Dark Eden

by Chris Beckett

  I was almost on top of the creatures before I saw them, and realized they weren’t bucks at all. They were tall as trees, standing on four legs that were each the height of a man, and black all over, black black like leopards. They had long long necks, and at the top of their necks, just below their big long heads, they had two strong arms with hands. Two of the animals were slowly feeding from the trees, pulling the branches towards their mouth feelers with their hands and biting off the shining lanternflowers. A third one had its neck bent down to the ground, and was pulling up starflowers in armfuls and feeding them to its slowly scrunching mouth.

  I put an arrow on my bow, but I found I couldn’t bring myself to shoot. It seemed wrong somehow to try and do for something that had grown so big. And anyway, what could one person do with a thing that size? So I lowered my bow and, instead of shooting, I called out to the creatures.

  ‘Hey, big guys! Look at me!’

  All three of them stopped. The one with its head down lifted it a bit, the two with their heads up lowered them, and the three of them together stared at me with their round, flat, flickering eyes, snuffling and blowing and chewing. One of them gave a belch – I could smell the sour stink from where I lay – and then all three of them just carried on eating as if I wasn’t there.

  I found that they’d left a wide strip of darkness stretching away through forest where they’d been. It was twenty thirty yards wide, a wide dark strip with no lanterns or starflowers growing in it. Even flutterbyes left it alone. I followed it for half a waking, further away still from L-pool and all the others, thinking to myself that this was what it would be like on Earth to walk in a forest at Night.

  But then, ahead and over to the right, I saw a new light shining through the trees, smooth and soft like the light of pools and streams. I knew straight away that it was that smooth watery light we’d seen from the ridge, and ran towards it.

  Gela’s sweet heart, I came to the edge of the trees, and there it was: a huge shining pool, so big you couldn’t see the other side, and deep deep, with giant wavyweed shining down there, like another Wide Forest under the water.

  I stood there for a long long time, looking down on it from a low cliff. Fishes swam through its branches like bats and birds. Little hills of water moved steadily across it until they toppled over on the shore. I couldn’t see the ends of it to the left or the right.

  ‘You can’t see the other side!’ I shouted to the others as soon as I got back. ‘You can’t see the ends of it! It’s like that C back on Earth. Worldpool, we should call it. It’s another whole world, like Forest, or Dark, or Underworld! Think of that! Maybe we should leave this place, move over there, make strong boats and go and see what’s on the other side!’

  But Gela just laughed.

  ‘All that work you put into building that wide fence here, John, and now you want to leave it all when you haven’t even finished.’

  ‘And how would Earth find us when they came?’ asked Dix.

  It had been two three wakings before I’d even managed to persuade any of them to come over to Worldpool and look.

  Remembering that made me feel me feel angry and sad as I headed away from L-pool and back to Worldpool again. I must have been there twenty thirty times since my first visit.

  Somehow I needed to get them all to move again. And at some point, somehow, we’d need to get back in contact with Family. Okay, Tina was right, we might end up being speared, or spiked up on a tree, but everyone had to die some time. People drowned, and got eaten by leopards, and died from infected slinker bites, and cancer, and sap-burns. Babies got born that couldn’t suck, and starved while their mothers’ breasts ached with milk. Everyone had to die, and death was usually nasty nasty, but there were still choices in life, it could still be better or worse.

  I slashed out at a jewel bat swooping down in front of me.

  ‘Tom’s neck, I didn’t split up dozy Old Family just to make another dozy Family on the other side of Dark. I did it to make things new.’

  But the only one of the others that was still trying to make new things happen was Jeff with his baby bucks.

  42

  Tina Spiketree

  My first baby I called Peter. He was a little batfaced boy, who looked like my sister, and I knew for sure his dad was Dix.

  My next baby was a girl and I called her Star. I didn’t expect this, but John loved her straight away. He was always picking her up. He was always offering to take her over to the pool to bathe her. And for a while he even stopped wandering off on his trips through Forest over to his precious Worldpool.

  I thought for a little while that he’d finally learnt how to be at ease with ordinary life, and then I remembered how John found it hard to be with his equals, and thought maybe that was why a baby was easier for him. A baby doesn’t answer back, does it?

