Mother of Eden

by Chris Beckett

  The baby bats screeched and wailed. I wondered if they were calling for their mothers, as human babies would.

  “I feel sorry for them,” I said.

  The chief laughed. “I guess it must hurt, but if so it’s soon over, and then they can come out of the cages.”

  “But if they can write and talk, it doesn’t seem—”

  I wished I hadn’t said it, because the chief’s face became darker and colder at once, and I hated the idea of losing his friendship. Apart from helpers, who had to do what they were told, and the small people, who saw me as Mother Gela, he was one of only a few in all these caves who’d made me feel welcome.

  Greenstone put an arm round my shoulders.

  “Starlight’s got some interesting ideas about animals. She thinks the same kind of thing looks out of their eyes as looks out of ours. Apparently it’s an idea that comes from Jeff Redlantern.”

  Earthseeker relaxed. “Ah. Well, the stories do say he had a soft spot for animals.”

  “Not only Jeff, but John, too,” I said, seeing as the chief now seemed interested rather than annoyed. “Remember how he saved that bat from the slinker, when they first crossed Dark?”

  The chief laughed. “I think that story’s just meant to be a way of speaking isn’t it? The slinker’s supposed to be David, I think. Isn’t that right, Greenstone? And the bat is John’s dream for Eden’s future, or some such.” He shrugged. “But that’s teacher stuff,” he said. “I tend to let them get on with it. . . . Ah! Here we are, look! Not really what you’d call writing, but it does look a bit like it.”

  “I’ll tell you what it looked like,” I told Greenstone later in the car. “It looked like how writing seemed to me before I learned to read.”

  He shrugged. “Well, I guess writing is just little scratches until you know better.”

  The car bumped on down the path toward Edenheart, the ringmen’s bucks around us, each with its six legs padding along steadily in that strange smooth way they had.

  “It’s so lonely, your New Earth story about the world,” I said suddenly. “No one looking out of your eyes but you yourselves, and the one watching you so separate and far away. Our Watcher was near near. We were the Watcher, all of us, when we managed to be quiet enough to notice it.”

  I’d tried to explain it to him before, and he’d tried to understand, but this time he just laughed at me, perhaps paying me back for my coldness earlier.

  “Honestly, Starlight! You ask how we know President was a man, and yet you guys on your little waterhill made up this whole Watcher thing that no one else in Eden has heard of!”

  “But we don’t make it up. We just notice it’s there.”

  That was what we always said on Grounds, anyway, but now, secretly, I had doubts. What did we really mean when we said we noticed the Watcher? And how often did it really happen?

  “I guess everyone feels lonely sometimes,” Greenstone said, “and that’s what’s so important about the Ringwearer. It means Mother Gela is here, not far away across sky, like President, but right here, with the ring on her finger, the loving mum everyone wishes they had.”

  I looked down at the ring, then slipped it off so I could see the tiny writing. I knew what it said, of course—I’d known it since I was a child—but it was different different now I could read it myself.

  to angela, with love from mum and dad.

  My mum and dad were dead. Greenstone’s mum was dead. Mother Gela’s bones lay under a pile of stones far away in Circle Valley. But yet here were Gela’s own parents whispering to me, from far away and long long ago.

  Quietstream Batwing

  The mother would talk to me about anything when I was washing her: her problems with the Headmanson, her feelings about the other big people, the fact she was only just learning to read, even her thoughts about the stories the teachers told us. She spoke so freely that I wondered if she had any idea at all how dangerous some stories were, specially the secret one that she and I both knew. Did she realize that a wrong word spoken could get a person sent to the Rock?

  I liked her a lot, and I kept trying to think of a way I could warn her, without putting myself in too much danger. She had a lot of courage, and she was tough tough—those were hands that had done proper work—but she was kind. All the helpers appreciated the way she spoke to them. The Headmanson was kind, too, and even the Headman could be kind to his favorites (and I was one, luckily), but there were plenty of big people who treated us no different from how you’d treat a bat: Fetch this, do that, no, not there you fool . . . without a please or a thank you, and without ever once looking at our eyes.

