We’re closer to Gela than they are, Mary repeated to herself in her mind, testing out the idea to see what came from it. Few people could think as quickly as she could. Few people were better at finding a new way of telling a story. And, when the Earth people made that crackly voice come out of that old screen, a question came into her mind. How could the Earth people possibly be sure that this was the voice of Gela? That screen had been in Circle Valley for four hundred years. We’d always known that it had once shown pictures that moved, and now we’d learned that it could also listen to people’s voices and remember them. These three Earth people knew all about screens, so they’d managed to find this old voice and make it speak out again through the veekle. But how could they know whose voice this had been, when so many different people had held the screen and spoken in its presence?
Suddenly Mary felt her old power coming back. She’d believed Mother Gela would make things clear when she reached Circle Valley, and that’s exactly what had happened! Our Mother hadn’t let her down. Gela was speaking to her again and Mary’s old certainty was beginning to return. The certainty that had filled her up so many times with grief and joy and rage! The certainty that made other people afraid of her! The certainty that gave her the strength to speak out, to name what she saw in front of her, to ride those powerful feelings like the kids back on Knee Tree Grounds rode the waves coming in from Deep Darkness!
‘How could these Earth people know who this is?’ she called out. ‘All they can know is who she says she is. But we Eden folk know better than that, don’t we? Many of you will recognize those words that voice spoke. And if you do, you’ll know they were part of that silly lie that some foolish women whisper to their daughters, calling it the Secret Story, and claiming it comes from Mother Gela.’
Muttering and murmuring surged in the crowd, like a great wave rising.
‘And what does that tell you, people?’ Mary asked. ‘Isn’t it obvious what’s happened? Isn’t it obvious obvious? One of those silly women, long long ago, got hold of this Screen and spoke to it!’
Somewhere in the background that young woman’s voice was still murmuring from the hissing crackly screens, but Mary’s was the only voice that people were listening to now. She had one of the best-known faces in all of the Davidfolk Ground, much better known than even David Strongheart’s, because she travelled more often than him, and visited places he’d never think of going. There’d be a few in the crowd who hadn’t seen her before, but there’d always be someone nearby to tell them who she was. And everyone knew about Mary Shadowspeaker. Everyone knew she was honest and brave and smart.
Deep tried to interrupt her. ‘But even if no one had used it at all, the bat-tree in that thing would only have lasted a few years at mo—’ he began, but Mary was in full flow now, and she couldn’t be stopped, not even when he had the veekle to make his voice boom out across whole clearing. People hissed at him to be quiet.
‘Gela is still with us!’ Mary called out. ‘I can still hear her voice, the same as ever. She’s telling me these Earth folk are just people like us, and the Earth they come from is just another place like Eden, with troubles and worries of its own. Well, this woman here told you that herself, didn’t she? She showed us the houses in the water. She told us about the floods and the fights. It’s a place just like Eden where trouble comes and people have to run from trouble. But that’s not the Earth where our Mother waits for us! This woman said that too, remember? She told us they know nothing of Gela where she comes from. She said the last they heard of Gela was that she’d come here to Eden and died.’
She held us all now. Even the Earth people stood and watched her in amazement. How many people could have moved so quickly in their heads from that first bewildering, head-spinning moment of seeing the people from Earth, to where Mary was now? How many people would have had the courage to speak out as she was doing, with the veekle and the screens right there in front of us to prove how powerful and smart the Earth people were? But of course she was as smart as any of the Earth people, and she was brave and powerful too. In her own way, she was as powerful as anyone there. Even Strongheart, even Newjohn, even Starlight.
‘We know our Mother’s alive, don’t we?’ Mary said. ‘We know she speaks to us. Because everyone hears her, don’t they? Some faintly, some more loudly. We all hear her, and we all know she watches over us. We all know she calls out to our shadows when they’re all alone in the cold forest between the stars. All that’s still true, that hasn’t changed one bit! All we’ve learned now is that she’s not on the sad Earth that these three people come from. That’s the one new thing we’re finding out. I wished I’d listened better to our old stories about Earth, because then I’d have known that already. I wish I hadn’t been so quick to dismiss them as children’s tales. But let’s not worry just now about what we didn’t know and what we got wrong. Think about what we do know, and what hasn’t changed at all. We know our Mother calls us back to her, don’t we? We don’t need anyone to tell us that. We know as a fact she calls us home. But it seems she’s made a better Earth for us to return to, not an old home but a new one. And that’s the place of warmth and light that we’ve always known was out there waiting for us, that’s the place where we’ll be safe forever.’
Some people were crying now, just like in her old shows. She was touching the disappointment we all felt, and the grief and the loneliness that had been creeping back over us, but she was touching the anger too. There were hundreds there, like that woman Treelight, whose hopes had been so raised up by the people from Earth that they thought grief itself had come to an end. The Earth people had smashed that hope, but they’d done much more than just smash it. They’d taken away the comfort as well of our old stories and our circles and our songs. It was true those things had all been wobbly stones. It was true they hadn’t been strong enough to take our grief away from us, but they’d still helped us to bear grief and get through it. And, until Mary spoke, it had seemed that we were going to lose them now as well, with that ordinary young woman’s voice, still murmuring away in the background, slowly destroying what little was left of the Davidfolk’s True Story.
