‘Still all in one piece,’ I said, holding it out for them to take it back. ‘Don’t bloody drop it, mind, like that silly girl did a few years back. Remember that thing was made by Tommy himself before he went blind, and show it some respect. Angela helped him cut the bark and smooth it and glue it together. It’s older than me, that House. It was made before I was born.’
‘Older than you, Mitch,’ they chirruped, just like I was a bloody kid. ‘My, that is old old.’
‘Now give me Plane. Come on, get on with it.’
I felt the long flat wings of Plane and the two hard jets underneath.
‘Be careful with those jets,’ I told them as I gave Plane back. ‘They’ve been broken off too many times by clumsy people that don’t know how to look after old things properly.’
‘Don’t worry, Mitch dear. We’ll be careful careful. Here’s Car for you now. Got it safe? Holding tight?’
‘Of course I’ve bloody got it. Michael’s names, stop fussing, woman.’
I liked Car best. I’d liked it since I was a little kid, because of the wheels that turned. I liked to hold Car and press the wheels against my hand so I could feel them move. I liked to make it say brrrm brrrm brrrm.
‘Why don’t you tell us the story, Mitch? About what Tommy used to say when he played with Car and the sound he used to make?’
‘I’m too old for stupid kids’ games.’
‘Oh go on, Mitch. You know you like telling us. Show us how Car went along the ground, why don’t you? And then maybe you’ll be ready for your nap?’
‘Oh alright then, if it will stop you nagging. Give me House back.’
I took House from them and put it down in front of me. I put Car in front of House, with its wheels on the ground. I felt the back of Car and pushed it back and forth a little bit to feel that special way it moved so smoothly over the wheels. The wheels are made of bits of bark, which Tommy and Angela rubbed round and smooth against a stone, and glued to the ends of two straight sticks.
‘Right . . .’ I began, but then I got a tickle in my throat that made my body double up with coughs.
‘Right . . .’ I began again.
‘Mitch,’ one of the women said, ‘the round bit’s . . .’
I didn’t take any notice.
‘Like I was saying, Tommy himself told me about this Car. He was old and blind, like I am now, and he was sad sad, because Angela was dead and he blamed himself for it, and all his kids blamed him for it too. In the end he did for himself. But he liked talking to us littles sometimes. I suppose we were nicer to him than the grownups. And he told us . . . He told us . . .’
I had to stop and cough again.
‘Mitch,’ that annoying woman said again. ‘I just wanted to . . .’
‘Gela’s tits, girl, will you stop interrupting me!’
That shut her up.
‘What Tommy told me,’ I went on, ‘was that when they want to go somewhere on Earth, they don’t walk like we do.’
I stopped to try and remember exactly what Tommy said, and then I remembered something else instead. I remembered I was the first kid in whole Family to have a batface, and the other kids used to tease me, but Tommy was nice about it. He said he had an auntie just like me back on Earth, and I mustn’t worry about it. He said it was just a hare lip. I thought that was a good word for it, but when I told the other kids, they laughed, and said they didn’t know what a ‘hare’ was, but anyone could see I looked like a bat.
It made me sad sad, thinking about that.
‘Back on Earth,’ I said after a while, ‘they didn’t just have bark shelters like we do. Their shelters had sides that went straight up like a cliff, maybe for five six times the height of a man, or more than that even.’ I touched the greasy roof of House. ‘And there were shelters inside the shelters called rooms. And some of the rooms were on top of other rooms, with hard ground in between them called floors. And they had telly vision in the rooms, which let them see moving pictures of things happening far away. And when they wanted to cook meat they didn’t even have to light a fire. They had hard boxes made of white metal that were always hot inside because of lecky-trickity, so you could just put the food inside and it would be cooked.
‘And if you wanted to go somewhere on Earth, you didn’t walk the way we do. Once, in the old old times, Earth people used to go about on the backs of animals called Horses that let people ride them. They were as big as woollybucks, with sharp pointy teeth. But there weren’t enough horses, so in Tommy’s time, people mostly went in cars like this one. You got inside them, like a shelter, and they ran along by themselves on their wheels, as if they were alive.’
