Dark Eden

by Chris Beckett

  I felt a scary stab of doubt, like the one I’d had when we first started out over Dark. Maybe Gela was right. Maybe what we were doing really was exactly what Angela had warned against. But I kept my face firm and certain. Whether we’d done the right thing or the wrong thing, we’d done it now and we couldn’t undo it. Our little group needed to feel that the choice we’d made was the right one, and I had to persuade them, as best I could, that it had been, whatever my own secret fears. I needed to put on a mask, and be certain certain certain. That was my job. That was my part in this story.

  ‘Yes, Gela,’ I said, ‘but she herself chose to go up into sky in the Police Veekle, didn’t she? And if she’d really been so set on not straying from Earth, she’d have tried to go back to Earth straightaway with the Companions, wouldn’t she? But she didn’t. She stayed here in Eden, because she was someone who took each situation and tried to make the best of it. And that’s what she wants us to do too.’

  I could see that a lot of them were looking puzzled and worried – I felt worried myself – so I quickly slipped the ring off my finger and held it out to them.

  ‘Gela is with us, remember. She didn’t give the ring to Caroline. She didn’t give it to David. She didn’t give it to Oldest. She gave it to me. Yes, and she told me she wanted us to spread out over Eden, and find new places to live, and new hunting grounds. She told me.’

  And it was weird weird, because I didn’t even ask them to, but one after another of them came forward to touch the ring in my hand, pretty much all of them, except only for Mehmet, and Tina, and Jeff.

  35

  Tina Spiketree

  We stopped there in that spot next to the stream, at the edge of Tall Tree forest. We got lookouts sorted, spread our wet wraps out to dry and gathered up some wood for fire. After that, most people crept off to sleep in whatever places they could find.

  But John stayed awake with Harry and Dix and me to take turns with the fire sticks. Tom’s neck, it took hours of rubbing them together to get a spark that would light anything. Our hands were all blisters with trying before we did. But even when we’d finally got some fires lit, John still wasn’t ready to sleep. He stood up and called to the lookouts to keep the fires stoked up, then he said he’d go for a walk.

  ‘I’m tired tired,’ he said, avoiding looking at any one of us, ‘but I’m going to find a pool to swim in before I lie down.’

  Dix glanced at me, but I stood up with John, and gave Dix a little sign that I’d be back to see him later. It would be good to feel Dix’s friendly arms around me before I let myself sleep, but I could see that John was carrying a heavy heavy load and it seemed unfair to leave him to do it all on his own.

  This forest was different different from the one we had grown up in. That great lonely empty space under the lowest branches was three four times the height of a man, so the bats and flutterbyes weren’t swooping and diving all around us like they did back in Circle Valley but were far far above our heads. Only sometimes a bird came blundering along at low level, squawking and screeching.

  ‘Makes me think of those Earth stories,’ I said. ‘Remember those ones about huge shelters that went up to sky, straight straight, as big as mountains? Skyscrapers? Walking underneath those things must be a bit like walking under these trees.’

  John didn’t say anything for several minutes. He didn’t even show that he’d heard me. In that way that he had, he was completely sunk down inside his own thoughts. But later, when I’d pretty much forgotten what I’d said, he spoke.

  ‘Yeah. They were made of metal and rock, plus a kind of glass you could see through like water.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Those giant shelters.’

  He looked tired tired. He was so worn down I could see quite clearly how he’d look when he was a trembly blind old man. I suppose I didn’t look much better.

  ‘You did do well, John,’ I said.

  I reached for his hand, but he didn’t respond to this in any way, so I dropped it again.

  ‘I did well, you reckon?’ he said. ‘I lost Suzie, didn’t I? And her baby. If it wasn’t for Jeff I’d have lost all of us. Gela’s eyes, Tina, when we were up there in the blackness . . .’

  His voice was getting shaky and he broke off.

  ‘When we were up there,’ he began again, ‘I thought about how I’d taken all these people away from Family, from their mums and their uncles and their brothers and sisters and all that and for what . . .?’

