‘Really? ’
All three Earth people had spoken at once. It was obvious that they were interested interested. Pleased to have impressed them, Strongheart called out to one of his helpers: ‘Go to my store and fetch the Screen.’
‘It doesn’t show pictures, though,’ he warned the Earth people. ‘It doesn’t do anything at all.’
‘Well, it wouldn’t,’ said Marius. ‘It’s four hundred years old and its bat-tree would have died long ago.’ He looked at Gaia. ‘But if the . . .’ he began and then said a whole string of words – dayter, files, kruptid, coad – that meant nothing to any of the Eden people. Deep and Gaia nodded, and each of them commented on what he’d said. Starlight recognized many of the words these two spoke, but she still couldn’t figure out what they were talking about. But after thirty forty heartbeats of this, Gaia turned back to Strongheart, Newjohn and Starlight, and tried to explain.
‘Screens have memories, you see. They have memories inside them: that’s how they can show us pictures and sounds. We might still be able to find things in there that Gela and Tommy said after the Defiant came back to Earth. Wouldn’t that be great? To hear what they were thinking in that time at the beginning when the two of them were on their own!’
When the Earth people finally came back to where we were waiting round their shelter, they had the Screen with them, a grey square, with some crumbling dirty-looking brown stuff round it, which, so the story went, had once been smooth and white. Marius handed it to me to look at, and I passed it on to the others. Only a few wakings ago, the Michael’s Place people would have been amazed to see such a thing, and even more amazed to be allowed anywhere near it, let alone touch it with our own hands, but now, as we handed it about, it seemed a rough, broken, tired old thing compared with the new and shiny things from Earth that we knew were in the shelter right behind us.
‘When we get back from our trip in the forest,’ Marius explained, ‘we’ll open it up. We’re not sure, because it’s very old, but we think there’s a good chance that we may be able to find words or pictures inside it, or even voices, that were put in here by Tommy or Angela when they were here on their own.’
Trueheart reached out and touched it. ‘But how does it work? How can a thing like this hold pictures and voices at all, never mind hold them for four hundred years?’
Marius smiled at her. He liked Trueheart, and she liked him. Not in a man–woman way, I don’t mean. They just noticed and liked each other’s smartness. ‘I’ll try and explain it to you, Trueheart, but it’ll have to wait. Right now we’re going to get ready to go out in the forest for a few days. When we get back we’re going to show everyone some pictures from Earth, over there in the big clearing with the stones, and then we’ll get to work on this thing.’
‘What do you mean pictures ?’ I asked.
Gaia laughed. ‘I’ll show you.’ She took out a linkup from a pocket in her wrap, and held it up in front of Trueheart and me and Fox and Clare. ‘Speak!’ she told us. ‘Move about! It’ll remember.’
‘Boo!’ shouted Fox, but I looked at the black square and couldn’t think of anything to say. It seemed dumb, somehow, to talk to a thing like that, and I felt myself blush. ‘Hello!’ I said awkwardly.
Smiling at how nervous we were, Gaia showed us the picture she’d made. Here was my beautiful little Fox, and here was his voice saying boo. Here was Clare – it looked exactly like her – and here was Trueheart with her batface and her smart curious eyes. But next to her was another horribly ugly batface I didn’t recognize at all.
‘Oh Angie, darling,’ said Clare. ‘It looks just like you.’
The ugly old batface’s mouth moved. ‘Hello!’ it said shyly from inside the glass, speaking in a strange voice I didn’t know.
Everyone else laughed and shouted. ‘That’s her! That’s Angie! That’s exactly how she speaks!’
After the Earth people had left Strongheart’s shelter, Starlight told me that she, Newjohn and Strongheart had sat for a moment in silence.
‘Do you think they’re really going to take anyone back to Earth?’ Newjohn asked after a while.
‘Don’t see how they can,’ Starlight said. ‘There isn’t room inside the veekle.’
Newjohn nodded. ‘That’s what I’ve been thinking too.’
