“No, she wasn’t! She was just cross with me for turning into a boring old mum.”
“Oh, come on, Glits, surely you know your sister better than that? She was cross with you for not looking after her like you used to before Mikey was born. You’d been like another mum to her.”
“I’m only six wombs older than she is!”
“All the same.”
“Starlight missed Mum,” I said after a while. “We all did. Even when Mum was alive, we sort of missed her, because she was only ever half there. But what Starlight didn’t get is that there’s no point in going on chasing and chasing after that missing thing. Best you can do is to try and give to someone else what you yourself didn’t have. I don’t want Mikey ever to feel that he’s on his own, or that he can’t get my attention.”
Angie nodded, looking down at the little boy snoozing against my breasts.
“Lucky Mikey. But it’s not all down to mums, is it? He’s got a dad and uncles and aunts who love him, too. He’s got all of us on Grounds.”
“I know that. And it’s a good thing, otherwise me and Starlight and Johnny would have been on our own when that spearfish did for Mum. But still, when a baby’s little, there’s no food that’ll nourish him in all of Eden except for his mother’s milk.”
Starlight Brooking
In middle of Edenheart a circle of big houses made of stone and wood surrounded what was called the Meeting Ground. It was at least half the size of whole of the Sand, with a floor covered in flat squares of stone, and all the trees cleared from it, except for a line of whitelanterns round the edge. On one side of it they’d made a kind of raised-up floor, where me and Greenstone stood. Ringmen stood round it, making a fence of spears, and beyond the ringmen more than a hundred people waited and watched, talking all at once. Greenstone stood next to me; Firehand was behind us on a high seat; and chiefs, teachers, and their housewomen were gathered on either side of us. I was wearing a longwrap in white and yellow stripes, like the one the old man had worn when I first met him, and Quietstream had spent hours washing me and tying up my hair in tiny plaits.
Presently three ringmen lifted metal horns and blasted out three high, clear notes that echoed up and down the cave: Paaaarp! Paaaarp! Paaaarp!
At once the place became so silent that you could hear the hmmmmph hmmmmph hmmmmph of the trees and even the faint chattering of tiny glitterbirds, far far above us on the roof of the cave, like a reminder that we humans were strangers in Eden, strange, pale creatures, fallen by accident from the sky.
Purelight helped the old man to his feet and he came shuffling slowly up to the front of the platform. The crowd was quiet quiet as he took the ring from his own hand, held it up for the people to see, and fumbled it onto my finger.
“Here she is!” the old man called out in a thin, croaky voice. “My son’s housewoman. The Ringwearer of Edenheart, and New Earth, and all of Eden!”
He took me by the elbow and shoved me roughly forward to the front edge of the floor, and as he did so, a great sound came bursting over us. It was just a roar at first, like the sound of big waves breaking on the edge of Grounds in windy weather. But slowly a rhythm started to emerge within it until all those people were chanting one single word, all together, over and over and over.
“Mother! Mother! Mother! Mother!”
Arms were reached out toward me, yearning, pleading arms, and people were crying out and tearing at their wraps. I wasn’t sure what to do, but I lifted my hands above my head and pointed to the ring on my finger.
That made them go crazy. The rhythm of the chant disappeared, toppled over under its own weight like another breaking wave, as they screamed and yelled. Then, slowly slowly, the chant built up again.
“Mother! Mother! Mother!”
I laughed. This was starting to feel good. I pointed to a young woman out there and smiled at her, and I could see her instant delight. I smiled at an old man, and it was the same. Their joy was so great that it was almost too much to bear, yet it came from being noticed by me. I opened my arms to the whole ground, and yet another great roar came rising up, drowning out everything but itself.
“Mother! Mother! Mother!”
They loved me! It was wonderful! They loved me so much!
