Dark Eden

by Chris Beckett

  Another leopard, we thought, and a moan went up and down the line. We knew we were just meat now. The leopard didn’t even have to take the trouble of killing us. Give us a bit of time and we’d have done that for ourselves.

  But the cry came again, and this time we could hear it had muffled words in it.

  ‘Hey! Is that you down there? John? Gerry? Tina? Is that you?’

  We looked up. There was a light high up on the snowy mountainside above us. In the centre of the light there was a buck, and on the buck’s back there was a strange shining being, its mask face lit up from below by the lantern on the buck’s head.

  Candy cried out in fear – she thought it was one of the Shadow People come for us before we were even dead – but I laughed.

  ‘Jeff!’ I called out. ‘Jeff!’

  It was my brother, of course, my clever brother. He hadn’t got lost at all!

  ‘I can see you now,’ he called down, while Def picked a way down the slope towards us. ‘I can just barely see you. Don’t go on any further, whatever you do.’

  His voice echoed from rocks over the far side of the valley. We all strained to hear him.

  ‘The snowslug is all broken up down there,’ he called down. ‘Don’t go on that way. This is the way. Up here.’

  He came weaving and zigzagging down the snowy slope.

  ‘There’s trees just over the far side of the ridge, and streams and lots of bucks. You’re walking right past them and you don’t know it.’

  And some people started to laugh, and some to cry, and everybody to talk and talk.

  ‘Wait there, and I’ll come down to you,’ Jeff called.

  ‘Harry’s dick, Jeff,’ John said, as Jeff came up close, ‘are we glad glad to see you, mate. I thought we’d had it there, I must say. I thought we’d finally run out of luck.’

  Jeff laughed.

  ‘Well, you haven’t. I’ve got a safe place to take you and it’s not far away. I’d have come sooner, but Def was too scared of the leopard and he refused to turn back. I had to let him rest and calm down and get a bit of sleep, and I needed to calm myself down too so that he’d feel safe with me, and let me lead him.’

  I’d never seen Jeff like that. I’d always known he was smart smart, way more smart than me, but all the same he was just my little clawfoot brother, who stayed on the outside of everything and sometimes said weird things. But right now he was a leader, almost like John. He was barely even a newhair, but he’d become like a grownup man. And I saw that it wasn’t just his cleverness that was special about him, and not just those sharp sharp eyes of his that could see things other people missed: it was also that he was strong. He was strong strong, far far stronger than I’d ever be, and in a way even stronger than John.

  ‘Jeff!’ I yelled, rushing towards him.

  I’d forgotten the ropes that still tied me, on one side to Janny Redlantern, on the other to Martha London. As I pulled out of the line, I fell. And then they fell, and then whole line fell toppling over into the snow in front of my brother on his horse.

  Jeff laughed.

  ‘We are here,’ he said. ‘We really are here!’

  34

  John Redlantern

  We followed Jeff to the top of the ridge and looked down into a little forest at the bottom of a bowl. It was tiny tiny compared to Circle Valley forest, and it didn’t spread up the slopes like forest did back there. All the trees were down at the bottom, except for a few giant trees that stuck up out of the snow on their own, breathing out puffs of steam, and making little pools of light here and there on the steep snowy slopes around the little valley.

  People cheered when they saw the lights of trees down there, and a few people shouted out thanks to Jeff, but we were too weary weary, and too sad, to talk much on the way down, and we stopped pretty much as soon as we were past the outside edge of forest. Tom’s neck, it was good to hear the sound of trees all round us and to have light to see by, but those tall straight trunks, and the lanterns, far out of our reach, high high above our heads, gave the place a lonely feeling. And there was no coloured light, no red or blue – all the lanterns were snow white or pale greeny-yellow – and it wasn’t warm in Tall Tree Valley. Even down at valley bottom where there were trees with warm trunks, you still needed to wear bodywraps.

