Starlight was quick quick. She could see she’d made a bad move, and she began to work at once on recovering from it, thrusting her ring hand above her head.
“New Earth belongs to all of you!”
It was as if a fire had burned too low and she’d lifted away the cooking pot to blow on the embers and bring them back to life. She stood and held the ring up there until the roaring had built up again like good strong tongues of flame, and then she moved from one side of the car to the other, left, right, front, kneeling down and reaching out so that people could touch the metal from Earth with their own fingers, their own lips.
“Mother! Mother! Mother!”
She stood up straight again and held up her hands for quiet.
“Never mind bats for now, though,” she told the crowd. “First of all we need to think about the ringmen, the metaldiggers, the underteachers, the stonebreakers, all the so-called small people. That’s the important thing, making you bigger, giving you your fair share of New Earth.”
How could she have thought of mentioning the bats, I wondered? And who cared about bats, anyway? But never mind; she was on top of things again. The fire was blazing again like we needed it to do, if we were to have any chance against Dixon and his friends.
“Mother! Mother! Mother!” the people chanted, and she stood there, smiling, her arms held out, with her bare feet and her bare breasts and her simple buckskin wrap.
“Here is your Headman now,” she told them after a time. “Here’s Greenstone.”
She glanced at me. I could see some uneasiness in her face, and I realized that she was worried what I’d think about the words she’d said. But this was her game, not mine, not anyone else’s. It was a game she had invented herself. I smiled at her and kissed her cheek.
“That was my beautiful housewoman!” I called out, and all the people cheered.
I’d been talking to small people since I was a little kid. I knew they liked me and, unlike some big people, I had no fear of them. It was the big people who scared me.
“Do you blame me that I loved her from the moment I saw her?”
“No! No! No!” the crowd roared.
“Don’t you love her, too?”
“Yes! Yes! Yes!”
“I was certain certain that she’d be the best of all Ringwearers, the best of all mothers for New Earth. Do you think I was right?”
“Yes! Yes! Yes!”
“Everything she just said is true,” I told them. “The ground and the metal don’t only belong to me or the chiefs and teachers. You need to give some of it to us so we can do our jobs, but it isn’t all ours, and from now on I promise, if you help me, you’ll get a fair share.”
I glanced again at the place where Whiteblade’s car had been. Where had he gone, I wondered? What was he doing now?
“So are you with us?” I called out to the people of Batsky.
“Yes!”
“Where are the ringmen? Are you with us, men?”
“Yes!”
“Will you help me and the Ringwearer?”
“Yes!”
“Will you do as I ask you?”
“Yes!”
“And how about the metaldiggers? Raise your hands! Where are you? Are you with us?”
Yes, they were here. Yes, they were with us. Yes, they would help us. And so would the stonebreakers and the stuffmakers and the flowergatherers.
Perhaps Starlight was right. Perhaps we really would win! What could the chiefs and teachers do to stop us, after all, if all their people were with us?
Lucy Johnson
Whiteblade came bursting into our house, nearly knocking over the helper who opened the door to him. He was panting and red in the face, and he stank of sweat. He’d ridden all the way down his cave and the Great Cave at full speed without a stop.
“Dixon!” he bellowed, pushing past helpers and bats. “Dixon! Where are you?”
I was in one part of the house, Dixon in another, and the two of us arrived in our door cave at the same time.
“That bloody Greenstone’s got to be stopped!” Whiteblade shouted. “He’s just come into my ground and spoken to my ringmen and small people, without asking me, without so much as telling me his plans. And can you believe this? That fishing girl of his stood up in front of all the small people in a buckskin wrap like she was one of them and not one of us at all. Which of course they loved, the lazy little slinkers, but it’s an insult to the ring. And you won’t believe what she said, Dixon! You just won’t believe it! She said that all the ground and all the metal—”
Dixon interrupted him. “Okay, Whiteblade. That’s enough for the moment. Lucy is here, and there are helpers all around us. We’ll go to my writingcave, and then you can tell me the rest.”
“Yeah, okay. I mean, I was prepared to give the guy a chance, but as far as I’m concerned, he’s blown it now. Whatever you and Gerry have planned, I’m with you. Even if it means—”
“We’ll go to my writingcave,” Dixon repeated in a firm, tight voice.
Of course I didn’t go with them—that sort of thing wasn’t for women or helpers—but, just as chiefs had listeners in the houses of other chiefs, so we women had listeners who reported to us about our men. Whiteblade arrived at Third Horn, and I learned before Fourth Horn that Dixon had sent a helper on buckback down to Edenheart, with a message for a ringman called Snowleopard.
I already knew about Snowleopard. Dixon didn’t know it, but I did. He was the man from Old Ground who’d won the polefight in Edenheart, and the paddle race at Brightrest. He’d come over with the fishing girl, and she thought he was her special protector and friend, but my clever Dixon knew better. He’d been giving Snowleopard metal to build up a little group of ringmen at the Headmanhouse who would do as Dixon asked.
That fishing girl was in for a surprise.