  He glanced round at me, but I looked away. I didn’t want to see him like that. It was just like the time he began to cry up there in Dark when that giant slinker nearly got the bat. I don’t know why, but I just couldn’t bear that side of him.

  Off under the great trees to our left, where the ground began to slope up towards Dark, a herd of six seven woollybucks were grazing on starflowers. That was one good thing: we were not going to go short of meat.

  ‘Do you really believe that Angela stuff, John?’ I asked him after a bit. ‘Really and truly? Only it doesn’t sound like the sort of thing that you’d . . .’

  ‘I saw Angela,’ he said in a stubborn voice, not looking at me. ‘Over by Deep Pool. I saw her sitting there by herself, crying. She didn’t want to be in Eden. She never wanted to leave Earth. But she knew there was no point in going on about it. Eden was where she was now, and she’d have to make the best of it. And that’s what she did: hope that Earth would come and get her back, of course, but meanwhile make the best of it. And she was right, wasn’t she? If she’d just sat and pined for Earth, she’d have wasted her life, wouldn’t she? Because she died before Earth came.’

  ‘But you actually saw her?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  He glanced sideways at me and looked quickly away again, like a kid expecting to be challenged.

  Well, there were lots of questions I could have asked him. Was he saying that he’d really seen her, like a real person, or was he just saying he’d imagined her in his mind? Was he saying that Gela really talked to him? Was he saying that she was really with us now? But I knew how it was when people start to talk about the Shadow People and all of that. You just can’t pin them down. They talk like a thing can be true and not true at the same time, or both there and not there. I couldn’t be bothered with it, and I’d always thought John couldn’t either.

  ‘Well, you never told me about it at the time,’ was all I said.

  ‘Gela’s eyes!’ he burst out. ‘Make up your mind what it is you want from me. To share things with you or to bloody hide them?’

  Well, I could sort of see that he might have a point there, but I was too tired to think about it, so I didn’t say anything.

  Haaaark! Haaaark! A bird was looking down at us from a branch high above us. We’d never seen a bird like it. It was a bird with no name, a bird that Michael Name-Giver had never seen. It was right beside a whitelantern flower so we could see the long shiny green wings it was smoothing down with pale long-fingered hands. Its hands and feet had long long red claws. Haaaark! Haaaark! It flew off through the trees.

  ‘People need things like the ring,’ John said after a time. ‘They need a story. They need to have something from the past to hold onto when they go forward into the future. Like when you’re climbing high up in a tree, you need to hold tightly onto the branch you are already on until you’re sure you’ve got a tight grip on the next.’

  ‘Well, some people might say that’s exactly what Circle was for. Most people, in fact.’

  ‘Circle was different. Circle was stopping us from going forward. It was making us stay in the past. Because it was fixed in that one place.’

  He had the ring on his little finger (it didn’t fit on any other). There was no need to hide it now. He stopped, took it off and passed it to me to hold. I must say, it was perfect perfect, so smooth and heavy in my hand, with those tiny little letters inside it. And it did prove that, whether John had truly seen her or not, there really had been an Angela, and she really did com
e from Earth. No one in Eden could make anything like that ring.

  ‘Just think, Tina,’ John said. ‘When Angela first wore that she wasn’t here in Eden at all, she was there on Earth. Imagine that! This thing, this bit of metal you’re holding in your hand, was there on Earth, with light shining down on it from sky!’

  He took the ring back from me, replaced it on his finger.

  ‘Probably everyone there has metal rings like this with tiny words on them, given them by their mums and dads.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘I don’t want us to keep wishing ourselves back on Earth, though. Earth will come when it’s ready, and most probably not for a long long time. But meantime we should aim to make Eden more like Earth with rings and sky-boats and lecky-trickity and telly vision. Coming over Snowy Dark was just a start, Tina. It was just the beginning of what we need to do. And Gela’s heart, we haven’t even finished crossing Dark yet. We’ve still got to get down the other side.’

