Mother of Eden

by Chris Beckett

  He looked round at all the people in the cave, big, small, middle-sized, all mixed together in that strange new Council of ours.

  “Let’s get this straight, everyone,” he went on. “Let’s get this absolutely straight. I have read many thousands of barks. I have read every single word written by John Redlantern and his companions. You just heard the fishing girl admit with her own tongue that she doesn’t really know what Mother Gela wants, but I do. I know what she wants. I know what President, her father, wants. I know what’s true and what’s false. So you need to listen to me carefully. Like the new Headman says, you’re not in trouble yet, none of you are, and you won’t be in trouble just so long as you do exactly exactly what he asks of you from this moment on. I don’t need to tell you what will happen otherwise.”

  “Remember, ringmen!” I yelled out. “Remember, topmen! Remember we warned you about this! Remember how we said that some of the chiefs might turn against us. Remember you promised you’d help us if they did!”

  I raised my hands above my head and pointed to the ring. Only a short time ago, in every houseplace in New Earth, that would have been enough to make a whole crowd roar and roar. But now there was silence.

  “Who are you going to listen to?” I shouted, though I could feel people moving further and further away from me, moment by moment by moment. “Are you going to listen to the Headman and the Ringwearer of New Earth? Or are you going to listen to a chief and a teacher who’ve pushed their way into the Headmanhouse and acted against all New Earth’s rules?”

  How different my voice sounded now, how different from the strong strong voice that had called out across those meeting grounds. It had been true what I said to Greenstone, truer than even I had understood: Power did come from the small people, and without them, I had no power at all.

  “That’s right,” said Greenstone from the far end of the cave. “Where in the rules of New Earth does it say that a teacher can take the hat from the Headman and give it to a chief?”

  Chief Earthseeker had stood up also: poor Earthseeker, who’d never asked for this fight in first place, and didn’t even agree with what we were trying to do. But he’d never liked the teachers.

  “That’s right,” he bellowed. “You show me where it says that in all your barks?”

  The Head Teacher looked across at him. “With pleasure,” he purred. “Come down to the Teachinghouse next waking, Chief Earthseeker, and I’ll show you where your own great grandfather John Redlantern wrote it down with his own hand.”

  Greenstone made a sudden move toward me, but he didn’t get far. Three ringmen grabbed hold of him and held him back. They were topmen, all of them, and not only that, they were men he’d made topmen only two wakings previously. Of the new topmen, only big Mehmet still seemed to be holding back.

  “Mehmet!” I shouted. “Get your men to help us! I know you don’t like the chiefs, and this is your chance to stand up to them.”

  He looked at me unhappily, glanced across at Dixon, looked back at me again.

  “Starlight, go!” Greenstone shouted.

  Many eyes turned uneasily in my direction.

  “Run, Mother!” screamed Quietstream from where she was still being held by men in masks, twelve fifteen feet away.

  I didn’t run, but I began to walk quickly toward the main door of the Cave. No one tried to stop me. Men and women, ringmen and small people, stood aside to let me pass. “Good luck, Mother!” quite a few whispered to me now, or “Long life!” And, though none of them spoke up for me out loud, a few followed after me, so that when I came into the Tall Cave, a little line of maybe fifteen people was trailing anxiously behind.

  Six men were waiting outside in the Tall Cave. They had metal faces and metal spears in their hands.

  Hmmmph hmmmph hmmmph went the great shining tree. From the windholes above people were looking down interestedly to see what would happen next. Time moved slowly slowly.

  “Starlight!” whispered a Mainground voice.

  “Snowleopard?”

  One of the metal faces leaned toward me. “Do exactly what I tell you and we’ll get you out of here,” he murmured softly. “Send these people back, first of all.”

  I told the people who’d followed me to go back into the Red Cave.

  “Do what the Headman asks you,” I told them, and left them to figure out which Headman they’d choose to obey.

  As soon as they’d gone, Snowleopard grabbed me with both arms and spoke to me out loud.

  “Gotcha!”

  “Snowleopard! What are . . . ?”

  “Shut up, whisperer.”

  His metal face couldn’t smile or frown.

  “We’re taking you to the Questioners, girl,” called Blink.

  I could see an empty eye socket through one of the eye holes in the mask, like there was just another empty mask behind it.

  “And if you’ve got any sense, you’ll answer them straight away,” said Spear, whose face was always half a mask.

  Snowleopard laughed, yanking my arm up behind my back as he pushed me forward. “Oh, she will. She surely surely will.”

  Part V

  Julie Deepwater

  One waking, maybe a wombtime or more after Starlight went away, a wind came blowing in from Deep Darkness, powerful and cold, rocking the lanterns back and forth on the trees and sending big waves toward us, which came rolling right in through the trees, clouding the water with sand and mud. We couldn’t cut bark, we couldn’t fish or gather waternuts, we couldn’t go out on the open water. All of us stayed on the Sand, wrapped up in skins to keep ourselves warm, our fires blowing smoke into our eyes. And we all felt restless and uneasy, the bitter wind reminding us of all the other things that had been disturbing the peace of Knee Tree Grounds.

  “We’re really here,” someone said as usual when we came together in the Meeting Place.