‘Perhaps this veekle is just the beginning,’ said Strongheart. ‘Maybe they’ll bring down a bigger one later.’
Newjohn shrugged. ‘But would you go? If you could leave Eden forever and live on Earth, would you really want to do it?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Starlight. ‘They haven’t told us enough about Earth for me to say.’
Strongheart thought for several heartbeats. ‘We wouldn’t be high people on Earth, would we?’ he said. ‘We’d just be low people like everyone else. Or maybe even lower.’
‘I don’t reckon it will happen anyway,’ said Newjohn. ‘I think we’ll stay here on Eden.’
Strongheart shook his head. ‘Well, let’s make sure they don’t turn us into low people here as well.’
Thirty-five
Leader Harry and his guards were up on Snowy Dark, their bucks’ clawed feet carrying them steadily forwards, their bucks’ headlanterns casting just enough grey light for them to see the bottoms of the steep slopes that rose up round them into unseen blackness far above and the tops of the slopes that dropped down into unseen blackness below. The creatures twitched their mouth feelers this way and that as they sucked in the cold cold air and tested it for the scent of leopards and the whiff of trees and warmth. Sometimes one buck or other would give out a cry, and one or two of the others would answer it – Eeeeeek! Eeeeeek! Eeeeeek! – and occasionally the whole herd of them would join in together for a hundred heartbeats or so before they all lapsed back into silence. And then all that could be heard was the sound of their breathing, and the crunching of their feet in the snow.
It wasn’t really people who first found the way across the Dark, it was woollybucks. Woollybucks live by moving back and forth between the valleys up in the Dark, as the snow comes and goes. Jeff Redlantern was the one who first understood that, our Jeff, who was also the first to figure out how to get bucks to let people ride them. When John and the others got themselves lost in the Dark, Jeff thought to himself that his buck must know the way to someplace where there was food and warmth, because even woollybucks can’t live on ice and snow. So he rode off by himself and let his buck go where it wanted, and in that way he found Tall Tree Valley. Him figuring that was what saved John and his people, and it was what made it possible later on for the other High Valleys to be found, and the other ways across the Dark.
Or that was what we were told on Knee Tree Grounds, in any case. But of course the Davidfolk like to give the credit to Wise Mehmet. Who can say which version is really true? It might even be that several different people figured the same thing out. It was just a case of noticing which ways the bucks were willing to go, after all, and which ways they weren’t. And a matter of remembering that bucks had been on Eden long long before people.
Anyway, whoever found it, David’s Path is only one of many ways across the Dark. And David’s Path itself joins up with dozens of other paths that head off in different directions along the sides of dark valleys, past rock and ice, and above the huge snowslugs. These paths themselves branch, join onto new paths, branch out again, join up again with more paths yet. So it’s all one path, really, a path that isn’t just a single line but a kind of net. You put your foot on any part of it and you know for sure that all over the Dark there are other feet walking that same path with you: human feet and buck feet, and here and there leopard feet too. Some of those feet are coming towards you, some moving away, others again crossing between two places that you’ll never see and have never even heard of. Where human beings have trod is only a small small part of the Dark, and the paths we know of are only a small part of the path
.
As Harry and his men rode across the snow, they passed many little groups of people coming the other way. That necklace of shining beads of light was still moving slowly across the snow towards Circle Valley, as the terrified people of Wide Forest tried to get their kids and their bucks out of the way of the Johnfolk. And from time to time Harry came across those little groups of guards who waited at the crossing places by their little red fires. The guards were scared scared too. There were only a handful of them beside each fire. What were they going to do if the Johnfolk came?
When a group of guards saw Harry coming, or a bunch of Wide Forest folk met him in the snow, they saw he was a high man and called out the latest bad news to him in the desperate hope he’d be able to do something about it. The ringmen and their metal spears were winning every fight, they cried. They were taking children from their mums and dads. They were doing for young boys so they couldn’t grow up to be guards. They were making people destroy their own circles of stones. The stories were often true, but they’d begun to have a kind of life of their own like stories always seem to, and, just as some stories grow by feeding on hope and longing, these ones grew bigger and more horrible as they spread by gorging themselves on fear.
