imaginary world which no one has ever seen spins round and round like a wooden top so half of it is all lighted up by the star and half of it is dark - not constant like our world; how the people there had wondrous powers, now lost to us; how they could store up words by making little marks; how they found hard stuff in the ground that they released by fire, and used to make knives and tools; how they found a thing called the Single Force, that could carry them between the stars...
        “And they found another kind of force that could be made to flow along strings, and could be used for light and heat and even for machines that could think. It was called Li. ..” Roop stumbles uncertainly on the word, “It was called Lick. ..Licktrickity ...”
        (“Li ...Lick. ..Licktrickity ...” Gerrar mimics under his breath, and there are giggles around him.)
        Who needs licktrickity in our Eedan, who gives us all the heat and light we need?
        “Rememfer!” goes old Mitch. “Our father Herrick commanded us to rememfer, for one day we will find these things again. if we only remember they are possible.”
        And then, while the children grow hungry and start to grizzle and cry, the Old Ones recite the Laws.

#

        It goes on and on, for a whole waking and longer it seems to me, and afterwards everyone is tired. The three Old Ones especially are tired, after all that standing and remembering and talking, and all that unspoken resistance and incredulity to struggle against. They look like empty husks, pale and tottering. They are pitiable and contemptible and admirable all at once. (I can hardly bear the conflict of my feelings). Their children and grandchildren come forward to help them. My own mother offers old great-aunt Gella her arm, to lead her to her shelter, where she can eat a little food and rest.
        The clearing quickly empties. Everyone is anxious to eat or to sleep, or simply to get away from that restricted space in the clearing between the trees and the Circle of Stones - and some have half a waking or more of travelling to do before they get back to their own shelters (there are even those who live as far away as the Hill Where The Lanterns Are Blue). But I whisper to Tema and to Gerrar to stay behind and wait till we are on our own. An idea has come to me, an appalling idea, a terrifying idea - an idea to redeem myself and make me at last into a man.
        So they wait, Tema swiping up at the bats and gold birds as they dive to and fro over our heads, Gerrar squatting proudly at my feet, with his little brother Jerf beside him, stretching out those aching twisted feet. (The Old Ones call them “Tommee's Curse,”
those feet and the hare-lips. They say it is a punishment on us all for Tommee lying with his own close kin. It is the sort of rubbish they do talk. They never say who the punishment is from!)
        “Now listen carefully ,” I tell them, when finally we are alone. “What I am going to say must be a secret between us and us alone. Is that agreed?”
        Gerrar nods enthusiastically. That boy would follow me to the Faraway Hills if I asked him, to the Faraway Hills and beyond. Tema crushes the head of a fallen lantern bat between her finger and thumb, and nods too, though with a questioning eyebrow raised. She has been disappointed with me once this waking, and she is quite prepared to be disappointed again.
        Jerf looks up at me with his wide eyes and says, “Yes, I promise.”
        “You'd better, Jerf, or if you can't you'd better go right now. This is serious, not a silly children's game.”
        Gerrar grabs his brother's arm and twists it menacingly to reinforce my words.
        “Promise on your life, Jerf, or go.”
        “I promise,” says Jerf, wincing.
        So then I tell them.
        “Listen. We will finish the Any Virsries for ever! We will destroy the Circle of Stones!”
        Their eyes grow wide and Tema lets out a low whistIe of mingled shock and admiration. This is more serious than she had thought. This is very bold indeed.
        But little Jerf's eyes suddenly fill with tears. “But we can't do that! What about the Old Ones? They love these stones. Poor old Mitch would die if he came here and the Stones had gone!”
        “Good! “ I hiss, banishing all the weak feelings of shame and pity that well up in my own heart. Banishing them like the soft faces of lantern bats, that look up at us so trustingly before we crush them in our hands.
        And then Tema - slender and dangerous as a tree leopard - grabs the little boy by the hair, and tips his head back and runs the tip of her finger across his throat. (How I want her, how I hunger for her!)
        “Listen, Jerf,” she hisses at him. “You promised Johar you would keep this secret and I'll tell you what I'll do if you break that promise. I'll take the shell of a fathom oyster and break it, and sharpen the jagged edge up on a stone. And then I'll pull your head back like this and slice open these two arteries in your little neck so all your blood comes spurting out like the sap out of a lantern tree. And then I'll slice open this little tube that you breathe through, and I’ll go on slicing until I reach the bone. Oh what a lot of blood I'll spill and you'll be dead, dead, dead! Is that understood?”
        Jerf nods and fingers his neck, with the tears running down his face, looking round for his big brother. But Gerrar, torn in his loyalties but subservient to me, has turned away guiltily to avoid meeting Jerf's eyes.
        Then Tema strides over to the Circle of Stones and picks up two of them, one in each hand. I do the same, half expecting them to turn into fire and burn me, or perhaps to come alive and scream aloud for help. But of course they are just ordinary white stones. Gerrar follows me and picks up another two. He smiles across at me mirthlessly, his face very pale with fear and guilt. And finally little Jerf, still crying, picks up a single stone - two would be too heavy for him - and hobbles after us to the stream that flows along the edge of the clearing on its way to the Deep Pool.
        They fall with a satisfying plop! into the clear water and sink down between the luminous yellow flowers of the waving-weed, to settle among the many identical white pebbles that form the bottom of the stream.
        “Johar, won't they just get more stones and make a new circle?” Gerrar asks. I think he is half-hoping that they will, and that our crime will be undone. Half of me knows exactly how he feels.
        “Very probably,” I say, “but the Old Ones think these stones were laid there by Tommee and An-gella themselves. A new Circle will never be the same.”
        And we go back for the remaining stones.

#

“Hooom , Hooom! Hooom!” goes a star bird in a tree beside the Deep Pool, later, when Tema and I are alone.
        She rustles her long tail feathers studded with luminous stars. She tips her head on one side and regards us for a moment with her enormous eyes.
        “Hooom! Hooom! Hooom! “ she goes.
        “Aaah! Aaah! Aaah!” comes the famt answer from a male somewhere in the lantern forest.
        Who knows where the forest ends?
        The female star bird clatters off across the Pool, spreading tiny ripples over the stars of the Pentagram reflected in its smooth surface.
        The forest hums.
        “We will be the new father and the new of Eedan,” I tell Tema, in the quietness beside the pool.
        She laughs.
        “No, I mean it!” I insist. “You and I are the best of our generation. We are cleverer and more beautiful than anyone else. Everyone knows it. That's why kids like Gerrar follow us around. We’re clever and we dare. One day we will rule this whole world.”
        “You're crazy Johar.”
        But she smiles across at me, showing her teeth and the pink tip of her tongue. I roll across to her and press my mouth to hers.
        “What will we do?” she asks with a little breathless laugh. “What will we do when we have all this power?”
        “We will tell new stories for the people to hand down,” I tell her, “stories about Eedan, not about some stupid imaginary spinning-top world, not about boats that can sail between the stars.”
        I start to feed at her mouth again, but she wriggles free from me and gets up.
        “Let's dive for some oysters,” she says. “I bet I get the most.”
        I race after her and catch beside the water's edge. Oh, how her body melts against mine! How her tongue slides quickly between our joined lips!
        “But what will we do when we are the Old Ones?” she says at last, when we pause to take a breath. “What happens when the young ones try to throw away our stories?”
        “Just let them try!”
        Laughing, she dives into the crystal water. And I follow after, down into the dim light and the strange reefs.
        And this time, no Old One's feeble horn is ever going to call us back.