Dark Eden

by Chris Beckett

  ‘Right,’ said John, as we sat round the fire inside our newly finished triangle fence. ‘We’re safe from leopards now, so let’s start building a proper fence.’

  He wanted to enclose a big big space, big as whole of Family area back in Circle Valley, so that it would give us enough room to grow as big as Family itself, and he wanted us to help him build a huge L-shaped fence so as to make a square with the two whole sides of L-pool.

  ‘But why do we need that, John,’ Gela asked him, in her sensible way, ‘when there are only fourteen of us plus a couple of babies?’

  ‘This is a new family,’ John said. ‘This is a beginning again, free of all the bad things that happened in Old Family. Clean and fresh and new. Without Oldest. Without Circle. Without Council. Without David Redlantern and his crew. Without Any Virsries where only Council can speak.’

  He looked round at us.

  ‘A new family without all those things, yes, but still one that will grow as big and strong as Family itself. Bigger, even. Stronger.’

  Harry jumped up and danced a silly jig. He could tell that John wanted us to be excited about his idea and he was trying in his own way to get us going.

  ‘Harry’s happy! Harry’s happy!’

  I suppose it looked cute when he was a little boy, before I was born, and I guess back then everyone laughed and encouraged him, but it didn’t look cute now, not when he was older than anyone else there. No one joined in and no one laughed.

  And we weren’t so crazy, either, about that ‘fresh and new’ thing of John’s any more. We helped work on his big fence from time to time, to keep him happy and because it wasn’t such a bad idea to stop leopards from coming in too close to the little fence around our shelters, but mostly we just got on with doing the ordinary things we needed to do to keep ourselves going.

  Life was easy in one way, but in another way it had turned out hard. Sometimes I felt lonely lonely. There were so few of us. Okay, there was my Dix, and his mate Mike, and my good friend Gela, and my batface sister Jane, and little sharp Clare, and cheerful Janny, who was always up for a laugh and a joke. And Gerry was alright, I suppose, boring but alright, and so, in his own funny way, was clever weird Jeff. And bloody old John was okay too, at least some of the time, and I guess I cared about my brother Harry, or I felt responsible for him anyway, though it drove me nuts having to sort things out for him when he annoyed people with his noisy stupidness. I even got on alright with Lucy Batwing, and the two London girls.

  But that wasn’t a lot of people to fill a whole world with, not when there was forest forest forest stretching away on both sides of us for miles and miles and miles. Thousands and thousands of trees shining and pumping – hmmph, hmmph, hmmph – thousands of flutterbyes and bats and bucks and treecats and slinkers and leopards, all with their flat eyes and their two hearts and their greeny-black Eden blood, taking no notice of us, carrying on with the things they’d been doing for hundreds and thousands of wombs, ever since they first came up from Underworld: it was lonely lonely when you thought too much about it. So much space, so much life going on that didn’t know or care we existed – and then us, just us, us few human beings, by ourselves in the middle of it all.

  We made babies as quickly as we could. Even I worked on making babies, though I was never that keen on being a mum. I slipped with Dix, I slipped with John, I even slipped with Mike once twice. And often I found myself doing it like a broody oldmum back in Family, not really thinking about the thing itself and what it felt like, just waiting for the job to be done, and then laying back after the bloke was finished, whichever one it was, and trying to keep his juice inside me. All the girls did the same.

  ‘Slipping should be a special thing,’ John said one time, when a bunch of us were together by the fire, scraping buckskins clean. ‘Not just something you do with anyone you feel like, or anyone needing a bit of juice. We should go back to how it was on Earth. One man just slips with one woman, so he knows which kids he was the dad of, and a kid knows which bloke is his dad. This way of doing things we’ve got into on Eden, where everyone slips with everyone: it only began here on Eden in First Harry’s times, when there was only one man in the world and it was him.’

  He looked straight at me as he said it. He hated that I slipped with Dix, and he knew I knew that he hated it. And in a way I understood what he felt, because I didn’t used to like it much either when he slipped with the oldmums back in Family. Back then I wanted him for myself, and now he wanted me to be just his alone. But how could I agree to that with a bloke like him, who wanted to slip with me one waking and then, for wakings and wakings after that, wasn’t even interested in even telling me anything, let alone touching me?

