‘Mother,’ I began again, ‘what should I do so as to be able to help your daughter Mary as best as I possibly can?’
Tell her everything, of course, came the thought straight away. Don’t hold things back from her. Tell her everything and accept whatever it is she has to say. Why even ask the question, when you already know what to do?
I was just pushing this thought to one side when it struck me that maybe this was my answer, that maybe this was Gela speaking to me right now? That was a scary scary moment, but it quickly passed. This couldn’t be Gela, I decided almost at once. Whether or not they were right, these weren’t new thoughts. I had this same conversation with myself every waking. And this wasn’t a new voice either. It was just the same soundless muttering that went on inside me all the time. It was just me, talking to myself. Maybe I should pay more attention to it, but not now, not when I was trying to hear our Mother.
‘Mother,’ I tried again, ‘I’m not even sure what I should ask you. I want to be a good daughter to you, though. I really do. Please could you just tell me what you want from me?’
Nothing came back. I waited and waited, trying to persuade myself that this thought or that was different from normal, but each time I really knew that wasn’t true. These were just thoughts, ordinary thoughts, just like the ones that went through my mind every waking. Eventually I stood up and walked out of the Circle and back to Mary.
‘I’m sorry, Mary,’ I said, looking into that big square face of hers, full of passion, full of certainty, full of trust and confidence in me. ‘I know I’ve let you down and I’ve let our Mother down, but I can’t hear anything at all.’
‘Oh darling, darling.’ Mary laughed and threw her arms round me. ‘You’re so hard on yourself. It takes time, of course it does. I couldn’t hear her at first either.’
I pressed her against me, sobbing with relief as I felt her warm solid body, all sticky with fug just like my own.
Nineteen
Nothing but ice and darkness. People say that all Eden was like this once, before the trees came up to the surface: a huge frozen ball of ice. But there was fire deep down in Underworld, the same fire that sometimes comes bursting out from volcanoes. In hot caves deep down near the fire, rock twisted itself into strange new shapes as a lanternflower will writhe and twist if you hold it in a flame. Some of the new shapes that came from that twisting were the first trees. They only grew far underground at the beginning, but then they began to climb up to the surface, melting the ice with their hot hot sap as they reached out into the air. The lowest parts of Eden’s surface filled with water and became Worldpool, and the trees that grew there became the shining watertrees that I used to see beneath me when we went out on the bright water from Knee Tree Grounds, their soft branches waving back and forth. Middle parts of Eden were opened up to the air as the ice melted and flowed down to the Pool, and so the trees there became forest, lit up by their lanterns, and filled with the constant sound of the muscles pumping inside their trunks, bringing up the heat that kept the ice at bay. But in the highest parts of Eden, the parts that were closest to the cold black sky, the ice never melted, and light never came.
We trudged through the snow, warmed ourselves beside the little fires at the guard camps, and trudged on again in the little pool of light from the headlantern of our only woollybuck. Outside that pool was darkness, but in the distance there were other little patches of light, ahead of us and behind us, with little shadowy groups of human figures inside them. Like a necklace of glowing white beads laid out over the dark ground, these patches of light wound their way along the side of a mountain and up to a crossing place ahead of us where there glowed a single red bead of fire.
I walked up beside Ugly to check the two little kids were okay, and found both of them asleep in their father’s arms, far away from all of this, at least for a little while. Dave himself stared out miserably over their heads at the mud and the snow and the darkness. Fox was walking up in front beside the woollybuck with his uncle Tom, who sometimes liked to tell him stories about his time in the guards.
‘I’m really not sure this was a good idea,’ Dave muttered. ‘We’re already cold cold and there’s a long way to go. Plus, I don’t care what you and Tom said about snowleopards, they’re still up here. What chance would we have against them if one came?’
‘I’m sure we’ll be fine,’ I said with a little sigh. ‘Try and keep cheerful for the kids, eh?’