Starlight Brooking
After Batsky, we traveled to another houseplace called Highdig. Along with our own Headmanhouse ringmen, we brought along another twenty from Batsky who Greenstone had asked to ride with us. The rest of the ringmen in Batsky he’d particularly told to stay there until he himself had personally sent for them.
Highdig was in the ground of Chief Gerry, Chief Dixon’s closest friend, but the small people there welcomed us as warmly as the small people in Batsky, and when we left we had another twenty ringmen following us, so now we were traveling with sixty men. Again, Greenstone told the rest of the Highdig ringmen to stay where they were:
“Do you understand?” he said to them. “I’m speaking as your Headman, and I’m telling you that you mustn’t move for anyone, not even your own chief, unless you know for certain it’s me who sent for you.”
It was the same at Shortpool, where metal was beaten into blades and tools and wrapped round the edges of wheels, and at Winghouse, where, every two hundredwakes, a prize was given for the best attempt at making a real jet plane that could fly. It was the same at dusty Narrowdig, at Metalhouse with its stink of ash, and at dark dark Greenrock, where all the trees had gone. When we finally went down again into the caves after three wakings, we were followed by more than a hundred fifty ringmen.
We made our way toward Edenheart through a side cave named Glass Cave, after the blackglass that could be found there running through the walls in thick bands. The chief there was Roger, and he came to meet us just outside his little houseplace at High Falls.
“Hey there, Headman Greenstone!” he called out cheerily, jumping from his buck and walking over to meet our car. “Welcome to my home.”
He wore his blond hair and beard in little greased spikes tied with colored laces in just the same way that Greenstone tied his own red hair and beard. The two had been friends since they were kids.
“You people have been out under the sky there, upsetting people, so I hear!”
“Trying to make some changes,” Greenstone said. “You and me often used to talk, didn’t we, about how the big chiefs had too much power and how we ought to get back to
how it was in the time of John?”
“I guess you’re planning to give one of your talks to the small people here as well? We’ve got a place all ready for you. I thought I’d come down myself and introduce you, if that’s all right. I mean, John’s hand, it’s not often we have the Ringwearer and Headman come to High Falls to see us. Everyone is excited excited! Perhaps I could ride down there in your car with you? My blokes can take care of my buck.”
He swung himself nimbly up into the car and directed us through the small cluster of shelters round his house to an open patch beside the stream where trees had been cut down and the holes filled up so as to make a space for games of football. On the far side of the stream, just in front of the shining cave wall, was a high, narrow waterfall, pouring down from the frozen darkness outside through a crack in the cave roof, and throwing up a fine mist that glittered in many different colors.
Thirty forty people were waiting, and they’d been shouting excitedly from the moment we came into view.
“Here’s your Headman, people!” Chief Roger called out.
The little crowd cheered.
“And here’s our beautiful Ringwearer. As she’s been telling everyone, she comes from a funny, gentle little place across the water, where they all wear nothing but skin bitswraps, and—look!—she’s wearing one right now!” The chief winked at me and Greenstone in a friendly fashion. “She’s come over here to our ground with lots of interesting new ideas that the Headman wants to try out here in New Earth. Like freeing all the bats.” He looked round at me. “That’s right, isn’t it? That’s one of your ideas that you spoke about up at Batsky?”
“It is,” I began, “but—”
“As soon as I heard that,” said Chief Roger, “I thought I’d better make a start on it.”
He waved to some men who were watching from the far side of the stream. There were lots of batholes in the rock beside the fall, and many young bats were caged there. The men waved back to their boss, then began to pull away the wooden poles that held the cage-fronts in place. Hundreds of bats came bursting out, screeching and creaking and flapping wings that had never before been used to fly. About half of them managed to lurch up into the air, but many of these crashed almost at once into one another or into the rock. One dropped sideways into the stream and was washed away. Another blundered into the little crowd and was angrily flung aside to lie twitching on the ground.
The rest of the bats didn’t even attempt to fly, just stood there as if their wings had already been cut and they’d been roped together to work in the digs. Their flat eyes rippling, they gave out a steady stream of high-pitched squeaks.
“Hard to imagine that lot with their own houseplaces, isn’t it?” observed the chief cheerfully to the watching small people.
He glanced quickly at me and Greenstone to give us another of his friendly winks. A childhood friend of Greenstone’s he might have been, and one of the few people, apart from Earthseeker, who Greenstone had reckoned he could rely on, but he wasn’t on our side anymore.
“You haven’t come to listen to me, though,” he said to his small people. “You can see me any waking, so I’ll stop now and let the Ringwearer speak. That’s right, isn’t it, Headman? You always let your housewoman talk first?”
“I’m not sure this is going to work, Starlight,” Greenstone said as we carried on toward the Great Cave and Edenheart.
“Why? Why wouldn’t it? Roger is just one guy. Look at all the people who cheered us in all those different places!”
“I guess. But this is a hard game to play, against some smart and powerful players. And some of the things you’ve said are things they’ll never forgive or accept.”
I guess he meant the words from the Secret Story. It was a strange thing, but even now, when I’d spoken them out loud to all those hundreds of people in all those different places, I couldn’t bring myself to speak of them by name.
