Mother of Eden

by Chris Beckett

  Quietstream Batwing

  When the Headman and the mother had finished with the crowd in Edenheart, they crossed the river, with all those ringmen after them, and came back to the Headmanhouse, just after the timehorn blew the end of the final quarter.

  “Paaaaaaaaaaaaaarp! Paaaaaaaaaaaaarp!”

  The sound was echoing up and down the cave as helpers ran out to meet them.

  “Paaaaaaaaaaaaaarp! Paaaaaaaaaaaaarp! Paaaaaaaaaaaaarp!”

  “Where’s Quietstream?” the mother asked as she climbed down from the car. “I am tired tired. I could really do with a bath.”

  “I’m right here, Mother.”

  I stepped forward, and bowed, but I couldn’t bring myself to return her smile or meet her eyes. I just turned and led the way.

  “We’ve been working hard hard,” she told me as she followed me into her sleeping cave. “I swear I could sleep for two whole wakings, one after the other.”

  “Could you, Mother?”

  “What’s the matter, Quietstream? Are you angry with me?”

  Hmmmmph hmmmmph hmmmmph went the tree. The stream tinkled into the pool.

  “Angry, Mother? It’s not for me to be angry with the Ringwearer. Let me take off this longwrap.”

  The mother raised her arms. “You’re angry angry,” she said, her voice all bright and brittle now with anger of her own. “I don’t mind people being angry with me, but I hate it when they lie and pretend they’re not.”

  She stepped into the warm water under the whitelantern tree and sunk down into it. I knelt beside her as usual and began to scoop up water and pour it over her lovely shoulders. My fingers were aching badly. They always got worse when I was upset.

  “Yes, I am angry, Mother,” I suddenly said.

  Well, that surprised her! She sat straight up and glared round at me.

  “Why?” she demanded.

  I checked there was no one at the door.

  “Because you spoke about things you promised not to speak about.”

  I’d never in my life discussed the Secret Story with anyone. I hadn’t even passed it on to my daughters. When it came to the moment, it always seemed unfair to make them carry that burden.

  “I don’t think I promised never to speak the words, Quietstream. I think I promised not to say where they came from.”

  I scooped up some water, poured it over her back, and began to rub her down. Then suddenly I stopped.

  “You came here across the Pool only a hundredwake or so ago, Mother, and yet you think you know better than we do who have lived here all our lives.”

  She said nothing.

  “The chiefs know where those words come from, Mother.” I began to rub again. “They know it because every time a whisperer is caught—every time one of us is caught—she’s given to the Questioners in the Teachinghouse, and they beat her, and burn her with hot metal, and threaten her kids, until she tells the whole story.”

  “I know, but—”

  I’d never interrupted the big people, never, but now I did. “And they write it all down every time. They have the Story right there in the Teachinghouse, written down, again and again, on hundreds of barks, which the Teachers show to the chiefs. The old Headman even used to joke about it sometimes with the Head Teacher. They’d put on women’s voices and screech out the words to each other.

  “ ‘Women are just as good as men,’ the Headman would squeal.

  “ ‘It doesn’t matter what color you are,’ the Head Teacher would squawk.

  “ ‘Red, purple, green, or blue,’ the Headman would cackle back.

  “Then they’d roar with laughter. And I had to stand there waiting in case they wanted anything, not speaking a word, and not showing anything in my face. It didn’t seem to occur to them I might recognize the words myself.”

  I could see the mother tense as I told her this, but she shrugged like she didn’t care.

  “Maybe the mistake we’ve all made,” she said, “is whispering those words instead of shouting them out loud. I mean, what’s the point of remembering them at all if we don’t do anything with them?”

  I began to rub her back again. “But they can be changed once they’re out there where everyone can hear them,” I said. “They can be mocked. They can be twisted round to mean something different from what our mother meant. Like . . .”

  I looked down at her hand, hesitating, but then deciding I’d gone too far already to worry about being careful now.

