Dark Eden

by Chris Beckett

  If he’d said that a waking earlier, we’d have all been mad at him, but now, our shelters buried and leopards wailing on the slopes, I could see people listening to him and thinking and taking it in, and I could see them remembering all the things that they didn’t like about small, cold, lonely Tall Tree Valley, the things that people like me had been trying to push away with our cheerful chatter about how easy it was to find bucks, or how nice the bloody starflowers tasted.

  Huddled up all wet and cold with a buckskin over my head to keep the snow off my hair, I thought about what it would really be like to stay forever under these lonely high trees, and deal with snows like this every couple of periods.

  ‘Yeah, you’ve got a point, John,’ I said. ‘Tall Tree Valley just doesn’t feel like a place where people are meant to live.’

  Mehmet laughed angrily.

  ‘Tom’s dick and Harry’s, what is this? People lived on Earth in places where it snowed for wombs on end, Gela. Didn’t you know that? And as for you, John, what is your problem? You know this snow won’t last, and you know quite well we could manage it easy easy if we put our minds to it, with bigger fires and better shelters and thicker wraps. So what is it you’re trying to do? Are you determined to do for us all?’

  I’d never liked Mehmet much, but I had to admit he was learning. He used just to moan at everything John did without offering another plan of his own, but now for the first time he was proposing something that could actually work. We could stay in Tall Tree. We could build stronger shelters. His hands were shaking and his voice was wobbly, but finally Mehmet was offering an alternative to John.

  He didn’t have long to wait either for someone else to take his side.

  ‘No way am I going back up there where my sister died,’ said Dave Fishcreek. ‘And no way am I going to let you lead me anywhere again, John, not after what happened last time.’

  His voice was shaking too. I’d tried a few times to point out to Dave and his brother Johnny that nobody made us go over to John from Family, and nobody forced us to follow John up onto Dark. I’d tried to point out that none of us could have have known that there was such a thing as snow leopards, and that John’s quick thinking had at least saved the rest of us from what happened to Suzie. I’d even tried reminding them Suzie was my friend, and that I loved her and grieved for her too, but she wasn’t the sort of person that would want them bitter bitter like this. But they’d never been willing to hear what I said.

  Johnny backed up his brother straight away. He wasn’t going to leave Tall Tree Valley and that was that. And as soon as he’d spoken, the three Blueside girls, one by one, said the same. And then the six of them – Mehmet and his five followers – looked around at the rest of us, hoping for more support. But everyone else stayed silent. Hunched under our buckskins, we peered up at the falling snow and wished wished we were somewhere else. And John was telling us we could be.

  ‘I’m getting tired of living in this little patch of trees up in Snowy Dark,’ John said. ‘I’m going to try and get down the other side to a proper forest, and if anyone wants to join me they can. It’ll mean going through more snow, I admit, but look around you. We’re in the snow already!’

  Mehmet jumped to his feet.

  ‘Harry’s dick, John. Don’t pretend this is the same as it is up on Dark. We can still see here! We can still find things to eat! We can still make fires! There’s firewood everywhere! And if we just built bigger and stronger shelters we wouldn’t even need to get wet.’

  I looked across the fire at Tina. I knew she’d be annoyed with John for once again springing a whole new plan on everyone, but when I mouthed the question to her ‘Will you go?’, she nodded, and I nodded back to say ‘Me too’. Then I looked at my sister Clare and asked her the same thing, and she nodded as well. So did Lucy Batwing. So did Janny and Jane and Mike.

  Aaaaaaaah! cried the leopard again, not so far up above us. Lucy and Martha London started crying again and said they couldn’t bear to live any more in this cold snowy place. I looked at John and saw the old slinker was having a job not to smile.

  Something came into my mind then that my mum made me learn when I was fourteen fifteen wombs old. It was a secret thing that I wasn’t to talk about. It was words that had passed from mother to daughter all the way down from First Angela, who I was named for. And Mum said I should remember the words exactly and pass them on in turn when I was older to any of my own daughters who would be able to remember them carefully, and keep them to themselves.