But Harry’s guards put an end to all of that. ‘Earth has come!’ they shouted back down. ‘A veekle’s come back to the Circle! Mother Gela herself is there! She’s taller than a man and her skin is black black, just like in the stories!’
Fear changed to hope. In middle of the cold and dark, people suddenly felt light and warmth inside them, like they were trees whose roots had found some new warm place deep down in Underworld, just at the moment their lanterns were starting to fade, and their trunks beginning to grow cold.
‘It’s quite true,’ Leader Harry called down to the waiting guards as he hurried by. ‘Earth really is here! Tell everyone that passes, but stay on watch here until I come back through.’ And to one group of guards at a place where five different strands of the great path all came together, he called out: ‘One of you, ride to the High Valleys and give them the news,’ and he pulled off his headwrap so they could see his face and know for certain who it was that was speaking to them.
Of course, the guards would have liked to leave their fires at once and head straight to Circle Valley, but they knew better than to go against what David Strongheart’s son had told them. One guard from that group by the five paths climbed onto a buck and rode off towards Tall Tree Valley. The rest threw more wood on their fire and waited for Leader Harry’s return.
But they were smiling and laughing now. They hugged each other, they squeezed each others’ hands, they told each other they couldn’t believe that in the generations that had passed on Eden, theirs was the one that had finally heard from Earth. One of them got out a jug of badjuice and shared it round, and presently they began to bellow out ‘Come Tree Row’ as loud as they could. It echoed off the cold black cliffs that were hidden away in the darkness above them, and a stone broke free, clattering noisily against the rock until at last it hit the snow and fell silent once again.
The path was busy busy. Those guards’ friend was riding towards Tall Tree Valley. Harry and his men were pressing on towards Wide Forest. All those little pale beads of grey light were still making their way along that long long necklace that had David’s Path as its string. Far off rockway, more beads of light were climbing up onto the Dark on the Shortcut, and over the top, and down again into those little bowls of life we call the High Valleys.
And over above Davidstand, where David’s Path came down to meet the many paths that criss-crossed through the shining trees of Wide Forest, a new group of people was starting the climb up to the ice and snow.
Davidstand belonged to the Johnfolk by then. They called it Ellpool, which was the name first given it by John Redlantern. Most of the people there had run away, and those that stayed behind were doing whatever the Johnfolk asked of them. Ringmen lived in whatever shelters they hadn’t burnt, wearing the fancy wraps and feather hats that the Davidstand people had left behind. In the Great Shelter, Headmanson Luke and his friend Teacher Gerry drank Strongheart’s badjuice and slept on his beds.
It wasn’t that Mehmet and Hunter had given up, but they’d learned that Johnfolk would always win a face-to-face fight because of their metal spears. So instead Strongheart’s first and third sons had their men hide in forest and set traps. Sometimes the guards would dig a hole in the ground and fill it with spikes, like buckhunters do, and then lead the Johnfolk towards it. Sometimes they’d tie thin strings over a path at just the height that would catch a man on buckback and pull him to the ground. Sometimes a bunch of them would scrape away the bark from hot spiketrees, cutting almost right through to the sap. A few of their mates would ride up close to the ringmen and shoot arrows at them. When the ringmen chased after them, they’d lead them to the spiketrees where their friends were hiding, and their friends would take axes and open up the trees, so that as the Johnfolk came by, scalding sticky sap would spray out at them, burning their skin, and making their bucks panic and scream. The guards would pick off the ringmen as they twisted and turned, trying to figure out which way to go.
One waking, about the time that Leader Harry was climbing up onto the Dark from Circle Valley, Headmanson Luke Johnson had gone riding out in forest near Davidstand with his friend Teacher Gerry.
They thought they were pretty safe with their ringmen all round them in their metal masks, and they were chatting away to one another cheerfully, without even wearing masks of their own.
