Once Marius came stumbling out and squatted down for some time in a drift of starflowers to take a crap. He took a long long time over it, and everyone watched in fascinated silence. Later on, Gaia came out and threw up two three times, and then Deep as well. It seemed our food didn’t agree with them. They did their best to smile at us in a friendly way before they hurried back inside the bark walls of their shelter.
Starlight came to see me. The other Michael’s Place people watched in amazement as this high high woman, in her blue wrap and her coloured stones, kissed me and hugged me, and then squatted down beside me to talk. They all moved back, bowing, to give us space, and when Trueheart came closer so she could listen, her mother hissed at her to leave us in peace. Glancing at Starlight to check she was okay with it, I told Clare that Trueheart could stay where she was.
‘I won’t stop long,’ Starlight said. ‘I need to be there when Strongheart and Newjohn are talking, to make sure they don’t do anything that could harm us in Half Sky. But I had to come and say hello properly, and to catch up on your story.’
‘Tell yours first,’ I said. ‘I’ve heard enough of it already to know it’s more exciting than mine.’
Starlight told me New Earth had turned out to be a cruel harsh place. She’d made dangerous enemies over there when she and Greenstone had tried to make things a bit kinder and fairer. It was really true that Greenstone had been thrown into a fire – this would have been more than ten years ago, but Starlight still had to control her face carefully as she told me this – and the same thing would have happened to Starlight if she hadn’t managed to escape across the Pool. She and the Kneefolk had put out the story about her body being found with a spear hole through it, so that the New Earthers wouldn’t come looking for her. She’d gone to Half Sky so as to be as far away from them as she could.
‘I’m so sorry that you had to hear that story, Angie, about me being dead. All I can say, that if we hadn’t told it, I think I might really have been dead by now.’ She laughed. ‘But never mind all that, eh? Your mum will be happy happy to know I’ve found you, Angie! So will everyone. You must come over and see us all!’
‘My mum ?’
‘Yes, dearest, your mum! She’s in Half Sky now.’ She saw the expression on my face – that news was just too much for me, on top of everything else, and my tears were already flowing – and reached out at once to hug me. ‘Oh Angie dear, she’s there, and so are your brothers and sisters. So are a whole lot of the people we knew at Knee Tree Grounds. Julie Deepwater persuaded a bunch of them to come, when they got tired of the guards from Nob Head bossing them round. Even my sister Glitterfish is there. And you know how she would never go anywhere !’
Gela’s heart, if the dead really had come back to life and health from under the stones of the Burial Ground, it would hardly have been any stranger than what was actually happening. First, the Earth people, then Starlight, and now this! Our home on Earth, my dead friend, my lost family: all of them restored to me in a single waking! I sobbed and sobbed. Starlight hugged me and rocked me. Candy and Fox came running over.
‘Why are you crying, Mum?’ Candy demanded. Kids do not like it, I’ve noticed, when their mothers are upset. If their mums need looking after, who’s going to look after them?
‘Don’t worry, dear,’ said Starlight. As she gently touched Candy’s hand to reassure her, I remembered that, when she was younger, she’d never been easy with little kids. ‘I think she’s crying because she’s happy.’
My old friend was still the star and I was still the grateful darkness. She was the high person who surprised and impressed my new friends. And she was the one who’d given the Kneefolk a new home, while I’d just run away from them to live among the Davidfolk. But right then I didn’t care. Candy and Fox squeezed in to hug me along with Starlight, and I felt happy happy happy.
‘They left Knee Tree because it was becoming part of the Davidfolk Ground,’ Starlight said, ‘with guards and traders and shadowspeakers and all the rest. I don’t think there’s anyone left there now. The ones who didn’t come to join us went over to join the Davidfolk on Mainground instead. Like you did, I guess. You must tell me that story, Angie. I still can’t imagine you with a shadowspeaker.’
