Daughter of Eden

by Chris Beckett

  Speaking of New Earth, I don’t know what stories they tell over there these wakings, so far away from Circle Valley, but I think it’s quite possible that people there don’t know that anyone came or that anything happened at all. And I’m fairly sure that, if they have heard any stories, they’ll have been told it was all a trick played by the Davidfolk.

  A long waking after the veekle had disappeared into the sky, Headmanson Luke reached Old Family cluster, bringing the bodies of Leader Harry and those two guards, David and Mehmet. As he’d rode through forest of Circle Valley, he’d passed groups of excited people from the High Valleys who’d come to see Mother Gela. The three guards in front shouted out to them not to be afraid, the ringmen hadn’t come to fight, but to talk to Gela. Standing warily back from the path, the people watched the ringmen ride by on their strange blue bucks, the high young man in front in his fancy wraps, with his blank face staring straight ahead, and the three dead men that followed behind, cold and stiff, draped over the backs of woollybucks.

  Luke came straight to Strongheart’s big shelter, where the Head Guard sat with Starlight and Newjohn. (The three of them had run out of things to say to each other by then, and spent a lot of time talking with their own people, and sending messages back to their own grounds, while they waited for news from Wide Forest. Starlight told me that she and Newjohn sometimes played chess. He was a pretty good player apparently, though she beat him more times than not.)

  Old Strongheart howled with grief when he saw the body of his second oldest son, kneeling and throwing himself over it to kiss, over and over, its cold cold cheeks. Leader Harry’s corpse had long since gone completely rigid. The mouth was fixed open, the eyes dried and shrunken in their sockets, and, because it had been carried over the back of a buck with its arms hanging down one side and its legs the other, it was stuck in that position, lying on the ground on its side with its arms extended upwards and its legs straight, its head facing its knees, as if poor Harry had been frozen solid in middle of trying to touch his toes. ‘I should have died,’ the old man wailed, ‘not you, my boy. It should have been me.’

  Harry was no boy really, of course. In fact he was a grand­father himself, many times over. Jane and Flowerlight knelt beside him, Strongheart’s two young shelterwomen, stroking his back and making soothing sounds.

  Luke watched all this, appalled. When that arrow had done for his friend Gerry, his feelings for the Davidfolk had turned to pure hate. But all that had changed since he’d heard Gaia’s voice in the linkup – Gerry would never have died, after all, if the Johnfolk in their pride hadn’t crossed the water – and now he blamed himself, not just for Harry’s death, but for Gerry’s as well, and many others too. He knelt down beside the old man.

  ‘Forgive me, Father,’ he whispered. ‘Forgive me. I know how it hurts, and if only I could undo what I did, I would, even if it meant giving up my own stupid life.’

  Strongheart showed no sign that he’d even heard him, his tear-stained face pressed against the cold stiff shoulder of his son, so Luke lowered his own face right down until it was on a level with the old man’s. ‘I’m so sorry, Father. We thought he had a knife, but he was just trying to . . .’

  All the shame and grief of the last few wakings came welling up inside him, and his own tears began to run down his face, only a matter of inches away from the old man’s but also from the two shelterwomen’s, who’d laid their own heads next to Strongheart’s. Jane, the younger of the two, caught Luke’s eye, and he wondered for a moment if she might help him reach out to the old man. But she gave Luke such a look of pure pure hate that he quickly looked away from her.

  ‘I’ve told all my men to stop fighting, Father,’ Luke said.

  ‘I told them to stop fighting and go back to the places they grounded on the poolside: Veeklehouse, Nob Head and David Water. I want to stop the killing.’