  ‘How would that work, though, John,’ Janny Redlantern asked, practically, ‘when there are eight girls here and only six blokes?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Clare, lowering her voice and looking round to make sure my brother was out of earshot, ‘and out of the six of us that did get a bloke, how would we decide which one got bloody old Harry?’

  They all laughed at that, though a couple of them looked guiltily at me and my sister Jane.

  Even John laughed.

  ‘You’ve got a point there, Janny,’ he said. ‘I admit you have a point.’

  Five six wakings later I came across him in forest with ugly merry Janny Redlantern, giving her a slip from behind, while she chattered away to him, just like some oldmum back in Family. He looked up and spotted me. Gela’s heart, I could tell how much he hated that I’d seen him. And soon afterwards he took his spear and a leopard tooth knife and a rope, and went off into Wide Forest on one of his long lonely trips.

  He was always going off into forest and, if he wasn’t in forest, he was toiling and toiling away on the big fence, dragging up branches, hacking at trees, all by himself if no one would help him, to enclose that stupid massive space that we wouldn’t need for bloody generations.

  He was restless restless all the time.

  Gela’s tits, he’d broken up Family, he’d killed Dixon Blueside, he’d led us though ice and darkness, he’d lost Suzie and nearly killed the lot of us, all because he wanted to cross Snowy Dark and start again on the other side, but now we were here, it wasn’t enough for him, this little group of familiar faces, this ordinary waking-by-waking routine of hunting and scavenging and cooking and mending spears and scraping skins. It didn’t leave him with any outlet for all that energy of his, squeezed tight up inside him, like sap inside a tree.

  40

  Sue Redlantern

  Paaaaarp! Paaaarp! Paaaarp!

  I’d just got off to sleep when the horns started for another bloody Any Virsry: one hundred and sixty-sixth. Of course I knew it was coming but, Michael’s names, I’d been dreading that sound. I didn’t care much how many years it was since Angela and Tommy came to Eden, but what I hated hated was that each Any Virsry was another year since my two boys Gerry and Jeff and all those others disappeared from Cold Path Neck and never came back.

  Paaaaarp! Paaaarp! Paaaarp!

  I crawled out of my shelter to make sure everyone was moving, and to help the youngmums with the little kids. Fox was out there already hurrying people along. He was Redlantern group leader now. It had been David for a bit, but then he became Head of Guards, and he moved out of Redlantern and set up his own fires and shelters with the other Guards over beside Greatpool, like a group all of their own with only men in it, a group over all other groups.

  Paaaaarp! Paaaarp! Paaaarp!

  ‘Come on, darling, don’t cry, mummy’ll be back out for you in a minute when she’s got your baby brother . . . Gela’s tits, Fox, give them a moment. Kids can’t wake up just like that. It takes them a bit of time . . . Here’s mummy look, darling, coming out of her shelter now . . .’

  Paaaaarp! Paaaarp! Paaaarp!

  ‘Yeah, yeah. We know, we know, give us a break. It’s all fine and easy if you’re on London time, but we were deep asleep over this side . . . Come on, sweeth
eart, you can’t go back into your shelter now. Wait till we get to Any Virsry, eh, and then you can lie down and have a little kip again . . . Michael’s names, but you are a big big boy, Dixie, aren’t you? You look like you’re ready for a leopard hunt, mate, never mind an Any Virsry. What do you reckon? You could go out and do for a leopard easy easy, I’d say . . . Yes I know, Fox, but the Guards won’t kill you for giving the littles a few minutes to sort themselves out before they go.’

  Paaaaarp! Paaaarp! Paaaarp!

  ‘Yes alright, Roger, you can lean on me. But don’t get any ideas, alright?’

