‘You guys alright?’ asked Tom, striding up to us. Straight away Trueheart fell back, to be out of the way of her dad.
‘Yeah, we’re okay. You must be worried about your boys at Veeklehouse.’
‘Clare’s worrying, but I’m not. Okay, some guards have been killed by the sound of it, but it won’t be many. When I was in guards, we planned for this over and over. Our leaders always told us that we’d fight just for a short time and then back off. The Johnfolk were bound to be in a strong position when they first grounded, because we’d be spread out all along poolside, and they’d all be in one place. No sense in losing a lot of men fighting them when they were at their strongest. But it’ll be a different story soon, I promise you, now that we know where they are.’ Tom laughed grimly. ‘It’ll be a different different story.’
‘Still,’ said Dave, looking round at his brother from Ugly’s back, ‘what a terrible thing to happen, eh, just before the four hundredth Virsry?’
Of course we didn’t know exactly when the Virsry would be. It was a bunch of old people far away over the Dark in Circle Valley who decided that, counting their sleeps and wakings until they got to three hundred sixty-five. But we knew it was about now, and we knew there were supposed to be special celebrations up in the Valley, to mark those four hundred years since Gela and Tommy first laid out that Circle of Stones.
‘No, mate, this is a good way,’ Tom said firmly, rubbing the stump of the right hand that he’d lost in a fight with a thief. ‘It’s a good good way to celebrate. Teaching those bloody Johnfolk a lesson for once and for all! What better way could there be to celebrate the Circle than to kick those circle-breakers back into the Pool?’
Behind me, I heard Trueheart give her scornful snort, but quietly quietly, so that, if her dad took her up on it, she could deny it had happened at all.
‘And believe me, Dave,’ Tom went on in a loud firm voice, either not hearing Trueheart or choosing to pretend he hadn’t, ‘we will kick them into the Pool, every single one of them that we don’t do for first with our good blackglass spears. There’ll be fast riders heading to Davidstand right at this moment to give old Strongheart the news, and – trust me! – as soon as he hears, he’ll be on to it, him and Leader Mehmet, they’ll be onto it like a leopard that’s seen a buck. I’ve met them both, you know, Strongheart and Leader Mehmet, and I’m telling you those two guys aren’t just tough, they’re smart smart as well. No way will these Johnfolk get the better of them, not when they’re on our ground, and so far away from the place they know. Strongheart will beat them, don’t you worry. He’ll smash them into little pieces.’
Six
When I finally reached Davidstand that time, I discovered that just about everyone was gathered together in the big Meeting Place there, between the Great Shelter and the L-shaped pool. Strongheart had just got himself a new young shelterwoman, and there was a celebration. At one end of the Meeting Place there was a raised-up floor of wood, where a man was twanging the string of a little guitar while a woman sang and another man tapped on a drum. But when they finished their song, a guard leader came out and spoke to us:
‘People! People! The Head Guard of all Eden, David Strong-heart.’
Everyone knelt and bowed down their heads, and a fat old man with white hair came waddling out onto that wooden floor in a long blue wrap, with a young newhair girl on his arm. We’d heard stories about him out on Knee Tree Grounds: how harsh he was, how cruel, how he tied his enemies to hot spiketrees and left them screaming there until all the skin and flesh on their backs was blistered off. But this old guy looked so friendly and kind that it was hard to believe that this was the same man, the three-greats grandson of Great David. He looked more like some nice old uncle, who’d save bits of stumpcandy for you, and carve you toys out of bone.
More of Strongheart’s family came out to join him on the wooden floor: his oldest son Leader Mehmet, who’d be Head Guard after he’d gone, a bunch of grownup daughters and sons, four five of his other shelterwomen, and twenty or more of his kids and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Strongheart put one arm round his pretty new shelterwoman and the other arm round one of his grownup grandsons, and had all the little ones gather in front of him in their fine fakeskin longwraps, sewn with feathers and batwings and coloured stones.
