I felt like crying, I felt like yelling out that I’d made a mistake and I wanted the game to stop. I wished I’d just run like Gerry had done, like every other kid would have done, and every grownup too, unless they were in a whole gang of hunters and they had strong spears with proper blackglass heads. All I had was a kid’s buck-hunting spear, with a shaft made from a redlantern sucker and a lousy spike off a spiketree shoved onto the end of it and glued there with boiled-down sap.
But there was no point in crying or yelling. There wasn’t even any point in being scared. It wasn’t as if I could tell the leopard I wanted to give up and not play any more, was it, like a kid playing hide and seek? It wasn’t as if the leopard was going to say ‘Fair enough then, mate, game over’. I’d made my choice and now I was stuck with it.
So I got myself in a good position and I readied my spear and I watched the leopard, waiting for its move. And I stopped having feelings. There was no point in feelings just then, so I made up my mind not to feel anything at all. I was quite good at that.
‘Help!’ Gerry began to holler from the treetop. ‘Gela’s sake, come and help us! It’s a bloody leopard here! It’s a big big leopard and it’s going to eat John!’
‘Shut up, Gerry, you idiot,’ I hissed. ‘You break my concentration and I bloody will get eaten.’
The leopard watched me. A leopard’s eyes are round and flat and big as the palm of your hand, and they don’t move in the leopard’s head like our eyes do. They don’t turn from side to side. But when you’re up as close as I was, you can see that inside the eye there are things moving, little glints that shift and glitter. And it’s like you’re looking into the thoughts in its black head, like you can actually see them. You can see them, but you can’t understand them. You can only see they’re there.
The leopard began to sing.
Looking straight at my eyes with those blank glittery discs, it opened its mouth and out came that sweet sad slow song that leopards sing, in that sweet sad voice that they have, that voice that sounded just like a woman’s. Everyone had heard it of course: that lonely ooooo-eeeee-aaaaa from far out in forest that sounded so human that you just couldn’t help thinking it was human in some way. Everyone had woken up in middle of a sleep and heard it out there. And everyone had thought to themselves, Gela’s heart, I am glad glad I’m here in Family with people all around me. And then they’d listened out for the friendly familiar sounds of other groups in Family with different wakings: folk cooking meat and scraping skins, folk building shelters with branches and bark, folk hacking at trees with their stone axes, folk chatting and laughing and arguing and shouting things to one another.
And that sweet sound of other people awake and busy, that gentle sound, it made the leopard off in forest seem far away, like another whole world, much too far away to think or worry about. It was just an animal after all, just an animal out there beyond the fence, hunting its prey in its own funny way, no different from a bat really, or a tree fox, or a tubeslinker. And so they sighed and rolled over, and got themselves comfortable among their sleeping skins and got themselves cosy and ready to go back to sleep. And it was almost cosier for them now than it was before, hearing that lonely leopard out there when they were safe and warm inside the fence, just like it was cosy cosy hearing rain on the bark roof of your shelter when you were dry and warm inside.
But for me all this wasn’t happening out there beyond a fence. The leopard was here and I was here too. And it was singing not to some stonebuck or hopper it had cornered, but to me. It was singing me a lullaby, singing a lament for long ago, singing a song of love, a slowly fading song, slowly fading away, sinking back, peacefully fading back and back into the distance, fading and fading and fading until it was far away, not here at all any more, but lost and forgotten . . .
And suddenly the beast was coming right at me, hurtling across the few yards of space that lay between us, its jaws open wide wide, its eyes glinting, its head down ready to kill, while its peaceful song lagged and faded behind it, just like its spots. I pulled myself out of the dream. I lifted my spear. I waited for my moment, knowing that I’d only get one shot at this, only one chance to get it right. I lifted my spear, and I readied it, and I told myself to hold steady and wait. Not yet . . . Not yet . . . Not yet . . .
Now!
Michael’s names, that next moment felt good! I got it just right. I shoved my spear into that leopard’s mouth and it went right down its big hot throat.
