Mother of Eden

by Chris Beckett

  “Get the body washed and made ready for the funeral,” I told Purelight, “and have the topman send riders out to the chiefs and teachers with the news.”

  Purelight bowed her head, but she still hung back, peeking slyly at my face. I had a reputation among the helpers for being soft, for showing my feelings as my father never did. No doubt she was expecting, if not tears, then a trembling lip or a wobbly voice, which she could report to the other helpers.

  “Hurry up, please,” I told her. “And have someone find the Ringwearer. I’ll meet her in the Red Cave, and she and I are to be left alone.”

  “Headman,” the healer said as Purelight went out—and it was strange strange to hear that word—“Headman, can I help you in any way? Sometimes the grief—”

  No doubt the old fool had some cure for grief in his bag that worked just as well as his cures for the lung sickness. Luckily, I had no need for it. My heart was as still and cold as the Dark Mountains above us, where the snowleopards waited for their prey.

  “I’m fine,” I told him. “You can leave now. I’ll have the topman give you your metal later this waking.”

  I stood by myself in front of my father’s corpse, enjoying the feeling of not feeling anything, and enjoying, too, the knowledge that helpers and ringmen would be peeking at me from the doors right now and seeing me not feeling anything. It made me feel powerful.

  When Starlight came to find me, I was sitting in my father’s stone seat, or the seat that had been my father’s. She frowned as she studied my face from across the cave, dismissing the helper who’d brought her to me with a backward wave of her hand. How quickly she’d grown used to ordering people about! How good at it she’d become!

  “Have the ringmen at the doors make sure that no one disturbs us,” she called back as she advanced toward me, watching my face all the time.

  I smiled. “Here, Starlight, you can sit beside me. These are our seats now. We can use them whenever we want.”

  She nodded and, still not taking her eyes off mine, she took the seat that had been empty since my mum’s death.

  “Everyone expects to see me grieve for the old slinker,” I said, “but why would I? He showed me no love at all.”

  “Not even once?”

  I wished she hadn’t asked me that, because straight away I realized that there was one time. I’d cherished it over many many hundredwakes, turning it over wonderingly in my mind. It was when I was a little boy, walking across some stony ground beside the river with my mother and father, whereabouts exactly I couldn’t say, but I think it was near the Fall.

  “Look, Greenstone!” my mother said. “There’s a bluefish come out onto the rocks. If you run you might catch it.”

  I ran, but I tripped up almost at once, grazing my hands and my knees and even my nose. I didn’t cry, because I knew my father didn’t like tears. I just picked myself up. Of course the fish had heard me and dived into the water, so I turned back to my mum and dad.

  “Good boy,” my dad said. “That’s a brave little man.”

  There must have been hundreds of people who’d shown me more kindness than that, yet as soon as I remembered it, the doors inside me swung open and the tears came.

  Starlight Brooking

  The Headmanhouse was made by building a wall across the opening of a side cave. At the back of it, there was another wall, and beyond that, the side cave went back without walls for maybe half a mile to the hole in the roof where the water came down from the mountains above. There were no bucks or other animals still living there except for the odd small bat that came down from out top, but trees and starflowers still grew on the banks of the stream, making the cave warm and light. It was here that the Headmen and Ringwearers of New Earth were buried, not under piles of stones as they buried people on Mainground, but under big square slabs of rock that were built round them like a kind of box, with their names scratched on the top. There was a whole row of these stone boxes, stretching away upcave from the boxes of John Redlantern and Brightflame, which were bigger than all the others, and painted in bright colors.

  Now all the chiefs and teachers gathered there, and their housewomen and sons and daughters, and the ringmen and helpers from the Headmanhouse. There were a bunch of underteachers, too, and a hundred or so small people the chiefs had brought in from their grounds. Four ringmen carried Firehand’s body out from the Headmanhouse to the box that had been prepared for him next to Greenstone’s mother. Pale as a dead spearfish, he was lying on a wooden bed in a blue longwrap sewn with many metal badges, and on his head was the Headman’s hat.

  I’d never seen the hat before, and I’d expected polished metal and colored plantstuff, but it was just a dried old buckskin cap, black with age. It didn’t need metal and fancy colors, though, because its power came from being a thing out of an old story, like the ring, or the Veekle, or the Circle of Stones. It was the same hat that John Redlantern had been wearing when Brightflame met him beside Brown River.

  In front of the stone box the ringmen paused, and the Head Teacher took the hat from the old man’s head before they lowered him into it. A hornman in red blew a long, low note.

  “Firehand goes to meet President,” called out the Head Teacher in a weird singsong voice.

  The hornman blew another blast.

  “. . . and Harry and Tommy,” called out the Head Teacher.

  Another blast.

  “. . . and Mother Gela and John.”

  Now all the chiefs and teachers came forward to take hold of the heavy stone lid of the box and lift it over the top of the old man. And that was the end of Firehand’s time in the light of Eden, and the beginning of his time in darkness. Almost all the small people were crying—I suppose to them Firehand himself was something out of a story—but the chiefs’ and teachers’ eyes were dry.

