To confuse things even more, there were a lot of Hiding People down there as well, people who’d slipped away into forest long ago, to keep out of the way of guards and ringmen, always on the move, hunting and scavenging among the shining trees without any clusters of their own. Mary said Hiding People was a good name for them. They were hiding away from the world, ‘a bit like those Kneefolk of yours on their little grounds.’ But, whether or not they were hiding from the world, when there were no guards round, the Hiding People came into the White Streams clusters to trade, just as the Riverfolk did, and brought in their own stories about giant bats and leopardmen to mingle with the others.
None of this stopped the White Streams folk from loving Mary’s shows, though. Just like the Edgefolk up at Harry’s Rest, they were excited excited to have her there. They shouted and cried, they fell to their knees, they raised their hands up to the black sky and thanked Mother Gela for bringing us to them, tears streaming down their faces. There was no doubt they loved Gela and wanted to hear from her, even though, when it came to the True Story, they had it all wrong in so many different ways.
One time, when we’d done a show right next to one of those white white streams, an old woman came up to Mary afterwards and asked her if Mother Gela would make her go to Earth when she died, even if she didn’t want to go.
‘Only I’d prefer it if my shadow could stay here,’ she said, ‘in some quiet place by the White Streams where it’s peaceful, and I can stay near my family.’
‘Earth is peaceful, my dear,’ Mary told her. ‘It’s our true home. It’s the place where all our troubles end.’
‘Well, that’s not what I’ve heard,’ the old woman said. Her whole face was covered with wrinkles so deep that you couldn’t see right down into them, and her breasts were like two little empty skin bags that have been soaked in water for way too long and then left out to dry. ‘What about all those stories about trouble on Earth? Like the story of the white and black people, for instance. You know that one? About how the white people tied the black people up with ropes and made them work like they were bucks? Or the one about Hurter the Germ Man and how he killed the Juice People. They say he took their leader Jeez and hung him up from a—’
‘My dear,’ Mary gently interrupted, reaching out and touching the woman on the back of her spotty old hand. ‘Those are stories from Earth, it’s true, but they’re only meant for fun. They’re just silly stories for telling to children. I mean, white people and black people! Think about it. Have you ever seen anyone that was either white or black?’
The old woman considered this. ‘But don’t they say our Mother had black skin?’ she asked.
Mary smiled. ‘Her skin was dark, and Tommy’s was light. But that doesn’t mean that she was black like the sky or that he was white like these stones, and it doesn’t mean there were two different kinds of people. I mean, look . . .’ Mary held her arm against the old woman’s. ‘My skin is a bit lighter than yours, and Angie’s here is darker. But you get that everywhere, don’t you? The same as you get people with different colour eyes and hair. My eyes are grey, look, and yours and Angie’s are brown. Everyone’s different, but that doesn’t mean there were ever black people and white people living apart from one another!’
She gave the old woman a friendly, teasing prod. ‘What an idea! Next you’ll be telling me there are green people and blue people!’
The woman giggled at that. Mary had shown her how she’d got the story wrong, but done it without shaming her or making her feel small or bad.
‘You’re so good at that,’ I told her afterwards when it was just the two of us again beside our fire, the guards a little way off through the trees. ‘You’re so angry with people sometimes, but then with someone like that you’re kind kind. You always seem to know which way will work best.’
‘I only get angry with people if they ought to know better,’ Mary said. ‘I get angry if they know quite well what Gela wants from them but pretend they don’t. But I can’t blame people if they’ve been told the wrong stories and just don’t understand. They’re doing their best with what they’ve got, the same as you and me.’
‘But how can you tell whether someone knows but pretends they don’t, or whether it’s just that they don’t understand?’
‘It’s just practice, Angie, practice and hard work. You’ll be just as good at it as I am one waking, or most likely even better. I’m so looking forward to that. I’m so looking forward to you and me being shadowspeakers together, talking about our work, trying together to understand the mind of our Mother.’
I don’t know why, but I clearly remember that when we lay down to sleep that waking, I couldn’t settle. I just couldn’t stop myself from thinking about the people I used to know at Knee Tree Grounds and how far they were away from me, and I missed them so much I ached inside.
A tubeslinker stuck its head out of the airhole of the whitelantern tree above me. There were two bats hunting for flutterbyes round the tree’s lanterns, and the slinker watched them as they dived and swooped. As it watched the bats, the slinker swayed from side to side, following their movements. And then suddenly one of the bats came too near and it sprung outwards. Two three feet of thin bony body came shooting out of that hole as it grabbed the bat in its jaws and held it tight. The bat thrashed about with its wings and waved its little arms about, but none of that stopped the slinker from dragging it back down into the hot sticky darkness inside the tree, crushing its wings as they were tugged inside the hole.
Eventually we came back to Veeklehouse again, my fourth visit this time, about a year on from the third. As she always did after a journey, Mary lay down for a rest and, once again, I walked over to the cliff. That’s how it is, I’ve noticed, when you come back to a place where you’ve been before. Unless you make an effort to avoid it, you find yourself doing the exact same things you did last time you were there.