  The mother was rather childish with me, that’s true, but I noticed she wasn’t so with others, and I decided that she only acted like a child with me because I made her feel safe. She came from such a different place—no chiefs, no teachers, no Headman, no ringmen—and she had a hard hard part to play as the mum of everyone. You could understand if she needed someone she could behave like a child with, and I was proud it was me, and relieved for her that it wasn’t someone else. There were plenty of other helpers who’d have been happy to tell tales.

  “I loved Chief Earthseeker and his family,” she told me when she came back from Starflower Cave. “They’re the nicest people I’ve met in whole of New Earth. Except for you, of course, Quietstream. You’re the nicest of all.”

  I’d been untying her plaits before she had her bath. Not such a nice job that waking: Those achy fingers of mine had been giving me a lot of pain.

  “I didn’t like the bats in cages, though,” she went on. “I know we eat bats back on Grounds, and I guess I’d rather have my wings cut off than be dead and eaten, but it still seems cruel somehow.”

  I had no time for cutbats myself, the nasty, creepy creatures. They might be useful in the metaldigs, I supposed, specially in places where the holes are narrow and dangerous, but I couldn’t see any need for them in a house, except as another way for the big people to show off. (“I’ve got more bats than you,” “Well, I’ve got bats that can clean floors,” “So can mine, but mine can speak as well.”) But I didn’t say any of that, of course.

  “They really are small, a lot of those so-called small people,” the mother said as she settled into the water. “It looks like they don’t get enough meat. And they seem to work so hard, yet all the big people ever go on about is how lazy they are, and how they should do more.”

  If you feel sorry for flowergatherers and bat keepers, I thought, you should see the metaldiggers. But I didn’t speak, just began to scoop water over her hair and shoulders.

  “Another thing I noticed is how many of them are batfaces and such. It seems unfair that just because you have a batface, you have to stay out there working in the caves, or out top.”

  My own mother was a holeface—a batface, as the mother called it—and I knew all about how unfair it was, but still I said nothing. It’s not that I thought I’d upset the mother if I spoke my true thoughts—I’m sure she would have been pleased—but I didn’t think she understood how hard it would be for me if she repeated things I’d told her to others: Quietstream thinks this, Quietstream said that.

  And anyway, people listen at doors.

  “The thing I don’t get,” the mother said, “is what happens to the batfaces and clawfeet who are born to the chiefs and the teachers? It must happen. Chiefs and teachers are people too.”

  I decided there was no harm in answering that. It wasn’t a secret, after all. “They’re given away, Mother. They’re taken at birth and given to small people to care for.”

  It had happened to my own mother. The woman I called granny wasn’t really my granny, but simply the woman who’d raised Mum since she was a baby. My real granny must have been the housewoman or daughter of some chief or teacher. Quite probably I’d met her when I started out in the Headmanhouse as a girl. I might have washed her back for her, like I was washing the mother’s back now.

  She turned to look at me. “Giv
en away?”

  “Yes, Mother. Those babies are broken, so the teachers say, because of the bad thing Father Harry had to do when—”

  “That’s not the babies’ fault any more than it’s—”

  She broke off, and I could see from her face that she’d figured out what all this might mean for her.

  “Oh, Gela’s heart, Quietstream, tell me that I won’t have to give away my own babies if they . . . ?” She shook my hands from her back. “I will, won’t I? They’ll be taken away! Oh, sweet Jeff’s eyes.”

  “But Mother, most babies aren’t—”

  But now she’d figured something else out as well.

  “I guess that’s why Greenstone hasn’t got any brothers or sisters? Am I right?”

  She was right, of course. Poor Mother Jane was pregnant eleven times. Four were born dead, with no mouth or eyes. Six were holefaces and sent away at once.

  “Mother, you must ask the Headmanson. It’s not for me to say.”