  ‘It’s not that these things are such a big big secret,’ my mum said. ‘But if everyone were to tell these words to each other all the time, they wouldn’t stay the same. They’d change in the telling in the way that the True Story does, and we wouldn’t remember any more what Angela actually said.’

  There were a lot of words from Angela that Mum taught me, but the ones I remembered now, as John and Mehmet were fighting over whether we should stay in Tall Tree Valley or whether we should go, were these:

  ‘Some men want the story to be all about them.’

  It was so true of John, I thought. As soon as things got quiet, and everyone was just getting on with things, he got uneasy because life stopped being a story about anyone in particular, and certainly not about him.

  But it was true of Mehmet too.

  ‘John doesn’t know the way to another forest,’ Mehmet hissed now, his face all blotchy with anger. ‘He doesn’t know it any more this time than he did before. Michael’s names, what’s the matter with all of you? This snow here won’t kill us, but that snow will.’

  It would have been nice nice, I thought, if this didn’t have to be about John or Mehmet, and could just be about deciding the right thing to do, but there weren’t any other choices apart from what the two of them were offering. It was the same when I first came over to John at Cold Path Neck: only that time the choice was him or ugly old David Redlantern.

  ‘We can stay up here in middle of Dark until we die,’ said John, ‘or we can finish off the job we started and find a place on the other side. Do we want to live the rest of our lives in the warm wide forests that we know are over there, or do we want to huddle up forever in this small cold place?’

  Aaaaaaaah! came the cry again from the slopes up to Dark.

  For a few seconds everyone was silent. Then Mehmet spoke.

  ‘And what about leopards, John? Want to explain to us why it makes sense to go up there among those white leopards all over again?’

  John laughed.

  ‘What makes you think they’re up there, Mehmet? They can throw their voices, remember? Tom’s dick, it was you that first figured that out! They could be down here in forest now. They could be just a few yards away. We’re in Snowy Dark, remember. We’re still in it, and we will be until we get down the other side.’

  ‘Oh that’s just a load of . . .’ Mehmet began angrily, but John cut him off.

  ‘Snow leopards cry out before they attack, the same as forest leopards sing. We know that now, don’t we? They cry out to confuse their prey about where they are. And we know now that if we hear that sound up on Dark, we just have to yell and scream loud enough, and we’ll scare them off.’

  He looked around at the faces in the firelight, half-hidden under buckskins.

  ‘In fact those leopards up there are a good sign. I’ll bet you anything they’re there because the bucks are climbing out of Tall Tree Valley to find their way down to lower ground, like we know bucks do in cold dips.’

  He made all of us to walk to the edge of forest so we could look up and see for ourselves. He was right. The snow was barely falling now, and, on the huge dark slopes all round us, we could see the headlanterns of bucks moving in long lines up out of Tall Tree Valley.

  ‘You see?’ he said. ‘Look at them! Heading off for the big low valleys! Those ones over there are going back towards Circle Valley, aren’t they, but look at these ones here! Where are they going, Mehmet? What does that tell you?’
<
br />   ‘It tells me you’re crazy, John. It tells me that, if we let you, you’ll go on until you’ve done for all of us.’

  Mehmet turned to the rest of us.

  ‘Harry’s dick, can’t you see it? He’s doing it again! He’s trying to control our minds. He’s trying to make us think that the way he sees things is the only way to see things!’

  ‘You don’t have to . . .’ began John.

  ‘Oh, just shut up, John, will you, shut up and give us all a rest!’

  Mehmet had come right up in front of John. He was the shorter one of the two and he glared up into John’s face, and then shoved him, hard hard, so he staggered and nearly fell.

  But John was nimble. He recovered his balance quickly quickly, and, in one single movement, he passed his spear from his right to his left hand, grabbed Mehmet by the neck and flung him down into the snow. And then he was over him. Mehmet’s body wrap had fallen open and John pressed the tip of his blackglass spear into the smooth skin of Mehmet’s chest. Both of them were panting panting for breath. A bead of red blood trickled across Mehmet’s skin and under his wrap.