I went back to the cliff, but I wasn’t looking for New Earthers this time. What would be the point of finding New Earthers to hear them mock my old friend, and laugh about her death? But since that time by the White Streams when I couldn’t sleep, I’d been missing my home a lot. I knew it was going to be a long time yet before we went back there, but I thought that if I could at least have some news of Knee Tree Grounds, it would make the place feel a bit closer again. So instead of trying to find New Earth paddle-men, I sought out the Davidfolk paddle-men, the ones who took the traders from Veeklehouse up and down poolside to places like Rockway Edge, and David Water, and Brown River.
I must have spoken to twenty men on the ledge under the cliff where the boats were, but most of them hadn’t even heard of Knee Tree Grounds, and the few that had heard of it had never been there. I knew I’d been away from Mary too long – she’d be waking up now, wondering where I was, and wanting me to help her get ready for her show – but I just couldn’t bring myself to go back to her without having some news, so I kept on asking, until at last I did find a bloke who knew something.
‘Knee Tree Grounds?’ he said. He was an old guy with a long white beard. ‘You’re one of the people that used to live there, are you? I wondered what happened to you all.’
‘What do you mean to us all ? They’re all still there apart from me!’
‘They aren’t, you know. You can see the remains of shelters, and the stones and ashes where the main fire used to be, and some writing on a tree. But the people have all gone.’ He chuckled. ‘I can’t read myself but apparently the writing says: “We’re really here”, which is kind of funny when you think about it, seeing as there’s no one there at all, unless you count all those fatbucks lying round on the sand. That’s why I went there, in fact: to do for fatbucks and melt them down. These Veeklehouse lamps are always hungry. You wouldn’t believe the amount of buckfat that’s needed just to keep them all burning. Just as we were paddling out of the place, I remember, another bunch of guys came over to
cut bark from those funny trees that bend over in middle. But apart from them, we didn’t see anyone at all. There are a few guards over there, but they have their own camp they’ve made out on the peckway edge of the water forest. My boss paddled out to them with a couple of guys just to let them know who we were, but the rest of us didn’t see them whole time we were there. Well, they’re there to watch out for Johnfolk coming across Deep Darkness, aren’t they? There wouldn’t be much point in them sitting on the sand with the fatbucks, because you can’t see anything with those big droopy trees in the water all round you. The guards have built a little grounds of their own out there out of sand and wood, my boss said, where they can look straight out towards Deep Darkness, and watch and wait. Of course, they’ve got a fast boat waiting ready all the—’
‘Where have the people gone?’
‘No one knows. I thought you’d—’
‘Do you think someone has done for them?’
‘I don’t think it’s that. The guards told my boss that they all just went, just disappeared for some reason, not telling anyone where they were going.’
Well, there was just one good thing about hearing that my home was no longer there, and that my mum and brothers and sisters and friends had all gone off somewhere where I might never find them. There was just one single good thing. At least this time I could tell Mary all about it, and not have to keep it a secret inside my head.
Mary was kind kind of course. She’d been about to put on a show, but now she told the Veeklehouse guards that it couldn’t go ahead for another waking and they should send the people away. And then she held me curled up against her while I cried and cried.
‘Mother Gela is watching you, remember,’ she said, ‘and she’s watching all your old friends too. Never forget that. Just because they turned their backs on Gela doesn’t mean she loves them any less. She’s a mother, isn’t she? And what mother loves her children less just because they’re naughty and run away from her? You need to trust Gela, my dearest. When you trust her, that’s when she can help you. Trust her, and I promise you she won’t let you down.’
‘Please forgive me for saying this, Mary,’ I said, ‘but I can’t see Mother Gela, and I can’t touch her. But I could touch those people, I could talk to them, I could see their faces.’
‘I understand, dear one,’ said Mary, still holding me close to her and gently gently rocking me. ‘Of course I understand. We all need people we can touch.’
For a moment I felt grateful with Mary for understanding that we needed real people more than her precious Gela, but then I felt angry with her instead. It was all well and good her being nice and understanding now, but if she hadn’t insisted that I stay away from the Grounds until I was a shadowspeaker, I would have gone there much sooner, and I might have got there in time to learn what the Kneefolk’s plans were, and why they were leaving, and where it was they were all going to.
I didn’t speak my anger out loud and if Mary had noticed any change in me at all, it would have been me suddenly tensing for a moment in her arms, arching my back away from her touch. But I quickly realized it wasn’t really fair to blame Mary and pushed the anger out of my mind. She couldn’t have known that the Kneefolk were suddenly going to leave a place where they’d lived for over two hundred years, any more than I could have done. And she hadn’t really insisted that I didn’t go back yet, either. She’d just suggested it. She’d just given it as her opinion that it might be better to wait, and asked me if I’d agreed. She’d even offered to go there sooner if I couldn’t wait, and I knew quite well that she’d have done just that if I’d asked her. The only reason I hadn’t asked her was that I’d been feeling guilty about things I hadn’t told her.
‘It just makes me feel so alone,’ I told her. ‘It makes me feel I’m all alone in Eden.’