  When Firehand was under the stone, we all went down to the Meeting Ground, where a crowd of people was already gathered and, on the raised-up floor in front of the whitelantern trees, the Head Teacher placed the Headman’s hat on Greenstone’s head and Greenstone promised to carry on the work of his great-great grandfather John, be a good son to Mother Gela, and protect New Earth and its rules. Everyone cheered and clapped.

  “The new Headman of Edenheart and New Earth!” the Head Teacher called out, and three hornmen blew loudly together.

  Greenstone had told me I had to speak now, both as his housewoman and as the Ringwearer, the mother of all of them, even Greenstone himself. I went to the front of the wooden floor and raised my hands for quiet.

  “This is a good man,” I told them. “He will do his best to look after you. And you must all do your best to help him, as I’ll try to help him, too. You must all listen carefully to what he says, and what he asks of you.”

  There was a big cheer. The small people loved me, but they liked Greenstone, too: He had a reputation for being friendly and kind. There was power here, I thought as I stepped back so that Greenstone could speak. We had power, just from being ourselves, that me and him could build on.

  There was more feasting after that, more music and dancing and leopards in cages. When we lay down at last in our bed, it was already more than halfway to First Horn, but I couldn’t help myself from speaking to the new Headman about the things I’d been holding inside my head.

  “If we get our power from the chiefs, and they get their power from the small people, then our power comes from the small people, too. We just need to find a way of reaching out to the small people over the heads of the big ones. It shouldn’t be too hard. You always say how impossible it is to please the chiefs and teachers because they already have so much and yet still always want more. But it should be easy to please the small people, because they have

  Greenstone Johnson

  A new Headman always calls a Council ten wakings after putting on the hat, and he always makes some new rules there to show he’s his own man. So, of course, as soon as my dad was in his box, chiefs and teachers came to visit me, all thr
ough every waking, to tell me exactly what those new rules should be. But me and Starlight figured out rules of our own, and in a couple of wakings, I would have the job of telling them all.

  This wasn’t going to be like last Council, when I gave them stuff they wanted and felt strong. That had seemed hard at the time, but the only hard part was that I didn’t give all of them everything they asked for. No, this time I was going to sit there on my own and tell them things that most of them would hate, and the thought of it made me feel weak and small. I did my best to hide from Starlight just how much I feared it—she didn’t seem to feel that same kind of fear—but I found it hard to sleep, hard to eat, hard even to listen when people spoke to me.

  “I’ll ride round my friends,” I told Starlight. “I’ll prepare them in advance. I think just this time it’s best I go alone.”

  I set off on a buck with just four ringmen riding with me, and went straight to Chief Earthseeker. As soon as he saw me, he had his helpers fetch fishing strings and floats and hooks, and took me out to a favorite fishing spot of ours. It was a place where a small side stream came down into his cave from a crack in the roof, descending to the cave’s main stream in a series of little waterfalls and pools. One of the pools was deeper and wider than the others, and that’s where we headed. There was only one path to it, and Earthseeker had his ringmen guard it so we couldn’t be disturbed. Then there was just me and the old chief, with nothing else for company but the sound of water and the pulsing trees.

  “So what’s your problem, Headman Greenstone?” he said as we settled down side by side on a rock, fixing meat onto our hooks and throwing them out into the glittering water.

  Back when I was a kid, this would have been the beginning of two three hours of happiness, listening to his stories, talking about fishing, or just sitting together in silence and enjoying the feeling of being alive. But it wasn’t like that now. I knew quite well that Earthseeker wouldn’t like what I had to say.

  “When new Council meets,” I said, “I want to make some new rules, which most of the chiefs won’t like. Probably not even you. And I’d like to give you a new job, too.”

  “I see,” said Earthseeker. “Well, you’d better tell me, then.”

  His tone was guarded, and the longer I spoke, the tenser he became, specially when I told him this would only be the first of several Councils, and that later on we planned to change the Council itself, bringing in topmen, ringmen, and other small people. Chief Earthseeker always treated his own small people with respect, remembering their names, asking after their children, making sure they were looked after when they were too old to work, but that didn’t mean he thought that small people should have more power.

  “These are big big changes, Greenstone,” he said, pulling his hook in and throwing it back out again. “Most chiefs will be strongly strongly against them, and there will be a lot more talk than there already is about whether you should be Headman at all.”

  Hmmmmph hmmmmph hmmmmph went the trees around us. A nearby spiketree released some hot steam with a long, slow sigh.

  “Is there a lot of that talk?”

  Many different kinds of trees crowded round the pool and hung their lanterns over the water, so that the ripples from the little waterfall that fed it kept changing as they spread across the surface: white, blue, red, yellow.

  “I’m afraid so, Greenstone. No one I speak to admits that it’s their own view, of course, because they know I’m your friend, but nearly everyone is keen to tell me that it’s what all the others are saying.”

  This was scary news, of course, even if not surprising, but I tried not to show my anxiety.

  “Well, that’s exactly why we need to start to make these changes. The chiefs are supposed to help me, not be their own little headmen in their own grounds, but if they won’t accept that, then I have to go over their heads and appeal directly to the small people.”