‘I’m so looking forward to the waking I can bring my mum over here with the ring on her finger, and bring these people here back to their true Mother,’ I imagine Luke saying.
‘So am I, Luke,’ I imagine Teacher Gerry answering. ‘And especially I’m looking forward to—’
Then Gerry stopped, as if a new and interesting idea had suddenly come to him and he was figuring out how best to put it into words. He leaned slowly towards the Headmanson like he was bowing. Then he half sat up again for a moment. He had a strange half-smile on his face. There was blood on his nostrils and on his lips.
‘Gerry? Are you okay? What’s the—’
Gerry’s smile didn’t change. It was like it was fixed on his face. And once again he bowed. But this time, he didn’t stop. He just bowed and bowed until finally his whole body toppled, slowly and calmly, from the back of his buck. And now Luke saw, for the first time, an arrow sticking out of his back. Our guards had been hiding in the white- and redlantern trees above them. They’d set up ropes from the treetops, so they could shoot off their arrows and then slide quickly down to the ground and run away. Among them, as it happened, were two of Clare’s sons, Mehmet and Mike, Trueheart’s older brothers.
‘Father!’ the Headmanson’s men were calling out to him, for that’s how the New Earthers speak to their high people. ‘Father! You’re in big big danger! Climb down now!’
Several of them had their bows out and were searching the treetops round them for targets, as Headmanson Luke jumped down to kneel by his friend. Teacher Gerry’s face was empty and white, except for the blood that streamed down from his nostrils and mouth, through his beard and onto his neck. His limbs were trembling, like a sweetbat trembles when you cut off its head.
Luke shook him. ‘Gerry! Come on, Gerry! Don’t go away from me!’ But it was obvious, even to Luke, that his friend had no life left inside him. The arrow had pierced Gerry’s lungs and heart, and his wrap was soaked with blood.
Luke had looked up at the ringmen round him. How could anyone have hurt his sweet gentle Gerry? How could anyone harm this man who wished everyone well whether they were high or low, men or women, Johnfolk or Davidfolk? How could anyone shoot dead a man who’d given his whole life to finding out more about the True Story and bringing it to all the people of Eden?
‘From now on,’ he’d told the ringmen, ‘do for every
one of them you find. Do you understand? I don’t care if they’re old or if they’re kids. I don’t care if they’re guards or flowergatherers. Whenever you find them, cut their throats, string them up like Tommy, tie them to spiketrees and let them burn!’
And then he’d had another idea. ‘Yeah. I know what we’ll do. They’re all running across the mountains to Circle Valley, aren’t they? We’ll follow them. We’ll go after them. We’ll destroy that Circle of theirs a second time, and soak the ground beneath it with their blood.’
Thirty-six
Gaia suggested I go with her and the other Earth people when they went out into forest, but Dave objected at once.
‘What about your own kids, Angie? You seem to have forgotten you’re a mother.’
Straight away Tom backed up his clawfoot brother. ‘Dave’s right. You should stay here, Angie, and look after your own.’
I felt Gaia and the two Earth men looking at me to see how I’d respond. You never saw Marius or Deep bossing Gaia about: they treated each other like they were all the same. The rest of the Michael’s Place folk watched as well: Clare, Davidson, Little Harry, Flame with baby Suzie sleeping peacefully in her arms. Dave and Tom couldn’t stop me, after all, and Dave and the others could easily easily look after our kids. But I shrugged and accepted what Tom had said. He was cluster head after all, and I had to live with these people.
The Earth people frowned and glanced at one another, but they accepted my decision. They fetched some boxes made of metal from their veekle, and also a strange big metal thing with wheels, like a child’s toy car, though it only had two wheels, big fat ones, one in front and one behind. The bike, they called it. They put it together quickly quickly out of several pieces, and it came alive just like the veekle, giving out a little high whining sound, shining out light, and moving by itself through forest, somehow finding its way round tree trunks and rocks and pools. All three Earth people climbed onto its back with those metal boxes and they rode it like it was a buck.
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