‘You’re really not, you know. You have me here with you, for one thing, and you know I love you. And you have our Mother, the best person there is to have on your side, even if you can’t yet touch her, watching every moment of every waking and every sleep.’ I’d relaxed in her arms again now, and she bent over to kiss me on my head.
‘I’m glad I’ve got you, Mary,’ I told her, ‘I really am, but it seems you’re all I have now.’
‘Well, you’re all I have too, you know, Angie, apart from our Mother. My mum and dad are dead, and I never see the friends I used to have when I was kid. Not that I was ever that good at making friends. I always knew I was going to be a shadowspeaker, even when I was little, and the other kids thought that was weird. My mum thought so too, actually. She kept telling me that I should let my dad find a man for me, like the other girls. People were talking about me, she said, and making her look bad, people were saying I wasn’t a proper girl at all. My dad was proud of me, though, and I do miss him. He was . . .’
It was strange to think of Mary as a child somehow, Mary with a mum and a dad.
She gave a little laugh. ‘I’m sorry, dear. I don’t know why I’m going on about my people when you’re sad about yours! I guess I just wanted to show you that I do know something about how you feel, and that I’m not so different from you. I’m so so sorry we didn’t go back to see your people sooner, Angie. If I’d had any idea this was going to happen, I promise you I wouldn’t have asked you to wait.’
‘I know that, Mary.’
‘I reckon you’ll find them one waking anyway,’ she said. ‘The good part about being with me is that we travel all over. We’re sure to hear some news of your people somewhere. And of course when you’re a shadowspeaker yourself, everyone will know your name, right across the Davidfolk Ground, and so your people will hear news of you as well. And you’ll be closer to Gela too, you’ll be able to hear her voice better, and then she’ll help you too.’
I nodded, wiping the tears from my eyes.
‘It’s time to go to Circle Valley, isn’t it?’ said Mary. ‘I’m sure you’re ready now. It’s hard to say this, dear, but suffering is part of it. We need to know what it is to suffer. It teaches us how to help people from sad sad Eden to get back to our Mother on Earth.’
Seventeen
When the Michael’s Place people left Davidstand again, our bucks were carrying even more stuff than when we’d arrived because we’d loaded them up with our new, hastily made wraps tied up in rolls. There were bodywraps, headwraps with holes for eyes and mouth, footwraps with three layers of skin and grease to keep the snow from soaking through, big ones for the grownups and little ones for the kids. We hadn’t had enough skins with us to make them all, but I’d managed to get a few more as a trade for some metal cubes that I’d carried with me ever since I left Knee Tree Grounds. (They’d been a present from Greenstone to the Kneefolk when he took Starlight away with him across the Pool.) No one in Davidstand would give food in exchange for anything – they knew they’d need it themselves – but people were happy enough to trade their heavy buckskins for things that were easier to hide and lighter to carry.
The path soon began to climb, though the slopes ahead of us were still warm and shining and covered in trees. We were all afraid of crossing the Dark and we didn’t talk much. Whatever I might have said to try and calm the fears of the others, I knew how dangerous it was up there. Sometimes the snow fell so heavily that you couldn’t see through it, or cloud came right down from the sky and wrapped the mountains up in a mist so thick you could hold out your hand in front of you and not be able to make it out. Poles stuck in the snow weren’t much use if you couldn’t see them, and nor were guards’ fires. People often got lost when when the mist was like that and were never found again; experienced people who knew the Dark well, never mind folk like us. And of course it was in those times when the path was hidden by snow or cloud that the snowleopards still felt safe enough to come back down from their hiding places up in the high cold places where people had never been, and hunt for human meat. In normal times, few people crossed the Da
rk without a guide, even if they’d crossed it before. But darkguides now were asking for more sticks than we Michael’s Place people had ever had.
Not that we were the only ones taking the risk. Each time we came round one of the folds of the mountain and the view opened out, we saw people ahead and behind who’d also decided the risks were worth taking, and were trudging slowly upwards through forest. The Dark might be dangerous, but it wasn’t as if Davidstand was safe. There were already groups of Johnfolk down there, on their fast, blue-skinned bucks, who were sneaking right up to the outside bank of the L-shaped pool and shooting arrows over the water.
‘I’m really worried, Angie,’ said Dave, clutching little Metty in his arms as he bumped and jolted along the stony path on Ugly’s back. ‘Look at all those people ahead and behind! Circle Valley’s going to be packed. There wasn’t enough to eat in Davidstand, but what are we all going to eat up there? The Valley can’t feed itself even in the best of times. They have to bring food over from Wide Forest.’
‘Dave, there’s no point in—’
‘Watch out!’ somebody yelled. A couple of stones came rolling down the slope that we were skirting round. And then two three bucks came into view, scrambling straight downhill and towards us, fast fast, with men on their backs in metal masks.
‘Quick, Dave! Get out of their way!’
Those of us near the front ran or rode or stumbled ahead. Those at the rear turned and hurried back, so that the Johnfolk could cross the path and carry on straight down the slope, as we hoped they wanted to do, without having to get mixed up with us.
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