  “Not for much longer!” shouted out a woman called Greenlantern, and there was a loud, harsh laugh. “Are we just going to sit here and wakedream as usual?” Greenlantern asked. “Or are we actually going to figure out what to do?”

  New situations seem to bring new people forward. Of course I knew everyone on the Grounds—we all did—but I’d never had that much contact with Greenlantern before. She had a narrow, pointy face, and I’d always thought of her as being a bit sour.

  “We always have quietness first,” Dixon said. “There’s plenty of time to talk afterward, when we’re eating.”

  We always managed that before, whether the wind was blowing or not, but it seemed hard to imagine quietness now with the branches creaking and groaning above us, and the waves beating away out there on the edge of forest.

  “Quietness won’t change anything,” Greenlantern said.

  “Quietness is the whole point of this place,” a woman called Clare said. “If you don’t want quietness, then go to Nob Head.”

  “Whether I go to Nob Head or not has nothing to do with it. It won’t be quiet here anymore when the Johnfolk come.”

  “Who says they’re coming?” I asked. “Why do we keep on about this? Why would they be interested in us?”

  “Because you and your friends went down to Veeklehouse, Julie, and told them where we were.”

  It was the first time I’d ever known the quiet time to turn straight into an argument.

  “They might know where we are,” said Angie Redlantern, “but what would they want from us?”

  “You’re just trying to make yourself feel better about what you and Julie did. We all heard what those guards said when they came over. The Johnfolk will need a place to rest after they’ve crossed over, before they go and fight the Davidfolk.”

  “Yes, you’re right, Greenlantern,” said Lucky. “We did all hear it. So do you have to repeat it every single waking?”

  “We’re Kneefolk,” said an old blind woman called Jane. She was the oldest person alive in whole of Grounds, the granddaughter of Jeff Redlantern himself. “Whole point of Kneefolk is we mak
e time for the Watcher, and remember it’s the Watcher that looks out of all our eyes.”

  “The Watcher!” Greenlantern snorted. “What use is the bloody Watcher now?”

  Starlight Brooking

  Snowleopard pulled a strip of buckskin over my mouth, pulled it tight and tied it behind my head, then shoved a stinking skin bag over my head so I was in darkness and could barely breathe. Someone else tied my hands and legs with rope. Then they dragged me out of the Headmanhouse and flung me facedown over the back of a buck.

  I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t move. There was nothing I could do, and no way that I could tell whose side these men were really on. Snowleopard had always said he’d protect me, and he’d said it to me again just now, before he’d turned harsh and cold, but where had he gone when he snuck away from the Headmanhouse, and what was he playing at now?

  “Tom’s dick, I wouldn’t mind being one of those Questioners if it meant I could get my hands on this,” said a New Earth voice.

  A hand came feeling up the inside of my thigh. I wriggled to shake it off, and several men laughed loudly.

  “Or this one, either,” I heard Spear say. “A bit old and fat, maybe, but they say old Firehand used to give her a slip from time to time. And from what people say, the old guy knew his women.”

  So they had Quietstream there as well.

  I felt one of them pull himself up onto the buck behind me and heard the sounds of other bucks around me snuffling and wheezing as the other men climbed onto their backs. Then we started to move. Presently water splashed against my legs and I guessed we were going through the river.

  “Let’s go round this way,” Snowleopard called out, so now I knew it was him on the buck with me.

  “Why not straight to the Teachinghouse?” asked a New Earth voice.

  “New Headman doesn’t want folk in Edenheart seeing this just yet,” Snowleopard answered. “Remember, she’s still their precious Mother Gela as far as the small people are concerned. He’s still got to break it to them that she’s just a whisperer.”

  I could hear the humming and the pulsing of forest all round me as the ringmen skirted the edge of Edenheart.

  “Right,” said Snowleopard. “We’ll stop here a minute.”

  I felt him jump down off the buck.

  “Why are we stopping?” asked a New Earth voice.

  Snowleopard chuckled. “Do you want to let the Questioners have all the fun? I’m sure they won’t mind if we have a little go first.”

  I tried to shout, but the only sound I could make was a sort of buzz, which just made the men laugh. I felt my wrap being yanked up above my waist. I couldn’t speak, and my face was covered up with a bag and hidden away from the men by the buck’s warm body, but my bum was right out there at head height, like it was a face of its own, looking out at the bright bright world.

  “How about that, boys? It’ll be burnt to a cinder soon enough. What a shame to let it go to waste.”

  I wriggled and squirmed. I tried again to cry out. I waited for their touch, their poking fingers.

  Quietstream Batwing

  So they’re going to start with the mother, I thought, and then maybe turn to me. I’d had a lot of bad things happen to me in my life. A good many chiefs and teachers thought pretty helpers were there to slip with whenever they wanted, just like we were there to bring them food and drinks. So I was afraid of what was coming to me, but at the same time I was kind of used to it, and I was worried for the mother almost more than myself. What made it specially cruel for her was that those three men from Old Ground were the ones she’d thought would keep her safe.

