A tiny, stooped old blind woman called Jane was reaching up to touch me. “Why did you bring those bats with you? Are they good to eat?”
The bats! Where were they? For the first time, I noticed that another small crowd had formed a little way off, a shrieking, squealing, jeering crowd of children and newhairs, gathered in a circle around some hidden thing, daring one another to go up close to it.
“You leave them alone!” I roared, pulling myself away from Dixon.
Everyone looked scared. Everyone stepped back to let me pass. The batlings were standing back to back, hissing and holding their hands out in front of themselves, while the little half-healed stumps on their shoulders worked up and down as if the creatures thought they could still fly if only they tried hard enough.
“No one is to touch them! Do you hear?” I said, not just to the children but to all the people of Knee Tree Grounds. “No one is to touch them or tease them or do anything to them at all!”
They all stared at me, eyes wide, mouths open. I’d always been known for my temper, and people had always been wary about upsetting me, but they were seeing something else now. I wasn’t just Starlight Brooking anymore. I wasn’t just the little girl who used to run around on the Sand, or the young woman who used to help her uncle with his boats. They had no idea, of course, that I’d been the Ringwearer, accustomed to adoring crowds, and silence when she chose to speak, and helpers who’d bring her anything she desired. But they could see I’d become something new. They could see I’d grown big.
Julie came forward and took me by the hand. “They meant no harm, Starlight dear. It’s just that none of us has ever seen such creatures before.”
“I don’t see what she wants them for,” muttered a woman called Greenlantern.
“She can’t expect us not to be curious about them,” grumbled an oldmum called Watershine.
“No one is to touch them, and no one is to hurt them,” I repeated. “Do you understand that?”
I glared round at them, challenging them to defy me. And everyone whose gaze I met, from little children to their great-great grandparents, cringed and bowed their heads, just as helpers had done in the Headmanhouse at Edenheart.
In the silence, the two bats ran quickly to a tree and climbed to its highest branches.
I felt sick inside. I could hardly stand for weariness.
we are reely hear, said Jeff’s writing on the tree. I’d always known what the words said, of course, but now that I could read them for myself, I felt like they were shouting at me inside my head.
I wasn’t really here. I wasn’t really anywhere at all.
“Come on, Starlight,” said Julie. “Let me take you to my shelter. We can get you something to eat, and then you can sleep.”
I’d annoyed the Kneefolk by scolding them like children, but Julie speaking to me like that had turned me back into a child myself, and they were ready to be kind to me again.
“Yes, you go with Julie,” said Caroline. “We won’t disturb you, and we’ll make sure those bats of yours are safe. You can tell us later why they’re important to you.”
Julie kissed me on the cheek and then, stroking my fingers gently gently with her own, she began to lead me across the Sand, the people around us stepping back to let us pass, and Dixon, Glitterfish, and Johnny following after.
“There’s no hurry,” Julie said, still stroking my fingers. “There’s no hurry at all. Sleep as long as you want. We don’t mean to make things hard for you. We just can’t help being excited to—”
She broke off because she’d found the hard, cool smoothness of the ring. Gela’s heart, I should have hidden it! It was pure luck that someone hadn’t found it already and shouted their mouth off to all the Grounds! I snatched my hand away from her, pulled off the ring, and stuck it in a pocket on my wrap.
“I’d better bring the bats,” I said.
I turned back toward the people of Knee Tree Grounds, who’d all begun to talk about me to one another. Everyone fell silent.
“Hey, it’s me,” I called up to the bats. “It’s Starlight. Come down, and you can sleep next to me.”
The bats peered down at me from among the lanterns. Around me, there were stifled laughs.
“Come on, come down,” I repeated firmly, while the people giggled and muttered to one another.
But the two wingless bats crept headfirst down the tree and stood side by side at its base, looking up at me with their flat eyes flickering.
“Well,” said a woman called Lucy, loud enough for everyone to hear, “I never thought I’d see a—”
But she never finished what she was going to say, because another voice interrupted her.
“Come on, come down,” it said, and there was a low groan from the watching Kneefolk.
Everyone had heard that voice, and everyone knew that it came from one of the bats.
I was startled myself, but at least I already knew that greatbats could speak words. No one else here had ever heard of such a thing. I turned round again and led the way to Julie’s shelter, the batlings behind me, and my uncle and brother and sister following after them with scared, strained faces. And as we passed between the shelters at the edge of the Meeting Place, someone called out after us, cruelly mimicking the raspy voice of the bat.
“Kerm ern, kerm down,” she called, and everyone laughed.
Julie gave me some waternuts and fish and a flowercake and I gobbled them down.
“Where’s Angie?” I asked when I’d finally eaten enough.
“She’s gone, Starlight. She went to live on Mainground. It was only ten wakings ago, so you’ve only just missed her. Such a shame. She would have so loved to have seen you.”
For the first time since they’d found me out in forest, tears came from my eyes. I dashed them impatiently away.
“Why did she go?”
“A woman came over from Nob Head. She was one of those shadowspeakers. She did the usual routine, rolling her eyes and talking to dead people and Mother Gela. But when she went back to Mainground, Angie went with her.”