‘Later,’ I sniffed, wiping my face and pulling myself out of that little huddle of people that loved me, so I could look at my old friend’s face. ‘I’ll tell you later. Shadowspeakers are different from what you might think. But now I want to hear more about Half Sky. And then I want to hear more about the Kneefolk.’
‘Half Sky’s a bit like Knee Tree Grounds in some ways, I guess,’ said Starlight. ‘Like Knee Tree used to be, I mean, when the Davidfolk left us alone. We don’t bother too much with old old stories and we stay out of the argument between John and David. You might think I’m a high person there – a big person as people say in New Earth – but I’m not a high person in the way that Strongheart and his guard leaders are in the Davidfolk Ground. I can’t make people do whatever I want, I don’t get to choose the story that everyone else lives by, and if the Skyfolk decide they want another Head, well, they can have one. So that’s a bit like the old Grounds, as well. I guess we do more things in Half Sky, though, than we used to do back on the Grounds. It was John Redlantern’s friend Tina Spiketree who first brought people to our ground, and all the stories say she liked to keep busy, she liked to make things happen.’
‘Just as you do, Starlight,’ I said, smiling. ‘I mean, look at everything you’ve done already! You’ve been right across Eden! You’ve become a high high person not just in one ground, but in two completely different grounds! You were never one, were you, for just sitting there and letting the Watcher look out of your eyes?’
Starlight laughed. ‘Well, believe it or not, I actually think about the Watcher much more now than I used to. I think it’s important to remind myself that Starlight Brooking is just a mask the Watcher wears, so as to stop myself from getting to think that the story is all about me. But yeah, in a way I am like Tina. I want Half Sky to get on and do things. We’re always trying to figure out how to build better boats, for instance, rather than just making them the same way like we used to on the Grounds, and we’ve found greenstone and are figuring out how to make it into metal. In that way, we’re a little more like the Johnfolk in New Earth. We’re like those big grounds too, in that we have something a bit like guards or ringmen. But all our young people have to take part, whether they’re men or women, and everyone in Half Sky chooses who will lead them. That way they don’t end up bossing everyone else round, like guards and ringmen do.’
‘Looks like you might not need guards any more,’ said Trueheart, who’d been squatting there listening all this time, her arms wrapped round her knees. ‘Or metal, or better boats.’
Starlight smiled. ‘The Earth people have changed everything, you mean? Well, that’s certainly true. But as to what we’ll need in future and what we won’t need, I’m not sure that’s something we can tell yet.’
I could see Trueheart wanted to talk more about that, but I needed news first about my mum and all the other Kneefolk who lived in Half Sky. Fox ran off to fetch the chess set that his dad had carved for him out of wood and bone, realizing that this was turning into typical boring grownup talk about people he’d never heard of or met, but wanting to stay in earshot in case it got more interesting again. He drew a board on the ground, and he and Trueheart began to play, Candy cuddling up against her brother and making suggestions for moves that he pretended to think about but hardly ever followed.
Most of Eden still had no idea what had happened, that was the strange thing. Most of Eden thought the world was the same as it always had been. Never mind further away, there were even parts of Circle Valley that hadn’t heard the story about the veekle from Earth. Hunters over by Exit Falls, for instance, might have seen a strange light in the sky in the distance but there was no way they could find
out what had caused it until several wakings later.
The story was gradually spreading peckway, as Leader Harry and his guards rode towards the Dark, shouting out to people as they rode past, but up on the Dark people were still heading our way in that long sad necklace across the snow, not knowing anything about it. Some people up there had decided not to head for Circle Valley but instead go to Tall Tree or one of the other High Valleys, like Steep Shelter or Buck Hole or Snowglass, which meant they wouldn’t hear the news for many wakings. On far side of the Dark, all the news that went back and forth through Wide Forest was about the fight with the Johnfolk. Down alpway in Brown River and way over blueway in Half Sky it would be fifteen twenty wakings before anyone knew about the Earth people, even though Headman Newjohn and Head Woman Starlight had already met them in Circle Valley. As to the people over in New Earth, well, if the news was going to get there, it would first have to cross Wide Forest to the Pool, then travel for three wakings across the bright water, and then across Deep Darkness, and then the bright water on the other side before it even reached the outer edge of their ground, let alone their high people who, so it was said, lived in holes in the ground as far back from their poolside as Davidstand was from ours.