  “Like the ring on your finger there: taken by the big people for themselves, though Gela was the mother of all of us. Our mother knew this would happen; that’s why she wanted us to keep her words safe until Eden was ready to hear them.”

  “Yes, but if we don’t—” She shook my hands angrily off her back. “Gela’s tits, Quietstream! Do you want to make a hole in my skin?”

  “I’m sorry, Mother. It’s just—”

  “I’ll tell you why I said the words. I said them because if I’ve got to stand in for Mother Gela, then I should say what Gela really would say. Otherwise I’d be doing exactly what you’ve just complained about: speaking words in the name of Gela that Gela would never have said.”

  “But you know that she wanted us to keep the story secret, Mother. That’s part of the story.”

  The mother snorted. “If the story’s true at all, that is. I know my mother changed it. ‘Always look out for men who like the story to be all about them,’ she told me. ‘They’re the ones you should try to be with.’ That’s not what you were told, is it? And if one woman can change it, probably others did before. Maybe it didn’t even start with Gela at all. Maybe some other woman made it up. Or some man.”

  “So why did you say the words then, Mother, if you don’t think they’re real?” I began to scoop warm water over her hair. “Did you really do it for Gela, do you think, Mother? Or did you do it because you thought it would help get the small people on your side to help you with your trouble with the chiefs?” Never in my whole life had I spoken like this to one of the big people. “Or was it just because it was exciting to say them, Mother, when everyone was watching and you had nothing on but a skin wrap?”

  She whirled round angrily. “Well, you’re certainly speaking your mind this waking, Quietstream, I must say! I thought small people weren’t supposed to—”

  “And I thought, Mother, that there weren’t supposed to be big people and small people.”

  She laughed angrily at that. “There shouldn’t be, but me and Greenstone seem to be the only people in New Earth who are willing to do anything about it.”

  Then she stood straight up, the water dripping from her body and her eyes fiery as she dared me to deny what she’d said.

  But when I’d wrapped her, she suddenly changed.

  “Please don’t be angry with me, Quietstream!” she burst out, turning and throwing her arms round me like I was her mum. “I’m trying to do the best I can, I really am.”

  For a second or two, I held out, stiff and unyielding, but then I couldn’t help myself and I gave way, taking her in my arms and kissing her on her wet hair.

  “I know you are,” I told her. “But you need to be careful. You’re playing with things you didn’t grow up with and you don’t really understand.”

  Then a voice called from the door, and my blood turned cold with fear.

  “Mother?”

  It was Purelight, a woman I’d never liked or trusted since she first came to the Headmanhouse. How long had she been waiting there? What had she heard?

  “Mother, the Headman says food is ready for you in the Writingcave,” she said, “and he hopes you’ll come and eat with him and Chief Earthseeker.”

  Starlight Brooking

  I was feeling pretty shaken when I walked into the Writingcave. Quietstream had made me doubt everything I’d done in New Earth. But Greenstone greeted me with a happy smile.

  “Here’s my smart smart Starlight,” he said to the chief, sending Purelight away on some other errand
and setting other helpers to keep watch outside the doors.

  Earthseeker stood and bowed, but the old guy looked a lot less pleased to see me. He didn’t smile or meet my eyes, and, when he sat down again, he looked away from me, and down at his big hands lying on his lap.

  “Was I was right to speak those words?” I asked Greenstone. “The ones people aren’t supposed to say?”

  Earthseeker was still looking at his hands, but I could see him tense, his big, thickly bearded face working away as his feelings fought one another inside him.

  “I was surprised, and I was kind of shocked at first, but I thought to myself: Starlight is clever. This is all part of her plan. And I could see why you were doing it, too. It was another way of giving power back to the small people, not just from the chiefs, but from the teachers, too. You were letting them have their own ideas about Gela, and not just ideas from the teachers.”