So it felt good good to hear Mary still standing up for it. Everyone was on her side. Everyone was angry angry angry with the people from Earth.
‘Yeah, you tell them, shadowspeaker!’ some guy shouted out. ‘These Earth folk don’t know everything, whatever they try and tell us!’
‘They don’t know anything, you mean!’ a woman answered him. ‘They don’t know anything that’s any good to us.’
There were shouts and jeers after that, and harsh angry laughs, and once again Treelight called out, the one who’d lost her eight sons and her man to the Johnfolk over in Wide Forest.
‘They’re useless !’ she yelled. ‘They’re useless useless. And they’re cruel too. Our boys are dead and we’re hungry and scared, and what do they bring us? Pictures and voices inside a screen! Things you can’t even touch. Things that just make us smaller and lonelier than we ever were before.’
‘Well, we tried to . . .’ began Gaia, but shouts and jeers stopped her from going on. And then, for a long time, no one spoke at all, and the crowd just roared on its own.
Poor Gaia, poor Deep, poor Marius: just three of them, far away from home, facing hundreds of angry Eden folk. They could feel the depth of the rage round them, of course they could. And, for all their linkups and lecky-trickity and bikes, they were just people, made of flesh like we were. Spears and arrows would do for them as easily as they’d do for us.
Gaia hadn’t been able to quiet the crowd, but when Mary held up her hands to ask to be allowed to speak, everyone stopped shouting at once. Even the voice and the crackling from the screens had gone silent. I guess one of the Earth people had stopped it.
‘There’s no need to take it out on these Earth people,’ Mary said. ‘From what I’ve seen of them, it doesn’t seem to me that
they meant us harm. And, okay, they’ve told us they can’t take us with them, but do we really need to be sad about that? I mean, would we even want to go to that sad watery world they just showed us? I don’t think so, do you?’
Lots of people shouted out: ‘No! No! No!’ at that. Who cared about that pale place with its cold trees and its stupid shouting animals?
‘And what we mustn’t ever forget,’ Mary said, ‘is that, even when they’ve gone, we will not be left on our own. Because we still have Gela. Look inside yourselves and you’ll see you already know that without me even telling you. We’ll still always have Gela. And, if only we listen to her, we’ll always have the true home she’s keeping for us, where all our troubles will end.’
There was another big roaring cheer. It wasn’t a happy cheer, it was still angry angry, but it was proud proud as well. It was like the Davidfolk were telling the people from Earth that they could do what they liked, because we hadn’t needed them anyway.
But behind us, Strongheart was rising unsteadily to his feet, signalling to his horn man to blow and make us quiet.
‘That’s enough now!’ the old man called out. ‘This meeting is over. We mustn’t be rude to our visitors from Earth. They’ve come to help us. They’ve come to stop the fight with the—’
He was the Head Guard, the Head of True Family, the most powerful man in all of Eden, a man that people would kneel and bow in front of if he ever came near them, a man that, if he asked for silence, would normally get silence at once. But now the people in the crowd didn’t let him finish. Mary had found her way, as she always did, to people’s deepest longings and fears, and it was like when a stream floods over its banks, or a jug full of juice is smashed on the ground. You can’t put it back, you can’t fix it together again. No one was interested in what that old man had to say.
‘Gela! Gela! Gela!’ part of the crowd began to chant, and then Mary started singing ‘Come Tree Row’ in her loud strong voice, and the chanting faded down as we all joined in. We sang it through again and again, round and round, so as to come again and again to that place at the end of the song where it reaches its home. And when Gaia’s voice finally boomed out from the veekle, asking if she could say a few more words, people shouted angrily at her to shut up and let us sing.
‘You’ve got nothing to give us!’ a man shouted out.
‘Yeah,’ another man called out, ‘you’re useless. Go on back to Earth and leave us alone.’
‘Yeah, go back to Earth, why don’t you?’ a woman echoed. ‘Why can’t you just bloody go?’ More folk took that up until it became another chant: ‘Go! Go! Go!’ And then some of the newhairs began to pick up stones and throw them, so that the Earth people had to hold their arms in front of their faces to protect themselves.
Strongheart told his guards to empty the clearing. Mary tried to call out that we should leave the Earth people alone, but by then it seemed that even she couldn’t control what she’d set loose. The shouting and stones kept coming until suddenly those lights shone out from the veekle, with a brightness we hadn’t seen since it first came down from the sky, a brightness that filled up forest, making everything pale, and covering the ground under the trees with long black shadows, like fingers of darkness pointing out accusingly from the shining veekle. The light hurt our eyes so that we had to turn away from it and, as we did, we saw each other, the blemishes on our skins, the deep tired lines in our faces, and we saw how the lanterns on the trees, which were normally the light of Eden, were drained of any light at all by the brightness all round them, and were just pale shapes dangling from the branches. It was as if dimness had been a wrap round us, keeping us warm, and now it had suddenly been stripped away.
