When they spoke thus each experienced ill-feeling toward the other and wished for some occult gift of hurting. They did not observe that these disbeliefs bubbled darkly from days when they did not believe in themselves. Halmis went to her brothers’ house, Ramiki to his father’s above the fields. The village talked, but old tradition gave it forth that prophets might be allowed to differ from other folk.
Whether individuals loved or hated, the river-country people had troubles of a collective nature. They had been long, long seated in a plain, great enough and rich enough for the forefathers, not so great nor so rich for the descendant swarm. Now it was crowded, now it was being sucked dry. For a time there seemed help in being a terror to the plain on the other side of a chain of hills, in organizing each bright season a great raid to bring home wealth and provision for man and beast. But that recourse was failing. Other plains, too, were crowded, sucked dry, growing poor.... There was much exposure of children, almost always female children. The old, too, were put to death. But all that only partially helped.
People must move—at any rate, some people. There was an old song of the plain which said that before the memory of man there had been a moving; in short, that the plain-folk had moved from elsewhere into the plain. It was hard to believe....
The chiefs and the elders consulted together. They applied for help to all likely forces, including, well to the front, the supernatural.
A concourse was held, an assembly of the folk of the plain. Not so many miles wide and long was the plain; it did not take thousands to make living difficult. The most got within hearing of them who harangued from the great flat stone that was the sacred or hallowed stone, alike of speech and of sacrifice. Chiefs must be orators, elders must know how to bring wisdom home, priest and prophet must be able to fix the ridge-pole.... All was done in order, throughout a day of sun and shadow.
Ramiki and Halmis stood together upon the stone that was wide as the floor of a house. The day was advanced, the light gold-red; behind were three great trees, before and to either hand the scimitar-shaped crowd of the people, excited already by music and by passionate, persuasive speech. The drums beat, the cymbals clanged, then silence, then right posturing by prophet and prophetess, then words half spoken, half sung, sent from the lips with force, ringing and reaching!
“Folk of the river-plain!”
chanted Ramiki.
“People of Arzan, the high god, the great god,
God of the gods!
For you I cried to Arzan.
‘O Arzan!
The people increase as it were the river in spring time!’”
Halmis the prophetess took the chant:—