  “So I am right. Gela’s tits, what a ground this is! What a cold, cruel ground! And you’re too scared to even speak about it.”

  Well, I couldn’t reassure her about her babies, but I could help in another way.

  “Mother, you do have to be careful what you say on this ground. For instance—”

  “Oh, not now, Quietstream, not now!”

  I guess she couldn’t bear to sit still anymore because she climbed straight out of the water, instead of soaking like she normally did.

  “Julie tried to warn me,” she said as I threw the dry round her. “New Earth might look shiny and bright, she told me, but that didn’t mean it was better. I didn’t listen, of course.”

  She grabbed a corner of the dry to wipe away some tears, then turned to look at me. She wasn’t the kind of person who feels sorry for herself for long.

  “Still,” she said, “I am the Ringwearer, and Greenstone is the Headmanson, so I guess if we don’t like the way things are, we’ll just have to change them.”

  Starlight Brooking

  I got it out of Greenstone in bed. Six children taken from his mother. He didn’t know how many were boys and how many girls.

  “When were you going to tell me about this, Greenstone? Before I gave birth to a batfaced child, or afterward? I notice you didn’t tell me before you started to put your juice in me!”

  “Most children aren’t born that way, Starlight. Not unless their mother or father is broken. My mum just had bad luck.”

  “Oh, come on, Greenstone, you must know these things can jump generations? Everyone keeps telling me how dumb and stupid we were on Knee Tree Grounds, but even we knew that. It jumps generations, and your mother had eleven kids, and all but one of them were . . . were broken, as you call it. And—” I stopped. “Tom’s dick!” I burst out. “When you asked me at Veeklehouse if my mum or dad were batfaces or anything, I didn’t understand why. But I should have asked you that question.”

  “Maybe I should have told you about my mum. It’s just that no one else would have refused to be my housewoman because of that. I guess they’d just accept that it’s a risk, a thing that Father Harry brought on us by slipping with his sisters.”

  “Harry didn’t have many choices, did he? And nor did his sisters. If they hadn’t done what they did, we wouldn’t be here at all.”

  “I know, but still, it—”

  “Oh, never mind all that. I am tired tired of all these old stories we go over and over all the time! Yes, everyone in Eden knows that they may have batfaced kids, or slowheads, but no one else has to live with the possibility of having their kids taken from them, do they? Even the Davidfolk aren’t that cruel.”

  “Well, of course Cruel David was a holeface himself, so he wasn’t going to pick on holefaces. But he was cruel enough in other ways, and some people say that it was because he was a holeface that—”

  “That he was cruel? That’s buckshit. First of all, my best friend is a batface, and she’s the sweetest and kindest person in Eden, and second, you Johnfolk get on just fine with being cruel without the help of batfaces. Just fine!”

  He was quiet for a moment. The tree pulsed, the water trickled, and somewhere a few wallcaves away, someone called out to someone else.

  “I’ll be honest with you,” he finally said. “When I see this ground through your eyes, I know what you mean. Some things here are cruel, including things you don’t yet know about. Our rules made us strong, made us more like Earth than anywhere else in Eden, but I agree with you all the same: It’s a pity things have grown the way they have.”

  “Well, who makes the rules?”

  “The Headman.”

  I laughed. “Then there’s no problem, is there? Or there won’t be once you’re Headman. You can change the rule about giving broken babies away, and all the other cruel rules as well.”

  “Well, I can try.”

  “What do you mean you can try? If the Headman makes the rules, then—”

  “He makes the rules, but he needs the backing of Council if he’s to stay Headman.”

  “Well, if you can’t persuade them, you can stop being Headman, and we can keep our kids.”

  He got out from under the skins—tall, gentle Greenstone—and walked away from me toward the pool.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Nowhere, Starlight. Nowhere. I’m staying here with you.”

  I followed him and we stood, not touching each other, by the water under the tree.

  “Starlight, I’m afraid this is something I should have explained way back at Veeklehouse, but you need to know that if I don’t manage to stay Headman, our lives will be in danger.”