  But still, there was dry ground to stand on, and it wasn’t so cold that you had to cover up your head, so we pulled the wet wraps off our feet and heads, and we had faces again, and not just buckskin masks. People looked at each other and saw friends they’d known all their lives, and, like children do when they see a friendly face again after they’ve been lost on their own, most of them started to cry. Angie cried. Gerry cried. Tina cried. Big strong Gela Brooklyn cried. Even Mehmet cried. Harry bawled like a baby in his big man’s voice.

  ‘Harry’s sad, Harry’s sad sad,’ he sobbed, while Tina cuddled him to try and keep him calm.

  And in middle of all of this, Dave and Johnny Fishcreek, in each other’s arms, began to wail out their grief for their sister Suzie, who’d been torn apart by that white leopard up on Dark.

  The only ones I noticed that weren’t crying were Clare and Janny, who had to feed their babies, and Jeff, who was lifting the bags off the back of his precious Def and smoothing down its fur.

  I wasn’t crying either. I felt sort of numb. I sat on a stone and rubbed my feet.

  ‘At least now there’ll be a story to tell,’ I said to myself.

  If we’d all died up there on Dark, then the only story about us that would remain would be the story they’d tell about us back in Family, and what kind of story would that be? It’d be a story about a bunch of stupid kids who wouldn’t listen to Council and Oldest and their own mums, and walked away from Family and were never heard of again. And that would have been where it ended, like the story of the Three Companions ended when they said goodbye to Tommy and Angela. But now that wasn’t how it was going to be. It hadn’t looked that way for a bit, but our story was still going on.

  It wasn’t the story I’d been expecting, though, because when we came down into Tall Tree Valley, it wasn’t me that was leading everyone, it was Jeff. That was how things had turned out, and that was how the story would be told in the future. People whose parents and grandparents weren’t yet even born would hear how the little clawfoot boy on his shining buckhorse came over the ridge to save his friends. They’d laugh and cheer when, up on some silly pretend mountainside, someone appeared on a pretend buck, playing the part of Jeff.

  When Jeff had smoothed down Def’s fur, he led it to the stream where it could graze, and then hobbled back to be among the others.

  ‘Oh Jeff, Jeff, you did brilliant brilliant!’ one after another of them told him. Even the Fishcreek brothers thanked him through their tears.

  ‘Thankyou thankyou, Jeff! We’d all have died up there like Suzie did, if you hadn’t come.’

  I’d lost something, and Jeff had gained something, that was obvious. They’d all heard me get scared. They’d all heard me admit that I’d taken the wrong direction. They’d all been there in Dark where I’d led them, and known that I had no idea where to take them next. Jeff had come and saved them.

  And now of course they were all over him, praising him, kissing him, hugging him, shaking his hand, patting his back. He’d probably never had so much attention before in his life, but he looked like he wasn’t sure he really liked it. I think maybe he felt a bit like I’d done that time we brought the dead leopard back into Family through Batwing gate.

  It was quite some time before anyone thought about me, sitting there by myself on my stone, watching them and rubbing my feet. But after a bit, Gela Brooklyn looked over and noticed me, and she came over and gave me a hug.

  ‘You did good good too, John, to get everything together,’ she said. ‘You worked hard hard for a long time back at Valley Neck, when none of the rest of us really believed we’d ever have to come up here.’

  Gela was one of those people who s
eem like grownups even when they’re little kids, and now she made me feel like a kid who a grownup’s being kind to.

  ‘And you figured out how to drive away the leopard too,’ she said.

  Tina saw Gela talking to me, and she came over and gave me a hug too, though it was a hug just like Gela’s, like the hug people give each other when they are just friends or groupmates.

  More of them came to talk to me after that. Dix shook my hand. Jane kissed me. Silly Martha London threw her arms round me and sobbed and sobbed. But some of them stayed away. Mehmet didn’t come near me, and nor did Dave and Johnny Fishcreek, whose sister had died because of my plan, nor Angie Blueside, whose cousin would never have been clubbed to death by Harry if I hadn’t split Family in two, nor her groupmates Julie and Candy.