I felt in front of me again for House, and found the door in it. And then I made two of my fingers walk from House to Car, like Tommy had done when I was a little boy.
‘One step, two step!’ I sang out, like Tommy had done.
I reached for Car.
‘Mitch,’ that woman said again, ‘that round bit . . .’
‘Will you shut up when I’m telling a story!’ I shouted at her.
I was angry angry. As I put my hand on Car, my heart was racing like it was going to burst, but straight away I could feel something was wrong. Car should roll forward smoothly, not rock from side to side.
‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘One of those round bits have come off, Mitch. Those wield things. I think you may have pressed down on it too hard when you coughed.’
‘What? The wheel’s come off?’
‘That’s right. But don’t worry. We can glue it back on again. We’ll get some sap boiled up now and glue it on.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me the wheel had come off? And why didn’t you take it out of my way when I coughed?’
Everything breaks doesn’t it? Everything bloody breaks.
My heart was pounding pounding so much it hurt, and tears were running down my face.
5
John Redlantern
When I woke up Gerry and Jeff were still both fast asleep, and so were all the rest of group. I chucked off the woollybuck skin I slept under and crawled outside. Hmmph, hmmph, hmmph, went the old redlantern tree our shelter leaned against, as it pumped its sap down into hot hot Underworld, and pumped it up again. Hmmmmmmmmmm, went forest with all its thousands and thousands of shining trees that stretched all the way from Peckham Hills to Blue Mountains and from Rockies to Alps. No one else was awake in whole group, except for David who was on lookout, and he just grunted and walked off out of the clearing. I went to the food log in middle of our group, near the glowing embers of the fire, took the flat stone off the top of it and felt inside for a handful of dried starflowers and a bone to chew on. Aaaah! Aaaah!, went a starbird off in forest.
Over on Blueside, Starflower group were just starting to wake up. Meanwhile London, which was just inside of those two groups, were coming in from forest and getting their dinner on the go. Soon the smoky smell of roasting stonebuck was drifting through whole of Family.
I pulled a scrap of green fat off the woollybuck bone with my teeth and began to chew it. The air was warmer since last waking. The dip was ending. Cloud was coming back over sky like a big dark skin and only a little bit of Starry Swirl could still be clearly seen, way over by Alps. I looked round at our group’s little space among our redlantern and whitelantern trees, our circle of twenty little shelters made of bark laid over branches leaning against tree trunks. I looked at the glowing embers that we never let go out, the flutterbyes flipping and flapping around the lanternflowers, and at Old Roger snuffling and snoring on that skin he slept on out in the open because he didn’t believe in shelters. There were bones stacked in piles ready to be made into tools, and a little heap of blackglass (which Oldest called obsijan), and spears and axes and piles of logs and twigs for the fire. Over to one side was our old group boat that we sometimes used for fishing on Long Pool and Great Pool but we couldn’t use just now because the skins had begun to come off from one end of it and nee
ded gluing on again. It all seemed small and boring after what I’d seen by the light of the woollybucks’ headlanterns. Whole Family seemed small and dreary and dull.
Redlantern grownups had decided I could have a no-work waking as a treat for doing for the leopard. The rest of the newhairs and men would go out foraging as usual but I could have whole waking to do whatever I wanted. What would I do with the time? I wondered as I chewed my breakfast off that bone. I wanted to go straight out into forest again and back to the edge of Dark. Or maybe down towards Exit Falls, that narrow gap between Blue Mountains and Rockies where Main River poured down all the water from all the streams in Circle Valley into whatever lay below. I was sort of interested in looking at it, because it was the only way out of Circle Valley apart from Snowy Dark. People of Old Roger’s age could just remember when it had been wider there, so that you could have climbed down from Circle Valley and found out for yourself what was below it. But no one did when they had the chance, and then there was a big rockfall. A great flat slab came sliding down on Rockieside of it, and now tons of water poured down between two sheer cliffs, and it wasn’t an exit at all.