The Earth people slept and slept.
‘Those were fast bucks that Harry took,’ I said to Dave, after Starlight had gone back to join the high people. We all spoke softly softly so as not to disturb the sleepers. ‘Do you reckon they’ll have reached the path up onto the Dark yet?’
‘I don’t reckon they can be much more than halfway to the Dark.’ Dave glanced up from a little knife that he’d started to whittle from a piece of bone. He scraped away for a bit then looked up again. ‘What I worry about is that the Johnfolk won’t believe Harry’s got a message from Gela, and will just do for him and his guys, without ever finding that . . . well, that talking thing, I don’t know what you call it . . . That little square thing Mother Gela gave Leader Harry with her voice inside it.’
‘Oh they’ll find it, alright,’ said Tom. ‘Even if they do for Leader Harry, they’ll see he’s a high man and they’ll be all over him to find out what he’s got on him.’
‘She’s not Gela,’ said Trueheart. ‘Her name is Gaia, and she’s the many-greats niece of Gela’s sister Candy.’
Tom chuckled knowingly. ‘Or so she says. But look at that dark dark skin of hers. How many people can there be who look like that?’
Marius came staggering out of the shelter, looked at us for a moment, and then hurried off into the starflowers again.
‘I’ll check they have enough water in there,’ I said. ‘You need water when your guts are playing up.’
‘I never thought, somehow,’ said Clare, ‘it just never really struck me before that people from Earth would crap and piss and throw up just as we do. It seems odd, somehow, don’t you think? And yet, if we need to do those things, I guess it shouldn’t be so surprising that they do too.’
Thirty-one
About now, give or take a few wakings, a buck came to the top of the high ridge surrounding Tall Tree Valley, and looked down from the Dark into that little shining forest down there with the darkness wrapped all round it. It was a big old smoothbuck, with a skin draped over it to keep it warm, and on the skin sat a woman, though she was so wrapped in buckskin just then that you wouldn’t have been able to tell whether she was a man or a woman, only that she wasn’t that tall. With her there were two guards on woollybucks, each one holding a spear whose tip glinted in the light of the animals’ headlanterns, and two younger women sharing another smoothbuck. She didn’t have a darkguide. It was tricky to find one just then, and she and the guards knew the paths pretty well.
The woman pulled off her headwrap. Her face was big and square. Her hair was turning to grey, and there was a stoop in her shoulders that hadn’t been there last time I’d seen her, but she looked as firm and determined as ever. She sat there on the back of her buck, looking down into Tall Tree Valley, and then she gave a little nod, pulled the wrap back onto her head, and began to ride forwards again down the steep snow-covered slope.
There are many things I found out later, and had to piece together as best I could with what I already knew, and this was one of them. Mary Shadowspeaker had been over near Nob Head when the Johnfolk came from New Earth, and she’d chosen to head up to Tall Tree Valley to get away from them, going not by the main path – David’s Path – that went up from Davidstand, but by another smaller steeper path that climbed up someway rockway from that, called High Valley Shortcut.
Mary liked Tall Tree Valley and had taken me there on our way over to Circle Valley. Her father had come from there, and she often told people about how one of her own many-greats grandfathers had been Mehmet Batwing, Wise Mehmet, who’d built the first stone shelters there, and been guard leader there when he died.
‘And of course, it was Mehmet Batwing who first found Tall Tree Valley all those years ago when he was with John Redlantern and the others,’ she’d also told me. ‘He saved all their lives when they were lost in the darkness and the cold.’