  Earthseeker shook his head. “I don’t mind taking those bloody teachers down a bit,” he growled, “but why do it in that way? Why do something that’ll make enemies of chiefs and teachers both? Your dad was always careful to split them up, and make them jealous of one another. And anyway, those words are surely—”

  “Yes, Earthseeker,” Greenstone interrupted him, “but Starlight’s whole plan was to play a different game, not playing the big people off against one another, but going straight to the people who give them their power in the first place.”

  A meal had been spread out for us on the table: chopped bucks’ feet cooked in melted stumpcandy, sweet-bat hearts, flowercakes tightly wrapped in batwing skin. Neither of the men had touched any of it.

  “Well, I won’t pretend I like this,” said Earthseeker. “I won’t pretend I’m easy with it at all. But I’ve always promised myself that I’d look after you, Greenstone, and I’ve always believed in supporting the Headman. And if that means—” He broke off with a shrug. He couldn’t even bring himself to name the thing that I’d done. All his life he’d been told that whisperers were bad, that whisperers told lies, that whisperers were enemies of Gela and New Earth.

  “They tell the Secret Story on Old Ground as well as here,” I told him gently. “If you think about it, that means it’s actually older than some of the stories the teachers tell.”

  Greenstone nodded. “It could even mean that it really does come from Gela. Think of that, Earthseeker! We say, ‘become like Earth,’ yet we punish women for speaking words that might have come from Earth itself.”

  Poor Earthseeker squirmed in his seat. “I’m going to leave all that to you,” he said. “I’ve never been one for teacher talk. You’re the Headman, and you’re the nearest thing I’ve got to a son, so I’ll back you whatever you do. Just tell me what your plan is, and I’ll do what I can to help you.”

  Greenstone looked straight round at me. It was one of those moments when you suddenly get something that’s been obvious for a while, but you’ve never quite got before. And what I got was that I was the leader here. Earthseeker knew he wasn’t a thinker, and he was happy to give his power and his loyalty to others who were. Greenstone was a thinker—he was smart just like his dad—but there was something inside him that meant he couldn’t really lead, either. His dad would have called it weakness, but you could say it came from a kind of strength: Greenstone deciding that he wasn’t going to be like his dad, no matter how hard the old man tried. Anyway, strength or weakness, it meant that right now everything was down to me.

  “Well,” I said, “we’ve brought back more than a hundred fifty ringmen. Put them together with the ringmen we’ve already got here in the House, and Earthseeker’s men as well, and we’ve got far more fighting men than any of the chiefs. On top of that, we’ve spoken to ringmen in all those places and had them promise they’ll stay where they are until we call for them. You already told all those topmen that exact same thing, didn’t you, Chief, that time we brought them all down here? You couldn’t have been clearer: The ringmen must stay where they are until we call for them. So I reckon we’re pretty safe for the moment. First thing we need to do is talk to our new ringmen, keep them on our side, make some of them into new topmen, and then we need to think about calling that new Council we planned, a bigger kind of Council, not just with chiefs and teachers in it, but small people, too, to make new rules.”

  Earthseeker took one of the bucks’ feet, pulled it apart with his big hands, then decided he didn’t feel like eating and chucked it back down again. “Well, I hope it works,” he said. “Apart from me, and maybe one two others if you’re lucky, you must have got pretty much every single chief and teacher against you. Even young Roger has turned away from you, from what you say, and I’d have thought he’d have been the last to go over to Dixon.”

  He wasn’t getting it, though. He was still thinking in the old way.

  “That’s the thing, though, Earthseeker,” Greenstone said. “That’s what Starlight has figured out. It doesn’t have to be all about chiefs and teachers. Big people are only powerful because small people make them so. Without the small people, they’re just—”

  “Yes, and the chiefs won’t necessarily all be against us in the long run, anyway,” I interrupted. “Firehand never gave them exactly what they wanted, did he? He just made sure they could see they’d be better off backing him than going against him. We can do the same. It’ll just take a bit longer.”

  Earthseeker looked at Greenstone, then back at me. And then he laughed. “John’s brave walk, Greenstone, listen to her! She would have been a match for your dad!”