Because he was riding on the buck, he wasn’t really aware of the biggest danger we faced, which was that our footwraps would fall apart or get soaked through. That’s how people got the black burn. Your toes and feet got so cold that they died and turned black, rotting away while they were still on you. You had to cut them off if you were going to have any chance of living, or the black rot would spread right through you. My footwraps were already worryingly wet, and so were Fox’s. And we had only a little bit of buckskin left to make new ones.
But I didn’t say anything about that to Dave, just moved away again, and walked on ahead through the muddy snow of David’s Path. Dave was hard to be with when things were difficult. Even back in Michael’s Place, he worried worried worried. Even down there in forest, with the warmth and light of the trees all round him, Dave behaved like he was up here in the Dark, with danger all round him. That’s why he always looked half-starved. It wasn’t that he ate any less than anyone else. It was just that worry sat inside him like a slinker and stole away the food that should have made him strong.
I supposed in one way he was right, as well. We were always in danger, even down in forest. Warmth and light and life were such little fragile things, like the necklace of little lights laid out through the blackness in front of us; and darkness and coldness and death were so big and strong. But still, I didn’t like to be with Dave when there was stuff to worry about. He made it worse, and he made me feel angry angry. Darkness was real of course, you couldn’t deny that, but surely we could choose what story we told ourselves about it? Surely there was no need to always tell the story in which the darkness won? After all, it hadn’t won yet, not in all the time people had lived on Eden. Here we were, look, as proof of that, with our wraps and our embers and our bucks, our blood still warm and our hearts still beating, making our way across the Dark.
Presently Trueheart came up to walk beside me.
‘Auntie Angie,’ she said, when we’d been trudging along together for a while in silence. ‘You know how you said that high people think they’re in a story that’s all about them, but low people know they’re not? What did you mean by that?’
However many times her dad beat her for questioning the things she wasn’t supposed to question, however much her mum scolded her for making trouble, however much the other newhairs mocked her – ‘Batfaced and mouthy. Who’s going to want a girl like her for a shelterwoman?’ – Trueheart would not stop trying to understand things, figure things out, make sense of them.
‘Oh I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I was talking nonsense probably. But I sometimes feel like the high people think we’re here just to help them act out their stories, even if that means us doing for each other and burning down each other’s clusters, and it never seems to occur to them that we might have stories of our own. I mean, Johnfolk wouldn’t be coming across the water at all, if it wasn’t for the old fight between John and David. Yet they were just two guys who somehow managed to draw everyone in Eden into their quarrel.’ I sighed. ‘But then again, who knows? David and John wouldn’t have become high men in first place unless other folk let them, so maybe people needed their stories.’
An idea came to me then, seemingly from nowhere, that made my heart beat more quickly all of a sudden. I looked round us to see if anyone was near, and found there wasn’t. We were all walking in a long straggly weary line behind Tom and his shining woollybuck up front. Fox was some way back now, having a little ride on a buck with his friend Brightsp
ear and Brightspear’s old granny. There were twenty feet, in front and behind, between the two of us and the next nearest person.
‘Trueheart,’ I began, my heart now absolutely pounding, ‘there’s something you might like to—’
But that was far as I got, because right then a bunch of new buck-riders appeared over the ridge in front of us, heading towards us fast. There were twenty of them at least, with spears, and each one was riding a proper woollybuck, so that the ground all round them was white white, and the snow their bucks were throwing up glittered and sparkled like little stars.
Some of our group began to blunder sideways into the deep soft snow to the side of the path, remembering the Johnfolk who’d come crashing across our path and shot that arrow at poor baby Suzie. Pretty soon they were in up to their thighs. (Tom’s dick, did they want the black burn? That was exactly the way to wreck your footwraps or even lose them!) But of course these men riding towards us were going the wrong way to be ringmen. These were guards, Davidfolk like us, returning from Circle Valley to join the fight down below in Wide Forest and round Davidstand.