  When Strongheart still didn’t respond, Luke lifted his head and looked round Strongheart’s shelter for someone else who might help him get through to the old Head Guard. Two of his ringmen had come in with him and now stood uncomfortably nearby, watched by twenty thirty guards, but they were no use to Luke now, and the only other face he found that wasn’t a stranger’s was the face of Newjohn, who’d once crossed the Pool to meet Luke’s dad Dixon, his fellow Headman. Dixon didn’t like Newjohn. ‘I don’t trust him one bit,’ he’d told Luke. ‘He’s one of the Davidfolk at heart. He pretends to be one of us when it suits him, but then he cosies up to Strongheart again as soon as our backs are turned. In fact I don’t trust any of those Brown River people. Even their stories are more like the Davidfolk’s than ours. The only true Johnfolk are the ones that followed John across the Pool.’

  The fact that Newjohn had been here, deep inside the Davidfolk Ground, when Johnfolk and Davidfolk were fighting one another over in Wide Forest, seemed to back up what his father had said, but Luke wasn’t certain of anything any more. Maybe Newjohn had been right to try and heal that deep deep wound that divided the people of Eden?

  ‘Headman Newjohn . . .’ Luke began, climbing back to his feet and bowing. Then he broke off. Something was missing surely? He looked again round the wide space of the shelter. ‘But where is our Mother? Where are the people from Earth?’

  ‘They’ve gone,’ said Newjohn with a shrug.

  Luke felt inside himself that same sudden emptiness that I’d felt myself only a waking before.

  ‘They’ve gone? Not far away, though, I guess?’

  ‘Yes. Back to Earth.’

  ‘But the message . . . The voice inside this . . . this . . .’ He took the black linkup out of a pocket in his wrap. ‘Gela’s voice, inside this . . . this thing here. She told me to come here and meet her.’

  ‘They were here in Circle Valley,’ said Strongheart, without looking up from his dead son, ‘but they had to go. They went back up into the sky over a waking ago.’

  Something shifted inside Luke. Up to that point he’d been willing to admit that he had been wrong, that everything was his fault, and even maybe that the Johnfolk themselves had been in the wrong all these years in their argument with the Davidfolk, but now, all at once, a new, suspicious mood took hold of him. It was a bit like the moment when a tubeslinker suddenly pulls right back inside the airhole of a tree – snap! – when it’s been reaching right out, as far as it can go without toppling over, and swaying from side to side in the lanternlight.

  ‘If they’d really asked me to come here, why would they go before I came? You’d have told them when they sent the message how far away I was, and how long it would take me to get here. And I came faster than you could have expected because you couldn’t have known I was already up on the Dark.’

  ‘It’s no good asking us why they went, Headmanson,’ Newjohn said. ‘They’re people from Earth. They make their own decisions.’

  Luke glanced down at Strongheart, who was still kneeling by his son’s body on the packed dirt of his shelter floor, but was beginning to struggle back up to his feet with the help of his two shelterwomen. Then he looked back at Newjohn. Luke’s eyes narrowed as he considered the Headman of the Brown River Ground. No wonder his dad hadn’t trusted this guy, with his cunning pointy face.

  ‘Tom’s stinking dick,’ he hissed. ‘This is a trick, isn’t it? Gela was never here. Earth never came. Of course not. It was just a trick to get me to stop the fight!’

  ‘Oh come on, Headmanson,’ snorted Newjohn. ‘Look at what you’ve got in your hand, boy! Surely you can see that comes from Earth? Surely it’s obvious that no one in Eden could make a piece of glass that can talk?’

  Luke looked down at the linkup. Of course it was obvious it came from Earth. And he’d seen the light as well, of course, the light of Earth’s sun, as that guard Roger had described it, shining out accusingly from the Circle as he stood looking down from the Dark. He hadn’t seen the veekle rising up into the sky, because by t
hat time he and the men with him were under the trees, but he had seen the light that the veekle made, and he knew that there was no light like it on Eden.

  ‘They gave me this ring,’ Strongheart said, and he showed Luke a metal ring that was identical in every way to the one his mother wore on her finger. As everyone knew on both sides of the Pool, except perhaps a few Hiding People, there’d only ever been one such ring on Eden, and it could only have been made on Earth. There was metal on Eden, but it was red, and it stained your fingers green if you wore it as a ring for too long. This one was made of two metals, just like his mother’s, one yellow and one white. ‘It belonged to Gela’s sister,’ Strongheart said, his voice flat and his face grey and indifferent with grief. He was a frail frail old man now, close close to death.

