‘I’m not Gela,’ she told them. ‘I’m not Angela. Angela is here in the Burial Ground in Circle Valley, under that huge pile of stones. My name is Gaia, and my ancestor was Angela’s sister, Candice.’
The people looked at each other. How strange and wonderful her Earth speech was. You could only make out the odd word, and yet somehow you knew you’d be able to figure it out, if only you listened long and hard enough.
‘Candice?’ crowed the old woman. ‘Did you say Candice? My name’s Candice too!’
‘Hey!’ called Deep. ‘Gaia! Marius! Come and check this out! I think we’re finally getting somewhere!’
Forty-six
I feel a bit sorry for Headmanson Luke when I think about that moment up there in the snow and the darkness. In front of him were three dead men and six angry guards. Behind were all those ringmen waiting for him to decide. He was young young – younger than me and Starlight were that first time we went to Veeklehouse – but he’d already made himself the fool of a story that all these watching men would take back to the Johnfolk and the Davidfolk both. He’d come across to Mainground to make his stern grey father proud, and bring some happiness to his mother Lucy. He’d come full of plans to help his friend Teacher Gerry bring the True Story of President to all the people of Eden. But now Teacher Gerry was dead and Luke had brought shame to his family and to all of New Earth. It would be hard for anyone to move forwards from a thing like that. But Luke was the Headmanson and he knew he must.
‘Topmen,’ he called, ‘come talk to me.’
In New Earth they have a Headman instead of a Head Guard, chiefs instead of guard leaders, and topmen are the bosses of smaller groups of ringmen under the chiefs, much like the blokes they call groupmen in the guards. There were four of them there among his ringmen. They climbed down from their bucks and walked over to him, pulling off their headwraps, which up here on the Dark they wore instead of their metal masks.
‘I’ll take ten men with me, and carry on to Circle Valley to talk with the Headman.’ Luke pointed to the oldest of the topmen. ‘You can come with me, John. Pick out nine more to bring with us. You three can take the rest of the men back to Wide Forest and—’
‘But, Father, you won’t be safe with only—!’
‘You can take the men back to Wide Forest, and give a message from me to our chiefs down there to stop fighting and go back with their men to Veeklehouse, David Water or Nob Head, wherever they first grounded. You can tell them what’s happened, and tell them about this . . . this . . .’ His voice became wobbly as he looked down at the little black square of glass and tried to figure out what to call it. ‘You can tell them about this black thing.’
At that point, he must have touched whichever part of it made it speak, because right then Gaia’s voice spoke out again, saying those exact same words in the exact same way:
‘Hello Johnfolk, this is Gaia from Earth. Three of us have come in a starship. Please stop fighting now and come to meet us.’
The topmen hadn’t heard it so clearly before. They started, they gasped, their mouths fell open, and at the same time their hearts opened too, and tears came to their eyes as they heard the clear, firm voice of a confident young woman, coming out of this tiny object as if she was actually there. Topman John fell straight to his knees and all three others followed him at once. For of course the Johnfolk looked up to Mother Gela no less than the Davidfolk, even if they heard her telling them completely different things.
How wretched it must have been for Luke Johnson, knowing he couldn’t share in their joy that Earth had returned. Now he could only look forward with dread to his meeting with the woman whose voice was somehow held inside this piece of glass. But he didn’t show those feelings. He’d managed to get back in control of himself. Whether he liked it or not, he had a place now in the story of whole of Eden and, like dead Leader Harry a short time ago, and like his many-greats grandfather John Redlantern, he knew that not only these men round him, but people not yet born, were watching him to see what he’d do next.
He turned to the six guards who were still alive. ‘You heard what I’ve told my men. The fight is over. I’ll come and meet the Earth people with your Headman, and they can decide which of us is right and which is wrong. I’d like to ask three of you to ride on to Wide Forest. Tell your leaders there from me that we won’t fight them any more, and that, if they let us, all my men will go quietly back to the places we grounded and wait there until the Earth people have told us what to do. I’d like the rest of you to lead the way back to Circle Valley, so you can tell your big people when we get there, and your people we meet along the way, that this isn’t a trick, that I’ve come to talk, just as the new Gela has asked, and that all of my ringmen except these ten have been told to go back to poolside.’
The six guards looked at each other, shrugged, and nodded. ‘We can tell folk what happened here,’ one of them said, ‘and we can tell them what you’ve just said. But we can’t speak for the high people. What they do is up to them.’
Luke Johnson looked down at the black square in his hand. If only he’d held back for one single heartbeat longer, he’d have heard the voice before he shot the arrow. ‘Of course. All you can do is tell them what I said.’
He pulled his headwrap back on and climbed back up onto the slim blue-skinned buck he’d brought over from across the Pool. He made himself sit up straight straight on its back. He made himself lift his head up high, like his father Dixon would have done, or his mother Lucy, who’d had to live with so much sadness. Then he turned towards Circle Valley again while three of the guards rode out ahead of him, and Topman John and those ten ringmen gathered themselves behind him.