  ‘Forget that for now, John,’ I said sharply. ‘Alright? Forget that completely for now. This place is fine. No one’s going to want to move for a long long time. No one’s even going to want to talk about moving.’

  We’d reached a spot where a stream had come up against some rocks and made a pool, four five yards across and two three deep, shining with wavyweed. John took his wraps straight off and dived in without saying a word in answer to me.

  ‘Tom’s dick, it’s cold cold.’

  He came to the surface spluttering and laughing, swimming as quickly as ever he could to the bank and hauling himself straight out. Wet and freezing cold as he was, I put my arms around him and gave him a hug. I hadn’t seen him laugh for a long time.

  Then he shook himself dry, put his damp wraps back on and we went back towards where the others lay cuddled up in twos and threes round the fires. Just before we reached them, John found a place to lie down between the warm roots of a tree, and he gestured to it, inviting me to lie there with him. I hesitated because I knew Dix was waiting, but then I nodded and we lay down together. He put an arm round me.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about the Three Companions lately,’ he said. ‘I’ve been thinking about how their story doesn’t really have an ending, or not as far as we know anyway. That’s a sad sad thing, isn’t it? Not to have a story that carries on. But if they’d managed to get back to Earth and fetch help for Tommy and Angela, well, then their story would have been the big story about Eden, wouldn’t it? Tommy and Angela would only have been a small small part of it, because they wouldn’t have had kids together and they’d just have been ordinary Earth people again, not the Mother and Father of a whole world at all.’

  He thought about this for a moment.

  ‘And you and me wouldn’t exist,’ he added, ‘and nor would anyone that we know.’

  ‘I guess.’

  Gela’s tits, why did he want to talk about this now? We were so tired. We’d been through so much. I’d thought he might want to slip with me before we slept, and I’d sort of wanted that too. But now I wished I’d gone back to Dix. Dix wouldn’t have wanted to go on about people who were dead long before we were born. He would have wanted me.

  ‘Do you often wonder about the Three Companions?’ John asked.

  I shrugged.

  ‘Not a lot.’

  ‘They say Dixon – first Dixon – was the one who first suggested to Tommy and Mehmet they disobey President, don’t they? He was the one that wanted to take Defiant across the stars. He thought that Jesus Juice was telling him to do it, whoever Jesus was.’

  ‘Claiming to get instructions from some old dead person. Now what does that remind me of?’

  He didn’t respond to that. He didn’t even seem to notice it.

  Typical of John, I thought, to have a soft soft spot for his great-great-grandmother who was buried under stones long before he was born.

  Having a soft spot for someone you never knew was another way of not having to be with equals, wasn’t it? Dead people can’t talk back, and you can choose what you want to hear them say, and know they’ll never tell you you’re wrong. Lucy Lu found that out, long long before John ever did.

  But I didn’t say that to him.

  ‘And first Mehmet,’ he went on. ‘His group was called Turkish, wasn’t it, and it’s said he was funny and kind and he was the one that Angela loved best. She said that once to Tommy, didn’t she? “Why couldn’t it have been Mehmet that stayed, not you?” she said. “Mehmet I could really have loved.” And then Tommy hit her, in front of all their kids, and called her miserable and cold and cruel. Remember that story? The Big Row. They used to act that one out sometimes, do you remember?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘And first Michael. He was gentle and quiet, they say. He was with Angela at first in that other little sky-boat. They were called Orbit Police, weren’t they? Their job was to make sure people followed the rules of Earth when they were up there in their boats in sky. He was like Angela. He didn’t want to come here. He wanted to stay in sky of Earth . . .’

  He broke off.

  ‘Someone will come from Earth eventually,’ he said after a bit. ‘I mean, we know the Companions went up to Defiant, don’t we? Okay, I know it was damaged. I know it was like a boat whose skins are beginning to come off. But the story doesn’t say it couldn’t make another Hole-in-Sky and fall through it, does it? The story just says that falling through most probably would have done for it, and for the Companions, and that means the remains of it would still have ended up somewhere near Earth. Sooner or later Earth people would have found them, even if the Rayed Yo was broken and didn’t call them. You’ve got to remember sky round Earth was busy as Greatpool, Tina, full of sky-boats doing this and sky-boats doing that. Just like Greatpool with all the groups out fishing. One of them would have found it. I mean, there were Police Veekles and . . .’

