Daughter of Eden

by Chris Beckett

  Sometimes I wondered if she’d known all along that I was keeping secrets. She was so smart about things like that, she had such sharp sharp eyes, and – who knows? – perhaps Gela herself had even told her. It was quite possible that Mary knew everything already and was just waiting for me to figure out what I had to do. It was a test, that was all, and not that hard a test either. If that was really so, no wonder Mary had been disappointed. It wasn’t because I didn’t hear Gela – she knew that was hard; she knew that took time – it was because I’d let her down.

  And look where letting her down had taken me! Look what I’d become as a result. A low low woman who foraged and hunted for her living like a thousand other low people across the Davidfolk Ground, and lived among other low people who knew next to nothing, and didn’t matter to anyone except themselves.

  And yet I could have been with Mary. I could have been with someone who was known and loved right across the Davidfolk Ground, from Rockway Edge to the White Streams. I could even have become known and loved in the way that she was. (Yes, and how else could a woman be so known and respected among the Davidfolk except as a shadowspeaker? Even the highest of high women had to live in the shadows of their men.) I could have been part of something important, something big, looking after all the people of True Family, helping them understand things, helping them grow, helping them find their way home. I might have come to know Gela, not in the way that everyone can, but as one of her special special helpers, the ones she trusts most, the ones she calls on. And I could have shared all this with Mary, one of the smartest and strongest people I’d ever known, who could have chosen so many people to be her helper but had chosen me.

  No one was smart like Mary in Michael’s Place. Except perhaps for Trueheart, no one was curious about the world in the way she was, no one was quick like she was at figuring things out. The rest of them could talk quite happily all waking about nothing more interesting than the next meal, or their kids, or the trades they managed to get in Veeklehouse, or the scraps of stories they picked up about the high people: ‘They say Leader Hunter’s oldest boy is in big big trouble with his dad.’ ‘I heard Strongheart gave his new woman a whole wrap covered in colour-stones, the lucky girl.’ ‘If we go to Veeklehouse next waking, apparently, we might see Leader Mehmet’s daughters. Everyone says they’re pretty pretty pretty.’

  So I think the main reason I never went to Mary’s shows was that I couldn’t bear to be reminded of how much I’d thrown away, and dreaded the thought of her seeing me, and having her turn her back on me once more. But a little part of me also dreaded the idea that she might forgive me, as she forgave so many people the stupid things they did, and offer me the chance to go with her once again. Because how could I go with her, now that I had kids to care for?

  Mary rode down into Tall Tree Valley, rode in under those huge trees with those long trunks they need to keep their lanterns above the snow when it falls, as it quite often does, right down into the bottom of the valley. She made her way to the Tall Tree cluster – it’s not far from the place where the path comes down – and rode in among those strange shelters, different from any other shelters I’ve seen, with their thick stone walls and their thick strong wooden roofs built to bear the weight of heavy snow. She found the cluster all swollen up, like Davidstand had been, and like Old Family cluster in Circle Valley was now, with scared people from different parts of the Davidfolk Ground who’d come there to escape the Johnfolk. No one knew how such a small place would be able to feed everyone. No one had a plan as to what to do next. But Mary went to the circle of stones in middle of the cluster – Wise Mehmet had laid it out with his own hands after he took Tall Tree Valley back into True Family – and she put on a show.

  She told the people that of course they were frightened, of course they were worried about the Johnfolk. We all knew how cruel they were, we all knew how they forced people to work in holes in the ground, we all knew how they made their low people listen to a false Gela, who told them wicked lies with Gela’s stolen ring on her finger.

  ‘But you must remember that Mother Gela’s on our side,’ Mary told them. And she reminded them that, no matter how hard things became for them, if they only remembered that, everything would work out for them in the end. Because Gela was watching them from far off Earth with all the love that a mother has for her children. She was watching them, and she was keeping their home ready for them. And one waking they would all find their way there, just so long as they kept their hearts open to the Mother of us all.

  ‘That’s all she asks of you,’ Mary told them. ‘That you keep your heart open, so she’ll be able to reach out to you and guide you home.’

  It was one of her best best shows, so people would say later. There was so much grief in that cold cluster, so much fear, so much longing. And Mary had always understood those things. Better than any of the other shadowspeakers, she’d always understood how close those feelings were to the surface of people’s minds, even in good times, even in times when there weren’t enemies burning down our shelters, and riding through our ground with metal spears. And right then in Tall Tree Valley, those feelings weren’t even hidden. Never mind below the surface, they were right on top. Everyone had lost their homes, or was afraid of losing their home soon. Everyone was scared. Everyone longed and longed for something that couldn’t ever be found in Eden: a place where things weren’t just safe for a waking or two, but were always safe, safe forever and ever.

  ‘It’s really there,’ said Mary, with tears and sweat running down her face. ‘It’s really there, waiting for you on Earth, with the lovely light of the sun shining down on it from the blue blue sky. Our home ! Our real true home, where our Mother waits for us, to take us in her arms, and hold us tightly, and dry away our tears.’