We let the guards drive us out of the clearing, but before I left I looked back and saw Mary still standing there, still looking in the direction of the veekle, her fingers like a cage in front of her eyes, like she was trying to face out those brilliant lights and make out what was behind.
Fifty-three
When I tell you things that happened when I wasn’t there, I rely on what people who were there told me or what they told other people. Starlight told me things that happened in Strongheart’s big shelter, for example, and I heard about Leader Harry’s death from the stories passed round by the three guards who came back. It’s tricky because people always hold things back, or hear what they want to hear, or tell the story in a way that makes better sense to them than how they heard it themselves. I’ve heard several different stories about how Leader Harry died, for instance. I’ve told you the one I’ve heard most often, but there are those who say it was Luke himself who called out ‘Blade!’ and the guy on the woollybuck next to him that shot the arrow, and some say Luke just shot the leader because he wanted to, and no one shouted ‘Blade!’ at all. I guess if I could speak to Luke or some of his ringmen, I might hear other stories again. Maybe they’d say there really was a shiny blade in Harry’s hand. It’s not impossible. Our guards still carried blackglass spears back then, but their leaders all had metal knives. And anyway, blackglass can shine in the light.
When the story isn’t certain – and it almost never is – all I can do is think about the people and the situation they were in, and figure out for myself what makes most sense. I work out, as best I can, how things would most likely have unfolded and connected together, and make the best guess I can as to how it must have been. I might be wrong – I’m sure I am wrong sometimes – but I figure that if we only ever told stories we could be completely certain of, then there’d be no stories at all. I mean, never mind other people, we can’t even be sure of our own memories.
I met Headmanson Luke that one time in Wide Forest when his men surrounded us as we were running away from Michael’s Place. I saw him again for a short time when he came down into Circle Valley with Harry’s body. I also listened to the stories that were passed round by the guards that came with him down from the Dark. Yes, and I also met his dad long ago, that first time me and Starlight went to Veeklehouse: Chief Dixon as he was then, that cold, proud man, who later did for Greenstone and became Headman of New Earth. Starlight had to deal with Chief Dixon when she was in New Earth – if he’d had his way, she’d have been thrown into the fire with Greenstone – and she met Luke’s sister and his mother Lucy, whose own dad and brothers had been thrown into that fire themselves by Greenstone’s dad. Luke would only have been a kid when she was over there, and Starlight says she must have met him, but can’t remember it. She would soon meet him again, though. She’d meet him in Strongheart’s shelter in Old Family cluster, and she’d tell me what happened there. It’s from all those things that I’ve got a sense of that young man, and what was in his mind.
When the light flashed out from the veekle, Luke had just reached the place on David’s Path where you can look down into Circle Valley. He saw forest round the distant clearing fill with brilliant light, far brighter than anything he’d ever seen, even in the shining caves of New Earth, and he saw how the smoke that rose from the many fires of Old Family cluster, which had been a dull orange smear against the stars, suddenly shone white against the black black sky.
His heart filled with dread. He knew this was the pure pure light of Earth pouring out from the Circle of Stones into the darkness of Eden. He knew the Davidfolk had always claimed that their Circle was the place where Earth would return. He knew his own many-greats grandfather John Redlantern had denied that claim when he destroyed the Circle, broke up Family, and brought killing into the world. But now here he was, Luke Johnson, the many-greats grandson of John, who had come across the water to destroy the Davidfolk, being summoned back to the Circle by Mother Gela. She’d sent the message by the many-greats grandson of Great David. And he was riding down to meet her with yet more blood on his hands.
Gela was the gentle Mother of all of Eden. The Johnfolk believed that no less than the Davidfolk, but Luke knew better than many that mothers had another
side. His own mother had seen her dad and her brother thrown down into that fire by her uncle Firehand, and she was full of bitterness and rage. That white light in the distance didn’t seem gentle to Luke. It didn’t seem kind. It seemed to him to be a sign that Gela already knew what he’d done. It felt to him like it was searching for him through the trees and that nothing could escape it in the end. He thought that, when that light finally found him, it would shine right through him and into the darkest and most hidden parts of his mind. His mouth was dry dry as he called out to those three guards who kept refusing to talk to him. ‘What is that light? How do they make it?’
‘How would we know?’ the guard called Roger answered with a shrug. ‘It comes from their veekle. I guess it’s the light of the sun. We know the Earth people can carry pictures and voices from one place to another, so I suppose they’ve got a way of carrying that with them as well.’
Luke yanked off his headwrap, suddenly maddened by the stuffiness and the smell of it, and, as his buck began to pick its way down the slope, he felt the cold cold air of the Dark against his face. ‘The light of the sun,’ he said, running his tongue round his dry lips. ‘Yes, I guess it must be. They do say that sunlight is pure pure white. Mother of Eden, imagine that! They can gather the light from a star and bring it down to the ground, as we might gather a jug of water from a pool.’
Roger didn’t answer him, but one of the others gave a harsh laugh and spoke not to Luke but to Roger and their mate. ‘I bet he wishes he hadn’t messed with people who can do things like that.’
‘Never mind that,’ said Roger. ‘I bet he wishes he hadn’t messed with the Davidfolk.’
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