‘This whole world is a story,’ Mary told them. ‘And just like in any story, everything has a purpose, even the sad things. Everything’s connected to everything else. It really is, my dears. As long as you keep your heart open to our Mother, you will be holding a string that stretches off into the future, on and on, through times and places you can’t yet see, some of them happy but many of them sad, until at last it reaches your true home, where bad things won’t happen any more and the happiness is there for good. Remember that. Of course it won’t take away your sadness now, but it will remind you that sadness doesn’t go on forever. Hold onto that string, however bad things are, and there will always be a way back home at the end for all of Gela’s true children.’
Judging by their faces, they didn’t fully understand what she meant but they could tell that Mary believed it completely and they could see, as I’d seen myself when I went to that show of hers on Knee Tree Grounds, that she was smart and strong and brave, and had driven out all the weak little doubts and fears that most of us have inside ourselves. And so they believed her, or believed her enough at any rate to get some sort of comfort from her words, some sort of sense that the world did still have some point even if they couldn’t quite understand it themselves.
Again and again, I saw Mary do that for people: bind the world together again for them when it had broken apart, give them something to hold onto when things were empty and pointless and cruel, lay out for them, like she said, a kind of string to hold onto. It wouldn’t change how things were right now, it wouldn’t take away their pain, but it led to a far off place where the pain would be taken away.
It’s no good pretending that I didn’t sometimes have doubts about the things that Mary said and did. Well, how could I not, when I’d grown up with people who thought the whole shadowspeaker thing was a trick to fool people? But again and again, when I had those doubts, I’d see her helping people, like she helped the people at Hot Pools, and the doubts would just blow away. Doubts were a kind of weakness, that was all.
‘When your stomach is sick,’ Mary would sometimes say, ‘the sickness seems to fill up the world, and it’s hard to hold in your mind that you’ll soon be well again. When you’re cold, it’s hard to believe you’ll ever be warm. When you’re lonely, you feel like you’ll never have friends. But these things do pass, and so will the sadness of Eden, just as long as you stay strong, and believe in Mother Gela.’
By the time we reached Veeklehouse, the better part of a year had gone by since we were last there. It was still only the third time I’d ever visited the place, but I knew from the last time that when you went away from a place, it stored up all the feelings you had when you were there before, and gave them back to you again when you returned, all at once, all wrapped up together. And they were lonely feelings that Veeklehouse had been keeping for me, not just from the first time when Starlight left me there, and all the excitement we’d shared about going there had all turned to grief, but from that time a year ago, when I’d got that news of Starlight and then had no one to share it with. Here was the shame I’d felt about not being truthful with Mary. Here was anger at Mary – I’d hardly noticed it at the time, but here it was – for not being the kind of person I could just talk to about Starlight, without it being all complicated and hard. And here was doubt and worry too, about whether I’d done the right thing to leave my home and give up all my family and friends for the sake of this one single person who I was afraid to share things with that I’d happily have shared with anyone on Knee Tree Grounds.
Mary was tired tired from travelling, and from a long string of shows with hardly a break between them, and she lay down for a rest. Straight away I hurried to the cliff as I’d done last time. I knew I’d never tell Mary where I’d been or why – she’d have seen no good reason for talking to Johnfolk, unless I was trying to persuade them to come back to True Family – and I felt badly about that, but I went anyway. There was a part of me, it seemed, that just didn’t fit in with how Mary wanted me to be. There were hungers that Mary couldn’t feed, and wouldn’t even recognize as being real.
I soon found some traders over from New Earth, and I got talking to one of their paddle-men. He had clawfeet, like my Dave, but his arms were thick and strong. Being a paddle-man is a good job for someone who can barely walk.
‘I used to be friends with a woman called Starlight,’ I said. ‘She crossed the water to New Earth. Last time I was here, one of you blokes told me she was the Ringwearer or something . . .’