  They all cheered and wept and cheered some more. As she often did, Mary went round them, kissing and hugging one person after another, murmuring words of advice. And when people offered her presents, she just pushed them away: ‘No, my dear, you need to keep that for yourself and these little ones of yours. Don’t you worry about me. I can look after myself.’

  Presently she had them all sing ‘Come Tree Row’ and they went round and round that old song, again and again and again, not wanting to stop, not wanting to bring it to an end. For when they stopped singing it, they knew, the feeling of going home would fade away, and they’d be back in Eden again, crammed into that little bowl of light surrounded by the Dark, with all their fear and grief crowding in on them the same as ever.

  And of course none of them – not Mary or any of them – had the slightest idea that only four five wakings away, there was a new landing veekle already standing in middle of the Circle of Stones.

  Thirty-four

  Two three hours after going to see Strongheart, the Earth people came back to their shelter again. It had been a strange meeting, Starlight told me later. In one way, Strongheart and Newjohn were just as excited as anyone else to have the Earth people among them, and they were proud proud too that it should happen when they were the bosses of their two grounds, because that would help to make sure that they were remembered in the stories of the future. But at the same time both of them were full of worries and doubts.

  The Earth people were kind and polite.

  ‘Eden is beautiful,’ Deep said to Strongheart, ‘and the people are wonderfully welcoming.’

  ‘Thankyou, thankyou!’ Strongheart bowed low and gestured to them to sit down on the piles of skins that were arranged under the tall whitelantern tree in middle of his big big shelter. ‘We were raised well by our first mother, Gela, who came from Earth just like you.’

  ‘I notice you always talk about Gela here, Head Guard,’ Gaia said, when they were all squatting on the skins, by the big warm tree trunk, ‘and not so much about Tommy.’

  ‘Well, he was a bad man, wasn’t he?’ Strongheart said. ‘He disobeyed President and brought Gela here
against her wishes, when she was only doing what President asked.’

  Helpers came with mugs of badjuice and barks piled high. There were different kinds of flowercakes. There were little sweetbat hearts, smoked over a fire and stuffed with stumpcandy. There were small strips of dried spearfish.

  ‘Those red cakes are from Brown River where Newjohn comes from, across the Dark and way way down alpway,’ Strongheart told the Earth people. ‘The white ones are from Rockway Edge. The spearfish comes from way out on the bright water near—’

  He broke off. High people always had food that came from far away – it was one of their ways of showing their reach and their power – but it had just occurred to him that, if you came from Earth, the distance these cakes and fish had travelled wouldn’t seem far at all, and he didn’t want to seem like some silly boasting kid.

  The Earth people nibbled at the food and sipped at their badjuice. It was obvious they didn’t like it – last time they’d tried our food it had made them ill – but they pretended they did. Strongheart only picked at the food himself, and Newjohn selected a bit of dried spearfish and chewed at the edge of it, watching the Earth people with his clever pointy face.

  ‘What we wanted to ask you, Head Guard,’ Deep bowed as he wiped his hands and mouth with the strip of fakeskin Strongheart’s helpers had given him, ‘is if you would mind us spending a couple or three wakings exploring the forest here. We’re interested to learn more about the animals and trees. It will help us understand Eden better.’

  Strongheart and Newjohn looked at each other. They hadn’t expected this at all.

  ‘Animals and trees?’ said Strongheart after a moment. ‘Of course. But don’t you—?’

  ‘If we can learn more about the life on Eden,’ Gaia explained, ‘we may one day be able to help you with useful things like new . . .’ She stopped, realizing she’d been about to say a word they wouldn’t know. ‘We might be able to help you find new ways of helping people when they’re poorly, like I helped that baby girl with the infected shoulder.’

  ‘Or things that will make you all grow bigger and stronger,’ said Deep.

  Since neither of the two old men seemed to know what to say about this, Starlight stepped in.

  ‘It sounds a good plan in that case, doesn’t it, Head Guard? You can explain to your people that our friends from Earth aren’t leaving us when they go out into forest, just trying to understand more about the world we live in. It might seem strange to us that they want to look at animals and trees, but we know, don’t we, that on Earth people know much much more than we do? I guess we’re learning something now about how they actually find out all that stuff !’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Marius. ‘We call it science.’

  None of the Eden people knew the word, but he repeated it for them, and told them how it was written, and later on Starlight came back and told it to me.

  ‘Science,’ she said. (How quickly I’d grown used to the idea that it was Starlight here talking to me, really Starlight, really my old friend!) ‘From what I gathered, it’s not a thing, exactly, but more a way of figuring stuff out. It’s like the world itself has a story – this thing happened because of that, that happened because of the other, and so on – and science is a way of figuring out what that story is, without getting it all mixed up with our own stories.’

  Trueheart was listening carefully carefully while Starlight was explaining this. ‘That sounds good good,’ she said. ‘Us humans are such babies. Us Eden people are, anyway. We always try and make our stories come out the way we want them to.’