Wham – the butt end of the spear caught me in the chest and sent me flying. Splat – a great big gout of the leopard’s greeny-black blood came spurting out all over me. That big black beast crashed to the ground and began to thresh about, bubbling and gurgling and clawing at the horrible hard thing stuck in its throat that was stopping it from breathing. Quickly I rolled away from its flailing feet. Aaaargh-aaargh-aaargh, went the leopard, trying to knock away the spear, aaaargh-aaargh-aaargh. It was drowning. It was drowning in its own blood. Pretty soon it stopped making that noise and just gurgled and twitched a bit. And then it was still.
‘Tom’s dick, John, you’ve bloody killed it!’
Gerry had jumped down from the tree and was running towards me.
I scrambled to my feet. My head had gone all weird and I didn’t know what to do or think or say.
‘Lucy Lu reckons leopards are dead women,’ was what I came out with, talking in a funny bright voice. ‘You know, Shadow People. She says that’s why their voices sound like that and their songs are so sad sad. Of course it’s crap, like everything she says. I mean . . .’
‘What are you on about, John, you bloody idiot? You did for it, look! All by yourself! Tom’s neck, you did for it all by yourself.’
I was shaking all over. I couldn’t have been shaking any more, I reckon, if I’d just spent an hour wandering around naked on Snowy Dark.
‘I’ll tell you a funny thing,’ I said, ‘when we saw those woollybucks up there on the snow, I thought for a moment they were a Landing Veekle from Earth. Hah! That was pretty dumb of me, wasn’t it?’
Gerry laughed.
‘Tom’s dick, John! You just killed a leopard!’
‘But I suppose one waking someone will come, won’t they? They say the starship was damaged when Angela and Michael chased after it in their Police Veekle and tried to stop it. They say it leaked. But even if the starship broke on the way back, and even if the Three Companions died, the people on Earth would find it sooner or later, wouldn’t they? I mean it had a Computer, didn’t it, and a Rayed Yo? Okay it’s two hundred wombtimes ago now that they left Eden. But think how long it must take to build a new starship. I mean it takes old Jeffo half a wombtime just to build one lousy log boat to fish with out on Greatpool.’
Gerry took my shoulders and shook me.
‘Gela’s tits, John, will you stop talking about bloody sky-boats! You’ve killed a leopard! All by yourself! With a kid’s spear!’
It was weird weird. The leopard was still twitching in front of me, I was covered with its black blood, and I was shaking shaking all over. But tears came into my eyes as I thought about the Three Companions, who left Tommy and Angela on Eden to try and get back to Earth: Dixon, who had the idea to steal the starship, and Mehmet, who Angela liked best because he was kind, and gentle Michael, who named the animals and plants. I wished I knew just what happened to them when they set off back across sky to Earth in their leaky sky-boat.
And I wished we knew how long it would be before someone came for us from Earth.
2
Tina Spiketree
John was interesting. I mean he looked nice, and I fancied him in that way, but what fascinated me most was the way he behaved. All that hunting trip he was trying to be different, trying not to be the same as all the other newhair guys. He went right up that icy ridge. He annoyed Old Roger and David by questioning the True Story. He stayed still and quiet while Gerry was trying to get laughs with his cold feet. Yes, and I’d given him that oyster, and he
’d been pleased, but he didn’t make a thing out of it like others boys would. He didn’t make a big thing about how he and I were going to have a slip. And now, while the rest of us were hunting bucks, he’d done for a leopard all by himself, which no one ever did, not unless they were cornered and had no choice. And his cousin Gerry was telling everyone that John did have a choice. He had plenty of time to run up a tree, but he’d decided to stay on the ground and try his luck.
So why had he done it? I could just about imagine some silly boy doing a thing like that for a dare, or doing it because his friends said he was a wimp, but John wouldn’t go for a dare, and no one thought he was a wimp. He’d done it for some other reason. I hadn’t figured out what it was, but I could see that John was like a good chess player: he didn’t just do what seemed right at one moment, he thought ahead. He thought about where he was trying to get to, four five moves on.
