Mother of Eden (23 page)

“Mother! Mother! Mother!”

I felt completely relaxed, completely in control. Laughing, I glanced round at Greenstone beside me. He was half facing me, half facing the crowd, looking bewildered but happy. Seeing me look at him, he smiled.

I turned back to the crowd and held up my hands for quiet. Once again I pointed to the ring.

“This is Gela’s ring. This is the ring that came from Earth. This is the ring that Angela Young was given by her mum and dad in that far-
off ground called Peckham that none of us will ever see.”

“Mother! Mother! Mother!”

I slipped off the ring and held it in front of my face. “There’s writing inside it. You can’t see it from there, but I can see it now. Perfect, tiny writing.”

“Mother! Mother! Mother!”

I raised my hands again, and there was silence at once.

Hmmmmph hmmmmph hmmmmph
went the trees.
Hoom! Hoom! Hoom!
called a starbird somewhere far out in the forest, Eden going on with its own life as if these strange, pale human creatures had never come here.

“I can see what the writing says, and it says
exactly
the words the stories tell us it says. Tell me what you think they are, everyone, and I’ll tell you if you’re right.”

There was a rumbling from the crowd as people started to call out the famous words. I pretended to look puzzled, and everyone laughed.

“What? I can’t hear you! Tell me again.”

Again the rumbling.

“Does it say ‘To Angela
 
.
.
.’?”

“To Angela,” the crowd boomed.

“Does it say ‘To Angela, with love
 
.
.
.’?”

“To Angela, with love.”

“Does it say ‘To Angela, with love from Mum and Dad’?”

“To Angela, with love from Mum and Dad.”

I slipped the ring back on my finger.

“Gela’s mum and dad loved her, and that kept her going in those lonely lonely times, when family was only two people, three people, four people, seven people, in forest all by themselves. And just as she was loved by her mum and dad, Gela loved her own kids. And you
are
Gela’s kids, all of you.”

I paused to let the crowd roar. I waited for the rhythm: “Mother! Mother! Mother!” Once I’d just happily basked in this attention, like a little child basks in the praise of grown-
ups telling her what a clever girl she is, but I was past that now. This was my job—
getting this attention, holding it, shaping it—
and everything depended on my doing it right.

“And she wanted her children to be happy, like any good mother does. She wanted them to care for one another, and to always always remember that they were
one
family. Small people. Big people. Ringmen. Rockwomen. Flowergatherers. Stuffmakers. Diggers. Underteachers
 
.
.
. Everyone! Even Headmen.”

I pointed to Greenstone, and he got a friendly cheer of his own.

“Gela is our mother. We are her children, and there are some things she wanted us always to remember.”

Again, I hesitated for a moment. I didn’t dare to look at Greenstone. It was a big big step I was about to take. It meant breaking two different sets of rules at once, the rules of New Earth and the rules of Mother Gela both. And it meant great danger for me.

“Always remember women are just as good as men!” I called out.

I’d done it now, and it was too late to go back. Most of the women there cheered loudly, but I was sure I could see the faces of women who were surprised and shocked to hear words they already knew.

“Don’t ever treat someone differently because of the way they look,” I called out, “whether they’re holefaces, or clawfeet, or whatever else.”

This made more sense, I’d decided, than “because of the color of their skin,” when every face in front of me was the same yellowy-
brown.

“Just because someone thinks they’re important doesn’t mean they’re better than anyone else, and nor does having lots of stuff.”

It was scary scary to be speaking these words out loud, but it was also wonderful. I had no doubt that they were older than all the other rules, older than the Johnfolk and the Davidfolk, even if they had got a bit mixed up in the telling through all those generations.

“Don’t treat people like they’re just things! And watch—”

I broke off for a moment because I’d noticed another car nudging its way through the people at the edge of the meeting ground. Chief Whiteblade stood in it in his red and white wrap, his arms folded and his face tight, ringmen all round him in metal masks. I felt a cold stab of dread. He was a chief of New Earth, and he must have sent women to the fire for saying these exact same words.