But I’d only got one waking, and that wasn’t long enough to get to Exit Falls or anywhere else at the edge of the valley. And anyway I was sore sore and bruised in my chest from when the spear butt had hit me, so in the end I just stayed inside Family Fence.
I walked through Spiketree and over to Batwing. Batwing group woke before Redlantern and they were already on the go out there around their newly fallen tree, whacking at branches with blackglass axes. Glittery flutterbyes were flitting and flapping around the opening of the stump.
‘Hey John,’ called that strange smart boy Mehmet Batwing, with his thin face and his pointy beard, pausing with an axe in his hand. ‘Off to do for another leopard, eh?’
‘Think I’ll take a rest from leopard-killing for one two wakings, Mehmet. Leave a couple of them for the likes of you.’
‘Good candy?’ I asked a little clawfoot kid that was hanging round there.
He took a stick and banged it on the side of the stump to drive the flutterbyes away. Off they flittered, flashing their glittery wings.
‘Have a bit,’ he said, pleased to have a chance to give something to the big boy that did for the leopard, ‘see for yourself.’
I peered down into the stump. Its pipes had emptied themselves of sap in one last convulsion, and the soft pipeflesh had shrivelled up like it does when the sap has gone, so now there was nothing inside the hollow trunk but air, hot, moist, sickly-sweet air coming up from far below. I could feel the heat of it on my face. I picked up a small stone and dropped it in, putting my ear to the opening to hear it rattling down and down and down into the fiery caves of Underworld, where all life began: all life except our own.
‘Don’t you want any stumpcandy?’ the kid asked, banging the stump again to stop the flutterbyes from settling back down on it.
I looked back in. There were a few crystals of sugar forming inside, already smeared with flutterbye droppings and bat dung with bits of flutterbye wing in it. It wasn’t much of a candyfeast, not like you get with an old tree that’s fallen of its own accord. But I picked off a couple of crystals, wiped off the batcrap on my waistwrap and stuck them in my mouth to suck.
A wailing started up in one of the shelters. It was that little kid who’d got burnt when the sap spouted up. He’d been quiet for a little while – I supposed a time comes when you’re so exhausted that even pain doesn’t keep you awake – but now he was off again and I could feel whole Batwing group wincing around me. They were all worn out by it. They’d had enough. The little clawfoot kid beat his stick forlornly on the stump. The grownups and newhairs lowered their axes, looked up wearily, and then began hacking away even harder at the tree. The more noise they made, the less they’d have to hear that kid’s screams of pain.
Me, though, I didn’t have to be in Batwing at all, so I wandered off. But that screaming kid, it didn’t matter where in Family I was, I could still hear him. And even way over Blueside, as far away as you could get from Batwing and still be in Family, people were talking about it:
‘Boy called Paul, apparently, twelve wombs or so, burnt all down one side of his face and his chest. Sticky redlantern sap all over the place and those dumb Batwings didn’t even have a pot of water on hand to douse him down. You should always have cold water ready when you take down a hot tree.’
‘Yes, and wear skins all over, and keep kids out of harm’s way.’
‘Paul his name is. Nasty sap-burn. Batwings getting a bit careless lately, I reckon, a bit cocky and careless. They had something like that coming to them for a while, I’m sorry to say. Not that it was the kid’s fault of course. I blame the grownups.’
‘Tree coming down and no one keeping an eye on the kids! I ask you. But that’s Batwing for you, isn’t it? Not that the kid deserved it. Paul his name was, apparently.’
That was what Family was like. You couldn’t get away from other people’s feelings and thoughts about everything that happened. Gela’s tits, every bloody little thing that happened, in no time everyone in Family was talking talking about it and poring over it and prodding it and poking at it and clucking their tongues over it. Everyone was deciding who to give credit to and who to feel sorry for and who to blame, like these three boring questions were the only ones there were. I wished I’d just gone out bloody scavenging with all the rest and not even taken a no-work. At least then I would have been outside Family.