Well, I was a bit like that too. I knew when to bide my time. So I didn’t ask John why he did for the leopard, however much I wanted to know, and I didn’t make a big fuss of him like most of the others did, and for most of the walk I fell behind him, leaving him to talk to the ones who wanted to go over the story of the leopard, over and over and over again. But I smiled to myself as we walked back to Lava Blob and then to Family, because I was looking forward to figuring him out.
Family was in eight groups, all bunched up together among the big old rocks that stuck up out of the ground between Greatpool and Longpool and up towards Deep Pool. Each group had its own space with bark shelters and a fireplace where embers were always set glowing. (It could take half a waking to get a new fire going with twigs or blackglass sparks, so no one liked to let a fire go out.) The outer edge of Family was formed by the pools or by rocks, or, when there wasn’t any natural sort of barrier, by fences made by piling up branches and rocks to keep out leopards and other big animals. First group inside the fence on Peckhamside was Batwing, so that’s the bit of the fence we came to first.
Old Roger Redlantern and big dumb Met dragged away the branches that made the Batwing gateway.
‘Leopard kill!’ Old Roger hollered out. ‘Jade’s boy killed a bloody leopard!’
‘John did for it,’ yelled Gerry excitedly, ‘my cousin John!’
Lately the grownups in most of the groups had decided we needed more food-trees in Family to help with our problem of not enough to eat. They’d decided we’d have to get rid of trees whose fruits were no good as food, like redlanterns. And when we’d set out six wakings before, Batwing had been busy chopping down a big redlantern tree, and they’d been at it all the time we’d been away, hacking away at that tree with stone axes for four wakings. They’d finally managed to pull it down with ropes maybe two three hours before we got there, and when we came in through the fence, there was the big tree lying on the ground with bits of broken axes strewn around it. (Someone would need to go over to Blue Hills soon for more blackglass.) The ground was still warm and sticky with sap.
Some little kid had got himself in the wrong place when the hot hot sap sprayed out. He’d been badly burnt. Burnt burnt. If he lived he’d have the scars forever. And now he was yelling and yelling in a shelter, and his mum sobbing by his side. Everything was spoiled for him and her, everything wrecked, by one stupid moment. But the rest of Batwing were pleased pleased with their work. They were walking round that great big fallen thing, and whacking at it with sticks and talking about what a bugger it’d been to get down, and how much bark they’d get off it, and how much wood. And the kids were looking forward to eating the stumpcandy. And everyone was trying not to notice the screaming kid in the shelter.
‘Boy killed a leopard!’ Old Roger boomed out again. ‘Young newhair. Jade’s boy John.’
John and Gerry were carrying the dead thing tied onto two branches. I was walking behind them, with ugly old David and handsome shallow Fox. Four others were carrying the big woollybuck that four of us had cornered and done for about the same time as John got the leopard. A lot of eating that buck was going to give, and a lot of skin and bones too to make wraps and tools with, and normally everyone would have been impressed, but now all they were interested in was the leopard. They came running over to touch that weird black skin that was so smooth smooth that it was almost like touching nothing at all. They wanted to look into its dead dead eyes. They wanted to feel the ridges down its sides where the starflower spots had glittered and flowed when it was alive.
‘Look at the big black teeth on it,’ the Batwings said, reaching out to touch.
‘Careful with them,’ said Old Roger, though a leopard’s teeth aren’t exactly fragile. ‘They belong to Redlantern, don’t forget. We don’t want good knives damaged.’
‘I saw him kill it,’ Gerry kept saying over and over. ‘I was up in a tree and I saw it! John could have climbed a tree too but no, that’s not my cousin John. He faced it all by himself with an ordinary kid’s buck-spear. Imagine that! Just an ordinary spear with a spiketree tip.’