“Angie? With a shadowspeaker? But she used to laugh at them when we saw them over at Nob Head! And at the people who were fooled by them as well.”
“I know she did. And she told me herself that she’d only come to see this Mary woman for fun. But everything changed when the woman suddenly came over and spoke to her. ‘You’re beautiful’ was all the woman said, but I guess no one had ever said that to Angie before.”
“I wish I’d been here. I’d have talked her out of it.”
“Maybe you could have done, Starlight, but Angie wasn’t the only one. Two three others went with her. Things have changed here on Grounds, things don’t hold together like they once did.”
“If only I’d been here, I . . .”
But I couldn’t go on. I was just too tired, and this was just more cold stone inside me when there was so much of it there already. I crawled into Julie’s shelter to sleep.
Once—I guess it was many hours later—I heard Julie outside, telling someone in a whisper to go away and leave me alone.
Once the bats disturbed me with their clicking and creaking.
Three four times my own dreams jolted me awake. Dreams of falling. Dreams of fire. Dreams of cold hands reaching up from dark dark water.
“Everything’s all right, Starlight, everything’s all right,” came my brother Johnny’s voice from outside the shelter.
They were taking turns to watch over me.
“It’s only a dream, Starlight,” murmured my uncle Dixon another time. “I’m here, and you’re safe and among your friends.”
Beyond him and not far away I could hear many voices talking, and there was a smell of roasting fatbuck. It was waking’s end on Knee Tree Grounds, and folk were gathering yet again to remind themselves who and where they were.
I sank down again into sleep.
And then, quite suddenly, many hours later, I was properly and finally awake, wide awake, with
no more sleep left inside me.
Julie Deepwater
She’d slept right through a sleep time and a waking and into the beginning of another sleep so that when she finally emerged, most of the Kneefolk were snoring and snuffling in their shelters. I’d been dozing on the Sand against a warm tree trunk, a rolled buckskin behind me to protect me against its heat. I rose to my feet and hobbled a few steps toward her.
“Your bats are just there, look,” I told her, softly, so as not to wake the people in the shelters nearby. “They’re quite safe.”
The creatures were standing on a branch in the greeny-yellow light of the treelanterns, rubbing their faces with their hands.
“I’ve never heard of a bat that could talk, I must say.”
“There are lots over there,” she said. “People use them to carry and fetch things.”
“Useful,” I said. “Anyway, like I say, they’re quite safe. And you are, too, Starlight. You’re back home. Whatever’s happened to you, you’re safe safe now.”
She laughed harshly. “Me? Safe?”
“Yes, of course. Who’s going to harm you here? Whatever happened to you, it was far away on the other side of Pool.”
“Listen, Julie. We need to move quickly. I need to get away from here. They’ll be over here looking for me soon soon. There’s only one way I can stop them.”
“Why would they come all this way, Starlight? What have you done that could possibly make them go to all that trouble?”
She felt in the pocket of her wrap and took out a metal ring. I remembered noticing it on her finger. I hadn’t been sure at the time why she’d felt the need to hide it, but anything made of metal was a novelty on Knee Tree Grounds, and I’d guessed she wanted to avoid having yet another thing that people would ask her questions about. Now she handed it to me.
“Oh, it’s beautiful, Starlight. It’s even two different colors, like the ring in the . . .”
I felt that same dread that had come over me when I first caught sight of Starlight’s bats. Slowly slowly, hardly daring to do it, I felt with the tip of my little finger inside the ring and found the words inside.
“You’re not telling me that . . .”
Starlight nodded.
“But . . . oh, Tom’s dick, Starlight, what were you thinking? Why did you bring it here? You must know the Kneefolk came here in first place to get away from this thing!”
She didn’t speak for a little while, and when she did, it was slowly slowly, like she’d been practicing the words in her mind.
“I didn’t have a choice about bringing it. I wouldn’t have got away if those three guards from Mainground hadn’t taken me in their boat, and they only took me because of this ring.”
“The three guards you met at Veeklehouse?”
“Yes.”
“Well, what happened to them?”
“I did for them.”
“You . . . ?”
“I drowned them. One, because they lied to me. Two, because they were going to hand me over to David Strongheart. Three, because they wanted to force their dicks on me. I don’t even feel sorry about it.”
She said that, but her voice was shaking and she was trembling all over.
“I thought about throwing the ring into the Pool,” she said, “doing the thing that John Redlantern didn’t dare to do that time he stood on the cliff at Veeklehouse. But . . .”
“I suppose you figured that wouldn’t help, because the people in New Earth would still think you’d taken it and still come over here looking for it?”
“Exactly. And when they came I wouldn’t be able to prove to them that the ring was at the bottom of the Pool, would I? They wouldn’t believe me. They’d think that either we had it here, or we’d given it to the Davidfolk. And they’re not like Kneefolk over there, Julie. They take power seriously. They do whatever they need to do, even if that means hurting or killing.”
“Like the Davidfolk.”
“Or maybe even worse.”
I remembered I still had the ring in my hand, smooth and beautiful as a spearfish. I gave it quickly back to Starlight.