  ‘I am Star’s dad, right?’ he asked me, when Star was five six periods old. ‘We made her that time we slipped next to the pool, didn’t we?’

  We were by the pool now, in pretty much the exact same spot he was thinking about. He was holding Star in the water, and she was kicking her little fat legs.

  I wished he hadn’t asked me. I knew he longed for me to say yes, and I thought, Shall I lie and tell him he’s the dad for certain? But I didn’t like lying, and nor did John, so I told the truth.

  ‘She could be yours, John, but she could be Mike’s too. Not long before I fell pregnant with her, I slipped with him once twice while we were out scavenging, and you were way away over bloody old Worldpool or somewhere.’

  When he heard that, he lifted Star out of the water, handed her over to me and went off into forest for half a waking. I wished then that I’d told him a lie. It wouldn’t even have been a big lie, because it could have been him that was Star’s dad, and I felt I’d been mean to him, insisting on the truth. I could see how it would be a special thing for someone like John to have a little girl or boy that he knew for certain was his own.

  ‘It probably was you, John,’ I told him when he got back. ‘It really probably was you that time by the pool.’

  I tried to reach and kiss him but he sat stiffly and wouldn’t relax into it. He nodded, and ruffled Star’s head, and then turned and gave me a little stiff smile.

  ‘It doesn’t matter anyway,’ he told me. But I could see it did. All the restlessness had come back into him.

  And at the end of that waking, when we were all eating fruit and stonebuck meat round our fire, with bats swooping overhead, he announced that he was planning to go back up Tall Tree Valley.

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘No point in cutting ourselves off from Mehmet’s lot, is there?’ he said. ‘We all set out together across Dark, didn’t we? There’s no reason why we can’t be friends. They might even want to come down here with us, if we told them what it was like.’

  ‘But wouldn’t this just be stirring up an ant’s nest?’ Janny said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Jane said, ‘it’s been three wombs since we left them. What makes you think they’d want to see us now?’

  ‘And do you really think Mehmet will be so glad to see you, John?’ asked Gela, looking up from her second little one sucking at her breast. ‘Let’s face it, he wasn’t exactly crazy about you even before you left him up there with just the other five for company.’

  ‘Who’s Mehmet?’ asked little Fox.

  His mum Clare laughed. She had three kids around her now. Our little group had grown. The fourteen who’d walked here from Tall Tree Valley were all grownups. The two babies that came with us – Fox and Flower – were little kids. And there’d been another ten new babies since, ten that had lived, with more on the way.

  ‘I think they’d be glad to hear from us up there,’ Clare said, ‘I reckon they’d be glad to see anyone after all this time. I mean there’s not so many of us here, but there were only six of them up there, remember. They must be going completely nuts if they haven’t already done for each other.’

  ‘Th
at’s true,’ Gela admitted, ‘and they’ll have had kids too. It’d be nice to see their kids.’

  ‘It would be nice to see anyone at all that wasn’t us,’ Janny said.

  ‘It could be they’ve all gone back to Family,’ said Jeff.

  Jeff had grown his new hairs now and he had changed. He was beautiful beautiful, with fine features and a strong slim body to go with his big deep eyes. All the other seven girls wanted to slip with him and he obliged them just as much as they wanted, like he was making up for all the time when no one would accept him as a proper boy, only as a clawfoot who was outside all of that. For myself, though, somehow I couldn’t quite forget Jeff the funny little kid whose sore feet I’d washed back at Cold Path Neck.

  ‘They’d never do that,’ John said with a snort. ‘Go crawling back to Family after what happened to Dixon and Met and John Blueside? They wouldn’t dare.’

  ‘They might, though,’ Jeff said. ‘It wasn’t any of them that did for those three. Remember how Mehmet liked to remind you about that?’

  John shrugged.

  ‘Only one way to find out.’

  He stood up, looking back towards Snowy Dark.

  ‘Eventually we’ll need to get back in contact with Family itself anyway. Not now, obviously, but when we’re strong enough.’

  We all looked at each other. Gela’s tits, was this man never going to leave anything alone? Must he constantly be poking and meddling around with the lives of everyone on Eden? ‘You’ll get us all done for, one waking,’ said Lucy Batwing. ‘The way you keep putting us in danger again and again.’