  Again, this obviously troubled him a great deal, and it was some time before he answered me, his breath whistling in and out of his big, strong lungs as he tugged his hook about in the water, trying to tempt a fish.

  “I don’t say the chiefs get everything right, Greenstone,” he said at last, “but the small people need chiefs. They wouldn’t sort out metaldigs on their own. They wouldn’t make plantstuff. Things like that take lots of people working together with someone on top organizing them. New Earth needs chiefs like a body needs a head.”

  “They don’t have chiefs where Starlight comes from.”

  He just shrugged at that, and then we sat silently for a bit, not easily and comfortably as we’d done in the past, but with a big, painful gap between us. Again and again we impatiently pulled in our hooks and threw them out again, unable to enjoy the slow slow pleasure of just sitting and watching and waiting.

  “Perhaps I shouldn’t be Headman,” I said at length. “Perhaps Starlight and me should get in a boat and go back across the water to somewhere where they won’t know who we are.”

  As I’d guessed, he didn’t like that at all, and his big face darkened. “Dixon would probably be made Headman, then,” he said in a tight, stiff voice. “Is that what you want?”

  Something tugged at my hook and I pulled in a mudfish. Its six little arms waved about frantically as I took the little green hook out of its mouth and tossed it back. “No, it’s not what I want.” I put more meat onto my hook and threw it out again. “Dad said I should put Dixon to the Rock if he gave me any cause for it. Maybe that’s the answer.”

  “And make poor Lucy live all over again what your father put her through? You couldn’t do that, Greenstone.”

  “No, I couldn’t, but if I’m going to do things a different way, then I’ll need your help. I have to get power from somewhere.”

  The old chief tugged at his fishing string to make the meat move in the water. “Well, you can have my help,” he said at length. “I won’t pretend I’m comfortable with your ideas, but you’re my Greenstone, and you’re the Headman, and I’ll back you in every way I can.”

  I put my arm round his big shoulders to tell him thank you. It was a generous thing he was doing, risking his own position among the big people of New Earth, for the sake of a plan that he himself wouldn’t have chosen, and I felt bad for even asking it of him, specially as there was more to come.

  “You’re a good boy, Greenstone,” he said gruffly, “and I know each Headman has to find his own way of doing things.”

  “Well, let me tell you my way, then. In this first Council, I’m going to say there’ll be no more bringing in of forest people for the present. I shouldn’t have agreed to that in first place, and I don’t want chiefs to be able to build up their power that easily.”

  The chief nodded. He could live with that. He wasn’t the kind to force people to work for him at spearpoint, and he didn’t need any more small people himself. “Okay, but the metal chiefs aren’t going to be happy, so you’ll—”

  “So I’ll need to find a way of keeping them in line. Yes, and that’s where your new job comes in. Remember how I made Dixon the Pool Chief?” I said. “Well, I want you to be the Ground Chief.”

  He laughed uncomfortably. “What’s a Ground Chief?”

  “I want you to be in charge of all the ringmen when they’re in the caves or the digs.”

  He was so surprised by this that he stopped right in the middle of throwing out his hook. “I appreciate the honor, Greenstone, but do you honestly think the other chiefs will let me take charge of their ringmen?”

  “I’m not trying to stop the chiefs being chiefs, Earthseeker. I’m just trying to go back to how it was in time of John, when chiefs were there to help him, not to tell him what to do. And to do that, I need there to be someone, apart from me, who talks to all the ringmen from all the caves, so they can think of themselves as being New Earth ringmen, and not just Dixon’s ringmen, or Gerry’s ringmen, or your ringmen. First thing I want to do after the Council is for you and me to bring all the topmen togeth
er at the Headmanhouse, without their chiefs, and agree some rules for all of them, right across New Earth.”

  He finally threw out his hook. “You’re trying to stop the chiefs being able to come against you, like they did in the time of Headman Roger?”

  “Exactly, because that’s what they more or less threaten, every time I do something they don’t like.”

  “Okay, but you do know that it’s not just a question of telling them new rules? People don’t really think about what the rules are; they think about who it’s safest to follow. You need to persuade the ringmen and their topmen that you’re the man worth following, not their chiefs, if it comes down to a choice.”

  “Well, that’s what I hope you’ll help us with. But we’ve got another plan, too. Me and Starlight are going to travel round the houseplaces in the caves and out top, making friends with the ringmen and small people and getting them on our side. I think I’m quite popular already with the small people, and of course they absolutely love Starlight.”

  Earthseeker smiled. “Well, that is certainly true. My people are crazy about her. Would you believe, some of them even say that just being near her makes illnesses go away?”

  I’d never heard that, and for some reason it moved me so much that, just for a moment, I felt as if I might weep.

  “Another idea I had,” I said quickly, to move the subject on, “was that we’d show our friendship to the topmen by giving each of them, say, ten cubes every hundredwake on top of what their own chiefs give them.”

  Earthseeker frowned. “But where will the extra metal come from, Greenstone? You’ve just told me the metal chiefs aren’t going to be allowed to bring in any more help in their digs.”

  I felt myself reddening. It was such an obvious point. To give something to anyone, you had to take it from someone else. That was almost the first rule of being Headman.