“Are you saying I shouldn’t have said them?”
He laughed. “You’re the chess player, Starlight, not me! I’m not saying you’re wrong. We had no choice but to take some risks. But you’ve certainly taken us to a dangerous place.”
“This isn’t like chess, exactly. There are really no rules. It’s more like a game of dare. We’ll be all right if we just keep going and act like we’ve already won, because as long as the ringmen believe we’re winning, they’ll stay on our side. And what can any chief or teacher do to us then?”
Greenstone smiled. Behind us the metal faces changed from green, to pink, to blue, to white, as the ringmen passed beneath the shining trees of Glass Cave.
“You may be right. But I wouldn’t talk about bats again, if I were you. Whatever your Jeff might have said about animals, no one here cares about their feelings, and even the smallest are glad of having them there to do the work that they’d have to do themselves otherwise.”
“Yes, I’d kind of figured that.”
“And I suggest that when you talk in Edenheart, you don’t talk about metaldiggers or stonebreakers, either. People there are proud they don’t have to go down dusty holes, and they’re glad it’s other peoples’ job to get the metal they use. You might as well talk about bats as talk about diggers in Edenheart.”
“So I’ll just talk about stuffmakers and traders, yes?”
“That’s right. Those are the sort of people who live there. Stuffmakers, traders, spearmakers, builders, helpers. And younger sons and daughters of chiefs and teachers. Big smalls, they sometimes call themselves, or even small bigs.”
I nodded. I’d imagined that great pile of blocks called New Earth would topple over just as soon as the ones at the bottom understood that they didn’t have to hold it all up. But I was beginning to see that almost everyone, however small, had at least some reason to want to keep that wall standing.
“I think you should put your longwrap back on, too,” Greenstone added. “Most people in Edenheart wear at least a plain longwrap. They think skin waistwraps are for forest people and diggers.”
I pulled on my white and yellow wrap and smoothed down my hair, readying myself for this one last job before we returned to the Headmanhouse.
“Perhaps you’d better be the one to speak first,” I said. “So they won’t say it’s me who’s in charge.”
“Good idea. And when it’s your turn, Starlight, be careful. Remember the Teachinghouse is in Edenheart. There’ll be ringmen and underteachers listening to us who work at the Teachinghouse, and some who help when people are questioned for breaking the rules. Maybe some of those words would be better left for another time?”
Mary Starfler
I saw the mother at Narrowdig. I had my little boy John with me. He’d been coughing and coughing for wakings, and he had a fever, too. We were all afraid it was the beginning of the lung sickness. I’d lost seven of my sixteen babies, and it looked like it was going to happen again.
People told me the mother could heal sicknesses. There were stories coming from Batsky about headaches and bad backs that had been eased just by being near her, and it was said that, over at a place called Johndigs on far side of the Great Cave, a woman who couldn’t walk at all stood up and walked just like you and me when the mother touched her with the ring.
So when I heard she was coming, I got six big, strong digger men together—my five brothers and my cousin Tom—and we persuaded our dig ringmen to let us go early early to the meeting ground, when there was still a bit of room to move, promising them we’d do extra work the next three wakings.
Soon as we got there—me, my mum, my kids, and our six big men—we pushed our way to the front. People were okay about it when they saw the state of our little John: He was so thin, so pale, and he was hacking away all the time like he wanted to cough out his insides. So we got right up there, right up next to the old car they’d put there for the mother and the Headman to stand on.
she knew what it was to break stones all waking long, and never see your kids until you were so tired that
all you wanted to do was lie down and sleep. She might not have any kids of her own, but she was a true mother just the same, a mother to all of us. And there on her finger—right there in front of us!—was the ring that Mother Gela brought from Earth.
Well, she talked to us for a bit, and the Headman talked to us, and then the time came that we’d been waiting for. The mother came to the edge of the car and knelt down so that people could see the ring and touch it. She went first to the front and then to the far side of the car from us. But then she stood up straight—the Headman leaned across and said something to her in her ear—and I was afraid for a moment she wasn’t going to get to us at all.
“Mother!” I shouted out. “Please touch my little boy!”
Would you believe she turned and looked straight at me? She looked straight into my eyes, just like you’d look at someone who lived in the same cluster as you! And then she smiled and came over. It was hard to hear over all the shouting and yelling all around us, but she knelt down right next to us, and spoke to us alone.
“There’s a poorly little man,” she said. “What’s his name?”
I told her he was John, and straight away she reached out her hand with the ring on it and touched it gently gently against John’s poor hot forehead.
“Hello there, little Johnny man, you are a poorly chap, aren’t you?”
“Thank you, Mother, thank you, thank you, thank you.”
I was crying and my mum was crying and my kids and brothers and cousin were all crying, too.
She moved on then, of course. Well, she’s a mother, isn’t she? A mother has to look after all of her kids. Having nine myself, I understood.
But that same waking, when we got back to our shelters, John lay down and slept like he hadn’t slept since the cough first started, slept right through until the First Horn blew. And when he woke, the fever was gone.
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