But I raised my hand with the ring again, and the people cheered, and I rode upward again on the sound of it, like the bats rode upward on the warm air above the great crack of Steam Fall.

“Watch out for men who think the story is all about them!” I called out.

I said the story as Quietstream had heard it, not as I’d heard it from my own mum. Seeing Whiteblade there had decided me.

“In fact, the story isn’t about any one person,” I said, moving on from the words that came from Gela, and back to words of my own. “The story is about us all.”

Greenstone Johnson

How far she’d come since she had the Timekeeper blow his horn early and mess up my father’s precious time. She was the housewoman of the Headman, but she was wearing the same wrap as a stonebreaker or flowergather, and openly speaking words for which dozens of women had been sent to the fire. Whether or not she knew I’d recognize them, she must have realized that there would be many out there who would.

Who else in all of New Earth was this bold, who else in all of Eden? Certainly not me. I was scared, scared both for her and for me, but I was proud proud as well. She was like a new John, standing tall and defiant in front of Family after destroying their Circle of Stones.

“John Redlantern led you to this ground of New Earth,” she called out. “He led you here, but it never belonged to him. How could it? It’s just ground, isn’t it? It’s been here since long before people first came to Eden, and what’s in it belongs to whoever finds it! The greenstone you dig is yours, and so is the metal you make from it.”

A big roar of approval went up from a crowd that included many diggers and stonebreakers. She raised her hands for quiet. It was like she’d been doing this all her life.

“The Headman asks you for some of it. He needs some of it for the ringmen who keep New Earth safe, and for their chiefs, and he needs some of it for the teachers and underteachers, who remember things for us. But it was never just John’s metal, and it isn’t just Headman Greenstone’s metal now. New Earth doesn’t
belong
to him.”

As the crowd roared again, I looked across the meeting ground and saw that Whiteblade had gone. Small people had filled up the space where his car had been, like skin growing over a wound.

“And
you
don’t belong to the Headman, either, or to the chiefs. The Headman is your leader and the leader of the ringmen, and the ringmen are there to protect the people of Gela’s ring. But the people of the ring do not
belong
to him.”

The crowd liked this, too, but then suddenly Starlight said a weird weird thing.

“And the bats, too.
They
don’t really belong to anyone, any more than you belong to the Headman. Before people came here they had their
own
houseplaces and clusters, their own writing. They belong to themselves as well.”

The faces looking up at us became troubled and confused, and who could blame them? Some of these people would be bat keepers, many would have bats working for them in the metaldigs, and most of them were the smallest of small people, with only bats to prevent them from being the smallest things of all.

Starlight was quick quick. She could see she’d made a bad move, and she began to work at once on recovering from it, thrusting her ring hand above her head.

“New Earth belongs to all of you!”

It was as if a fire had burned too low and she’d lifted away the cooking pot to blow on the embers and bring them back to life. She stood and held the ring up there until the roaring had built up again like good strong tongues of flame, and then she moved from one side of the car to the other, left, right, front, kneeling down and reaching out so that people could touch the metal from Earth with their own fingers, their own lips.

“Mother! Mother! Mother!”

She stood up straight again and held up her hands for quiet.

“Never mind bats for now, though,” she told the crowd. “First of all we need to think about the ringmen, the metaldiggers, the underteachers, the stonebreakers, all the so-
called small people. That’s the important thing, making
you
bigger, giving you
your
fair share of New Earth.”

How could she have thought of mentioning the bats, I wondered? And who cared about bats, anyway? But never mind; she was on top of things again. The fire was blazing again like we needed it to do, if we were to have any chance against Dixon and his friends.

“Mother! Mother! Mother!” the people chanted, and she stood there, smiling, her arms held out, with her bare feet and her bare breasts and her simple buckskin wrap.