  Even the ones who did talk to me soon walked away again, all except for Gerry, who squatted down and stayed by my side. And even with him things were different now. He knew I’d lost something too, but he was letting me know he’d stand by me anyway. He was always a kind boy, but he’d never had to show me that sort of kindness before, except maybe that time when I came out of Bella’s shelter, and most of Redlantern looked the other way.

  ‘I know you feel bad bad about what happened to Suzie and about us getting lost,’ he said, ‘but you did get us up on Dark. You got us sorted back at Valley Neck. You made sure we got all the stuff together.’

  ‘Yes, I did get us up on Dark, but it was your little brother that got us down.’

  And even while I was saying that to Gerry, half my mind was already thinking and thinking about how I should deal with Jeff.

  Weird clever Jeff: I’d known him since he was born, and me and him and Gerry had shared a sleeping shelter back in Redlantern for wombs and wombs. He’d never been a trouble to me (at least not apart from his clawfeet) but now he suddenly was. I was tired tired of solving problems, but he’d become yet another problem that I had to figure out how to fix.

  I don’t mean I thought Jeff would try to take over from me. He wasn’t like that. He wouldn’t even be interested in playing the part I played. But people were going to listen to him more from now on, and they might quite easily decide that what he said was worth more than what I said. And that wouldn’t just be a problem for me, it would be a problem for everyone, because they needed me to bring things together and make things happen, and to do that I needed them to go on believing in me.

  But how could I get that back? Apart from having saved us all, Jeff had another advantage over me, which actually came from the fact that he wasn’t interested in doing what I did. To do my job, you had to wear a mask and hide your feelings, you had to choose carefully what you said and what you kept inside. People could see that, and it made them wonder what it was that you were holding back. But Jeff could just be himself, and no one would ever doubt that what he said was what he really meant. So not only had he saved them all after I’d got them lost, but he’d always seemed easier to know, and gentler, and more genuine than me. Tom’s dick, how could I compete against that?

  I couldn’t fight him, that was for sure. I couldn’t push him away. I couldn’t put him down. I couldn’t turn the others against him.

  ‘I’ll just have to get closer to him,’ I decided. ‘Stop thinking of him as little Jeff and make him my friend. I’ll have to . . .’

  But then I made myself stop. It was stupid thinking about this now. Jeff would keep for another waking. There were other things I had to do right now, and I needed to save my strength for them.

  I stood up.

  ‘I need to talk to everyone together now,’ I muttered to myself. ‘Get things sorted so we can eat and sleep.’

  The others were sitting by a small stream, many of them still crying, and many still with arms round each other. I went to a rock that stood above them all, next to the stream, and climbed up onto it. Tom’s dick, I was weary weary of having to be John Redlantern. Bad bad things had happened since I stuck my spear between the ribs of fat old Dixon Blueside, and I could have done with a rest. But at the same time I knew this was one of those moments yet again, one of those leopard moments.

  Michael’s names, there were so bloody many of them! So many! One after another after another!

  ‘Hey, everyone, listen up!’

  I was scared that they’d take no notice, or even that they’d shout me down: ‘You? Why should we listen to you?’

  But that didn’t happen. They might be disappointed in me and some of them might even hate me, but they all did what I asked and went quiet.

  ‘Well, we got here,’ I said. ‘Maybe not to the other side yet, but to a new place. All of us except poor Suzie. And we would never have made it if it wasn’t for my smart smart cousin Jeff who thought of turning bucks into horses, and came back to find us when – let’s face it – we were lost lost. He got us there. He saved us. So thankyou, Jeff. Thankyou.’

  Everyone cheered and yelled and clapped for Jeff. He smiled, and then suddenly laughed like it was all a big joke.

  ‘And what will save us in the future,’ I said, ‘what will keep us going and keep us moving along, is new ideas, like Jeff had when he decided he could turn bucks into horses.’

  They weren’t so keen on that bit, with its hint that we would be moving on again.

  ‘What will save us in the future, John,’ Mehmet called out, ‘is not going up onto Snowy Dark without knowing what we might meet or where we’re going.’

