They went north out of the settlement, down the slope to the creek, through the curtain of ribbon-willow and up the opposite slope toward the rebuilt temple. Near the temple they found a slight declivity in the soil, and they sat down near it to share a drink from Saturday’s canteen before beginning to dig. The digging was a gentle process during which they slowly laid small neat spadefuls of earth in a sculptured pile at each side of the armspan-wide trench they were making.
Saturday sang as she dug. “Owee, owee, owee, janga, janga.” The words made no sense, but her voice was tuneful and happy sounding. Jeopardy contented himself with grunting occasionally. When Willum R., Deal, and Gotoit came up the slope to join them, each with spade, Deal and Gotoit joined Saturday’s psalmody, and Willum R. grunted along with Jeopardy. Neither of them had enough sense of music to notice that the grunts were rhythmic, that they punctuated the song the others sang, that the whole was greater than its parts.
Six cats appeared out of the surrounding grasses and sat in a circle beyond the piled earth, waiting curiously. The trench slowly deepened. The deeper it became, the slower the children dug, until they were moving in a gesture ballet full of long pauses. First Willum R., then Deal, then Gotoit got out of the trench and watched while Jep and Saturday went on uncovering, quarter inch by quarter inch.
“Here,” said Gotoit, bending forward to offer Saturday a paint brush. “You’ll need this.”
Saturday did need it. Of course, Gotoit had brought it, because Gotoit’s mother was a hobby artist and the brush was right there where Gotoit could lay hands on it. Saturday leaned down and began to brush the soil away. She had come to a thick, felty mass, like a mattress. “Knife,” she said.
Willum R. handed Jep his knife, a very sharp one. Willum R. had spent most of the previous evening sharpening it. Jep slipped the knife into the felty mass and began to cut it, a long cut, from the head of the trench to the bottom. Then he made cross cuts, from side to side, a dozen of them. Finally, he cut fifteen palm-sized pieces of the mat loose and handed them one-by-one to Saturday, who put each into a film bag, sealed the bag, and put it into her knapsack.
“Now,” said Gotoit.
Saturday and Jeopardy laid the fibrous mat back at either side. Beneath it was … something. Dark. Hard. Faintly sparkling. As big as a grown man, or bigger.
“We can’t raise it,” said Gotoit.
“Wait,” said Jep. “It’s all right.”
“Anybody got anything to eat?” asked Saturday.
“We do,” someone hollered. The diggers hadn’t noticed Sabby Quillow and the Tillan kids coming through the trees. Thash and Thurby had brought fried poultry-bird, salad, and fresh bread, and Sabby had brought fruit.
“What are we waiting for?” asked Thurby from his seat on the dirt pile, his mouth full of crisp bird.
“We can’t raise it,” said Saturday. “We got it uncovered all right, but we can’t raise it.”
“How much do you think it weighs?”
“A lot,” said Jep. “As much as four men, maybe more.”
They had almost finished eating when the men came through the willows: Sam Girat and Jebedo Quillow and the two other Quillow uncles, Quashel and Quambone, as well as Thash and Thurby’s uncle, Tharsh Titian. A little later, the three Wilm uncles showed up: Asia, Australia, and Madagascar. Eight of the strongest men in Settlement One, all nodding to the kids and looking into the hole to see what was lying there.
“Where does it go?” asked Sam, totally unsurprised. Last night Theseus had told him about this. He couldn’t quite remember the conversation, but he recalled Theseus had mentioned he’d be needed to help.
Saturday pointed. To the rebuilt temple, of course.
The men had brought ropes and long bars. They levered the mass up, got ropes beneath it, then hauled it out. No one suggested using a machine. Instead, the men made loops of the rope and put the loops over their shoulders, then carried the heavy thing the short distance to the temple door, through that door, making a rhythmic grunt with each step as they went around the temple and through the door into the central room, where they stood their burden erect upon a network of crossed ropes before heaving it in one muscle-straining effort onto the plinth at the center of the room.
“Raised,” they said, as they lifted, all at once, eight voices speaking together in the same pitch, like a growl, like distant thunder, deep. Then again, “Raised.”
They tilted the mass to one side, then the other, as they removed the ropes, then rolled up the ropes and left, chatting to one another of inconsequentialities, Sam already offering suggestions to Team Leader Jebedo Quillow about one of the delicate vegetable houses. Outside, all the children except for Saturday and Jeopardy were filling in the hole, bringing spadefuls of soil from other areas to make it level and invisible. In the central room, the cousins were cleaning off the thing with the paintbrush Gotoit had brought, brushing away the remaining webs, which had clung to the mass but which were now shriveling into ash. When they had finished, they stood back and looked at it. It stood the height of a tall man upon the plinth: dark, rugged, and angular, like a surrealistic sculpture of an almost human form. It had nothing that could be identified as a head or limbs, and yet it gave the impression of personhood. A sound came from the pedestal, the slightest whisper, as though something were moving slowly inside the stone. After a time, dim lights gathered at the foot of the new thing, ascended very gradually to the