Starlight Brooking
I would have liked to have been the child there for a bit longer, let Julie comfort me and tell me that everything would be all right. She was the same age as my mum, after all. But when she gave me back the ring, I knew it was all up to me.
“I must take this away from here as soon as possible,” I told her, putting it back in my pocket.
“But surely wherever it goes, the Johnfolk will still come looking for it here?”
“Not if I give it back to them.”
Julie stared at me as if I’d gone nuts. “Give it back? You can’t cross the Pool again!”
“No, but boats go back and forth between Brown River and Brightrest these wakings. I’ll go down to Brown River and find someone there who can take it.”
Julie ran her hands over her face. “Well, we won’t let you go on your own this time,” she said. “I’ll come, too, and we’ll get other people to help us.”
“Thanks, Julie. I couldn’t do it on my own, not alpway across the wind. We’ll have to be careful who we ask, though. They’ll have to be people who can keep a secret.” I’d thought about this a lot, out there on my own in Deep Darkness. “The Davidfolk must never know the ring came here,” I said. “Imagine what they’d think if they knew their precious ring had come back across the Pool, and we’d just sent it back to the Johnfolk! And it would only take one foolish person to say something stupid at Nob Head, and then they’d know.”
“You’re right. And it’s worse than you realize, Starlight, because the Davidfolk have started coming over here since you went away. Angie’s not the only one who’s gone over to them. There’s talk of us having guards here. Greenlantern even suggested we get a shadowspeaker of our own.”
“I guess that’s my fault.”
“Well, our fault. That smart sister of yours was quite right; our trip to Veeklehouse really did shake things up.”
“As if I hadn’t caused enough grief over there. Oh, Julie, I’ve changed the story of so many lives.”
Julie thought about that for a few heartbeats. “Well, no one can know what the consequences will be,” she said, “once their actions are let loose in the world. Even now you can’t know what will happen in the long run. None of us can. Who knows whether things would have been better or worse in a hundred wombtimes, if you hadn’t crossed the Pool with Greenstone?”
“You say that, but you don’t know what I’ve done. Someone over there is dead because of me.”
“You mean those three guards?”
The cold stone inside me shifted, sending out icy shafts of pain. “Them, too, and maybe others as well, but the one I’m talking about is . . .” I could hardly bring myself to say his name. “The one I’m talking about is Greenstone.”
“Greenstone? I thought . . . Well, it doesn’t matter what I thought. What happened?”
“I’ll tell you another waking.” There was no time now for crying. “We need to make plans. We need to fix that boat.”
“I had a look at it, Starlight. Its wind-thing is broken, and the right-hand part of the boat is coming away from the floor a bit, but apart from that it’s fine. It shouldn’t take more than a half waking to fix if a bunch of us—”
Someone had come up behind us.
“It shouldn’t take more than half a waking to fix what?” asked Glitterfish.
I guessed she’d come to take a turn at watching me so that Julie could get some sleep.
“My boat.”
“Your boat? You’ve only just got here!”
I took the ring from my pocket and handed it to her as she squatted down on the sand.
“Keep your voice down, Glits,” Julie cautioned her, as she stood up to leave us sisters on our own. “I know it’s a shock, but keep your voice down.”
I guess she was worried Glitterfish would start to yell when she saw the danger I’d brought with
me, but my sister was completely still and quiet as she turned the little circle of metal in her hands and held it up to read the words. She was one of the few people on Grounds who knew how.
“To Angela, with love from Mum and Dad,” she read out softly.
Her eyes filled with tears as she handed the ring back to me.
“Such a simple thing,” she said. “And all that cruelty and killing over it.”
“I know,” I said, “but I’ll tell you what I’ve found out. The world is full full of people who go through their whole lives longing for a mother’s love.”
Glitterfish Brooking
People had called her Mother over there, Starlight told me, as if she were Gela herself. Hard fighting men had cried with happiness when they saw her. Women old enough to be her granny had reached out for her as if they were little children. Who would have thought it? My little sister, Starlight, who’d always said she’d never have kids, had ended up mother to half of Eden!
“I’d have thought you’d like that, Star. You always liked being the center of attention. Why didn’t you stay?”
Starlight looked quickly away from me. “It’s hard to explain without a long long story,” she said after a few seconds, “but one reason is that I thought that if I was playing the part of Gela, I should speak Gela’s real words.”
“Real words? You don’t mean . . . You don’t mean the Secret Story, by any chance?”
My little sister looked at me in surprise. “Yes, I do, but how do you . . . ?”
“Mum told it to me.”
“But when she told it to me she said—”
“She said that it was for you alone, yes? And that, whatever you did, you mustn’t tell your sister because she couldn’t keep a secret? She said the exact same things to me. Bloody old Mum. She was so desperate to tie each one of us to her that she divided us from each other.”
“I suppose she did.”
“Funny thing is that Julie’s mother told her the Story as well. Julie tried to pass it on to me. I told her I already knew it.”
Starlight managed a small smile. She was rested by her sleep, but she still looked weary weary, like she was carrying a big big load.
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