Dark Eden

by Chris Beckett

  He had his arm round Tina. She was shaking shaking. I was shaking too.

  ‘Yeah, they will. They’ll know it was to do with us, because they’ll know that Dixon and Met and John Blueside came over this way and that the three of them came past Lava Blob on purpose to make trouble. David planned it with them, I’m sure. Maybe he hoped to get us to chase back after them into their part of forest. He’ll have been wanting to make trouble for a long time. He’ll have been wanting to be able to go to Caroline and Family and say the agreement wasn’t working.’

  ‘So if they know it was to do with us,’ said Gela in her slow deep voice, ‘they’ll still come after us when the three of them don’t come back. Even if they pretend to Family that they’re just trying to find out what happened.’

  ‘Yes of course. So we haven’t got much time. We need to get ourselves together and go.’

  ‘Go where?’ Dix asked.

  Gela’s tits, where had he been all this time? What did he think this whole business was all about?

  ‘Over the top, of course. Over Snowy Dark. Like we’ve been planning, yeah? Like we’ve been planning ever since we came here.’ I looked round at their faces, and I realized that it wasn’t just Dix. Tom’s dick and Harry’s! None of them had really believed this was ever going to happen. Not one. It was always going to be somewhen off in the future, never ever now.

  Still, it was too late for talking and explaining. They were just going to have to get it through their heads by themselves.

  I started going through all the things we’d need to get together.

  ‘Gela, you sort out wraps for everyone. Mike, get all our spare skins and blackglass and rope. Dave, we need all our meat and stumpcandy and seedcakes. Clare, can you sort out some embers . . .’

  In a couple of hours, the drum had called everyone back. All twenty-one of us were there, plus Janny and Clare’s babies, and we had the meeting, a sort of Strornry, our last in Circle Valley. It was a dark dark time. No one had ever argued with me about whether we would really go over the mountains, not once, but I suppose they’d all privately hoped that it would never really get to that. We had the agreement with Family written on bark after all, and for ten periods it had seemed to work. Family had handed over blackglass and skins to us as they’d agreed. We’d had plenty of meat to spare to keep our side of the deal. I suppose they’d all persuaded themselves that things would just go on in the same way forever with our own little family at Cold Path Neck, Old Family going its own way on the far side of Lava Blob and a bit of toing and froing going on between us here and our mums and friends and groupmates over there. Most of them seemed to have decided that going across Snowy Dark was nothing more than a weird dream of mine. Some of them had never even given it any thought.

  ‘How do we know there even is another side?’ said Lucy Batwing. ‘Dark might go on and on. And then we’d die, wouldn’t we? We’d die of cold.’

  ‘We know it doesn’t go on forever,’ I told her. ‘When Tommy and Gela and the Companions first saw Eden from their sky-boat, the thing they noticed was that it was all covered in light. Remember that? All covered in light, not just one patch of light and the rest dark. That was weird to them because Earth got its light from a star, and didn’t have lights of its own. So they noticed it, and it stuck in their minds. That’s why they talked about it to their kids, and why we still remember the story.’

  ‘Okay, so there’s more forest beyond Dark,’ said Clare Brooklyn, who was nursing her baby boy, ‘but we still might not reach it. Even with your wraps and woolly horses and all, we’re not going to be able to keep going more than a few wakings, are we? Not in freezing cold and pitch darkness. Not even us newhairs, let alone my little Fox and Janny’s Flower.’

  The twenty of them were ranged around in a circle, most sitting, some standing. I was pacing around in middle. I couldn’t keep still, that was too much to ask of myself, only one two hours after I’d done for Dixon Blueside with my spear.

  ‘It’s dangerous but we’ve got to try it,’ I said. ‘In a couple of wakings they’ll come after us. David Redlantern and all his friends in Family. Caroline and Council won’t be able to control them any more. They’ll be over here with clubs and spears. Look what they did to Jeff, look what they tried to do to Tina. And that was before we did for David and the others.’