As they came nearer, we saw there were two high men in middle of them, with fancy coloured fakeskin draped over the backs of their bucks. When they were up close to us, one of them pulled off his headwrap to scratch his face, and we saw it was Leader Hunter, Strongheart’s third son, and our own guard leader. At once, whether we were on the path or standing out there in the deep snow, all of us knelt and bowed. The two of them waved in acknowledgement as they hurried past, in that almost lazy way that high people wave to low ones. Then they were gone in their glittery cloud of tiny stars, and we all got busy dragging people out of the snow who had got stuck, and retrieving footwraps that had been pulled off.
We only found out later that the other high man was Leader Mehmet, Strongheart’s oldest son, and the one who would be Head Guard after him. The two of them and their dad had got right down into Circle Valley and had been making their way across it when the news reached them about the Johnfolk coming from across the Pool. They’d talked it over, the three of them, weighing up the different alternatives, and in the end they decided it was best that Strongheart carried on and went to the four hundredth Virsry, while these two came back to lead the fight.
Strongheart and his sons had never before invited the heads from Brown River and Half Sky to come to the Virsry, but they’d done it this time in the hope of building stronger links between the three different lots of people that shared Mainground. And right now, they’d figured, that was more important than ever before. The Riverfolk had always played that game of sometimes leaning to their fellow Johnfolk in New Earth, and sometimes leaning to their neighbours, the Davidfolk, on Mainground. But with the New Earthers attacking our ground, they were going to have to come down on one side or the other, and which side they chose would depend a lot on who they thought would win. And so the most important thing right now – or so Strongheart and his sons decided – was to seem confident and to celebrate the Virsry exactly as planned.
‘You were going to say something, Auntie Angie,’ said Trueheart, when we were all finally moving again.
‘Was I? I’ve quite forgotten if so. It was probably nothing much.’
But I hadn’t really forgotten and it certainly hadn’t been nothing much. Truth was, I was badly shaken by the thought of what I’d been about to do. For if those high men hadn’t interrupted me, I’d have started telling Trueheart about the Secret Story. Women are just as good as men . . . Having a lot of stuff doesn’t make you more important . . . Don’t trust a man who thinks the story is all about him . . . I’d been about to tell her all of that, along with the story that came with it about how our Mother Gela herself had told it to her daughters and asked them to keep it secret and pass it on to their daughers in turn through the generations.
How could I have even considered doing that, I asked myself now, when I’d have been giving Trueheart the burden of a secret that she’d have to keep forever, unless she wanted to get me thrown out of Michael’s Place and sent away from my kids and my friends? How could I have put her in the position of making that choice? It wasn’t as if I didn’t have my own daughter to pass it on to if I really had to tell it to someone. And it wasn’t as if I didn’t know that Trueheart hated secrets. For hadn’t she always refused to divide her heart in the way that I’d done with Mary, showing one part of myself but holding another part back? Trueheart was braver than me and more honest with herself. She refused to hide, she refused to pretend to believe something that she didn’t really believe. That was why she kept saying the things she did, however many times her dad hit her. There was no way it would have been fair to have told her the Secret Story, and put her in the position of either wrecking my life, or having to keep a big big secret. I felt myself shaking just at the thought of what I’d been about to do, shaking like I shook once long ago when I was a kid, when I’d slipped and nearly fallen down the high steep cliff at Nob Head.
And never mind Trueheart, I asked myself, how could I think of passing that story to anyone ? After all, I myself believed, didn’t I, that the Secret Story wasn’t true? I myself believed, didn’t I, that at best it was something from long ago that hadn’t been remembered properly, and that at worst it was a lie? Gela’s heart, I might not be with Mary any more, but I was still one of the Davidfolk! And if I believed in True Family, believed that Gela was still watching over her children, believed that Gela could still reach out to us, why would I want to tell anyone a thing like the Secret Story?
But, even as I asked myself these questions, I knew quite well why I’d nearly told Trueheart. The things she said and thought were like the Secret Story and for a moment there I’d thought she’d like to know that Gela had been on her side.
