The stones comprising this particular load, broken by the stone masons
into crude blocks of two and three times the weight of a man, were for
the Master's garden wall, which Si'Wren must pass by every day on her
way to and from the spice tent. As the two sweating drivers were helped
along by the boys, many looked on disinterestedly and more than a few
openly laughed and mocked at the slowness of their progress.
One onlooker shouted gleeful insults, bringing on the inevitable vile
curses from the aggravated drivers.
The men kept the oxen at their yokes with cursings and whippings, as
they dragged the stone boat screeching over the exposed surfaces of
rocks and stones in the ground and the wooden runners scraped over them
with ear-splitting squealings. Si'Wren watched also as the team made
their way slowly past the spice tent and beyond, to where the stone
masons labored to build the new garden wall.
Si'Wren bowed her head a little, and shut her eyes gently as she softly
sang a prayer for the physical safety of the young boys. She often sang
prayers during her work, swaying gently to the rhythm of her own soft
sweetly-uttered syllables. It was not merely a prayer she sang always,
but sometimes rather, a long-favored tribal song, a song of old which
kept alive the promise about the Garden of Heaven to which all good
souls must surely one day go.
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