  “Danger? Why?”

  He stood there quietly for a few seconds before he spoke. “I guess you know the Davidfolk sometimes punish people with death?”

  I nodded. The Davidfolk did for people with spears, and they tied them to hot trees. I’d known that since I was small, and my mum had told me, many many times, about the part my own dad played in it.

  “Well we do, too,” Greenstone said, “and not just people who’ve done bad things. It happens to people who are dangerous to the Headman.”

  “I don’t get you.”

  “If I was Headman and then gave up the Headman’s hat, there’d be a new Headman and a new Ringwearer, and they wouldn’t want the old Headman and the old Ringwearer hanging about.”

  “Why would that matter to them? We’d go out in forest somewhere, or back across Pool.”

  “We’d still be powerful pieces on the board. The new guy would know that anytime the chiefs and teachers got fed up with him—and chiefs and teachers always do get fed up—they could turn back to us and say, ‘This is the real Headman. This is the real Ringwearer.’ So we’d always be a threat to him.”

  “What, and he’d do for us, just because of that? Surely not. That’s just crazy.”

  He turned toward me. How sad he looked, how weary, standing there naked in the light of the tree. “You think not? My dad did for his own brother for just that reason.”

  “His brother?”

  “Remember Harry, who hesitated to put his hand in the water? A hundredwake later, my dad heard he’d been muttering to some of the chiefs that the Headman’s hat should still have come to him. I liked Harry. He was friendly. He’d always come looking for me whenever he came to the Headmanhouse, so me and him could have a little chat. But Dad did for him before he could make more trouble. ‘Cut the rocklantern early,’ he said, ‘if you don’t want it all over the wall.’ ”

  “This ground gets worse the more I hear about it.”

  “I haven’t told you the really bad part yet. My uncle Harry had two small sons. They were only little boys, and they were my friends, but . . .”

  “Oh, Gela’s heart! Firehand did for them as well? Children? Why?”

  “Same reason. He couldn’t have boys growing up who might claim the Headman’s hat, and specially not now he’d given them good reason to hate him.”

>   “Did you try to stop him?”

  “I did, and so did Mum, but he told us that we didn’t understand, and we ought to be grateful to him for protecting us, and saving the Headman’s hat for me. Of course, I told him that if anyone gave me that hat now I would throw it in their face.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Oh, he was angry angry. He told me I wasn’t a proper son of his. He said that if only he had another son, he would give me away to some metaldigger out top, like you’d give away a holeface baby. And he beat me hard hard hard. The game of power is everything for him. Everything. If you don’t agree with him, he thinks you’re just weak.”

  We stood looking at each other for a long time then, trying to figure out how we stood.

  “This must have been hard for you,” I finally said.

  Greenstone shrugged.

  I put my arms round him. I could feel the tension fall away from him.

  “I feel bad I brought you to this cruel ground, Starlight,” he said. “I should have told you more about it. I just couldn’t bear the thought of letting you go.”

  “Not inside me,” I said at first, when we were back in our bed. I was scared I’d have a batface baby that could be snatched away from me. But in the end, I didn’t stick to that. There were dangers everywhere. If we tried to avoid them all, we’d never live.

  Julie Deepwater

  I was by myself in my boat shelter, rubbing down a new bark, ready for greasing, when I heard a whooping from out in forest: at first a single voice over alpway, then nearer voices picking it up on every side. Someone had seen a spearfish, and that strange whooping sound was our way of telling anyone in the water to get out quickly, and everyone else to get in a boat and begin the hunt.

  Johnny Brooking was nearby, working on another boat with Angie Redlantern.

  “Hey, you two,” I called out to them. “Want to come with me?”

  They ran for spears, and for meat and string, and I headed to my favorite and fastest kneeboat, with the carving I made on it of First Gela and her daughters. A couple of people who’d been gathering waternuts were wading quickly toward the beach. The whooping had stopped now. Everyone was listening for the whistles that would tell us someone had found the fish.