So the stories were true. There was metal in the ground of Eden as well as in the ground of Earth. And John Redlantern hadn’t drowned. And Gela’s ring wasn’t lying on the bottom of Deep Darkness. I felt a strange, dark dread. What else would change? What else would come bubbling back up from the past?
“Metal’s not trading for as much as it did when you guys first came over,” the trader said stubbornly.
“Possibly, possibly. But I’m not asking you for two hundred, am I? I’m asking for one hundred twenty. You know I could get a hundred fifty at least if I could be bothered to walk round all the other traders.”
The trader pursed his lips for a second or two, then nodded, took the lump of metal, and reached under his table to bring out twenty-four of the notched lengths of wood.
“Thank you, my friend,” said the red-haired man, handing the sticks over to one of the men with him.
Then he laughed. He knew his own power. He knew he was fascinating. He knew he was protected by two fighting men with metal-tipped spears. And he knew that among the little crowd that had gathered round was a beautiful young woman, watching everything he did with shining shining eyes.
He reached out again toward the bag of sticks his companion was holding for him and took some sticks back out. Then he made a little bow to Starlight and put them in her hands. There was a gasp from all the people watching, Kneefolk and Veeklehouse folk alike.
“You have these,” he said to her, closing Starlight’s hand around the sticks with his own. “Trade them for some colored wraps and rings. You’re pretty pretty, prettier than anyone I’ve ever seen, but plain buckskin doesn’t do you justice, if you don’t mind me saying.” He smiled and winked, a wink for Starlight alone. He was really noticing her now. “My name is Greenstone,” he said. “Greenstone Johnson. See you later, I hope.”
And then, with a bow to Dixon, Delight, Angie, and me, he turned and walked away, his two companions hurrying behind him with their metal-tipped spears.
Starlight looked down at her hand. There were five pieces of wood there, with five notches on each, exactly the same as we’d just been offered for those eight ten-foot boats that had taken us forty wakings to make, and nine hard wakings to bring here.
“You can look after these, Uncle Dix,” she muttered. “Put them together with what we get for the boats.”
Dixon nodded stiffly as he took them.
“Jeff’s twisted feet, Uncle Dix!” Starlight’s eyes filled suddenly with tears. “Would you have preferred me to refuse them?”
“I’m not . . .” began Dixon. “I’m not . . .”
He looked across at me, hoping I’d know what he wanted to say.
“Your uncle’s not cross with you, Starlight,” I said.
“I’m really not, dearest,” he said. “It’s just . . . Well, if I’m cross with anyone, it’s that Greenstone man. He had no business . . .”
“No business to do what?” Starlight demanded. “To wear bright things? To have a nice face? To give someone a present?”
Again Dixon looked helplessly at me, and I searched for a word that would describe what the smiley man had done. It would have had to have been a word that meant something like “getting something just by handing over sticks for it.”
“I’m not sure it was a present” was the best I could manage. “I think it was more like a trade.”
“A trade? So what did he ask in return?”
Your heart, Starlight, was what I wanted to say, but I knew it would either make her angrier or put ideas into her head that I didn’t want her to have. And anyway, I was aware there were strangers nearby, watching us funny Kneefolk and smiling at our funny way of talking.
“Where do this lot come from?” I heard a woman ask.
I lowered my voice. “I think this place confuses all of us,” I said to Starlight. “It takes us away from the Watcher. It makes us think—”
“I like it here. It’s way more fun than the Grounds.”
“And I think that man Greenstone could confuse you, too. He seems exciting because he’s new and he’s—”
“I thought he was lovely,” Angie said, though it was easy to see she was troubled herself. “I think it was nice of him to give a present to Starlight just because he liked her. I mean, I wouldn’t mind if—”
“I’m going to look at the Veekle,” Starlight said.
“I thought we could all see it together later on,” Dixon said.
“I want to see it now. You coming, Angie?”