I was looking for the nice warm feeling I got last time from hearing about my friend and seeing how impressed the New Earthers were that I knew her. But, before I’d even finished speaking, I could tell that it wasn’t going to be that way this time round. The clawfoot man was quite friendly at first, but as soon as he understood that I was a friend of Starlight’s he became hostile and harsh.
‘The False Ringwearer, you mean? The one that came over from here and tried to steal our ring? The one that told wicked lies, with our Mother’s ring on her finger?’
I was so shocked that at first I just gaped at him, not knowing what to say.
‘What do you mean wicked lies ?’ I asked at last.
‘Have you heard of the Secret Story?’
I did my best to look like I hadn’t.
‘Well, maybe you don’t have it over here, but it’s a pack of lies that silly women whisper to each other. If they get caught they’re sent straight to the fire, and serve them right. But your Starlight seemed to think she was above all of that. She didn’t just tell a girl or two, like other whisperers do, she shouted it out to whole crowds of people, up and down our ground: men, women, children, everyone who came to see her. But she got what was coming to her in the end. You won’t be seeing your little buddy again, I’m afraid, holeface. No one knows for certain what actually did for her, but she washed up way down alpway from here near Brown River with her lungs full of water and a big old spear hole through her.’
‘What? Starlight, you mean? You mean she’s—?’
‘That’s right, holeface, I mean she’s dead. Looks like she had a quarrel with one of her stonehead mates, and either died from the wound or drowned.’ He’d been avoiding looking at me, but now he gave me a little sideways glance to see how I was taking it. He spat and shrugged. ‘I guess it’s hard to hear if she really was your friend, but I’m afraid it served her right, the little slinker.’
‘But Greenstone—’
‘That weak fool of a Headman who brought her over? He got what he deserved as well. He should never have been Headman in first place and nor should his dad either. Greenstone ended up in the fire, that’s what happened to him. The big big fire that no one ever comes out of. It’s Headman Dixon in charge now, and quite right too. He’s a good strong man, and a proper Head. And his woman Lucy’s a proper Ringwearer as well.’
The man stood up, turned his back to me, and hobbled over to talk to a friend of his. He didn’t want anything more to do with a friend of the False Ringwearer.
I made my way slowly back to Mary. I felt like my whole body was packed as tightly with tears as a spiketree is packed with boiling sap. And yet I couldn’t talk to Mary about it. She’d have no sympathy with someone who went over to the Johnfolk and wore that ring for them, let alone someone who spread the Secret Story. I remembered how Mary had given comfort to the people at Hot Pools whose little girl had died, how she’d comforted grieving people in little clusters right up and down the Davidfolk Ground, but I knew she wouldn’t be able to give that comfort to me. That wasn’t because she’d want to be unkind to me. It was because Mary knew without any doubt that anyone who’d turned away from Gela’s True Family would never find their way home. Starlight would wander forever through the dark icy forest of the stars.
‘But perhaps Starlight was bringing the ring back for True Family?’ I whispered to myself. ‘Perhaps in the end she saw what was r
ight, like those people did up at Rockway Edge?’
But, however hard I tried, I couldn’t persuade myself that this was true. It wasn’t just that Starlight had had no time in the past for shadowspeakers, and had laughed loudly at the stories they told. After all, the same had been true of me. No, it was because I knew Starlight was way too firm and strong to ever change her mind about a thing like that.
And that was a strange thought, because what was I really saying? Was I saying I only believed this stuff because I was weak?
Mary saw I was sad, of course. She’d had a lot of practice of spotting people who were sad or uneasy in themselves, and she was good good at it, even when the people were complete strangers to her.
‘You’re sad, aren’t you, my dear?’ she said. ‘Coming to Veeklehouse has made you sad sad.’
I nodded, and then I couldn’t help myself any more and all those tears came pouring out as Mary took me in her arms. But I didn’t tell her about Starlight. I told her instead that coming back to Veeklehouse made me sad because it reminded me of my friends from Knee Tree Grounds who’d been with me when I first came here, and it made me miss my old home and my family.