Twenty
After that first time in the Circle, Mary got a good big meal for us from a trader, and took me to a pool she knew of where the water wasn’t too warm, so we could wash away that sweat that clings to you when there’s a fug in forest, and refresh ourselves with a bit of coolness. And then she made me lie down to sleep, sitting beside me and stroking my hair, like a mum or dad does with a little child who’s tired and troubled, and needs help with letting go of wakefulness.
‘Dear sweet Angie, why do you worry so much? You of all people! Of course Gela will speak to you. Our Mother loves you so much! You’re so pure, Angie, you’re so honest, you’re so careful not to mix up in your mind what you want for yourself with what’s important for everyone. I think of all those times you’ve questioned me – How do we know David was right and John was wrong? How do we know we’re not just saying what the high people want us to say? – and I know you do it because you don’t want to say anything unless you’re sure sure it’s true. That’s exactly what our Mother wants: someone who’ll listen carefully, someone who’ll never confuse their own selfish thoughts with our Mother’s voice from across the stars.’
She bent down and kissed me on the cheek.
‘Now get some sleep, my dear, and we’ll try again next waking. Not many speakers get to hear our Mother the first time they try.’
I slept. I dreamed. I wandered through a forest. Everywhere I looked, there were objects lying on the ground: stones, fruitskins, fallen branches, dead starflowers, broken seedgrinders, buckbones, ratshells, feathers, leopards’ teeth, coloured beads, lumps of stumpcandy, old stone spearheads. I was searching searching but, however hard I tried, I couldn’t remember what I’d been sent to find.
‘I want to show you something,’ Mary said, when we’d both woken again.
We bathed in that pool again, to wash away the sweat of the night, and then she led me along a path into forest beyond the fence of Old Family cluster. The fug still hadn’t lifted. The ground was wet with its moisture, the mist still made rings of colour round the lanterns, and everything further away than twenty thirty feet was a blurry shape that didn’t seem quite real.
We came to a place where the trees opened out. It was another clearing like the one where the Circle was, but this one wasn’t empty. From one side of it to the other and even under the trees all round it, dark shapes loomed up in the fug like silent, watching creatures, some no higher than my knee, some much taller than I was. Actually, they were simply piles of fist-sized stone. When one of them was near enough, I could see that perfectly well. Yet I still couldn’t quite get the idea out of my head that the other ones, the hundreds of others that I couldn’t clearly see, disappearing into the fug, were something more than that, something alive and listening. Even when we’d walked up to one, touched its stones, felt their hardness and coldness, it still seemed to change back into one of those silent, listening beings when we’d moved on and I looked back at its blurry shape.
Mary didn’t need to tell me what this place was, because I knew it from stories. I recognized at once that it was Burial Grounds, where everyone who died in Circle Valley was buried, along with high people from across the whole of Davidfolk Ground.
‘Tom’s dick,’ I said. ‘There must be more dead people here than there are people still alive in Veeklehouse and Davidstand together.’
‘But this isn’t anything like the true number of dead people,’ Mary said. ‘When no one remembers or cares any more about one of them, they take the stones to use again and bury the bones in a pit. Most people only lie here for a generation, or two at most. There are only a few who never stop being remembered and loved, so that their piles just get bigger and bigger.’
The biggest pile of all was right in middle, and of course it was the pile that covered the bones of Gela. It was like a little hill, twice as high as me, and Mary and I made it a little bit bigger still by laying two more stones on it that we’d brought down specially from the edge of Snowy Dark. Not far away from it, there was another smaller pile for Tommy, with the words ‘Tommy Schneider: Astronaut’ scratched on a flat stone in front of it. He’d once lain next to Gela, Mary told me, but her pile had grown so big that it had begun to bury his and he’d had to be moved. At far end of the clearing there was another big pile over Great David, which also rose well above my head, though it still wasn’t anything like as big as Gela’s.
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