Forty-seven
Deep had found some more pictures of Earth, and now the Earth people were showing them on the screens in Circle Clearing. They were pictures of a place called London, a place they knew we’d have heard of, because it had been the home of Angela Young, and part of Old Family cluster was still named after it. More than a thousand thousand people lived in London now, Gaia told us – more than a millyun to use their word – which was surely many times more than lived in whole of Eden. But she said this was still much much less than used to live there.
The screens showed us a moving picture of rows and rows of houses with doors and black windholes, under that strange white sky. Pale pale pale: that was the word that kept coming to me. When we’d imagined the brightness of Earth we hadn’t imagined it like this, because our brightness is always next to darkness, and it’s darkness that makes the brightness shine out. Brightness next to other brightness is a different thing, just like a voice speaking in the humming forest is a different thing from a voice in the emptiness of Snowy Dark.
‘Why are those houses in water?’ someone called out.
‘Lots of houses in London are,’ Gaia said. ‘It’s the same in many sitties.’ A sitty, we found out, was a giant cluster where many thousands lived. ‘The water rose up when the ice melted. It was a hard time, and there were lots of fights between the people who’d been driven out of places and the people who still had homes. Whole areas of London had to be given up. These houses here are empty. No one lives in this part of London any more, but . . . oh here you are, look! . . . There are lots of birds there!’
A strange white creature flew out of one of the windholes. It rose up into the pale grey sky on long thin wings that were white as human bones. And, as it climbed up through the air, it suddenly gave out a cry, a strange lonely shrieking, which made us shiver, as if a skeleton had opened its jaws and wailed. We watched it in silence. We’d always been told that the animals of Earth were like people. We’d always understood that they had red blood, and a single heart, and eyes like human eyes, and that you could look into those eyes and see how they were feeling, just like you can with people. But this was nothing like a person, and it seemed to us far far stranger than any Eden creature.
&nb
sp; I looked round at the hundreds of people who’d come to the clearing to see the pictures. It was easy to tell the people who’d come down into the Valley in the last couple of wakings because their eyes were full of tears at the sight of the veekle and the pictures from Earth. The people who’d been here long enough to see the pictures before were all watching with dry eyes. But new arrivals or not, no one seemed to know what to make of the white winged creature with its cold and lonely cry.
The Earth people looked out at us worriedly. They could tell there was a different mood in the clearing this time.
‘We thought perhaps you’d like to see some pictures of yourselves,’ said Gaia, and straight away the three screens showed forest of Circle Valley, and three little boys doing a silly dance.
‘It’s Davey!’ someone shouted. ‘It’s Davey and Tom and Trueson!’
Now this was fun! We all cheered up at once, and soon everyone was laughing out loud.
Another picture appeared. ‘Look! It’s you, Lucy!’ someone yelled out delightedly. ‘No way!’ a woman answered. ‘No way is that me!’ Her friends laughed at her. ‘It is, you know! That’s exactly what you’re like!’
Another picture came, this time a moving one. ‘Tom’s dick! Look!’ a man shouted. ‘It’s old Roger. I’d know that weird walk anywhere!’
Then came a picture that talked. ‘You want me to speak? I . . . um . . . I don’t know what to say,’ said an old guy in a fancy wrap, looking shyly out of the screen. And everyone cheered because it was David Strongheart himself, but he didn’t seem that scary or high when you saw him like that, not like the fierce leader who’d sent hundreds to their deaths, but more like a kind old granddad to us all.
There were more pictures of low people after that, each one greeted with delight by their friends and family. It went on for some time. Everyone was way way happier being shown what they already knew than they had been looking at those strange pale pictures from Earth. Even pictures of places delighted people.
‘Hey, look! It’s that bent tree over by Lava Blob!’
‘Ha! I know that place! It’s just this side of Cold Path Neck!’
‘That’s Longpool, isn’t it? No, wait a minute, it’s Greatpool, look! There’s that bit of rock that sticks up on blueside.’
But at last the screens went black again.
‘We’ve got an interesting thing to show you,’ said Deep, his voice booming out from the veekle, ‘a really special thing that we know you’ll all want to see and hear, but first Gaia’s got something to speak to you about.’
‘I want you all to listen carefully,’ said Gaia, speaking slowly slowly and carefully carefully. ‘I want you all to understand what I’m going to say. I want to tell you first of all that I’m not your Gela, whatever some of you think. What we know of Gela back on Earth is that she came to Eden four hundred years ago and never came back. We don’t know anything after that. We assumed she must have died here on Eden, but we didn’t know until now that she’d had children and grandchildren. As far as we know she never came back to Earth, alive or dead, and all that’s left of Gela is here on Eden.’ She waited, watching our faces to see if she’d been understood. She’d managed to keep her voice strong and sure, but we could see in her eyes that she’d dreaded saying these things. ‘I am not Gela,’ she repeated. ‘In fact I’m not even as closely related to Gela as all of you are. Half of every one of you comes from Gela. My only connection with her is that a tiny tiny part of me comes from Gela’s twin sister, Candice.’
There was a silence across the whole clearing. The trees pulsed. The flutterbyes rustled and flicked round the lanternflowers. A starbird screeched in forest: a proper Eden bird with feet and hands and big flat eyes.