  ‘And of course you’ve got that new message too, Head Guard,’ Newjohn gently prompted him. ‘You’ve got that new message for the Headmanson to hear.’

  ‘Oh yes, I . . .’ Strongheart fumbled in his wrap with trembly hands and took out another smooth black linkup. ‘By the way,’ he said suddenly, a little of his old strength and power returning for a moment to his voice, ‘they told us that President was not Gela’s dad. It was a man, it’s true, but Gela never even met him, and it wasn’t President that called the Three Men down from the sky.’

  He fiddled round awkwardly with the square of glass until suddenly a woman’s voice came out of it. Luke recognized it at once as being the same voice that had spoken from the linkup he still held in his hand, but he refused to listen to what it had to say. It was going to be so much easier for him if he didn’t believe that Earth had come. That way he wouldn’t have to go on carrying the awful burden of shame and guilt that had been with him ever since ­Harry’s death. He wouldn’t have to spend the rest of his life being the one who’d done for the messenger from Earth. He wouldn’t even have to wonder whether the Davidfolk were right after all about John Redlantern and the Johnfolk, and whether he’d brought his friend Gerry across the Pool to die for no good reason at all.

  ‘Put that away,’ Luke said, while Gaia’s voice was still speaking to him. ‘I’m not interested in your tricks. We’ve always known you have old things from Earth here in Circle Valley. We’ve always known that some of those old things could talk or show pictures or give out light. You’ve just used some of them to fool me.’

  Starlight stepped in now. ‘Oh come on, you idiot! Use your head! You can see these things are bright and new. The Mementoes that were here before are so old that they’re crumbling away, and none of them do anything at all. The Head Guard can show them to you now if you don’t believe me.’

  Luke hadn’t spotted Starlight before. He’d vaguely noticed that there were high women in the shelter as well as women helpers, but women in New Earth played no part in the kind of talk that was going on now, and he’d paid them no attention. Now he’d seen Starlight, though, he recognized her at once. She might not remember meeting Headman Dixon’s little boy when she was over there, because she’d been too busy watching Luke’s dad Dixon and his mother Lucy – when a leopard’s singing to you, as people say, you don’t look at the flowers! – but the little boy remembered her alright, even after more than ten years.

  ‘The fishing girl!’ he hissed. ‘The slinker who tried to steal our ring. So she’s still alive, is she? Now I know this is all a trick!’

  And not only that. He knew for certain again that he was in the right. After wakings of doubt and shame, he knew once more that he was one of the good guys in the story of Eden. He knew that the Johnfolk were the true followers of President and Mother Gela, and these people round him were the cowardly slinkers who’d followed the Holeface back at the time of Breakup. All his guilt had gone.

  Fifty-six

  I went to find Mary. It was too late to get her to meet the people from Earth, which I would have liked her to do, but, scared though I was to meet her, I thought I should still tell her something about what I’d learned about them. She was a powerful person and would have a lot of say in how this story was told from now on.

  After she’d shouted at the Earth people, the guards told her she must leave the cluster and not come back while the Earth people were still there. But everyone seemed to know where she was, camping beside a pool with her two helpers and her guards, a mile or so out in forest, saying what she thought to anyone who came to see her. I got a young batface boy to take me there for half a stick.

  When I arrived she was sitting with her back to me with her feet in the pool. It was such a familiar sight – that strong solid body, that big square head – that it was hard to believe that eight years had gone by since she’d ordered me out of her sight. I was terrified. But I asked myself what was the worst that could happen? It wasn’t like she’d do for me, was it? It wasn’t like she’d even hit me. At most, she’d be angry with me again and tell me she didn’t want to see me. I could get over that.

  I gave the boy his half stick, and told him I could find my own way back, then I walked forwards. She still hadn’t noticed me, still just peacefully sat there waggling her big feet in the water. In between shows, she’d always liked to spend time alone with her own thoughts, sorting things out and joining them together.