I glanced, just for a moment, at Greenstone, who’d come up to stand beside me. His eyes were bright as he watched me, and I could see he loved me, too: this beautiful, gentle man who could have chosen so many other women. To think I’d wasted all that time on Knee Tree Grounds, when all this had been waiting here for me!
“Mother! Mother! Mother!”
I remembered I’d been asked to speak some words, so I held my hands up for quiet.
Jeff’s eyes, I had so much power! I made one gesture and they all screamed. I made another and they all fell silent at once. There was only the pulsing of the trees, the chattering of the glitterbirds far above us. Eden was carrying on its own life as it had done for thousands and thousands of wombs, but the strange creatures from the sky were holding their breath, waiting for whatever I had to give.
“My name is Starlight,” I called out. “My speech may sound strange to you because I come from far away, but I hope you can understand me, and I promise to learn as quickly as I can to speak as you do and look after you all as a mother should care for her children. Even though I come from far away, I am one of John’s people, just as you are, and I’m proud proud to put on Gela’s ring, proud to stand here with your Headman and chiefs and teachers, proud to help them make New Earth grow stronger and wiser until we truly become like Earth and find our way back to Earth itself.”
Greenstone had told me the things I needed to say, and now, as the people screamed and yelled, he passed me a heavy skin bag. I reached inside as I’d been asked to do, took out handfuls of little metal cubes, and flung them out to the crowd.
Cars came then, and ringmen cleared a way so that me and Greenstone and the other big people could go back to the Headmanhouse.
Big tables had been carried into the Red Cave and piled up with sliced buckhearts, and baby bat wings, and newborn bucks’ feet boiled in their mothers’ green blood. In the blue cave next to it, there were people playing music on drums and horns and little banjos with three strings. Beyond that, in another red cave, was a forest leopard in a cage, black as the sky between the stars, with bright spots shimmering on its skin. A man was prancing about in front of it in a woollybuck mask, and the creature was singing to him in that strange, sad voice that leopards have, like a woman all alone, crying for something lost.
But I wasn’t alone. Greenstone was right beside me and, all the time, chiefs and teachers, and their housewomen and sons and daughters, were coming over to kneel and kiss the ring. Even the helpers knelt and kissed it as they passed this way and that with jugs and barks of food, their faces melting in gratitude when I smiled at them.
“It’s good to have a Ringwearer again,” the chiefswomen all said, and some of them at least seemed to mean it. “You’re so beautiful! The small people will love you!”
“You’ll be good for the Headmanson,” said Chief Earthseeker, the man who’d taught Greenstone how to hunt. “He’s a good good bloke, but he needs someone to tell him what’s what.”
Then he patted my arm and moved away so more people could come forward and bend murmuring over the ring.
“You are perfect as Ringwearer,” said a young teacher called Harry as he released my hand and stood up.
There were tears in his dark, gentle eyes as he turned to Greenstone, who’d been his friend when they were kids.
Part III
Luke Snowleopard
Paaarp! Paaarp! Paaarp!
First thing every waking the timehorns blew from the windholes above us at the top of the Headmanhouse. Straight away, another horn would blow down at the Teachinghouse. And then, while it was still echoing, more horns would answer, up and down the caves, fainter and fainter, as they followed Edenheart’s lead.
Paaarp! Paaar
p! Paaarp!
“I don’t get this horn business,” muttered Spear as we climbed out of our beds. “Why does everyone have to wake and sleep at the same time?”
“You don’t get it because you’re ignorant Davidfolk from Old Ground,” said Big John, who was one of the three who shared our tiny wooden cave inside the Headmanhouse.
We’d had some annoying crap from Big John when we first arrived—stuff about coming from cross-pool and being Davidfolk and talking funny—and I’d had to put him up against the wall and let him know who he was dealing with. That had sorted things out, but now he was pushing it again.
“Okay,” said Spear, splashing water onto his ugly face from a bowl. “So tell an ignorant Maingrounder why you guys need to count out the time like this, and all keep the same sleeps and wakings?”