Starlight Brooking
How fierce and beautiful Veeklehouse seemed to me, as we turned away from the others and plunged back into it, how big and bright, burning with that feverish flamelight that made even Starry Swirl above us look thin and pale.
“Kneefolk always go on about how we’re better than the Davidfolk and Johnfolk,” I said, “with all their cruelty and their fighting. But, Tom’s dick, look at them! Look at them and compare them with us!”
Angie ignored this completely. She knew quite well it wasn’t what I really wanted to talk about.
“That Greenstone is beautiful,” she said. “And you only have to watch his face to know he likes you a lot.”
I looked away from her. It was wonderful to hear her say this but, Jeff’s ride, I did not want to speak of it myself.
There was a gate in the fence around the Veekle, and a big man stood there. He was holding a heavy, glass-tipped spear, and his hair was tied back tightly to show a circle of white dots on his forehead. This meant he was a guard, one of the ones who, if the rules said your fingers should be smashed, would bring the rock down on your hand.
My mum, Dream, had told me about the white dots my dad, Blackglass, had on his forehead when she first met him: the sign of the Circle of Stones. And she’d often talked to me, I never quite knew why, about how he had to punish people as part of his job. He’d tied people to spiketrees, she told me, as hot to touch as boiling water, and then had to stand there and watch them squirm.
“Where are you two from?” the guard demanded.
“Knee Tree Grounds,” I told him.
He pulled a face. “Where?”
“It’s off Nob Head. Out in Worldpool.”
He laughed harshly. “In Worldpool? What are you? Fatbucks? You talk funny, too. Are your people even Davidfolk?”
All the time I was thinking about that man Greenstone, and his eyes, and the present he’d given me in front of everyone, and what Angie had said about the way he looked at me.
“No, we’re . . . I don’t know . . . Jeffsfolk, I suppose,” Angie was saying. “Why do you want to know?”
“Jeffsfolk? Jeffsfolk? John’s red spear, are you telling me you lot follow that useless clawfoot? I shouldn’t even let you in. This place belongs to us, to True Family that stayed together as the Mother of Eden wanted.”
“It belongs to Davidfolk, you mean?” Angie asked.
“Well done, Einstein. But I’m feeling kind this waking.” He wasn’t looking at Angie as he spoke, but at me. “And it’ll be kind of fun watching your friend walking round.”
So we went in. And there it was, the Veekle, in the place where it crashed to the ground, all those hundreds of wombs ago. Tom’s dick, even just the size of it was hard to take in. It was thirty foot wide at least, yet we knew it had once been carried inside that huge starship from Earth.
We reached out to touch it. The metal was strangely cold, its smooth surface reflecting the orange light of buckfat lanterns burning on poles all around, and the oldness and strangeness of it made us dizzy. Everyone in Knee Tree Grounds knew the story of how John and his friends had come across the Veekle when they were fleeing from the rage of David Redlantern and Old Family. Everyone knew about the three white skeletons they had found inside it, and the picture that had come to life, just for a moment, and spoken out loud in the voice of Michael Namegiver. It had happened so long ago that it seemed more like something from a dream rather than something that had really happened in o
ur own world, yet this thing had been old even then. Even to Jeff and John and Tina, who were like dreams to us, this would have seemed a thing from a dream.
“That guard’s looking at you,” Angie said.
“Let’s get out of his sight, then.”
Ducking our heads, we climbed through a jagged hole into a kind of cave inside the Veekle. The roof was made of a strange stuff that was clear like water, and through it came dimly the orange light of Veeklehouse, casting faint shadows on the dirty orange floor. All around us were rows and rows of strange shapes: circles, squares, bits of writing in small, neat letters. There was a stale, sour smell.
“Ugh,” said Angie, “it really does smell of blood.”
Straight away an image came into my head of rotten flesh dripping from the bones of those three men into the brown crumbling stuff on the floor, and I felt sick. I felt so sick that I knew that if I didn’t get out into the open air, I really would be sick. A woman was coming in with her three fat children, and I banged my head on a jagged corner of metal as I squeezed past them in my hurry.
