‘Hey, John! You’re breaking Circle!’
It wasn’t David or Caroline, not a grownup at all, just little Jeff hobbling into the clearing.
‘Go away, Jeff. Don’t get involved in this.’
‘What will this do to Oldest, John? Think what it will do to them!’
I’d been shutting all my feelings out of my mind, like I did when I was facing that leopard, but now, just for one moment, they all came pouring in. I imagined old Mitch’s feelings about this special place, made by his grandmother and grandfather, which had been here for all his long long life, and I knew that I’d ruined all that. I’d ruined the peaceful centre of Family. Even if I stopped now, I’d already ruined it. It was all broken to pieces forever.
I looked at Jeff. He could see the horror in my eyes and his own eyes reflected it.
‘Don’t you believe that Angela told us to wait here for Earth?’ he asked me. ‘Or do you just think that she was wrong?’
Not many people in Family could have asked those questions without letting you know what they thought you ought to reply, but Jeff really wanted to know. He watched my face and waited for me to answer.
‘I think Angela knew a whole lot of things,’ I said at last, ‘but I don’t think she knew just how long long this wait for Earth would be.’
He didn’t say anything. He just stood looking up at me, studying my face.
‘It needs to be done, Jeff,’ I said. ‘I don’t like it, but it needs to be done. We need to break away.’
Even now he didn’t speak, but after a few more seconds he slowly reached out and touched one of the stones in my hands, like he was making himself part of what I was doing. He nodded.
‘I’ll go back to Redlantern, then,’ he said.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘That’s best.’
I waited until he’d gone before I went to the stream and dropped in the stones I was holding. Then I went back for two more, and two more after that. I finished off with the five stones in middle. It didn’t take me long. There was no more Circle in Circle Clearing. It was empty and blank. It was sort of . . . dead.
And I felt dead too. Empty. I couldn’t find any feelings inside me about anything. I knew I must have destroyed Circle for a reason, but I could barely remember what that reason was. I knew that big big things would happen now as a result, but I couldn’t make myself care what they would be. It was like I’d turned to stone myself.
But I walked up Dixon Stream by myself – even old Jeffo was asleep in his shelter – and I climbed the rocks round Deep Pool to where Tina was waiting for me.
She’d been squatting on the bank, eating nuts. She stood up as I came scrambling towards her.
‘You took your time, John. What have you been . . . ?’
When she looked into my face her expression changed completely.
‘Gela’s heart, John! What’s up with you? What have you done?’
I didn’t say anything at all. I pushed her back down on the ground again, I pulled off her wrap, I pressed my mouth against hers . . .
‘Hey John, careful. I don’t want a baby . . .’
I pushed into her and into her and into her until I was ready to come, which was pretty soon. And then, when I’d spurted out my juice over her belly, I didn’t even speak to her, just dived into the pool and swam a long way under the warm bright water before I surfaced, as if I could wash away everything just by letting the water rinse the sweat from my skin, as if this would make Circle whole again, or make it alright with everyone that it had gone.
Tina didn’t swim. She waited for me on the bank and when I tried to climb out, she kicked me back in again. And she didn’t do it in play. She really kicked me.
‘Just tell me what you did, John.’
I didn’t want to hear my voice say it, but I knew I had to.
‘I destroyed it, Tina. I destroyed Circle of Stones.’
‘You . . . You what? You’re bloody joking, aren’t you, John? Tell me you’re joking.’
But of course she could see by my face, and by everything that had happened so far, that I wasn’t.
‘Tom’s neck, John! You idiot. You bloody idiot. Who do you think you are?’
She grabbed her wrap and started climbing up the rocks away from me.
‘Hey Tina, wait . . .’
‘Keep away from me, John. You did it on your own. You can take what’s coming to you on your own. I’m not part of it, alright? I’m going back to Spiketree. Don’t come after me. I mean that, John, I really mean it.’
Well, I could see she meant it and I really hadn’t expected this. I’d thought that she’d be of the same sort of mind as me. In fact I’d thought she’d be impressed by what I’d done, like she was impressed with the way I spoke out at Any Virsry. I’d thought it would make me seem brave and strong in her eyes.
I listened to her climbing up the rocks, heading back to sleeping Family where some time soon, maybe in an hour, maybe in two or three or four, someone or other would wake up and pass through Circle Clearing and see what I’d done.
And I knew I was alone in whole world. I was lonelier even than Angela was, all those wombs ago, when she came up here by herself and cried.
I took Angela’s ring out of the pocket in my wrap. Of course I didn’t really believe Angela would come to me or anything. I wasn’t like Lucy Lu. But I sort of hoped I would be able to see her in my mind as I’d seen her before.
It didn’t happen, though. Why should it? And why would Angela want to help me out anyway, when she and Tommy made Circle and started Any Virsries? They didn’t want those things ended, did they? Whole point of those things was to last and last. And Angela had specifically told all of us to stay by the stones and wait for Earth.
I put the ring away again. For a bit I just sat there rocking back and forth on my haunches, like I’ve seen mothers do when they’ve lost a child and they don’t know how to get through it, just rocking and rocking and rocking themselves to make a rhythm and make the time go past.