  ‘Well, we didn’t do it actually, John,’ said Mehmet Batwing with an angry laugh. ‘That was you. You did it. You and Harry and Gerry. The first killings in Eden. Smart move, John. Smart smart move.’

  His thin little face was hard and cold and there was suddenly a dark ugly feeling out in whole group that each person had been keeping hidden inside until then. Two or three people muttered in agreement with what Mehmet had said, including Angie Blueside, a cousin of John Blueside who was lying dead in forest right at that moment, with Gerry’s spearhole in his belly and starbirds and tree foxes feeding on his flesh. Why should we all freeze on Snowy Dark, was what a lot of them were thinking, just because John and Harry and Gerry lost their heads and did for three people who were already running away?

  ‘I think you’re forgetting, Mehmet,’ said Tina in her iciest voice. She was angry angry. ‘I think you’re forgetting what Dixon Blueside and his mates did to Jeff and what they tried to do to me. Do you think they’d have left us all in peace if we’d just . . .?’

  I put my hand on her arm to tell her to leave it; I didn’t need her to defend me.

  ‘No, you’re quite right, Mehmet,’ I said, as calmly as I could with my tight tight throat. ‘And you’re welcome to stay here or to go back to Family, Mehmet. All of you are welcome to stay or go back. Take what’s yours, if you like, and walk back to Family. Tell them it was John and Harry and Gerry who did for Dixon and his mates, and that it was nothing at all to do with you. Which is true. It’s perfectly true. So go on if you want to. Go on. No one’s stopping any of you. You all came to me, remember, all of you, every single one, out of your own choice. I didn’t force you to come and I certainly won’t force you to stay.’

  I folded my arms and stood and waited. Mehmet looked around awkwardly, but all his support seemed to have disappeared.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I just meant . . .’

  ‘You just meant what?’

  ‘Oh nothing. It doesn’t matter.’

  He was sort of smiling but under the smile he was ashamed, and under the shame he was angry angry. He was going to be trouble, I could see, and it would actually be better if he left. But if I tried to make him go, that would have been trouble too. That would have been even more trouble. It might have made whole plan fall apart.

  ‘I’m not making anyone do anything,’ I repeated. ‘Do you all understand?’

  There was silence for a bit.

  Then Lucy London spoke. She was a short plump girl with bulgy anxious eyes.

  ‘But if we go over Dark we won’t ever see our mums again, or our sisters and brothers. I mean, it’s okay not seeing them every waking like now, when we can still see them if we want to, up by Blob. But if we go over Dark that won’t happen any more. We’ll never see them, never never, and we won’t even get a chance to say goodbye.’

  ‘No, you won’t,’ I said.

  ‘But that’s not fair!’ said Lucy London, and several people murmured crossly in agreement.

  ‘I’m not making you do anything,’ I repeated, as patiently as I could. ‘You can go back to Family if you want. Or you can stay here at Cold Path Neck if you think you can make a go of it. It’s up to you.’

  ‘Yes, but Family is horrible now,’ complained Lucy London. ‘And staying here would be no good if there were only a few of us. We’d be lonely, wouldn’t we? It wouldn’t be any good at all.’

  ‘Mother Angela would say it was wrong to go over Dark,’ said Julie Blueside. ‘Okay we came over here, and didn’t stay right next to Circle, but we’re still in Circle Valley, aren’t we, and we’d still be able to see if a Veekle from Earth came down from sky. Plus our frie
nds in Family would tell Earth where we were.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said her younger sister Candy. ‘And my mum told me that First Angela and First Tommy and First Harry all came to Lucy Lu in a dream and told her that if we go across Dark we’ll be lost forever. We won’t have the Shadow People to watch over us any more, and even after we die, we’ll never go back to Earth.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ sneered Tina’s sister Jane. ‘So how come Lucy Lu used to say that beyond Snowy Dark was where the Shadow People lived?’

  ‘Don’t bother, Jane,’ said Tina. ‘Once people start talking about messages from Mother Gela and the Shadow People, black can be white and white black and a thing can be true and its opposite true all at the same time.’