  He looked around, expecting some support, but everyone was silent. That had been a bad bad time up there in Dark, feeling our way along, not knowing whether snow leopards were out there ready to pounce, and I guessed it would probably keep coming back to all of us all our lives, over and over, in our dreams and when we were awake. But it had been too big big a thing to turn so quickly into quarrelling.

  Mehmet shrugged, and crossed his arms, and kept quiet.

  ‘We need to sort out a few things,’ I said, more confidently now, ‘like lookouts, and building shelters, and hunting and making a fire. And we need a funeral for Suzie and that poor baby of hers that never got to be born. It’s sad sad we can’t bury their bodies, but we can still have a funeral. We can still make a pile of stones and write Suzie’s name on a stone.’

  ‘Yes, but when Earth comes,’ said Suzie’s brother Dave, in a flat flat voice, ‘Suzie’s bones won’t be there to be taken back to Earth, will they?’

  ‘So she’ll be left alone on Eden forever when everyone else has gone,’ Johnny said, ‘all because of what happened up there. Because of the path you took us on, John.’

  ‘It did sometimes happen back in Family, didn’t it,’ I said, as gently as I could manage, ‘with leopards and things like that, that there was nothing left for us to cover up with stones? We don’t really know what happens when we’re dead, do we? There are some, aren’t there, who say our shadows always return to Earth when we die, even when our bones stay here in Eden? But we don’t know. And of course what we’d all want, when we die, is for our bones to be kept in a place where Earth could find us. I’m sad sad for Suzie that we couldn’t do that for her.’

  Mehmet gave an angry snort.

  ‘The way we’re going, there’s not much chance that any of us are going to find our way to Earth, dead or alive.’

  A sort of sigh went up. Several people murmured in agreement with Mehmet and for a moment I feared again that I’d lost them. But I found I still hadn’t. Dave and Johnny were standing near Mehmet, along with Angie Blueside and Julie and Candy, and their eyes were cold, but yet they were all still watching me, expecting me to carry on, even Mehmet himself. Whatever their private thoughts and feelings, they were all still waiting for me to tell them what was going to happen. That was what my job was, and, though they might not like me for it, they still agreed it was my job.

  But I knew that they needed more from me now than just a plan, so I took out Gela’s ring again.

  ‘Remember that Gela is with us,’ I said. ‘Not with Old Family but
with us, with this new little family of ours, which is trying to make the best of dark Eden, just like she did herself. Gela is with us. She’s not with the ones who just sit and wait for sky-boats to take them home. She’s not with the ones that try and prevent anything new from ever happening. She’s with the ones who set out across Dark, not knowing what they’d find. And she is proud proud of you all. You’re the ones doing what she wanted her children to do.’

  I looked out at them. I saw Janny frowning, trying to figure out whether she agreed with me. I saw Lucy London, her face all smeary with tears. I saw Tina with her arms folded, waiting to see what trick I was going to play this time.

  ‘And when sky-boats do come from Earth,’ I said, ‘they’ll come looking for us right across Eden, because they’d expect us to make the best of our time here, and not skulk away our lives in Circle Valley until all the food is gone. After all, Earth folk themselves left even the solid ground behind, and travelled far far further than we’ve done, right across Starry Swirl.’

  It was funny. I hadn’t known myself what I was going to say when I started out, and I heard my own argument like it came from someone else. But it persuaded me. Yes, I thought, that really does make sense. It really is what Earth would expect! And I felt relieved relieved, because there was doubt nagging in my own heart too.

  But Gela Brooklyn, Tina’s closest friend, questioned what I said, not in an angry way like Mehmet might have done but in a slow and puzzled way, like she was really trying herself to understand.

  ‘Yes, John,’ she said in her deep voice, ‘but Angela was the one who always chose not to cross Starry Swirl when she had the chance. It was the Three Disobedient Ones who made her come to Eden, when she wanted to stay near Earth. And she and Michael did their best to make the three of them stay near Earth as well. Yes, and later, when she was here in Eden, she chose to stay here rather than cross back over Starry Swirl again with the Three Companions. She chose to stay and wait for Earth to send a new boat, rather than risk the old one, knowing that it might well sink.’