  ‘Gela’s heart, John, what are you doing!’ I screamed.

  ‘John! Stop!’ yelled Tina.

  And in the same moment she cried out, a leopard cried out too above us.

  ‘Go on then John,’ jeered Mehmet. ‘Do for me, like you did for Dixon Blueside. It’s getting to be a bit of a habit, isn’t it? That’ll make five, at my count, dead because of you. Or should that be seven, with the two little ones?’

  Tina stepped forward, yanked away the spear. I pulled Mehmet roughly up to his feet. The two of us pushed them apart.

  ‘It’s a choice,’ Tina hissed at Mehmet. ‘It’s a free choice. People can stay with you or they can leave with John. What’s so hard to understand about that?’

  No one spoke. The Fishcreek boys and the three Blueside girls went to stand by Mehmet, the boys clutching their spears tightly. The rest of us walked back to our camp and began to dig out our storage logs from under the snow, to get out dry food and spare wraps.

  I could see the six of them wavering as we loaded up. I could see them wondering what it would be like to be by themselves in this cold bleak place. I wondered if, at the last minute, they’d crack and come with us, as Mehmet had always done before. But they stayed.

  ‘Don’t think you’re the brave ones,’ Mehmet jeered after us as we set off behind John and Jeff and Jeff’s woollybuck, Def, ‘just because you’re the ones that are going. Angela stayed, remember, when the Three Companions left. She stayed in one place and made a go of things, like we’re doing. But you, John, and all of you that follow him, you just run run run.’

  38

  John Redlantern

  There were lights below us! There were lights and lights and lights, on and on, as thick as stars in Starry Swirl.

  ‘Gela’s heart, Jeff,’ I whispered, ‘this is the best moment in my whole life, the best best moment!’

  Bright bright lights, on and on, and not just ahead but to the left too, and to the right: red and green and yellow and blue and white. We’d never seen such a thing. We’d never seen a forest that bright and that big.

  I turned to shout to rest of them still toiling up the slope behind us in the darkness. We’d been walking through Dark the length of two long wakings. We’d twice heard leopards and had to scream and yell to scare them away.

  ‘Quick! Quick!’ I yelled down. ‘We’ve done it! We’ve made it! We’re okay!’

  I turned to look down again at forest below us.

  ‘Just look at it, Jeff. Tom’s dick, just bloody look at it! On and on!’

  As each of the others reached the top, they shouted angrily.

  ‘You two were way too far ahead! You should have bloody waited for us! What would have happened if a leopard had come?’

  But, when they saw what was laid below them, they fell silent, just like me and Jeff had done.

  Never mind little Tall Tree Valley, this made Circle Valley look tiny and closed-in. Both those places were really just little splat holes in Snowy Dark. But this wasn’t a splat hole. It wasn’t just another valley. It was a whole world. Everyone could see that. Everyone.

  ‘Weird to think Family stayed in that one little place for a hundred and sixty bloody years,’ Gela Brooklyn said, rubbing her pregnant belly, ‘when all of this was so near.’ ‘Tom’s neck, John!’ Gerry shouted excitedly, coming up next to me, putting his arm round my shoulders and leaning his head against mine. ‘You did it! You bloody did it! You are brilliant brilliant, John. You’re great.’

  He was proud of me again, as proud of me as he had been when I did for the leopard.

  In fact they were all proud of me.

  ‘You made this happen,’ Tina said, coming over beside me too, and slipping her arm round my waist. ‘You started this all by yourself and made it happen.’

  We still had our headwraps on to keep out the cold, so we were like some kind of weird two-legged bucks standing up there in the snow, and it was dark dark too, but in the light of Def’s headlantern I could see Tina’s shiny eyes looking at me out of the holes in the buckskin.

  ‘You bloody did it, John!’ said Gerry again.