  I thought at first that he was just trying to remember what other kind of boat there’d been.

  ‘ . . . and Sat Lights?’ I suggested.

  But he didn’t answer me. Pretty soon he began to snore.

  36

  John Redlantern

  I didn’t like Tall Tree Valley one bit. I knew that when we first followed Jeff down from Snowy Dark. I knew it when me and Tina and Harry and Dix sat up trying to get a fire going. I knew it when I lay down to sleep with Tina. And I still knew it when I woke up again on my own.

  There was a smell of roasting buckmeat, and I could hear people already awake, but first thing I did was walk up the slope a bit, up near the bottom of the snow, so I could see out over the valley.

  ‘No,’ I said out loud as I looked down at this little bit of forest with Dark high high above it on every side, ‘there is no chance that I’m going to settle for this place.’

  Tall Tree Valley wasn’t anything like a good enough trade for Bella’s death, and for bringing killing into the world. It might make us feel tiny tiny like ants under those big trees, but it was small small itself. You could walk from one side to the other in one two hours. And how many people could a place that size support, when there was hardly enough meat in whole of Circle Valley to feed Family? There might be lots of bucks here now – I could see five six of them just standing where I was – but there’d been lots back in Circle Valley too, hadn’t there, before Family did for most of them.

  And anyway, who wanted to stay in a place where you had to cover up your skin just to keep warm?

  I walked back down towards the others. They were already busy. Tina and Gela had been giving people jobs to do. Someone had done for a little buck and roasted two of its legs, and Jane Spiketree was cutting off strips of greeny meat with a leopard tooth knife, and tossing them onto a bark plate that Harry was holding out for her. Mike Brooklyn and Candy Blueside and Gerry were dragging branches over for a simple fence. Dave and Johnny Fishcreek, with those awful shadowy faces people have when someone they love has just died, were slowly slowly spreading out a pile of fading starflower
s to dry, with Angie and Julie helping them. Jeff was sitting in front of Def, offering it handfuls of wavyweed from a heap he’d gathered from a pool. The woollybuck prodded and stroked each handful with its feelers before it gulped the stringy stuff down.

  Sound carried a long way in the empty space under the trees, and I could hear them all talking when I was still ten twenty yards away.

  ‘There’s bucks everywhere in this place, aren’t there?’ said Janny. ‘Getting meat is going to be easy easy from now on.’

  ‘We’ll just wear a few more wraps than we used to and it’ll be fine,’ said Tina’s sister Jane.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Gela, ‘and we should be able to make shelters a bit stronger than usual to keep out the cold.’

  ‘Plenty of starflowers everywhere, I must say,’ said Julie Blueside.

  ‘But fruits are too high to reach to reach, though, aren’t they?’ worried Lucy London, looking up at the trees with her bulging eyes.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Tina in a bright bright voice that didn’t sound like her normal way of speaking at all, ‘but we can use ropes, or make nets, can’t we? We’ll have plenty of time for jobs like that, when meat is so easy to get.’

  That was the story they were telling each other: Tall Tree Valley was going to be fine fine. And if one of them started to tell another story, then someone else would straightaway put them right.

  ‘Whole time we’ve been here I’ve not heard one leopard,’ Janny said. ‘That’s a good sign, isn’t it?’

  ‘We’re going to miss Family,’ sighed Lucy London. ‘I wish we weren’t so far from them.’

  ‘But we’ve got each other, haven’t we?’ Jane said quickly. ‘We’ve got each other. And we’re nearly grownups after all, aren’t we?’

  ‘Do you reckon those snow leopards come down here?’ asked Lucy Batwing. ‘I couldn’t cope with them again.’