Now, the skull of a Taltos stays resilient long after other bones in his body have become hard. But the skull can be crushed easily, if one knows how to do it, and we had—unfortunately—learned.
But death still horrified us. Murder was a very infrequent crime. The death penalty was for those who threatened the entire community. Birth was still our central sacred ceremony, and when we found good places to settle, which argued for permanence, we frequently selected places for our religious circle dancing, and we laid out stones to mark these places, sometimes very, very large stones, in which we took pride.
Ah, the circles of stones! We became, though we never thought of it that way, the people of the stone circles all over the land.
When we were forced to a new territory—either by starvation or because another band of Taltos was coming towards us whom none of us liked, and with whom no one wanted to live in close quarters—we got in the custom of making a new circle at once. Indeed, the diameter of our circle and the weight of its stones became a claim upon a certain area, and the sight of a very large circle built by others was a sign to us that this was their land and we should move on.
Anybody foolish enough to disregard a sacred circle? Well, they would be given no peace and quiet till they decamped. Of course, it was scarcity that imposed these rules often. A great plain could support very few hunters, really. Good spots on lakes and rivers and on the coast were better, but no place was paradise, no place was the endless fountain of warmth and plenty that had been the lost land.
Claims of sacred protection were asserted against invaders or squatters. And I remember myself carving a figure of the Good God, as I perceived God—with both breasts and a penis—upon an immense stone in one of these circles, a plea to other Taltos that they must respect our holy circle and therefore our land.
When there was a true battle, born of personality and misunderstanding, and rank greed for a particular portion of the earth, the invaders would knock down the stones of those who lived there, and make a new circle entirely of their own.
To be driven out was exhausting, but in a new home the desire to build a larger, more imposing circle burnt hot. We would find stones, we vowed, so large that no one could ever dislodge them, or would ever try.
Our circles spoke of our ambition and our simplicity—of the joy of the dance and our willingness to fight and die for the territory of the tribe.
Our basic values, though unchanged since the days of the lost land, had hardened somewhat around certain rituals. It was mandatory for all to attend the birth of a new Taltos. It was the law that no woman could give birth more than twice. It was the law that reverence and sensuality attend these births; indeed, a great sexual euphoria was often sustained.
The new Taltos was seen as an omen; if not perfect of limb and form, beautiful to behold, and full sized, a terrible fear came over the land. The perfect newborn was the blessing of the Good God as before, but you see, our beliefs had darkened; and as they darkened, as we drew all the wrong conclusions from purely natural events, so did our obsession with the great circles darken, our belief in them as pleasing to the Good God, and as morally essential for the tribe.
At last came the year when we settled on the plain.
This was in the south of Britain, now known as Salisbury, where the climate was beautiful to us, and the best we had ever been able to find. The time? Before the coming of human beings.
We knew by then that the winter would always be with us; we did not think it possible to escape the winter anywhere in the world. If you think about this, it’s a perfectly logical assumption. Alas! The summers were longest and sweetest in this part of Britain, I knew this firsthand now, and the forests were thick and full of deer, and the sea was not far away.
Herds of wild antelope wandered the plain.
Here we decided that we would build our permanent home.
The idea of moving all the time, to avoid arguments or to chase the food supply, had long since lost its appeal. We had