‘Stand up, everyone!’ he called out to us. ‘Dance! Have a good time! This is a celebration, a celebration of my family. And I don’t just mean my family that you see here round me with my lovely new shelterwoman, but my big family, True Family of Eden, which is every one of you.’
Everyone cheered at that.
‘We’re Davidfolk,’ the old man said, ‘and there are two things that Great David taught us, two things that I want you to remember and never never forget. The first is that there’s only one True Family in Eden, and we’re all in it, and we must hold that Family together no matter what. The second is that sometimes that means being tough. Back when Great David was young up in Circle Valley, all the people in Eden lived together by the Circle that our Mother and Father made. They understood the first part of what I’ve just said, about family being important, but they stumbled badly on that second point. And that meant that when John Redlantern started his nonsense, way back at Virsry One Six Three, Family couldn’t bear to be as firm with him as they needed to be. Only Great David saw that this wasn’t a time for kindness. Only he saw that it was one of those times like when you get a boil on your neck, and you’ve just got to take a knife to it. But the rest of them faltered – Oh! Oh! Oh! Not a knife! A knife will hurt! – and that meant that when they did finally come to their senses, it was too late: Juicy John had split them in two. Which is how we got to the situation we’re in now: two grounds facing each other across Worldpool, hating each other. None of it need have happened, none of it, if only Family had listened to Great David.’
He took his arms from the shoulders of his young grandson and his even younger shelterwoman, and picked up one of the little kids in front of him.
‘Isn’t she beautiful, people?’ he asked, and everyone cheered. ‘I’ve got eighty-two kids, nine hundred forty-one grandchildren, and . . . well . . . more great-grandchildren than I can count, and – do you know what? – I love every single one of them. You’re all good Davidfolk out there, I can see, and I know you’ll understand.’
Again everyone cheered, while Strongheart looked round for one of his women to take the little girl from him.
‘What makes me madder than anything about the Johnfolk,’ he told us, ‘is how they claim that, if it wasn’t for them, everyone would still be living in Circle Valley. Of course not! Tom’s dick and Harry’s, we Davidfolk would have found our way across the Dark in our own good time, without any help from Juicy John. Of course we would! But we would have done it when everyone was ready. And that’s the difference between us and them. We look after everyone. We make sure everyone is ready before we move.’
I looked round at the people round me. I badly needed someone’s help, but whatever old Strongheart said about us all being one Family, they all looked like strangers to me. I noticed a guard nearby, though, who seemed to have noticed me. He was maybe twenty years older than me, and was holding his spear with one hand because his other hand was cut off at the wrist. He saw me look at him, and I guess he could tell how scared and desperate I was, because he beckoned with a sideways movement of his head that I should come over and talk to him.
‘You look a bit lost, my dear,’ he said.
I told him I was. I’d fallen out with the shadowspeaker Mary and she was the only family I had left. I didn’t know where to go, and I was hungry hungry.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a couple of flowercakes, and when this is over, I’ll sort you out with some more.’
It was Tom. He was still in the guards back then, but his guard leader was about to send him back to Michael’s Place because of his hand, and becaus
e he wasn’t so young any more in any case. Later on he found me food to eat and let me sleep in his shelter, and I let him have a little slip with me because I was grateful. He had me turn my back to him – men often did that – and grunted away to himself for a bit. I just went away into my own head until he’d done.
During the eight years I lived since then at Michael’s Place, this was to happen from time to time. Tom would follow me when I went out into forest, and have me bend over for him, and afterwards he’d just carry on like nothing happened, heading back to our cluster, or going off hunting by himself. We never spoke about it, but somehow it was as if we’d agreed that this was the trade for him letting me come back with him to Michael’s Place. If I’m honest, I guess I also hoped that maybe it would mean that fewer of my kids would have clawfeet.