‘Of course you miss them, my darling one,’ Mary murmured as she gently rocked me in her arms. ‘Of course you do! And I promise you we’ll go back there to see them. But let’s wait for a while longer, if you can bear it. If you can hold on that long, I’d like to go back there when we’ve done that trip up to Circle Valley, and you’re a shadowspeaker in your own right. And we’re not quite ready for that. You’re learning fast, but you’re still learning, still full of worries and doubts, though I know you’re working hard hard hard at sorting them out. If we do another round of shows in Wide Forest, I reckon when we come back here again we’ll be ready to go up to the Circle. We’ll go across the Dark, and when we come back over, you’ll be a shadowspeaker like me, and we can go over the water to that pretty grounds of yours as two shadowspeakers together.’
I nodded through my tears, and she reached up and kissed me on my tear-stained cheek, pressing me close against her short solid body.
‘But that’s only if you can wait that long, my darling,’ Mary asked me. ‘Do you think you can? Do you think you can leave it that long before you see your people in Knee Tree Grounds? If you don’t think so, just say, and we’ll go up there now.’
‘Let’s go now! ’ I longed to say. Why not now? Why did I have to be a shadowspeaker first? But I felt guilty because I knew I was hiding things from her, I knew I was only telling her a small part of the real reason for my tears. And for that reason alone, knowing I was letting her down and wanting to make up for it, I said the thing that I knew would please her.
‘Yes, of course, Mary,’ I said. ‘Of course I can wait.’
Fifteen
Davidstand was taut and jangling with fear. All of that big square space between the L-shaped pool and the L-shaped fence was packed with people who’d come, like us, from poolside. They were crammed in under the trees between the shelters of the people who normally lived there, some of them with eyes screwed up, trying to sleep, some talking together in tense low voices, some hunched over fires as they cooked up slinkers and bats and ants and whatever other scraps they’d been able to find to eat. They eyed us warily as we came through. Who were we? Where did we come from? What had we seen? Why had we chosen to come here when each new arrival just made things harder for them?
The first place we tried to stop, a bunch of Davidstand men came over with big sticks in their hands and told us we couldn’t stay there, it was their ground. So much for the Davidfolk being one big Family. The exact same thing happened the second time round, just as Kate and Clare had finally managed to get a fire going. Tom and Davidson picked up their spears and began to growl that they’d been guards here for years, and deserved some respect, but Clare and Kate pulled them away from the Davidstand men. We abandoned our fire and found yet another patch of ground, right under the fence, to put down our babies and our loads, hand out small bits of dried meat to our kids to chew on, unpack our bucks, and start the business of firelighting all over again with those little pots of embers that had to be gently gently coaxed into glowing and smouldering again before they would make flames. All round us other small fires were crackling under the trees, and other low tense worried voices were asking the same questions that we asked ourselves: What were we going to eat? How far away were the Johnfolk? Where would we go when our meat ran out?
When my kids were as settled as they could be, I walked over to some people nearby. They told me they’d come from near David Water, a fishing cluster on poolside, some distance down alpway from Veeklehouse, where I’d been a couple of times with Mary. The Johnfolk had attacked there too, it seemed, as well as Veeklehouse. Twenty boats, they said, had grounded there. Last they’d seen of David Water was the smoke rising from their burning shelters.
‘And the worst part is that Strongheart doesn’t know about it!’ one of them said, a clawfoot woman about the same age as Clare.
‘He doesn’t know ?’
‘He doesn’t know about any of this at all. He’s not here.’
Gela’s heart, that was a big shock. I felt sick and empty inside. All of us had imagined Strongheart and his sons here in Davidstand, figuring out how to drive the Johnfolk back into the Pool. We’d talked about it on our long walk over here. We’d comforted ourselves with the thought that, even as we trudged along, our Head Guard was working out how to get us back home again. We’d told one another, over and over, that the place we were going was the one place, more than any other, that Strongheart would keep safe.