  What difference did my feelings make, though? I was tied up, just like she was. I couldn’t move, and I could barely make a sound. And who would have come and helped us, anyway, even if we could have cried out? We were already dead. We were just whisperers on their way to the Teachinghouse and the Rock. We had no real life left ahead of us. Only a few grim hours of fear and pain.

  But then I heard a sound I wasn’t expecting. It was a sort of soft crunching. Crunch! Crunch! Crunch!

  “Hey, wha—!” a man’s voice cried out after that third crunch, but a fourth soon silenced him.

  “Okay, quick now,” said an Old Ground voice. “Kick them in the water and go.”

  “That was easy,” said one of his friends. “That was easy easy.”

  “One more little stab for old Rog there, I reckon, to make sure he’s properly done for,” said the third one, and I heard him grunt as he delivered a final thrust.

  There were splashes as the bodies were dumped into the river. Then the three men who were still alive jumped back onto their bucks and we started to move again, the guy on my buck leaning down to whisper in my ear.

  “Little change of plan,” he said.

  Starlight Brooking

  We finally stopped in a damp and echoey place, where the loudest sound was fast-running water. Snowleopard jumped off the buck’s back, reached up to lift me down, and pulled the bag off my head. Blink was doing the same for Quietstream, grinning his gap-toothed grin as he undid the skin tie around her mouth.

  “Don’t I even get a kiss?” he said.

  “Aren’t you taking us to the Teachinghouse?” Quietstream asked.

  “We’ve been playing a bit of a game,” Snowleopard said as he knelt down to cut away the ropes they’d tied me with. “Old Dixon thought we were his men, and gave us lots of his nice metal cubes, but we’ve sort of tricked him.” He looked at me and winked. “Well, we couldn’t let you down, could we, Starlight? We were friends of your dad, after all.”

  I could see Quietstream watching him while Spear worked away with a knife at the rope round her ankles. I could see her wondering if this was just another game. I didn’t know what to believe myself.

  We were just inside the opening of a tiny, steep side cave, which brought a small stream of icy meltwater down from the surface. Red and blue rocklanterns crawled over one another on its dim, damp walls. Behind me, the stream poured out into the light of the Great Cave.

  “So you kept your promise,” I said.

  Snowleopard laughed. “Of course, Starlight, of course. Didn’t we always say we would?”

  I didn’t answer that. “Blink, Spear, you, too,” I said.

  I’d never felt easy with those two. Blink was such a weird mixture of an old man and a naughty child, and with Spear I’d always had a feeling that not just his face, but all of him, was only half alive.

  I went to Quietstream and hugged her. “I’m sorry, Quietstream. I’m sorry sorry sorry.”

  She hugged me back, but her face was grim. She might have escaped the Teachinghouse herself, but we both knew what happened to the mums and daughters of whisperers.

  I turned back to the men. “So how are we going to help Greenstone?”

  Snowleopard shook his head, his blue eyes fixed on mine. “We can’t help him, I’m afraid. Chief Dixon told me he was going to take Greenstone straight to the Rock. No Teachinghouse, no nothing, just straight over the cliff. I did try to suggest he hold back on that for a while, but . . . well . . . I’m only a ringman, aren’t I, and he’s a big big chief. He wasn’t going to listen to me.”

  I looked straight into his eyes. Not many people could hold my gaze when I looked at them like that, but Snowleopard looked steadily back at me. “How come you were talking to Dixon in first place?”

  Snowleopard didn’t hesitate. “We knew he was up to something, and we reckoned we could help you best if we pretended to go along with it.” He laughed. “We were proved right, too. Old Dixon chose me and the boys to be the ones to take you away from the Headmanhouse. He reckoned you’d make less fuss if it was us.”

  Greenstone had been sent straight to the Rock. I heard what he said, but my mind couldn’t take it in. It was like a cold cold stone wrapped up tight inside a piece of skin. I knew it was there, I even knew what it was, but I couldn’t yet see it or touch it or feel its weight.

  “There’s
nothing we can do?”

  “I’m sorry, but no. There’s only three of us, and it’s too late, anyway. That fellow of yours has gone.”

  Quietstream put her hand on my arm. There were tears running down her face. She’d cared for Greenstone since he was a baby, after all.

  “I know he’d be pleased pleased if he knew you were safe, Mother.”

  “Well, he won’t have known that, will he? How could he? He’ll have been completely alone, right up to the end.”

  She’d been trying to help me, but what she’d actually done was make the truth seem more real to me, opened a chink in that awful package in my mind and let me glimpse that cold cold stone inside it. I quickly closed it up again.

  “You’re really sure they took him straight to the Rock?”

  Snowleopard nodded gravely. “Definitely. No doubt about it.”

  “There must be something we can do!”

  “He’s gone. Old Dixon wanted him out of the way for good before most people even knew what was happening. ‘We’ll shove Firehand’s boy straight over the cliff’—those were his exact words. ‘We can deal with the whisperers later.’ ”

  “But couldn’t we just try?”

  “Like I said, it’s too late. Ask yourself what he would have wanted. For you to save yourself, or for you to be thrown down after him?”

  I looked at Quietstream.

  “He would have wanted you to save yourself, Mother. He loved you like he’d never loved anyone.”