Anyway, that first time at Davidstand, in his rough little shelter, he just lay down afterwards, said, ‘Sleep well,’ and then, almost at once, began to snore. But he was friendly enough when we woke again. He told me he was going to leave the guards and go back to Michael’s Place to be with his shelterwoman and kids.
‘I know when I’m not wanted,’ he said.
He said his dad had been head of the cluster but was too old to carry on, so he was going to take over.
‘You should come with me,’ he said. ‘My brother Dave is looking for a shelterwoman. He’s a clawfoot and he’s a bit slow, but he’s alright. I reckon you and him would get on.’
Seven
Whatever was happening in Veeklehouse had long ago been buried by the hum of forest all round us, the pulsing of the trees, pumping their sap down to find the heat of Eden’s core, and pumping it back up again.
Too tired to speak, we walked in silence. We wanted to get as far away as possible from the Johnfolk, and so we pushed on for much longer than a normal waking, though our feet were sore and tired, and our kids were worn out. In the end it was our bucks that made us stop. Loping along in that strange way they have, with their backwards bending knees and their splayed feet, and their six legs that each move in turn, they began to stumble under their heavy loads, and to pant and groan and ooze green froth from their mouth feelers.
Well, we recognized the signs and we did not want bucks that couldn’t go any further and would have to be done for. Not only did we rely on them to carry our stuff and our clawfeet and old people and our little kids, but each one of them was a few wakings’ meat for us if things ever got hard and we couldn’t find anything else to eat. So we finally stopped, and ate some flowercakes, along with a slinker that Davidson and Tom had managed to do for along the way, tearing its tough muddy-tasting meat from its bony shell and hoping it didn’t give us a bellyache. Then Tom drew a circle on the ground and called out to Gela, as all Davidfolk do at the end of a waking, asking the Mother of us all to look after all until the time came for us to return to Earth:
‘Keep us safe, Mother! Keep us strong! Help us hold together and help one another! Help us be patient until the time comes, just as you were patient patient in all your time on Eden. Help us beat the Johnfolk and drive them back into the water.’
He got out the little guitar that my Dave had made for him from the hard grey shell of a groundrat, and started to twang out a tune on its string. It was a song from Earth, one of those songs that were so old that half the words don’t even make sense, but we still sing the sounds anyway so as to keep the song as close as possible to how it was sung on Earth. We used to sing that same song back on Knee Tree Grounds, and quite probably the Johnfolk sang it too, but it was surely the Davidfolk’s favourite song:
Come Tree Row, take me home
To the place I come from
Wister Jinyer, mountain mother,
Take me home, Come Tree Row.
We sang it slowly, standing together round that circle that Clare had scratched on the ground, bringing the song round not just once but many times to the place where it came slowly to rest on that final note. Oldies sang, and little kids. Candy belted it out, beating time with her little strong arms. Everyone joined in, even Trueheart. She might think she’d seen through shadowspeakers, but she still liked the story the shadowspeakers told about going home to Earth. So did I, so did pretty much everyone on the Davidfolk Ground, and though we didn’t understand all the words of that song, we knew it was a song about home. You could tell that even just from the tune, the way it comes to rest on that last note.
We were scared scared – scared for our missing friends and sons and daughters, scared for ourselves – and we were grieving for our life at Michael’s Place. Tom’s dick, that life had seemed hard in its own right when we were living it, what with worries about finding enough stuff to satisfy Leader Hunter and still feed ourselves and our kids, worries about how it was getting harder to find meat, worries about sick kids, and births that go wrong, and so many other things, but it had seemed happy and peaceful and safe compared with now. So we needed home right then more than ever, the true home that we all long for, where Johnfolk wouldn’t come and smash our shelters, and leopards wouldn’t sneak through the fence, and death itself couldn’t reach out its cold cold hand and snatch away our babies and the ones we loved.