“You could have waited a minute,” the woman said crossly.
Back in the open I stood and breathed in. I’d left the rotten blood-smell behind, but the air was heavy with burning fat and the greasy stink of cooking meat, and I had this horrible picture in my head of all human life as a kind of rottenness, spreading like a dirty stain across the stars.
Why did Greenstone give me that present? What was he trying to say?
“Ugh!” Angie said happily as she came out after me. “That was horrible! But wasn’t it great?”
At the gate the guard stood in our way.
“My name’s Mike, sweetheart,” he said to me. “Want to meet up sometime when I’ve finished here? It’d be worth your while. We guards can get hold of things, you know.”
“Yeah, that would be nice,” I muttered.
We rushed out into the busy path outside and almost ran straight into a row of three big woollybucks plodding along on their six flat feet, loaded with bags of uncut blackglass. I knew that the smooth headlanterns on the backs of their heads could light the way for travelers across Snowy Dark, but here we could barely make out their glow.
“Hey, you’re bleeding!” said a voice from behind me.
It was him! It was that beautiful man Greenstone!
“Bleeding?” I croaked.
He pointed at where I’d banged myself coming out of the Veekle.
“We’ll find someone to clean that for you.”
One of the two spearmen with him pointed to a two-floored shelter, which had writing up outside it. Of course to me and Angie it was just lines and shapes.
“ ‘Healing,’ ” Greenstone read out. “That’s handy.”
He and one of the men led me inside and up a ladder, where an old woman wiped the cut with soft buckskin and put some fatty stuff on it.
“Did you trade those sticks I gave you for something nice?” Greenstone asked me when we were back outside.
“No, I shared them with the others,” I said. “Otherwise it wouldn’t really have been . . . well, fair.”
He frowned.
“I’ve caused you a problem of some sort with your people, haven’t I? I knew it was stupid. To give a gift to a girl like that, without asking her father! I’d never have done a thing like that at home. It’s just that, well, you looked so lovely.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. “Dixon’s my uncle,” I told him.
“Your uncle, then. I’m sorry. How can I make it up to you? Would it be okay if I were to get you a meal?”
I glanced at Angie, who kind of shrugged. Of course this wasn’t so exciting for her as it was for me.
“A problem?” I gabbled, turning back to him at once. “A meal? No. Why would it be?”
He gestured toward another of the shelters of Veeklehouse.
“Are you fond of woollybuck meat? They cook it good good there, in a juice of fruit and starflowers.” Then he laughed. “Do you know what? I don’t even know your name!”
“I’m Starlight, and this is my best friend, Angie.”
He looked in Angie’s direction and nodded, but didn’t meet her eyes. Batfaces aren’t a pretty sight, of course, with their noses and mouths all mashed up together, but this seemed more than that. It was almost like he’d never been this close to a batface before.
The three of us sat on a log on top of the clifftop, sharing a bark plate piled with stew. The dark shapes of boats were moving slowly over the shining water beneath us, and bats were circling above them, their bellies lit by the water’s light, and diving down from time to time to snatch up fish and scraps. Greenstone’s two companions were someway off along the cliff, and their faces were hidden by shadow, but Greenstone himself had his back to Worldpool, so that the flamelight of Veeklehouse fell on his lovely face, lively and full of confidence. I’d never seen anyone so beautiful.
I felt like I’d melted inside. I felt like the solid parts of my body had been scooped out of me and replaced with something warm and liquid and light. I felt I’d finally broken out of the ordinariness and sameness of the world.
“You should learn to settle for the good things we have in Knee Tree Grounds!” Glitterfish had often told me, but I’d always always known that if I looked hard enough I’d find something more.
“You’re not from Veeklehouse yourself, I think?”
Greenstone helped himself to a large green lump of buckmeat.
“We’re not from Mainground at all,” I told him. “We’re from Knee Tree Grounds. It’s a little place out in Worldpool.”