  And off we went, whole Redlantern group – Fox, blind Old Roger, Lucy Lu, Jade, all of us – through Spiketree (who were still getting themselves together) and Brooklyn and across Stream’s Join to Circle Clearing. I was doing my usual job of jollying people along – Fox might be leader but he hadn’t got a clue about all that – but inside me all the time it was cold and empty and dark, because I knew too well what I was going to have to see and what I was going to have to hear and what I was going to have to swallow.

  There was a fug sinking down over us. It was warm and close and the rain was coming, just like it did that Strornry after one-sixty-three, when John destroyed the Stones. Such a terrible time that seemed then, the worst time, like everything was poisoned and spoiled: Gerry and Jeff and the others going off after John and Tina, Bella hanging herself like Tommy from a tree . . . But, looking back on it now, it wasn’t really so bad after that Strornry, not for about a wombtime. A lot of newhairs were outside of Family over Cold Path Valley way, it was true, and we missed them and things were tense. But we could still see them at Lava Blob and in forest round there, still see them and get news of them, and still look after them in a way.

  But then, not long before one-sixty-four, horrible Dixon Blueside went off with our Met and with John Blueside and the three of them never came back.

  Well, David obviously knew something that we didn’t know, something about where they went and what they meant to do. He and a bunch of his newhair boys – we didn’t call them Guards then, but that was what they were becoming – they all rushed off into forest with their spears and their clubs and their angry puffed-up faces. They found the bones that the foxes and starbirds had left – this side of Lava Blob, they all insisted, this side – and then they went on to the camp that John and the others had started over at the mouth of Cold Path Valley. They found all of them gone. It was obvious, David told us: they’d all gone up onto Dark to die of cold with Juicy John and Teasy Tina. ‘I’m sorry for those of you who’ve lost your kids,’ he said, ‘but didn’t I tell you we should have spiked that John up like Jesus? Didn’t I say it? “Spike him up until he burns,” I said. But you all said I was being too hard.’

  He said the same things again at one-sixty-five and I knew, I knew, I knew, he’d say the same things again now, at one-sixty-six: they were all dead up in Snowy Dark, they were fools for following John, we were fools for not doing for John when we had the chance.

  Anyway, here we were back in Circle Clearing in the space between the trees and the stones – the new stones: they’ve never seemed the same to me as the old ones – and there was Caroline inside Circle looking sort of tired and shrunken and old. Mitch was beside her, the last of Oldest, the last one of Tommy and Gela’s grandchildren, with his scrappy white hair and beard, and his blind eyes, and his hands that grabbed and groped around him all the time, like he was frightened he was sinking into the earth. Just outside Circle, Secret Ree stooped over her bits of bark.

  Paaaaarp! Paaaarp! Paaaarp! The Council helpers were still blowing those old hollowbranch horns because the most important people hadn’t yet arrived and the meeting couldn’t start without them.

  Paaaaarp! Paaaarp! Paaaarp!

  Parp–parp–parp–parp! came the reply at last, and then into the clearing rode David Redlantern, the Head of Guards, in all his ugliness, up on the back of the woollybuck they’d managed to train for him over the last year. He glared round at us, and behind him his Guards, thirty forty young men, grinned and smirked at each other with their big blackglass spears over their shoulders. And he led them right round the clearing, right round the edge of Circle, so we could all see who were really the ones that decided things around here: the ones that could arrive as late as they liked at Any Virsry and still everyone would wait for them and not complain, however long they took. It wasn’t tired old Caroline any more who was in charge.

  And then, when they’d made that point, they all stopped in a group together in the space between Circle and the rest of Family. Two of them helped David down from his buck, and they all squatted down, and David gestured to Caroline to carry on.

  Tom’s neck, how did he get all that power? Why did we let him take it? He was only a Redlantern boy after all. I remembered him when he was a little kid and I was a newhair. I didn’t like him much even then. He was sort of loveless from the start, but when I was little I used to keep an eye on him. We batfaces took a lot of stick and we had to stand up for each other. I didn’t expect him to grow up into anyone nice or special, and I was right: he didn’t. He grew up into a sour sarcastic lump of misery. But sour and sarcastic is one thing, this was another. Who could have imagined this?