After a bit I made up my mind to get back in control of myself.
‘It’s not like I’ve made some kind of blunder,’ I told myself. ‘This wasn’t a mistake. I thought about it. I knew what I was doing. I knew it would be horrible, for everyone else and for me. But I was trying to make something happen that needed to happen.’
I couldn’t see Angela or feel her presence, but I could sort of feel the voices of people in the future watching this scene that I was in. John All Alone, they’d call it. The scene that came after John Destroys Circle and Tina Dumps John.
I imagined them standing round me, those future people, looking in, calling things out. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Maybe they were thanking me for what I’d done. Maybe they were shouting out to me that I’d done wrong. But in a way it didn’t matter, the same as it didn’t really matter whether Tommy and Mehmet and Dixon, the Disobedient Three, did wrong that time they refused to listen to President and carried on instead towards Hole-in-Sky.
‘No. Don’t do it!’ we yelled out to them, every Any Virsry. But the fact is that if they hadn’t made that choice, we wouldn’t have existed. We wouldn’t even have been there to yell back to them. Most probably no human being would ever even have heard of this dark world called Eden.
So we couldn’t really mean it, could we, when we called that out to them? Or at least we could only really mean it in those dark dark moments that no one ever talks about when life itself seems to have no worth at all.
Then I heard a shout coming from Family way. It was quite faint. I couldn’t hear the words.
Soon there was another shout, and another, and then the horns started up. It wasn’t long slow blasts this time but the quick Parp! Parp! Parp! Parp! Parp! that means a Strornry Meeting. All over Family people would be waking up, afraid. What could it be? What dreadful thing could have happened? They’d look round anxiously at each other, to see if anyone else had a clue. What could it mean? What terrible event could justify another
meeting so soon, when they hadn’t even had half a sleep to let them recover from the three wakings of the last one?
I stood up. A couple of jewel bats were zipping along just above the surface of Deep Pool: dark shadows, fast and smooth across the smooth bright water, one just a little in front and to the side of the other. Their little arms were hanging down and their fingertips were trailing over the surface as they swerved and darted around the lilies looking for fish. If they saw one – grab! – they’d have it in a flash and then, all in one smooth smooth movement, they’d curve off up to the rocks and the trees to find a place where they could divide the fish up between them with their sharp little teeth and their nifty little hands. If I’d left the stones alone I could have been out here now watching those bats with Tina, with nothing at all to worry about. Life would have been easy for me. Family wasn’t going to starve yet, after all. Not for a long time. Not for another generation maybe.
But it was like with the leopard. I’d made a decision that I knew could turn out badly, I’d taken a chance on it and now it was too late to go back. The leopard had to be faced.
I started up the rocks, heading back towards Family.
16
Tina Spiketree
The thing with John was that everyone thought he was so brave, and he thought he was too. I’m not saying he boasted about it because he didn’t, but that’s how he saw himself: someone who faced things, someone who never flinched or turned away.
And in one way he was brave brave. He did things that no one else would do, like facing that leopard, and throwing the stones in the stream. No one else in whole Family would have done either of those things. Well, okay, some would face a leopard, but not on their own and not without a strong blackglass spear, and not when they were only twenty wombtimes old. But definitely no one no one else would have done what he did with the stones. No one else would have even dared to think about it.
So he was brave in those ways, but there were other things, things that most people did every waking and didn’t think anything of, that John just couldn’t bring himself to do. People didn’t think of it as him being scared. And he didn’t see it that way either. But all the same he was.
He didn’t really have any close friends was one thing. I mean, he was a good-looking bloke and he was smart smart and strong and a fighter and a leader – and no one had any complaints if he wanted to hang out with them, no complaints at all. So if you asked him to name his friends he could give a long list, and if you asked them, they’d say, ‘Yeah, sure, we’re friends with John Redlantern, he’s alright.’ But he didn’t have any particular kids he hung out with, except only his cousin Gerry. And Gerry, well, he was more like John’s shadow. John could handle Gerry up close to him because Gerry didn’t ask anything of him at all. Gerry wasn’t his equal.
And then there’s the way he didn’t want to slide with me that first time up at Deep Pool. I reckon that was because he was scared too. I mean he was okay doing it with the mums around Family, like that Martha London, so why not with me? Well, it was that equal thing again, wasn’t it? I was equal to him, and that scared him.
I don’t mean he didn’t want equals. I’m just saying it scared him. I mean those oldmums, they didn’t ask anything of him, did they, only his juice. He could say yes, he could say no, it made no odds. Either way he could just walk away. But it scared him if he couldn’t be in control of things. It really scared him.
In that respect, not just some people but most people were braver than John was. I mean, I liked to get my own way too, of course. Everybody knew that about me. I liked to get what I wanted. But the thing was, if I didn’t get it, well, I just tried something else. It didn’t scare me. I didn’t have that fear that he had, which he didn’t even know was there, that fear which made him hold everyone at a distance, that fear of not controlling things.