Everyone needs a home, even people like my friend Starlight, or old Juicy John Redlantern who set himself against whole of Family. People like them might seem to be turning their backs on their homes, but really they’re just looking for a better home, one that goes deeper, one that’s stronger and truer than the little flimsy things that most of us try to cling to. They’re looking in the wrong place, though, that’s what I learned from Mary. We human beings are just passing through this world, so of course it feels flimsy, of course it never quite feels like a proper home. And it’s no good trying to find one either, because it’s just not here to be found. We need to be patient and look after each other, and not ask too much, and listen for our Mother, and then we will go one waking to our real true home. Either a starship will come and take us back when we’re alive, or our shadows will fly there after we’re dead, and come alive and solid again in the warmth and brightness of Earth’s star.
Where I grew up we followed Jeff of course, and we used to just laugh at ideas like that, but Mary said the Kneefolk were like people who sit and shiver in some cold place, secretly wishing they were warmer, but telling themselves loudly all the time that they’re warm enough already and that anyway there’s no such thing as fire. ‘Doesn’t the fact you long for a thing show that it’s out there somewhere to be found?’ That’s what Mary used to say. ‘If we feel cold, there’s fire. If we feel hungry, there’s food. If we want a man and his dick, well, there are men with dicks who want us too. It’s the same with the true home we all long for. It’s there, if we can just find our way to it.’
And that’s what the Circle was, Mary taught me, a way home. So I tried not to think of people who stayed hungry, or people who died of cold, or people who longed for someone to hold them but never found one all their lives, and I stood by the Circle with the other Davidfolk, and sang ‘Come Tree Row’.
Afterwards I laid out a buckskin on the ground for my kids, and another for me and Dave, up beside the trunk of a redlantern tree.
‘How do we know the Johnfolk won’t come?’ Fox wanted to know, looking up at me with his big big eyes.
For my kids, I was home, like mothers usually are for little kids. I was the safe warm place they knew they could come back to. But that was a hard part to play when I was scared scared myself.
‘They won’t come, darling. They’re too far away and they’ve got our guards to fight. And anyway, we’ve got Strongheart, don’t forget. He’s strong and smart and powerful and he’ll know exactly what to do. We’re going to Davidstand where he lives, so he can look after us.’
Poor Fox was so tired from all that walking that, frightened as he was, he still sank straight down into sleep. Candy was the same. ‘I saw the boats first,’ she said as
she closed her eyes, and then she was gone. Metty took a bit longer to settle, but eventually his eyes closed, and I kissed his twisted little face and laid him carefully down. Dave put his arm round me as I stretched out on the ground beside him. He’d been on buckback all waking of course. He hadn’t had the exercise that I’d had. All the muscles in his body were taut with fear, and I knew he wouldn’t sleep, just worry worry worry, eating himself up inside.
‘What are we going to eat at Davidstand? That’s what bothers me,’ he muttered. ‘There’s no hunting round there any more – they’ve done for all the bucks for miles: it’s even worse than round Veeklehouse – and what have we got to trade with?’
‘No point in worrying about that now.’
I turned my back to him and settled myself down. I did not love Dave that much: there was no fun in him, no joy, and he had almost no curiosity about anything. I loved the kids we’d had together – I think they were all his, though Fox might possibly have been Tom’s – and he loved them too, but the truth was that I’d just made do with Dave because I wanted to be able to stay in Michael’s Place and not have to be on my own any more. I guess he’d made do with me as well. No one chooses a batface if they can avoid it.
I lay listening to the pulsing of the tree beside us – hmmmph hmmmph hmmmph – and watched the flutterbyes flapping round the redlantern flowers shining above me. I saw they were beautiful things, those shining pink tubes, curving upwards at the end so the flutterbyes could find their way in. Swaying slightly slightly in the breeze that came from across the Pool, they were beautiful beautiful. But it was a beauty that made my heart ache, almost as if they weren’t really there at all, were just a memory from some far off time, long long ago.
Daughter of Eden Page 4