‘He’s gone to the four hundredth Virsry at Circle Valley,’ the woman told me, watching my face with that funny pleasure people take in giving bad news. ‘He was long gone by the time we arrived here. Guards have been sent after them, of course, on fast fast bucks, but they can’t possibly have reached them yet.’
Strongheart had taken Leader Mehmet and Leader Hunter with him as well, she told me, his first and third sons. They’d be on their bucks now, up on Snowy Dark, making their way to Circle Valley to join Strongheart’s second son, Leader Harry, who was guard leader up there and was getting things ready for the Virsry. So it wasn’t just Strongheart who didn’t know. All four of the highest men in the Davidfolk Ground knew nothing at all about the Johnfolk attacking us.
A whole crowd of people had gone with them, so the woman had heard. The four hundredth Virsry was a big big thing, and, for the first time ever, the Headman of Brown River and the Head Woman of Half Sky had been invited to come to it. Strongheart had taken his two newest shelterwomen, Jane and Flowerlight – Jane was pregnant, and Flowerlight had a small baby – and Mehmet and Hunter had each brought one of their women, along with about thirty helpers and forty of the guards that we’d been thinking would be here to protect us.
‘They went off as happy as anything, apparently,’ the woman said, ‘with horns blowing and drums thumping. The high women chucked out handfuls of stumpcandy for the kids to run after. The high men chucked out trading sticks. And all the while those ringmen were coming towards us across the Pool.’
I dreaded bringing this news back to the others so much that I put it off for a bit by walking to see what other news I could gather. It was a strange thing. I’d been brought up on the Grounds to think of Strongheart as a cruel man who would willingly do for people if they so much as questioned him or criticized him or stood in his way. And he really was. Even the Michael’s Place people, and the folk I talked to when I was in Veeklehouse, would complain about how much stuff he took from them and how little he let them keep, even though they were Davidfolk. ‘Those high people are all the same,’ they’d say, ‘they just look after themselves.’ And yet still, in a time like this, we all looked to Strongheart to protect us, like he was some kind of kind wise granddad, and we were little kids.
More little fires, more s
cared exhausted faces. Guards were riding about on bucks, trying to look important but not really knowing what to do. Davidstand people were frightened that all these strangers from poolside would try and take what was theirs, and so their men clutched sticks and spears and glared out at us from their solid shelters whenever we went too near to them. Poolside people were worried that the Davidstand folk would throw them out, and so their men clutched sticks and spears too, daring the Davidstand men to even think about it. And everyone, from Davidstand or poolside, worried that no one was in charge, no one was telling them what was happening, or what was being done, or what they were supposed to do.
When I spoke to other poolside people, I heard stories about the Johnfolk. We’d been lucky lucky it seemed. The ringmen hadn’t been as kind with others as they’d been with us. One time, in a cluster near David Water, a bunch of them had caught some guards trying to sneak up on them, and tied them to spiketrees to scream and burn. And when a woman in the cluster had run forwards to untie them – she was the granny of one of the guards – they’d pulled off her wrap and tied her to a tree as well. In another cluster, just alpway of Veeklehouse, the people had foolishly refused to bow down to the Johnfolk, and the New Earthers had done for everyone they could get their hands on, cutting the throats of oldies and little kids with their long cruel metal knives. And in not just one but many clusters the ringmen had gathered everyone together and made them watch while they pissed and crapped over their precious circles of stones, and then danced in middle, where no one was supposed to go except high people and shadowspeakers, lifting up their fakeskin wraps to show their arses and their dicks.
‘So what’s our plan?’ Clare asked, when I got back to the others.
I hadn’t passed on all the stories I heard – Candy had run to me and climbed into my arms as soon as she saw me, and Fox was right beside me, listening listening listening – but I’d told her that Strongheart and his sons were up on the Dark, heading for the Virsry at Circle Valley, and that they were going to meet the high people from Brown River and Half Sky.
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