Still, I made the best of it. I got given some roasted birds stuffed with candy by the youngmums over in Blueside in exchange for telling them about the leopard. I got some dried fruits to chew in Brooklyn. I had a swim in Greatpool, and some little kids came and showed me their little toy boats made of dry fruit skins greased with buckfat.
In London everyone was in their shelters in mid-sleep, except for just the lookout, a big slow boy called Pete about a womb older than me, who was leaning on a bark rest against a tree stump and chewing the end of a twig from a spiketree.
‘Alright there, John?’
‘Not bad.’
‘Heard you did for a leopard, eh?’
‘Yes, up Cold Path way.’
‘Long way off then. You can’t get much further than that.’
‘No.’
‘Only maybe Exit Falls. That’s further, isn’t it?’
‘No, it’s nearer, but of course there’s also whatever’s below Falls, as well. And whatever’s across Dark.’
‘Below Falls? I’ve never heard of that. Are you sure . . . ?’
Then a slow smile spread over his face.
‘Below Falls! Michael’s names, you’re winding me up aren’t you, you slinker? There’s no such place as Below Falls, is there? You had me for a minute there.’
‘Well, of course there’s something below it, Pete. Where do you think the water goes? You could even climb down next to it once, until that big slab slid down on Rockieside, and Fall Pool filled up.’
Pete shuddered.
‘Who’d want to climb down? There might be anything there. And we’ve got everything we need right here in Circle Valley.’
A woman in one of the shelters heard us speaking and stuck her head out, a plump big-breasted grownup woman two three times my age with, I guessed, five six kids sleeping there in the shelter with her.
‘You’re John, aren’t you? The boy that did for the leopard out there?’
Out she came smiling. She didn’t have her wrap on.
‘I’m Martha,’ she said. ‘Would you like a little slide, my dear?’
Pete looked away politely and began to hum.
‘We could go over there in the starflowers,’ Martha said, pointing to a big bright clump growing over beside the stream.
A lot of women thought if you did a slip with a young guy who was fit and healthy, it would stop you having batface babies, or clawfeet. Us young guys didn’t argue.
‘Yeah, okay,’ I
said.
We went over to the clump of starflowers and she knelt down so I could give it to her from behind. This wasn’t about pleasure for her. She didn’t move or moan, only gave the odd tiny little sigh for the sake of politeness. And we could hear that kid over in Batwing all the while we did it, wailing and crying in pain.
‘Kid called Paul, apparently,’ she said while I was still pushing in and out of her. ‘Nasty sap-burn when they got down that big old redlantern tree.’
She considered this while I kept on humping away behind her.
‘Wouldn’t happen here in London. We keep our kids under control. No way would a London kid be let near a tree that was about to come down. And we’d always have a pot of water ready just in case as well.’
‘Keep the littles under control, eh? It’s got to be the . . .’ I muttered but then I came in her with a shudder, and she rolled over on her back among the flowers, lifting her knees and cupping her hand over herself to keep the juice that she hoped would make her another well-behaved London kid with straight lips and unclenched feet to live its life out in that particular little trampled clearing called London, among those particular bark shelters and that particular little group of people, who liked to think there was something different about them from everyone else in Family.
And there were differences, I thought, kneeling above her but looking away across Family towards Batwing on the far side, and thinking about the groups between here and there. For example, the names. Blueside just means the group that’s furthest over Blueway, the side nearest Blue Mountains, Redlantern just means we’ve got a big bunch of Redlantern trees (which we’re slowly cutting down and replacing by chucking whitelantern seeds down the stumps). But London and Brooklyn were proud proud of the fact that their names came from across Starry Swirl, from Earth. The Earth folk had a big big Family, with many many groups in it. Angela’s group was called London and the people there had black faces like Angela did. Tommy’s group was called Brooklyn, though some people called them the Juice. (As for the Three Companions, who took Defiant back across Starry Swirl, leaving Tommy and Angela in Eden, we don’t know the group names of Dixon and Michael, but they say Mehmet’s group was called Turkish, even though his last name was Haribey. I don’t why.)
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