  ‘Well, I’m not suggesting we get in touch with Family now, am I?’ John said, laughing. ‘I’m just suggesting going up as far as Tall Tree Valley, to see Mehmet and the others. Surely there’s no harm in that?’

  43

  John Redlantern

  Me and Gerry and Jeff went back to Tall Tree Valley. It meant going up over Dark again, but crossing Dark wasn’t the same as it had been before. It didn’t seem so far when you knew for certain there was something there to get to and you knew how to find it. (And that made me realize that it wasn’t really so far back to Circle Valley either. This journey that everyone had said was impossible for five six generations: you could walk whole of it easily in six seven wakings.) We each had a fullgrown woollybuck of our own to ride on now, and we each pulled a big snow-boat behind us. Mine was loaded with food and spare wraps for us. Theirs were piled with things to trade with the Tall Tree people: smooth widebuck skins that they’d never have seen before, and fruits you couldn’t find up there.

  It was weird weird when we’d got over the high Dark and dropped down into Tall Tree Valley to find Mehmet and Johnny and Julie still up there near the place where we’d all once lived together after Jeff saved us from Dark. And they were men and women now, young men and women, not newhairs any more, and they had five six little kids running round, and strong strong shelters they’d made with stones. They’d covered them over with branches and sealed up the roofs and walls with mud and buckskins so they’d keep out the cold, even in the snow.

  Tom’s dick, they were surprised surprised to see us, surprised and scared, like we were Shadow People or something, come back to life again from death.

  ‘We thought it might be time to make friends again,’ I told them.

  Mehmet stared at me for a moment, and then suddenly he smiled.

  ‘Friends! Yes, friends!’ He rushed forward to shake my hand. ‘That’s right, John, we should be friends. We’re grownups now, after all, not newhair kids. We should put our little arguments behind us, like kids’ quarrels.’

  And he hugged me and gestured to the other Tall Tree people to come and do the same.

  ‘Let’s get a buck roasting,’ he called out to them. ‘Let’s get the fire built up, get a good blaze going for a big roast.’

  Julie kissed me and Gerry and Jeff.

  ‘Wow, look at you, Jeff!’ said Julie. ‘Wow! You look fine fine. I can’t believe how you’ve changed.’

  Who would have thought weird little Jeff would turn out to be the one that girls wanted to slip with as soon as they saw him, clawfeet and all?

  ‘The others still around, are they?’ I asked. ‘Dave Fishcreek? Angie? Candy?’

  ‘Candy died having her baby,’ Julie said shortly. ‘The others are out hunting with . . .’

  Mehmet hastily interrupted.

  ‘Yes, I should explain, John. We’ve got a couple of visitors up here from Family. Don’t worry,’ he gave an awkward laugh, ‘it’s not David Redlantern or anyone like that. Just a couple of Fishcreek people, come up to trade a few bucks for some blackglass. I don’t know how you’re fixed where you are, but we haven’t got any blackglass up here and we kind of need it.’

  And then he sort of peeked at us, like he was in a hiding place and peering out, and not really standing right there in front of us at all.

  ‘You got blackglass at all where you are?’ he asked.

  ‘Come to think of it,’ he said, without even waiting for us to answer that first question, ‘where is it exactly that you’re staying now? Is it far from here?’

  ‘Not really,’ began Gerry, ‘just over the ridge there and then . . .’

  Mehmet was leaning forward, listening intently.

  ‘Oh, it’s a fair distance,’ I said, to cut Gerry off, ‘quite a few wakings’ journey. That’s why we’ve never been up before.’

  Mehmet looked between Gerry and me and smiled his complicated smile. And presently Angie and Dave Fishcreek came back with a couple of young Fishcreek men called Paul and Gerald. Harry’s dick, those two’s faces looked even more like they thought we were Shadow People come back from the dead than the faces of the Tall Tree people had done. As soon as they saw us, they stopped dead where they were, their muscles tensed up, ready to fight or run, and their fingers tightened around their spears. But Mehmet ran over to them, gabbling excitedly.