  ‘Mary?’

  It took her a moment to recognize me, but when she did, it wasn’t what I was expecting at all.

  ‘Angie!’ she cried, and her whole face lit up with pleasure as she scrambled to her feet. ‘Oh Angie, I thought I might never see you again!’

  She wanted to hug me, I could see, but she wasn’t sure if she should, so I kind of half-opened my arms to let her know it was okay, and straight away she rushed forwards and held me tightly. I didn’t know what to say and, anyway, she hadn’t left me a lot of breath to speak with.

  ‘Well, it was you that sent me away, Mary!’ I gasped out.

  ‘I know, I know, and I was so so wrong. I knew that almost at once, and all this time I’ve been hoping hoping that I’d see you so I could tell you so and say I’m sorry.’

  Mary called out to her helpers and guards. ‘Janey, Brightness, Davey, Met, this is Angie, that old helper of mine I often talk about. The one who came from that little grounds out in the Pool by Nob Head.’

  The helpers and guards nodded to me without smiling, not quite as pleased to see me as Mary was, but Mary ignored that, taking my arm and leading me away from them into forest.

  ‘I’m so sorry for what I did, Angie.’

  I shrugged. ‘I guess you were disappointed. After all your teaching and all the encouragement you gave me, I still couldn’t hear our Mother.’

  ‘If you couldn’t hear her, you couldn’t hear her. There was no reason for me to get angry with you. The only thing that might achieve was to make you pretend you could hear her so as to please me, and what would be the point of that? Not that you’d have done that anyway, Angie. You’re way too honest.’

  I smiled. ‘Well, I did think about it.’

  Mary stopped and turned to face me. We were passing under some yellowlantern trees. She held my shoulders and studied my face in their light. When you’re a batface it isn’t often that someone looks into your face for so long and seems so pleased to do it. It felt pretty good.

  I smiled. ‘Why were you so angry, Mary? You accused me of thinking I was better than you, but you really couldn’t have been more wrong! All the time I was with you – more than two years – I always thought you were way way better than me.’

  She released my shoulders and turned away from me. She was ashamed, I realized. Mary, who was always so strong and so certain, was too ashamed to hold my gaze.

  ‘I guess there’s always doubt,’ she said. ‘Always doubt about everything: Is it really true? Am I just imagining it? Am I just making it up? Am I just saying what people want me to hear? When I first stood in the Circle myself, I was with a speaker called Firespark. To tell the truth, I wasn’t sure if I�
��d really heard Gela, but partly because I was afraid of Firespark and partly because I wanted so much to be a speaker in my own right, I told her that I’d definitely heard our Mother. It wasn’t for a long time, not until after I’d left Firespark and set out on my own, that I really felt confident that Gela was speaking to me. But even then, there were still sometimes moments when I . . . well . . . doubted. But I pushed the doubts away. I told myself they were weak. Well, you can doubt anything, can’t you? You can doubt you love someone. You can doubt that anything matters at all. If you wait to be completely completely certain, you’ll never believe anything, that’s what I always told myself. A strong person makes up her mind and then sticks to it.’

  She began to walk again, and I followed her. We moved from under the yellowlantern trees into the blue light of a couple of spiketrees. Hmmmph hmmmph hmmmph they went as they pumped up their boiling sap from down in the fires of Underworld. Even six seven yards away from them I could feel the heat of their trunks against my skin.

  ‘Like leopard hunters,’ Mary said. ‘That’s how I always explained it to myself. If they allow themselves to doubt at the last moment, if they hesitate or change their minds about what they’re going to do, then they’re dead. And if they allowed themselves to doubt before they even started, well then, they’d never go after leopards at all. They’d hunt bucks instead, or gather starflowers.’

  ‘Well, it is brave to take a story and stick to it. You’re a brave person, Mary. That’s why people come to hear you. They know you believe what you say. They know you won’t waver. That’s why I wanted to be with you too.’