And now, all on his own, he’d decided to change the history of Eden forever. He hadn’t told me about it. He hadn’t told anyone about it. He chucked the stones in the stream all by himself, while I waited for him like a bloody idiot, not knowing what he was doing or why he was taking so long, and then he came up to Deep Pool and expected me just to accept what he’d done. He expected me to trust him. He expected me to support him and line up with him, even though he hadn’t trusted me enough even to tell me what he was planning. It’s that equal thing again. He just didn’t quite get it. He didn’t quite get that other people apart from him had their own thoughts and their own plans and their own things in their heads.
I was so angry with him about that. I mean, Michael’s names, I hated Any Virsries like he did. I hated Oldest and their remembering. I wouldn’t have cared if I never heard them go on about Angela and Tommy and lecky-trickity and that bloody Big Sky-Boat Defiant ever again, and I agreed with John that there was no point in going on and on about Earth all the time. So, if he’d discussed his idea with me, maybe I’d even have come round to it. But, Gela’s heart, just to decide on his own to bust Family apart, and then to come to me and expect me just to accept it and carry on with him and be beside him when Family found out? To expect me to share the shame and blame for something that I’d never even been told about? I don’t bloody think so.
I went back to Spiketree, trying not to catch the eye of the lookout for that sleeping, who was a bloke called Rog that was always trying to get me to slip with him, and I crawled into my shelter.
My sister Jane said, ‘Everyone’s been talking about you, Tina. They’ve been saying that . . .’
‘Just shut up, Jane, alright?’
Pretty soon after that, the horn started. Parp! Parp! Parp!
A woman in Blueside had had a heart attack and she and her daughters didn’t come to Strornry. A couple of blokes in Brooklyn couldn’t sleep. They’d set off hunting and didn’t get back until most of it was over. A few newhairs had gone out for a little bit of slip, like I thought was the plan for me and John when I went up to Deep Pool. But everyone else in the world was there, back in Circle Clearing, like Any Virsry all over again.
But the thing was that it wasn’t Circle Clearing any more, because there was no Circle. And that was really horrible. It was like you saw someone you knew in forest and you called out to them, but when they turned round towards you, you found out that their teeth and their tongue had fallen out, and their face had a big empty hole in middle of it. And the weird thing was that nobody wanted to go near that gap where Circle had been. People had always stayed round the edge of the clearing in any meeting, whether Any Virsry or Strornry, and always kept well back from the stones, but now they squeezed even further back, pressing up tight together right under the lantern trees to be as far as possible from where the stones had been. And that made the hole in middle look even bigger and emptier and more horrible.
Yes, and it was what we called a fug that waking. The cloud had come down low in the last few hours, right down into the treetops, making the highest lanterns into fuzzy blobs of light. And a fine rain was falling, not like the soaking rain you get in the hills round valley’s edge, but fine valley rain, like wet mist. And it was hot and stuffy. Everyone’s skin was shiny with rain and with sweat. It was like there was no sky, no forest even, and this sad lonely little scene, this clearing with a hole in middle, was all on its own in the world, a stuffy little cave with no air in it, surrounded by nothingness. There weren’t even any flutterbyes or bats coming in and out of the clearing, because they don’t fly when there’s a fug, they hide up and keep their wings dry, and wait for the cloud to lift.
People’s faces were grey and exhausted. They hadn’t left Any Virsry feeling happy, but they’d thought that at least they could get some sleep. And now this! Lots of women were crying, some men as well. Little kids and babies saw their mums crying and they cried too. Other grownups, instead of crying, had stone-hard faces. They were waiting for someone to shout at, someone to blame.
Oldest weren’t out in middle like they had been in Any Virsry. They couldn’t hac
k it. Their helpers had sorted out a little space for them on one side of the clearing, with their padded logs to rest their backs against. Old Stoop looked like he was about to die any minute.
But Caroline and Council were out there, far away from us all in middle of that empty space. And Caroline, that cold grey woman, was full full of rage. Her rage was like boiling sap inside a tree that’s about to fall, just waiting for someone to give it that last push when the sap would come spraying out to scald and maim anyone standing near. Jane the creepy little Secret Ree and Council were all around her and they all looked pretty much as angry as she was, except for Bella Redlantern, who just looked terrible, like she was about to be sick.
And then John came, poor old John, all by himself, coming from Londonside. There was a sort of gasp from all round the clearing and people standing on Londonside pulled hastily aside to let him past, like they were afraid of even touching him, like they were afraid of catching something from him if they stood too near to him.
A dreadful silence fell. Even the babies seemed to know to shut up crying. And he walked right out into middle, walking stiff stiff and straight straight with his head held up, as if to say he was ready to take whatever they were going to do to him. But his face was white, and he wasn’t looking anywhere but straight in front of him. (I bet he looked like that when he faced the leopard.) When he was three four yards in front of Caroline, he stopped.
He was only twenty wombs old. Only fifteen years in the old time.
‘You did this, didn’t you, John Redlantern?’ Caroline said.
And there were three four seconds of total silence.
‘Yes I did,’ he said then in a small quiet voice. ‘I did it because . . .’
‘I don’t wish to hear why you did it.’
‘I did it because . . .’
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