The Blessing Stone by Barbara Wood Page A

nursing infant to the threshold of puberty. Boys older than this had left their mothers and joined the band of hunters, and so they had perished in the Reed Sea. As Alawa kept her eyes on the boys she thought again of the dead hunters and the lost moon and the nightmares that were plaguing the women, and the frightening thought that had formed in her mind days ago spoke louder now: that the drowned men were unhappy and jealous of the living. This was why they haunted the women’s dreams. How could it be otherwise as there had been no silent-sitting performed for them? Everyone knew that the dead were jealous of the living, which was why ghosts were so greatly feared. And would the dead hunters not be especially jealous of the little boys who they could see growing up to take their places?
    Reluctant though she was to carry out the deed, Alawa was firm in her resolve. As long as the hunters continued to be jealous of the boys and therefore haunt the women, the moon would not come out. And without the moon the clan would die. Therefore the little boys must be sacrificed to send the ghosts away. Then the moon would return and put babies into the women again. And thus the clan would survive.
     
    At the next resting stop, the women sat with their backs to trees to nurse babies and cuddle their children. Some, having reached the end of their stamina, began to cry.
    They had all lost loved ones in the Reed Sea—sons, brothers, nephews, uncles, sleeping partners. Bellek had watched his younger brothers perish; Keeka, the sons of her mother’s sisters; Alawa, five sons and twelve sons of her daughters; Laliari, her brothers and her beloved Doron. A loss beyond comprehension, beyond counting. When the new tide had swallowed up the band of hunters, the women had run up and down the shore, screaming and shouting, hoping for a glimpse of survivors. Two had thrown themselves into the raging water to disappear forever. The women had camped on the new shore for a week until Bellek, after eating magic mushrooms and walking in the nether realm, had decreed the place bad luck and that they must leave. That was when they had gone north to encounter a vast, terrifying sea, and then had turned inland, to go in search of the moon.
    But they still had not found it and the women were becoming disconsolate.
    Seeing the tears streaking down Keeka’s cheeks, Laliari reached into the pouch that hung from her belt and, bringing out a handful of nuts, offered them to her cousin.
    Keeka had been plump, before the invaders came. She loved to eat. She had lived in a hut with her mother, her mother’s mother, and her own six children, and every evening after the communal meal she would hurry back to the hut to store food away that she had hidden beneath her grass skirt. Keeka also loved coupling with men and didn’t need to be coaxed. Nonetheless, the hunters who came and went from her hut with frequency brought her extra gifts of food and so dried fish and rabbit haunches hung from the roof of her shelter, onions and dates and ears of corn. But no one minded. Everyone in the clan ate well.
    As Keeka snatched at the nuts and gobbled them down, Laliari looked back through the trees and saw a tragic figure lurking in the mist. She Who Has No Name. Laliari was amazed the poor creature had survived this far, being cut off from the clan as she was and having to trail behind the others through the thick fog. Laliari felt sorry for her. People were afraid of childless women because they were thought to be possessed by an evil spirit. How else to explain why the moon had not favored them with babies? Before the invaders came, She Who Has No Name had lived at the edge of the settlement, treated as invisible, eating tossed-away scraps. She had been forbidden to touch food that other people were to eat, or their drinking water, or someone’s hut. And no man would embrace her, no matter how desperate his need for sexual release.
    No Name had not been born with bad