  Greenstone looked across at me. “I know,” he said. “She’s like a new John Redlantern.”

  They were Johnfolk, of course, so to them that was praise. But I couldn’t help thinking that it was John who brought killing into the world, and John who split a family that was living at peace into two groups of people who hated each other.

  Greenstone Johnson

  More than two hundred ringmen squeezed into the red housecave, some with metal masks and armguards tucked under their arms, others just with spears. Standing in front of the two stone chairs and the big whitelantern tree, Starlight raised the ring above her head to make them all cheer, held it out in front of her so the nearest men could kneel and kiss it.

  I asked them all if they’d stand with me.

  “Yes! Yes! Yes!” the men shouted happily.

  Would they fight, if need be, against anyone who set themselves against the great-great grandson of John Redlantern?

  “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

  Would they protect the Ringwearer, who spoke for Gela herself?

  “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

  Starlight spoke then, reminding them they came from the small people, people who wore undyed plantstuff or buckskin wraps, just as she’d done herself until she came here.

  “We’ve got sons and grandsons of metaldiggers here, am I right?” she called out.

  Some of the men cheered.

  “And of flowergathers and stuffmakers?”

  More cheers.

  “And bat keepers and metalmakers?”

  She told them she’d been raised by a man who gathered bark and made boats from it, and her mother had done the same.

  “And my father was a fighting man, like all of you!”

  Of course they all cheered at that.

  She told them the only reason some chiefs might wish to stand against me was that I wanted to give more to the small people, people like their own fathers and mothers, and the big people were afraid that this would mean less for themselves.

  “And they’re right to fear it,” Starlight said, “because it will mean that. But don’t you think they’ve got more than enough?”

  The men roared their approval of this. And why wouldn’t they, when they had so little and us big people had so much? Starlight was like John Redlantern. And she was like the guy who first figured out you could make greenstone into metal. Her thoughts didn’t go back and forth along the same old paths like everyone else’s. And bec
ause of that, she’d found a whole new kind of power for us.

  “Raise your spears, men, if you’ll fight for us,” I called out.

  The men cheered again, and shook their spears above their heads.

  “If enough of you ringmen stand by us, then there won’t even be a fight,” I told them. “Are the chiefs going to fight on their own?”

  The men laughed and cheered and shook their spears again.

  “Are there any topmen out there?” I asked.

  Two men raised their hands, and I called them to the front.

  “We need some more topmen to join these two,” I said, “but I don’t know most of you, so you tell me yourselves, all of you, who you think I should choose?”

  They liked the idea that I’d trust them to pick their own leaders, and they began to shout out names: John this and John that, Harry Bignose, Mehmet from Batsky. . . . I picked out four who seemed to have been cheered the loudest and had them come up to the front. Meanwhile Starlight began to move through the cave so that more men could kneel and kiss the ring, and take from it that calmness and sureness that everyone seemed to find in it. As each man knelt, she placed her hand gently on the back of his head.

  “Gela’s proud of you,” she’d say.

  “Long life, Mother,” he’d murmur dreamily back. “Long life and happiness.”

  “And to you, my friend,” she’d softly answer, “and to you.”

  “We’ll look after you, Mother,” one guy shouted out to her across the cave. “We’ll look after you like we’d look after our own mums.”

  “And I’ll look after all of you, my friends,” she called back. “I’ll be a mother to you all.”

  She really will win this for us, I thought, just like she’d won almost every game of chess she’d ever played with me. Jeff’s brave ride, why would the ringmen not side with us?

  Starlight Brooking

  I’d done well, I told myself as I moved round the cave, bringing the ring to all those fighting men. Yet uneasiness crawled inside me like a slinker through the airtubes of a tree. And even as one tough ringman after another knelt and kissed my hand and promised his support, my eyes searched back and forth, back and forth, between the glowing red walls of that big big housecave, seeking out my three protectors, Snowleopard, Blink, and Spear.