“Well . . . it . . . just makes sense,” Big John muttered.
He didn’t have a clue, the great dumb fatbuck, but I did. That Firehand was making sure he let everyone know who was in charge. He was making sure they knew he wasn’t just the boss of the chiefs and the ringmen, not just the boss of the small people and the cutbats, but even the boss of time. That was a smart smart guy.
I splashed water over my own face and pulled on my wrap, then we climbed down a ladder to the big wallcave on the next level, down where all the ringmen ate. There were seedcakes and a black hunk of dried meat for each of us, and we squatted down to eat round the walls, thirty forty of us in the pink light of a redlantern, while the two topmen shouted things out to us:
“Listen up, men, listen up. We had a complaint from a teacher last waking that one of you didn’t treat him with proper respect. Watch it, all of you! You do not want us to have to take this up with you again!”
“Listen up! We’ve got a big polefight coming up. Twenty cubes for the winner . . .”
“Listen up! We need ten of you for a paddle race down at Brightrest. . . .”
“Listen up! Here’s your jobs for this waking. . . .”
Spear and another two guys were to ride upcave. Me and Blink were to walk round the houseways of Edenheart, houseways being the Johnfolk’s fancy word for the paths between the houses and shelters.
Making sure that everyone saw us every waking, with our big metal spears in our hands, was another way Firehand let people know who was boss, and that was a trick old Strongheart also knew.
“What were guards started for?” I remembered him asking me once when I was a young man, the first time I stood in front of him.
“To fight the Johnfolk, Head Guard!” I answered.
“Wrong!” he said. “Wrong, wrong, wrong. Guards were started first and foremost to keep the Davidfolk in line.”
“We going to take part in that polefight?” Blink asked.
“Of course. And the paddle race. We want to get noticed, and we need all the metal we can get.”
A trader watched us warily as we walked past his tables of fruit and flowercakes, and Blink gave him one of those scary grins of his with no teeth in it, and only one eye.
“Have a good waking, fathers,” the trader called out.
“Hyav a gud waking farrthers,” Blink mimicked under his breath.
Starlight Brooking
Paaarp! Paaarp! Paaarp!
When the horns blew, Greenstone jumped out of bed. He needed to go to his own cave to be bathed and wrapped, and get himself ready for another meeting with Council.
“Good luck,” I told him, and he smiled bravely, and kissed me, and said he’d be fine, though his face was taut and pale.
I lay there feeling a little lonely, and a little worried, but mainly annoyed that I couldn’t go to Council in his place, seeing as he seemed to dread the fight, and I would have loved it.
Pretty soon Quietstream appeared, as she did at the beginning of every waking.
“Have you always lived in Edenheart?” I asked her as I stepped into the pool.
“Always in the Cave, Mother. I was born in a little sheltercluster half a mile from here.”
“Don’t you miss the sky?”
She laughed at that. “Miss it, Mother? I’d never seen it in my life until the Headmanson was born, and we had to take him to meet the people out top.”
“But it’s only a few miles from here to the mouth of the cave!”
“There was no need to go there, Mother. And plenty to do where we were.”
“So what did you think when you saw it for the first time?”
“It scared me, Mother, to tell you the truth. Shall I dry you now?”
I climbed out of the water and let her rub me down with one of the fakeskin dries that the bat brought in for her. Or plantstuff, as they called it in New Earth.
“What’s scary about sky?”
“Having nothing above my head, Mother. Just nothing, on and on and on.”
“But Earth’s out there. Don’t you like that thought?”
“Like the teachers say, Mother, no one gets to Earth by staring at the sky.”
“No one gets to Earth any which way, but surely it’s nice to know it’s there? Nice to think there are more people out there somewhere. When I was a kid, my mum used to show me a star that she said was the Sun of Earth. You could really only see it properly when we were out fishing, out on open water past the edge of our forest. I always used to look forward to seeing it. Mother Earth. It gave me a nice, safe feeling.”