  ‘Sci-ence,’ Strongheart slowly repeated, as he sat on his pile of skins in his big shelter, turning the word over, as you might turn over some creature from forest that a hunter had brought in, figuring out what kind of thing it was, what kind of teeth it had, what kind of legs and hands. ‘Sci Ence.’

  ‘It means looking at things like animals and trees and rocks,’ Deep said. Even sitting down, Deep was big big, but his face was friendly and kind. ‘Looking at them in a special way, inside and out, not only with our eyes but with . . .’ He glanced at the other Earth people as he struggled to find words that we’d understand. ‘ . . . but with different kinds of tools we have for seeing things that are too small for eyes to see, or for figuring out what they’re made of.’

  Newjohn laughed. ‘But we know what animals are made of ! Meat and bone and blood.’

  ‘Ah, but what are meat and bone made of ?’ asked Deep with a friendly smile. ‘And is the meat and bone of Eden animals made of different things from our own? Why is their blood green, for instance, while ours is red? How come most of them have six limbs while most large Earth creatures only have four? How do their eyes see, when they’re so different from ours? And what can they see? Do they see the same colours as us, or different ones? Who knows? Perhaps they see heat as much as they see light. That would make some sense, seeing as there’d have been almost no light at all in Eden until life first appeared.’

  Again Newjohn laughed uneasily. ‘Michael’s names, you people say some strange things! How could we possibly know what animals see?’

  ‘Well,’ began Marius, ‘it’s not easy, but we could begin by testing whether they can tell the difference between two colours. It would be a matter of—’

  ‘But that would be for later, Marius, wouldn’t it?’ Gaia interrupted him with a smile. ‘For the moment, if it’s okay with Head Guard Strongheart here, we just want to wander out into the forest and see what’s there.’

  Strongheart looked at Newjohn, who gave a tiny shrug and a nod. When Leader Harry had still been in Circle Valley, Strongheart had turned to him for advice, but of course Harry was crossing the Dark now, and the only other man there who was anything like as high as Strongheart was Headman Newjohn. Starlight found it funny how these two old guys, one fat and round-faced, one thin and pointy-faced, had begun to rely on each other, even though Strongheart was head of all the Davidfolk, and a many-greats grandson of Great David, and Newjohn was head of the Brown River folk, and the many-greats grandson of Juicy John himself.

  ‘Well, if you need to look at the plants and animals,’ the old man said, ‘then of course you must. I only ask that you come back before the New Earthers get here.’

  ‘We’ll be back long before that,’ said Deep. ‘And when we come back, we thought maybe you’d like us to show you all some pictures from Earth.’

  The two old men looked at each other, unsure what was being offered to them.

  ‘If I may, Head Guard, I’ll show you an example,’ Deep said, and he took out another flat square thing from a kind of bag he was carrying. It was what they called a linkup, much like the one that Leader Harry was carrying to the Johnfolk right at that moment up there on Snowy Dark, with Gaia’s voice inside it. It looked like it was made of blackglass, though it was smoother than any blackglass on Eden. ‘Here is my little daughter, Avi,’ he said, and handed it across to David Strongheart.

  Strongheart took the glass from him and looked into it. His eyes weren’t so good – many people his age, after all, couldn’t see at all – so he held it out at arm’s length. Then he, Newjohn and Starlight all peered at it.

  ‘I can see something moving,’ Strongheart said.

  ‘It’s a little girl!’ cried Starlight, whose eyes were still sharp as ever. ‘Listen! You can hear her voice!’

  ‘Oh yes, I can see her!’ shouted out Newjohn, forgetting for a moment that he was Headman of all the Riverfolk, and acting like an excited child.

  Strongheart could hear the little girl, but he still couldn’t make her out. ‘Maybe you need these?’ Marius said, taking out from his wrap another strange new object: two circles of a special kind of glass that wasn’t black like most glass, but could be seen through as if it was water, like the glass on top of the veekle. Marius showed Strongheart how to fix them over his eyes and now, when the old guy l
ooked at the picture again, it had suddenly become perfectly clear to him.

  ‘It is!’ he cried out, and burst out laughing. ‘It is a little girl. I can see her wave and smile.’

  Tears came to his eyes. Tears came to Newjohn’s eyes too, and to Starlight’s as well. It was so wonderful and so strange, she said, to think that this little human child was alive right now, far far away through all that cold black empty sky, under the sky of Earth.

  ‘And yet there was something sad about it,’ she told me. ‘The distance made it sad. Like a happy thing feels sad when you’re looking back on it, and it’s long long ago.’

  ‘We thought you and your people might like to see more pictures like this,’ said Deep, ‘pictures of Earth, and maybe pictures of people from your own past, like Gela.’

  David Strongheart stared at him. ‘Pictures of Gela? Pictures that can move and talk?’

  ‘Yes, I’m pretty sure we can find some,’ Deep told him. ‘And we have some other screens in our veekle, bigger than this one, which we can take out and—’

  ‘Screens?’ interrupted Strongheart. ‘Did you say screens? We have a screen here! It’s one of the Mementoes from Tommy and Gela.’