  ‘Well, you’ve got that wrong, Tina,’ shouted Julie. ‘You just don’t understand. Yes, in a way the Shadow People live beyond Dark, but not in that way . . .’

  But then Harry started up again.

  ‘They did for Brownhorse!’ he yelled, sweating, redfaced, spit flying out of his mouth, and banging hard hard on the drum with every word. ‘They were bad bad. They did for Brownhorse! They nearly did for Harry’s sister too!’

  ‘Leave it, Harry!’ screamed Gerry. He was shaking shaking all over. ‘Just bloody leave it, alright?’

  And now six seven people were all shouting at once.

  ‘Shut up, Harry!’

  ‘Brownhorse was just a woollybuck!’

  ‘Just because you don’t know anything about the Shadow People, Tina, doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I’ll talk about what I bloody want . . .’

  ‘Leave Harry alone. They did for Brownhorse, Jeff’s Brownhorse.’

  ‘Shut up, Harry!’

  ‘It matters to some of us what the Shadow People think, Tina, even if it doesn’t matter to you.’

  ‘Gela’s tits, can’t you see we haven’t got time for all that crap!’

  ‘They did for Brownhorse . . .’

  ‘Don’t you tell me what we’ve got time for!’

  It was like a chess game when it gets stuck and won’t move forward. I needed to bring a new piece into play.

  ‘Everybody be quiet,’ I hollered. ‘Shut up now and I’ll show you something!’

  29

  Tina Spiketree

  We were in terrible danger. Three people were dead. Harry and Gerry and John were killers, and they were all three shaking shaking all the time because of their heads trying to get hold of what they’d done. And there was going to be more killing, and any one of us could easily end up dead in only a waking or two. This was one of the most important meetings that anyone on Eden had ever had, but it looked as if it was going to become a pointless shouting match, not about what we needed to do but about the Shadow People, or about Harry being too noisy, or about how a woollybuck had died. We were facing death yet we were fighting about nothing at all.

  But then John silenced everyone. He absolutely silenced us. He took away our breath.

  ‘Angela has come to me,’ he said. ‘She came to me over by Deep Pool. She told me she wants her children to spread out over Eden and not stay in one place pining for Earth. She wants us to be at home here in Eden, not just in this valley but at home all over Eden, just like people are at home all over Earth. She says Earth would expect that of us, and will come looking for us wherever we are. She says Earth will be disappointed with us if we stay only in one place.’

  He looked round our dumbstruck faces. No one would have thought it possible. He was just about the last person in Eden that you’d expect to say a thing like that. I was scared scared someone was going to laugh and it would all fall apart. And I think someone would have done too if he hadn’t said something else that was even more weird and even more unexpected.

  ‘If you don’t believe me, have a look at this. Gela has given me a sign.’

  He reached down, took something from the little pocket at the edge of his waistwrap and held it up between his finger and thumb. It was small small and at first I couldn’t think what it was.

  ‘You know the story of Gela’s Ring? You remember it? Angela’s lost ring? Well, this is the ring. I found it, soon after she first came to me.’

  I started shivering all over. Some of the others cried or laughed, like Angela herself might have done if someone had found the ring for her, long after she had given it up for lost. Some of them swore. Michael’s names! Harry’s dick! Tom’s neck! Even the two little babies picked up the strange feelings all around them and began to yell, first Clare’s little Fox and then Janny’s baby Flower. And after that, would you believe it, the two remaining horsebucks in their cave – Def and Whitehorse, Jeff called them – they started as well, like they could pick up the excitement too, and that made everyone laugh, even the ones who were crying, and even the ones who’d done for other human beings only a few hours before.

  But as John moved round everyone showing them the ring, and how tiny and smooth it was, and how it was really made out of metal, and how it had tiny writing inside with Angela’s name, tiny writing that could only have been done on Earth, I started to feel angry.

  John had done it again! He’d behaved again like he was the only one in the world that needed to know or decide anything! He’d destroyed Circle without asking anyone, and kept the ring for himself without telling anyone. He’d expected us to follow him and trust him, but he hadn’t trusted any of us at all.