  ‘To think I was about to say we should turn back,’ said Janny, looking down at the thousand thousand lights below. ‘To think my Flower could have grown up in bloody old Tall Tree Valley, when all this was waiting for us.’

  And then suddenly she pulled off her headwrap and mine too, so she could give me a wet batface kiss.

  ‘Well, if Janny’s going to kiss you, I will too!’ Tina said, yanking off her own headwrap. Our skins were all pink and sticky from being inside the wraps, and she kissed me slowly with her mouth open, like a kiss before a slip. The others cheered us on.

  They’d never been pleased with me like this. Even when they first came over to me at Valley Neck – and that was long long before Suzie died, long before I’d got them lost and Jeff had had to save them – they’d grumbled as if I’d made them come, as if all that they’d given up was my fault and nothing to do with them. But now, when me and Jeff had forced them to keep going and risked their lives by pushing on ahead with their only source of light, they were pleased pleased pleased.

  It felt good good, but even better than their praise was the sight of Wide Forest itself stretching away down there, with no Dark to make an edge to it, except for the Dark we were standing on.

  Far off in the distance, I noticed, the light of Wide Forest changed. There was a kind of winding edge between the twinkly light of the trees below, which was like the light of Circle Valley, and a softer, smoother, more even light, which was more like the light that comes out of a stream or a pool.

  ‘That couldn’t all be water over there, surely?’ I said to myself. It didn’t seem possible, and yet I remembered stories of such a thing on Earth, a pool that was bigger than all the dry ground put together. The C, it was called for short, but no one in Eden knew any more what that had stood for.

  ‘Think of bloody old Mehmet and the other five,’ said Dix with a snort of laughter, ‘stuck back up there on their own in Tall Tree Valley, figuring out how to keep warm next time it snows.’

  ‘Yeah,’ shouted Harry. ‘Ha ha! Sitting by themselves in the snow.’

  He laughed and laughed, as Harry sometimes did, going on until it was almost like it was hurting him or he was having a fit. It often got on people’s nerves so much that they ended up telling him to bloody shut up, and then he’d get upset, which was even noisier and more annoying than his laugh. But this time everyone joined in with him happily, laughing and laughing up there on that ridge in Dark, with the wide bright world below, all glittery and fresh and new. No more snow and dark and snow leopards. All of that was behind us. No hungry wakings. No having to eat bats and slinkers because there wasn’t enough buckmeat. A new start for us, a new world, and all the space we could possibly need for generations and generations and generations.


  We started down the mountain. In a couple of hours we were walking by a stream with trees humming all around us, and their lanterns lighting our way, white, blue, pink, yellow. Herds of stonebucks lifted up their heads from the shining starflowers and watched us pass. They didn’t even try to run away.

  39

  Tina Spiketree

  So now we’d crossed Snowy Dark and found Wide Forest, the wide wide space that John had always insisted would be there. And in some ways life was easy easy, easier than it had ever been back in Circle Valley. There was so much fruit and so many birds and bucks – stonebucks and woollybucks and a new kind of buck we called a widebuck, big like a woollybuck, but with smooth smooth skin – that we could get together the food for a waking in just an hour or two. You didn’t need to have everyone working working all waking long just to get enough to eat, like we used to have to do back in Family. John said we should start School again when our children were a bit bigger, and teach everyone to write and do sums. He said we should use all that extra time to learn things and find out new things, like they did on Earth.

  We found a place to stop, a quarter waking’s walk from bottom of Dark. It was next to a long warm shining pool that bent round like a knee or a letter L, so we called it L-pool. It was full of fish and oysters and ducks. Trees grew round the edge of it and out into it too, waist-deep, and their big bright lanterns hung down over the water, white and green and yellow, giving out a thick sweet scent. The water gave us protection from leopards on two sides, and we quickly made a short fence out of branches near where the two sides of the L joined, so as to make ourselves a little safe triangle. Inside this fence we built a half-circle of shelters, and two big fire holes in middle, deep deep so as to be sure that there’d always be red embers glowing there.