  ‘Who’d have thought it, eh? We thought maybe the rest of them hadn’t made it through Dark, after they left us here. But it’s John, look. Old John Redlantern himself, and Gerry and Jeff with him. Nice to see them, eh? Nice to have a chance to put old troubles behind us.’

  ‘Er . . . yeah . . .’ said Paul Fishcreek and Gerald Fishcreek, uncertainly, still fingering their spears.

  ‘So how is Family these wakings?’ I asked them. ‘Caroline still Head, is she?’

  ‘Caroline? Um. Yes,’ said Gerald, looking at Paul.

  ‘How about our mum?’ Gerry asked. ‘Sue Redlantern. She okay, do you know?’

  ‘Yeah. She’s good,’ said Paul.

  ‘You guys still hate us down there, then?’ I asked.

  Gerald and Paul Fishcreek looked at each other like they were in agony.

  ‘Oh no, no . . .’ they both began.

  Tom’s dick and Harry’s, there was weird stuff going on, weird weird, but I couldn’t tell exactly what it was. When we’d eaten Tall Tree’s buckmeat and the Tall Tree people had got to their usual sleeping time, I refused Mehmet’s offer of a space in one of their shelters and found somewhere else a little way from them, where me and Jeff and Gerry and our bucks could get some rest with solid rocks against our backs, and could get a good view of anyone that came near.

  ‘It’s not so cold that we need a shelter,’ I explained to the Tall Tree people, ‘and of course we’ve been keeping different wakings to you. We’ll be more comfortable out there where we can talk and get up and move around without disturbing you.’

  I told Gerry and Jeff I’d keep the first lookout, but none of the three of us had actually gone off to sleep when, after an hour or so, we heard someone creeping up. We grabbed our spears ready. But it wasn’t Mehmet or Dave or Johnny or the Fishcreek blokes, which I’d truly thought it might be, sneaking up on us with leopard tooth knives. It was Julie.

  ‘Hey, Jeff, do you want to slip with me?’

  I suppose life wasn’t much fun for them up there. It was cold, and nothing
happened, and, when they didn’t have visitors, each of them only had four other people to talk to, apart from the little kids.

  ‘That would be good, Julie,’ Jeff said.

  And he did it with her, right there in the space beside the rock, slowly slowly and gently – and quietly quietly like you do when other people are near – and afterwards he held Julie in his arms on the sleeping skins and they talked, softly softly so as to let me and Gerry sleep if we wanted to. But I didn’t sleep. I lay there listening to the sound of their talking, while the strange tall trees hummed all around us.

  Most of the time, it was too quiet for me to hear the words, but once Jeff raised his voice slightly, not in anger (he was hardly ever angry) but firmly to make a point.

  ‘They were protecting me and Tina, Julie!’ he said. ‘They didn’t just do it for no reason! You know that!’

  I didn’t pick up any more of what they said after that but after a while I heard Julie begin to sob and Jeff comfort her. That’s why girls loved him, not only because of his beautiful eyes and his face and his golden hair and his long fine fingers and the way he could slip on and on until they’d had enough, but because he was kind.

  Maybe an hour later a kid began to cry over in one of the stone shelters, and Julie recognized it as her own.

  ‘Michael’s names, Jeff,’ muttered Gerry enviously, after she’d gone. ‘How do you bloody do it?’

  But Jeff had more worrying things to talk about.

  ‘John, Gerry, listen to this,’ he whispered. ‘Mehmet has been down to Family. It wasn’t so long after we left Tall Tree last time. Apparently David Redlantern is the only one who really decides what happens in Family now. He’s got a whole bunch of young guys called Guards, who make people do what he wants, and Caroline doesn’t matter any more. Julie says Mehmet’s done a deal with David to get the friendship of Family back. She doesn’t know what the deal is exactly, and she’s sure that Mehmet hasn’t told them whole story, but she reckons he’s promised he’ll help them to get to you. One thing Mehmet has told her and the other Tall Tree people is that David still wants to kill both of you two, and Harry as well. He still says he wants to spike you up to burn like Jesus, for killing Met and Dixon and John Blueside. And Julie says Mehmet’s told David about Gela’s ring. Apparently David hates you for that too, he hates you for keeping it for yourself.’