  I was so angry I didn’t even care about the ring any more. All I wanted to do was scream and yell at John. But I couldn’t do that then, could I? Angry as I was, I knew that we were all in danger. And I knew that everyone here needed to be able to believe in John and trust him, because what he said was right. We did have to go. We did have to take the risk of going over Snowy Dark.

  But then an idea came to me. I realized there was something I could do to stop John having it all his own way, without messing up the things we needed to do.

  ‘I know,’ I said, ‘let’s do the story now. Let’s do the story of Gela’s Lost Ring. You can be the teller, Dix. I’ll be Angela. Harry, you can be the first Harry. Suzie Fishcreek and Lucy Batwing, you can be the first Suzie and Lucy. Clare, you can be the first Clare, Candy can be Candice. John can be Tommy.’

  Everyone was puzzled by this at first. It was too sudden, I suppose, and they couldn’t see the point of it, and it sort of interrupted them in middle of looking at the wonderful perfect ring. But at the same time everyone could see it was, in a way, a suitable thing to do, to remember the story of this famous thing that had just been put in front of them. That was how we’d been brought up. Every Any Virsry we’d been told to remember things, to join the present up with the past.

  As for John, when I peeked at him sideways, I could see that he was feeling just like I’d been feeling a few moments before. He was angry angry, he felt set up, he really didn’t want this at all, but at the same time he knew he had to go along with it. I hadn’t given him a choice, just like he hadn’t given me one.

  Good! Serve him right. Let him see what it felt like.

  ‘So this is the story of Angela’s ring and how she lost it,’ began Dix, that kind pretty boy who had stopped to care for me and Jeff while John and the others went belting off to kill.

  ‘Gela never wanted to come to Eden. She and Michael were made to come here against their will by Tommy and Dixon and Mehmet. She decided to stay and start Family here with Tommy, because she thought it was better to live and see what the future would bring until Earth came back than to go into sky where it was pretty certain that she’d drown. But she was sad. She missed her mum. She missed her father. She missed her group, which was called London, like our first group here in Eden. She missed the great star – Sun – that filled up Earth with light. She missed being with people that she loved and knew. She was sad sad inside. But she didn’t show that to people. She made the best of things. She cared for her kids and did all she could to make their life happy. She even thought about us in the future and . . . and . . .’

  H
e hesitated here, because he was about to say that Gela made Circle of Stones, which is what the story normally said, but he could see that it wouldn’t be right to say that any more (even though everyone knew quite well what it was that he was missing out), and that it was a part of the story that was now going to have to change.

  ‘ . . . and she made traditions and laws,’ he said, ‘that we still keep. She even made herself love Tommy, though he wasn’t the kind of man she normally liked, and even though he often got angry and sulky, and once twice he even hit her.’

  He looked round at John and held out his hand for the ring. I could see John didn’t want to hand it over one bit, but once again he had no choice, not without spoiling the story. Clever Dix. Kind, pretty and clever.

  ‘Angela had a ring . . .’ Dix stumbled a bit in his words there, because of all the weird feelings that came with telling a story about the ring while the ring itself was right there in his hand, and his voice came out all thick and wobbly, like he was about to cry. ‘Gela had a ring, which was given to her as a present by her mum and her father. (They knew who their fathers were on Earth: they weren’t like we are here.) And the ring . . . the ring had writing inside it, tiny writing that said “To Angela with love from Mum and Dad”.’

  He passed the ring to me and I could see that, although he was doing it for the story, he was doing it for my sake too, because he’d seen how I felt about John springing this on us like this, and he wanted to help me feel better. After all, we didn’t need an actual ring to tell the story. Normally when people do the story of Angela’s Ring, they don’t have a ring at all.

  ‘Then one waking, when she was out in forest scavenging, Gela lost her ring. It slipped off her finger somehow and she couldn’t find it. And then . . .’

  And now it was my turn. I was Angela. I dropped the ring on the ground (out of the corner of my eye I could see John wince) and began running back and forth, back and forth, kneeling down, standing up again, moaning, muttering, beginning to cry.