‘That’s the first thing we have to tell you,’ said Deep, ‘and the second is that, we’re really sorry, but we can’t take you back to Earth. It’s just not possible. Any of you who have been inside the old landing veekle will know that there’s only room inside it for a few people. It’s only meant for three. I’m afraid there will never be a time when more than a few people can go back and forth between Earth and Eden. Even just to get three of us here took the work of tens of thousands of people for tens of years. When we go back to Earth – and that will be soon, I’m afraid – we’ll work hard to get more people to come here again and help you with your lives, but no one is ever going to be able to carry you all back to Earth, though I know many of you have hoped for that for many many years.’
The Earth people looked out at us. You could see how hard this was for them, just the three of them facing so many many disappointed people. As for us Eden folk, well, I guess a lot of us had already half-figured out what they were telling us, but hearing them say it was a completely different thing. When you figure a thing out for yourself you can still hope you’re wrong. They’d taken away any possibility of that.
‘We’re sorry,’ said Deep. Right behind him, their veekle stood in the Circle of Stones that the Davidfolk had kept in readiness for it all these years. How many hundreds of copies of that Circle were there, I wondered, across whole of the Davidfolk Ground? How many times these last four hundred years had Davidfolk stood beside those circles and sang ‘Come Tree Home’?
‘You’re sorry, are you?’ a woman screamed out, her voice harsh with anger and loneliness and cold cold grief. I recognized her face. It was the woman called Treelight I’d stood next to in the line for dry meat, the one who’d lost eight of her nine sons to the ringmen’s metal-tipped arrows. I remembered that brightness in her voice then as she told me she knew she’d see her boys again on Earth, that particular kind of brightness that people put in their voice when they’re determined that they’re going to be cheerful, no matter what, determined to believe that what they’re saying is true.
Eight sons and their dad, all dead! But Treelight had told me how she’d made herself hold all that grief inside as she’d crossed Wide Forest and climbed up onto the Dark, so as to be able to look after the little kids, and comfort the oldies, and keep things going, along with the other women who’d lost their men as well. All the way across the Dark, she’d told me, she’d made herself push her dead boys out of her mind every time she began to think about them. But when she was coming down far side of the Dark into Circle Valley, she began to feel that she wasn’t going to be able to manage it any more, that her grief would come bursting out of her no matter what. I can’t carry on doing this, she thought. I’ve reached the end of it. I’ve got no strength left.
And just then, so she’d told me, right at the exact moment she was thinking she couldn’t hold on any longer, Leader Harry and his eight men had come riding by on his way up to the Dark, calling out the news about the veekle that had come down in the Circle and the people inside it from Earth. Treelight had laughed with happiness, the other women too. They’d all laughed and shouted and sang. There was no need for grief any more, no need for loneliness! Hungry and tired as they were, they’d come down into forest of Circle Valley with cheerful cheerful hearts.
But now this! The end of hope. The end of those few precious wakings when she’d thought she might never have to face that huge awful icy grief that had been welling up inside of her.
‘You’re sorry, are you?’ Treelight screamed. ‘So what have you lost, eh? What have you had to give up? You’ll be back on Earth in a few wakings, I guess, telling your friends about the funny Eden folk who don’t have lecky-trickity, or starships, or pictures that can talk.’
All three Earth people stared at her with scared, shocked eyes.
Treelight was just one person, but there were many many who were like her. Most of the people there were hungry, and worrying how they’d keep their kids alive when Strongheart’s stores ran out. Most of them had lost their homes. Many had seen friends done for by the Johnfolk. Most had men and newhair boys who were still in Wide Forest and could well be dead. Over and over, the mothers and fathers of
guards had had to listen to stories about how our guards’ glass-tipped spears were no match for the metal spears and arrows of the masked ringmen. Over and over they’d had to hear about what the ringmen did to the men they caught.
All these people had clung to the hope that the Earth people would save them somehow, take away from them the reasons for their fear and grief. It was like they’d been running from a leopard and for a little while had really thought they were going to escape it, but now suddenly they’d reached a high high cliff and they couldn’t run any further. They had no choice but to stand and wait for that merciless creature to reach them.
I suppose if they’d thought about it, most people would have seen that this wasn’t really the Earth people’s fault, but right now the crowd wasn’t in the mood for thinking. And people all round the clearing began to scream out in their bitterness and disappointment as that dark dark leopard of grief and fear began to gobble them up.
‘It’s alright for you, isn’t it?’
‘What did you come here for anyway?’
‘You should have left us alone!’
‘The slinkers! They just came here to make fun of us!’
Everyone was full of fear, everyone was full of rage. Kids picked it up at once. Candy had stood up to shout and laugh with the others when those pictures of Eden people began to appear on the screens, but now she came back to my lap again, pressing her cheek against my breasts and putting her thumb in her mouth as she watched and listened to the anger all round us. Fox had been standing apart from me with some friends, but now he came back too and squatted beside me, resting one hand on my knee, his face tense and pale.
In front of the Circle of Stones, guards tightened their grip round their spears. I don’t think the Earth people would have lived if they hadn’t been there.
Daughter of Eden Page 31