  But anyway, it was time for the count. The leaders came out from their groups to report how many in their group were here now, and how many were out hunting or scavenging and all of that, and Secret Ree scratched the numbers down with a shaky hand, though she was nearly blind. Then we waited while they added up the group counts and worked out the count for whole Family. It went on and on, like it did every time. Harry’s dick, how hard can it be to add up the numbers from eight groups? Babies cried. Newhairs gave each other looks.

  Then at last Caroline stood up.

  ‘There are five hunded and eighty-one people in Family,’ she announced, ‘more than ever ever before!’

  My clever Jeff wasn’t in that count, was he? Nor my Gerry, nor Janny Redlantern, nor John. They weren’t part of it any more. And yet, even without them, the number had gone up. It was like they didn’t matter somehow, like they made no odds at all.

  Caroline yelled the number into old Mitch’s ear, and they levered him up to his feet, and he began to quaver on about rememfer this and rememfer that, and how a big round boat came down from sky, and how there were only thirty people when he was a kid, thirty in whole world.

  We were supposed to be impressed or feel sorry for them, for managing to keep going when they were so few. But there were only twenty with John that went up on Dark.

  How does David know they died? I thought. How could he really know? John believed it was possible to cross right over or he wouldn’t have led them there, and who’s to say he was wrong? He was no fool. He figured out how to make warm wraps. And my own Jeff figured out how to turn a buck into a horse for them to ride. (David would never have thought of that, never, not if he lived for a thousand wombs, though he was happy enough to steal the idea from Jeff.) So who was to say that they didn’t make it over to the other side?

  There was a new part in Any Virsry now. There was a special bit where bloody old Lucy Lu got up and started telling us the messages she’d had from Angela and Tommy and dead Stoop and all the other Shadow People.

  ‘John is with them now,’ she told us, ‘John Redlantern, and all his little gang. They froze up on Dark and now they’re Shadow People with the rest of them. But none of the other Shadow People . . .’

  She broke off here, rolling her eyes and screwing up her face as if she was in terrible pain. That woman has always been a liar and a faker, ever since she was a little kid.

  ‘Gela’s heart,’ she cried, ‘Gela’s dear good heart, but they are lonely lonely. None of the other Shadow People talk to them because they broke up our Family. And they know now they did wrong. They know it, because all is revealed in the Shadow World, all is revealed. And they feel ashamed ashamed, and they hate themselves and they hate each other, and that’s ho
w it’ll always be for them, poor things, poor poor things, for ever and ever and ever.’

  David stood up, one hand on the back of his buckhorse. Michael’s names, I hated all this. It was my boys they were talking about, my boys and their friends. How dare they talk about them like that? But I knew from the past what would happen if I tried to speak out. Everyone would yell at me and shout at me. People would warn me I’d end up being an enemy of Family too if I wasn’t careful. People would ask whose side was I on. People would hiss that they could see where my boys got it from. So I kept quiet, with only silent tears to show how I felt inside.

  ‘Yeah,’ David said. ‘Dying in the cold and hating themselves forever. That’s what you get for trying to break our Family, and that’s why we have Guards now to make sure it never happens again.’

  ‘Oh I know, I know,’ wailed Lucy Lu, ‘I know it has to be. But when you see them as I see them, you can’t help feeling sorry for them: always lonely, always miserable, always with the cold of Snowy Dark creeping through them and always . . . always . . .’

  She stopped because we could hear shouting voices coming from forest behind us on the Peckham side of the clearing. In came three more of David’s Guards, dragging along another young man, with a buck on a rope following behind them.

  The Guards didn’t take any notice of the fact that an Any Virsry was going on, and they paid no attention to the person in middle of Circle who was supposed to be Family Head.

  ‘David! David! Look who we found skulking around outside Family. Look who it is!’

  Who was it? He looked familiar – that narrow, clever face with the wispy blond beard – but we hadn’t seen him for a long time, and he’d grown, and we’d never seen him looking so scared before. But Gela’s sweet heart, it was one of them! It was one of our lost kids!