She brought a green wrap for me and helped me tie it on.
“We called that star the Home Star,” I said. “I don’t know if it’s really the Sun—over at Nob Head, they show their kids a different star—but we used it when we were far out in the Pool to find our way back home. You have to line it up with the shadow of a mountain they call Tommy’s Cup, and then you know you’re heading the right way.”
“I’ll comb your hair now, Mother.”
“ ‘No one gets to Earth by staring at the sky,’ ” I repeated as she gently passed the comb across my head. “That’s a saying here, is it?”
“Yes, Mother. We say it when someone stands around wakedreaming when there’s stuff they should be getting on with. And another saying is ‘The true way to Earth is through the Teachinghouse.’ ”
“Well, I’m on my way to Earth, then,” I told her. “I’m going to the Teachinghouse now.”
“There, Mother, you look pretty pretty. Shall I put the plaits back in?”
“Yes, please.”
Plaits were good because they took a long time, and I loved my time with Quietstream. She gave me all the fun and comfort of being mothered, but still let me be the boss. What could be better than that?
“Tell me a story, Quietstream,” I said. “Tell me something that’s happening out in the Cave.”
She tied off one plait and started on the next.
“Well, I did hear a funny thing from one of my ringmen friends last waking, Mother, about those blokes who came over from Old Ground with you. They make this drink from fruit juice—I don’t know how—and when they give it to the other men, it makes them laugh a lot, and go all silly until they can hardly stand up by themselves. But perhaps you know about it yourself, Mother, as you come from over that way?”
“I’ve only tried it once. It does make you feel strange.”
Quietstream stepped back from me to check how my hair was looking.
“My friend told me they have competitions to see who can take the most without falling over. It must be funny to see.”
A helper met me at the door of the Teachinghouse and led me through three four wallcaves, to where Head Teacher Michael himself sat gnawing on a piece of buckmeat, while a young boy waited beside him with a big pile of barks.
“Ah, pretty pretty,” said the Head Teacher, looking straight at me without quite meeting my eyes.
He put down the meat and knelt with difficulty to kiss the ring. The boy put his barks on one side to come and help him up again, then he, too, knelt in front of me, and I felt his soft lips brush my fingers. He was only twelve wo
mbtimes or so—I still couldn’t think in hundredwakes—and when I smiled kindly at him, his whole face lit up.
“I understand you need some help with reading, Ringwearer,” said the Head Teacher.
“Yes, we write a bit differently on the other side of the Pool.”
He sniffed and wiped his nose on the sleeve of his wrap. “Well, that’s certainly true. One of the things First John did when he crossed the water was to sort out writing. He tidied up the alphabet, took out the letters we don’t need, and wrote down the simplest way of spelling every single word.” He was prodding with his tongue at something stuck between his teeth. “That’s something to remember about John. People think of him as a fighting man, like a chief, but he was the first teacher, too. When he turned some of his chiefs into teachers, he had to teach them to read himself. And he wrote the first barks in this Teachinghouse. There are more than a hundred here written by John.”
He took the scrap of food from his mouth, examined it, and tossed it across the floor.
“Well, let’s have a look at these letters, then.” He sighed, holding his hand out for the boy to give him a bark.
Letters were written on it, and he went through them with me, from A for Arrow to N for Nolij.
“Nolij,” he said, “that’s the really important thing. That’s what John understood, and that’s why we teachers are here. But that’s enough letters for the moment. You said back in Council that you didn’t know President was Gela’s dad?”
“No, I didn’t, and I don’t really see how you people here could find out something new about Earth that no one on Mainground knew.”
His face darkened. “Well, let’s think this through,” he said after a few seconds, his voice all tight, like he’d had to struggle not to shout. “What do the stories tell us about what Gela was doing there in the sky of Earth, when Tommy and his friend tried to steal the starship?”
“She was sent up in the Police Veekle to stop them.”
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