And Gerry looked around at the impressed Batwings, and the people from other groups who’d started to appear: Fishcreek, Spiketree, Brooklyn. He was thrilled, because no one had ever been so interested in what he had to say. (He wasn’t a boy that was particularly funny or clever or interesting. He didn’t really even have opinions of his own. I’d hardly even noticed him until now.)
‘And he killed it cleanly in one go,’ Gerry told them all. ‘One single stab.’
‘Well, he wouldn’t be here to tell about it if he hadn’t, would he?’ said a Batwing boy about mine and John’s age. ‘It’s not like a leopard’s going to stand there and let you have a second go.’
The boy was called Mehmet. He was named, like a lot of people were, for Mehmet Haribey, who was one of the Three Companions. But, though the True Story said that Mehmet Haribey was friendly and kind, Mehmet Batwing didn’t look all that friendly. He had a narrow clever face and a little pointy yellow beard, and he was a sarky bugger who liked to find fault with people.
Well, I can be pretty sarky myself when I want to be, and I can deal with sarky people, no trouble, but Gerry didn’t know how to handle them at all. I saw him look at Mehmet and frown, but he really couldn’t work out what exactly Mehmet was getting at, so he shrugged and carried on.
‘A bloody great leopard,’ he yelled out again excitedly, turning away from Mehmet. ‘John says I can share the hearts. And it’s fully grown, not just a little one. It sang at him and everything. Sang like a woman, even when it was running towards him. You should have heard it. You should have heard. Like a lovely gentle woman it was, even when it was running at him with its jaws wide open. Fully grown it is. Have you ever seen such a big one? Biggest one ever, I’d say. John says I can have one of its hearts, because I was there too when the leopard came.’
We passed on through the group and into Redlantern group area, which came before Spiketree. And Redlanterns got out some fruit beer and passed it round in dried whitefruit shells for all us to drink and celebrate the double kill.
‘John, you idiot,’ said John’s mother Jade, with that smile of hers that was supposed to send men crazy. ‘Why couldn’t you climb a bloody tree like any normal person?’
I looked at her and wondered why men couldn’t see the emptiness inside her. It was like she was acting being a person, she was moving her pretty body around to make it seem alive, but inside she was lost lost.
‘Jade, Jade,’ said her sister Sue, laughing. ‘Your only son kills a leopard by himself and that’s all you can say?’
Sue Redlantern was Gerry’s mum and she was a batface, like David, and like my own sister Jane. She was as ugly ugly as John’s mum was beautiful, but she was kind and giving and everyone knew it, not only in Redlantern but across whole of our side of Family.
‘He’s a bloody fool,’ said Jade.
I looked at John. His face was still still, but Gerry was upset on his behalf.
‘Your son John is brilliant brilliant,’ he told Jade hotly.
‘He’s bloody brilliant. How many kids of twenty wombtimes have ever . . .?’
‘You should say years,’ said Old Roger. ‘You should say fifteen years, not twenty wombtimes. You know what Oldest say: the world doesn’t come from a woman’s belly.’
‘How many kids of fifteen years,’ Gerry said, ‘have ever done for a leopard on their own?’
‘He is a brave boy,’ said Roger, ‘even if he is rude to his elders.’
‘He’s a bloody lucky boy,’ said sour David, pursing his ugly batlips that split open right up into where his nose ought to be.
Little kids were crowding round with toy spears cut from whitelantern twigs.
‘How did you kill it, John? What was it like?’
There weren’t only kids from Redlantern around us now, but from my group Spiketree and from Brooklyn and even from London and Blueside, right across the other side of Family. Grownups had come over too.
‘Right down the throat, I hear,’ said an old Fishcreek guy called Tom. He was another batface and he had clawfeet too, poor bugger, so he couldn’t ever have been a hunter. But he was clever with making things out of wood and stone – spears, saws, axes, knives, boats – and he liked to talk about hunting. He liked to show that he knew about it.
Dark Eden Page 3