“You mean it’s a waterhill?”
“Waterhill?”
“You don’t know that word?” Greenstone laughed. “People do speak strangely over on this side of the Pool. It just means a bit of ground with water all round it.”
I smiled and nodded. “Oh, well, yes. It is, then. A waterhill.” It was kind of fun saying it. “We just call that a grounds. But you come from right across the far side, yes?”
I’d never noticed before how delicious it could feel to say the word you.
“That’s right. From New Earth.”
“New Earth?”
“Noo Urf!” He laughed as he copied my way of speaking. “We say New Earth. But please please go on saying it your way.”
He took some more of the meat, then wiped the green juice from his fingers and lips with a square of plain fakeskin he took out from inside his wrap.
“You’re not eating, Starlight!”
How could I eat when all my insides had melted away? I picked at the corner of a piece of meat.
“New Earth’s a long way away,” Greenstone said. “Ten whole wakings’ paddling across Deep Darkness, and then another two three wakings of bright water. And it’s big big, big as whole of Old Ground here.”
“Old Ground? Is that your word for Mainground?”
“That’s right. I guess because we left it so long ago.”
Angie reached across to take some meat for herself. “We tell the story in Grounds sometimes,” she said, “about how John Redlantern set out cross Deep Darkness with Gerry and a bunch of other people.”
I nodded.
“John was an old man and he was tired of all the killing on Mainground. That’s the story we were told. He’d gathered a lot of people around him by then, but David still had more, and there was no end in sight to the fighting, and he knew it wouldn’t ever stop while he was still there on Mainground with the ring on his finger. So he took some of his followers and set out across the water. And no one ever heard from them again.”
Greenstone laughed. He had a lovely, happy laugh. “Well, you’re hearing from them now, Starlight. John Redlantern was my own great-great grandfather.”
“Tom’s dick, think of that!” I said. “John from all those old stories, and he’s your own great-great granddad.”
“Well, Jeff Redlantern is ours,” Angie pointed out tartly. “And he’s in
those stories, too.”
She was of course jealous of Greenstone and me.
“That’s true,” I said. “John’s cousin Jeff. My great-great grandfather, and Angie’s, too.”
He hadn’t seemed to notice when Angie said it, but he was interested interested when I did.
“Well, that means you and me are cousins!”
“So is everyone in Eden,” muttered Angie.
“What’s it like in New Earth?” I asked.
“Ah, well. I’d spoil it if I told you.”
Greenstone winked at me, and handed me his square of fakeskin. It seemed wrong to use something so precious for such a purpose, and anyway I’d only had that single bite, but I wiped my hands and mouth as he had done.
“Go on, tell me!”
Greenstone smiled. “Well, tell me first, what you think of Veeklehouse?”
“I love it.” I turned to Angie. “We love it, don’t we, Angie? It’s so . . . so big big, so bright, so full of life.”
Greenstone nodded. “Okay. Well, I promise you this. When you’ve seen Edenheart in New Earth, this place will seem small and dim.”
“You’re joking?”
“I’m really not, Starlight, I’m really not. John Redlantern wanted New Earth to be a place full of wonders, just like Earth itself. You must come and see for yourself.”
“That will never happen.”
“Oh? Why not?” He said it with a laugh, but it was a laugh that quickly faded, and it struck me that even he was a little scared by what he was saying. “No, really, Starlight,” he persisted. “Really, seriously, why not?”
“Because . . .”
He seemed to mean what he said, but I couldn’t be sure. Gela’s heart, I couldn’t even be sure whether I wanted him to mean it.
“Sorry,” he said, reaching out and touching my hand. “I know you’ve lived all your life on that little waterhill of yours. And I’m sure your home and your people mean a lot to you . . .” He tossed the greasy piece of bark over the cliff. “. . . even if they don’t let you keep a present.”
“They would have let me, but . . .”
Mother of Eden Page 4