On Knee Tree Grounds I’d heard that it was Jeff Redlantern who found Tall Tree, that time he rode off bravely all by himself on the back of a woollybuck in search of warmth and light when the others were all stuck on a snowslug and didn’t know which way to go. We called the story Jeff’s Shining Ride and, as I said before, it was a particular favourite of ours, but I let Mary have her version as I usually did. After all, it was Jeff himself who said that the past keeps changing, and it’s the present that always stays the same, so he couldn’t really complain that I didn’t stand up for him.
We’d had a warm welcome down there in that strange little valley back then. I guess they didn’t get so many visitors, and the Tall Tree folk liked it that Mary treated them like they were special. Just about everyone in whole valley came to see her show and, at the end of it, Mary told the people there they were lucky lucky to live in the place that was special to Wise Mehmet, the one who’d turned away from the True Story and then had the courage to come back. Of all the people from the old stories, he was one of the best. Everyone cheered loudly at that.
After the show, I remember, we went for a walk, just Mary and me, along a stream. One of the weird things about Tall Tree Valley is that all the streams there flow not out of the valley, but towards its middle where their water all pours into an enormous hole. We walked right up to the edge of that hole and looked down, with the roar of waterfalls all round us, peering through the spray and steam for glimpses of the warm shining forest of Underworld.
Mary slipped her arm round my waist and kissed me on the cheek. ‘Oh Angie, I’m so glad to have you, and I’m so excited we’re on the way to Circle Valley. I know you’re going to be great.’
She pointed out a kind of ladder made out of rope, which dangled down down down into the hole. It disappeared into the mist so I couldn’t see where it led, but apparently it carried right on down to the bottom. Mary told me the Tall Tree people climbed down it to hunt and gather fruit and flowers. Her own dad had often been down in the caves. They stretched away for miles, she said. There were giant slinkers down there, twenty feet long and fat as bucks, that crept along the ground, and there was a kind of tree that didn’t stand up by itself but climbed over the walls and roofs of the caves, so the brightness of forest was above you as well as round you. And, if you knew where to go, you could find holes and cracks that dropped down still deeper, with hot air blasting up from yet more layers of Underworld all the way down to the great fire.
I eyed the ladder uneasily, desperately hoping that Mary wouldn’t suggest we climbed down it. I wasn’t used to heights. Knee Tree Grounds hardly rises above the level of the water, and the cliff near Michael’s Place was no more than twenty feet high at most. I found it scary enough just standing on the top there and looking down.
But then Mary laughed. ‘The Underworld�
��s for Johnfolk, though, I reckon.’ We’d been hearing stories lately in the Davidfolk Ground about how the Johnfolk in New Earth didn’t live under the black sky as we did, but under the ground: the high people in big shining caves, the low people in narrow dark holes that the ringmen forced them at spearpoint to dig out for themselves. ‘Gela’s True Family should be out under the sky, don’t you think, Angie, so that Earth can find us when they finally return?’
She stood looking down for a moment, then she turned to wink at me and laugh, pulling me against her again.
‘Who am I kidding, Angie? Just the thought of going down that thing makes my hands sweat with fear.’
She could be sweet sometimes. She didn’t often make fun of herself, but when she did, it was lovely. And Tall Tree Valley seemed to be a place where she found it easier to be like that. I guess that might have been part of the reason why, when the Johnfolk came across the Pool, Mary headed to Tall Tree: it was a place she felt at home. But maybe she also figured that the High Valleys, which have no Circle of Stones, no Veekle, no mementoes of Earth of any kind, would be too small and unimportant for the Johnfolk to bother about.
And she was certainly right to keep out of the Johnfolk’s way. They were especially cruel to the shadowspeakers when they caught them. They showed them no pity at all. All across Eden, people loved Mother Gela, but one thing that Johnfollk and Davidfolk both especially hated were those who claimed to hear Gela telling a different story to their own.
Thirty-two
A long way past the length of a normal sleep, the Earth people were still in their shelter. I think maybe they pretended to still be sleeping, even after they were really awake, just so they could get some peace and quiet for a bit. It must have been hard hard for them, tired and sick in their stomachs, to think of facing all us Eden people.
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