“Here is your Headman now,” she told them after a time. “Here’s Greenstone.”

She glanced at me. I could see some uneasiness in her face, and I realized that she was worried what I’d think about the words she’d said. But this was her game, not mine, not anyone else’s. It was a game she had invented herself. I smiled at her and kissed her cheek.

“That was my beautiful housewoman!” I called out, and all the people cheered.

I’d been talking to small people since I was a little kid. I knew they liked me and, unlike some big people, I had no fear of them. It was the big people who scared me.

“Do you blame me that I loved her from the moment I saw her?”

“No! No! No!” the crowd roared.

“Don’t you love her, too?”

“Yes! Yes! Yes!”

“I was certain certain that she’d be the best of all Ringwearers, the best of all mothers for New Earth. Do you think I was right?”

“Yes! Yes! Yes!”

“Everything she just said is true,” I told them. “The ground and the metal
don’t
only belong to me or the chiefs and teachers. You need to give some of it to us so we can do our jobs, but it
isn’t
all ours, and from now on I promise, if you help me, you’ll get a fair share.”

I glanced again at the place where Whiteblade’s car had been. Where had he gone, I wondered? What was he doing now?

“So are you with us?” I called out to the people of Batsky.

“Yes!”

“Where are the ringmen? Are
you
with us, men?”

“Yes!”

“Will you help me and the Ringwearer?”

“Yes!”

“Will you do as I ask you?”

“Yes!”

“And how about the metaldiggers? Raise your hands! Where are you? Are you with us?”

Yes,
they were here.
Yes,
they were with us.
Yes,
they would help us. And so would the stonebreakers and the stuffmakers and the flowergatherers.

Perhaps Starlight was right. Perhaps we really would win! What could the chiefs and teachers do to stop us, after all, if all their people were with us?

Lucy Johnson

Whiteblade came bursting into our house, nearly knocking over the helper who opened the door to him. He was panting and red in the face, and he stank of sweat. He’d ridden all the way down his cave and the Great Cave at full speed without a stop.

“Dixon!” he bellowed, pushing past helpers and bats. “Dixon! Where are you?”

I was in one part of the house, Dixon in another, and the two of us arrived in our door cave at the same time.

“That bloody Greenstone’s got to be stopped!” Whiteblade shouted. “He’s just come into my ground and spoken to my ringmen and small people, without asking me, without so much as telling me his plans. And can you believe this? That fishing girl of his stood up in front of all the small people in a buckskin wrap like she was one of them and not one of us at all. Which of course they loved, the lazy little slinkers, but it’s an insult to the ring. And you won’t believe what she said, Dixon! You just won’t believe it! She said that all the ground and all the metal—”

Dixon interrupted him. “Okay, Whiteblade. That’s enough for the moment. Lucy is here, and there are helpers all around us. We’ll go to my writingcave, and then you can tell me the rest.”

“Yeah, okay. I mean, I was prepared to give the guy a chance, but as far as I’m concerned, he’s blown it now. Whatever you and Gerry have planned, I’m with you. Even if it means—”

“We’ll go to my writingcave,” Dixon repeated in a firm, tight voice.

Of course I didn’t go with them—
that sort of thing wasn’t for women or helpers—
but, just as chiefs had listeners in the houses of other chiefs, so we women had listeners who reported to us about our men. Whiteblade arrived at Third Horn, and I learned before Fourth Horn that Dixon had sent a helper on buckback down to Edenheart, with a message for a ringman called Snowleopard.

I already knew about Snowleopard. Dixon didn’t know it, but I did. He was the man from Old Ground who’d won the polefight in Edenheart, and the paddle race at Brightrest. He’d come over with the fishing girl, and she thought he was her special protector and friend, but my clever Dixon knew better. He’d been giving Snowleopard metal to build up a little group of ringmen at the Headmanhouse who would do as Dixon asked.

That fishing girl was in for a surprise.