Mother of Eden (24 page)

Starlight Brooking

After Batsky, we traveled to another houseplace called Highdig. Along with our own Headmanhouse ringmen, we brought along another twenty from Batsky who Greenstone had asked to ride with us. The rest of the ringmen in Batsky he’d particularly told to stay there until he himself had personally sent for them.

Highdig was in the ground of Chief Gerry, Chief Dixon’s closest friend, but the small people there welcomed us as warmly as the small people in Batsky, and when we left we had
another
twenty ringmen following us, so now we were traveling with sixty men. Again, Greenstone told the rest of the Highdig ringmen to stay where they were:

“Do you understand?” he said to them. “I’m speaking as your Headman, and I’m telling you that you mustn’t move for anyone, not even your own chief, unless you know for certain it’s me who sent for you.”

It was the same at Shortpool, where metal was beaten into blades and tools and wrapped round the edges of wheels, and at Winghouse, where, every two hundredwakes, a prize was given for the best attempt at making a real jet plane that could fly. It was the same at dusty Narrowdig, at Metalhouse with its stink of ash, and at dark dark Greenrock, where all the trees had gone. When we finally went down again into the caves after three wakings, we were followed by more than a hundred fifty ringmen.

We made our way toward Edenheart through a side cave named Glass Cave, after the blackglass that could be found there running through the walls in thick bands. The chief there was Roger, and he came to meet us just outside his little houseplace at High Falls.

“Hey there, Headman Greenstone!” he called out cheerily, jumping from his buck and walking over to meet our car. “Welcome to my home.”

He wore his blond hair and beard in little greased spikes tied with colored laces in just the same way that Greenstone tied his own red hair and beard. The two had been friends since they were kids.

“You people have been out under the sky there, upsetting people, so I hear!”

“Trying to make some changes,” Greenstone said. “You and me often used to talk, didn’t we, about how the big chiefs had too much power and how we ought to get back to how it was in the time of John?”

“I guess you’re planning to give one of your talks to the small people here as well? We’ve got a place all ready for you. I thought I’d come down myself and introduce you, if that’s all right. I mean, John’s hand, it’s not often we have the Ringwearer and Headman come to High Falls to see us. Everyone is
excited
excited! Perhaps I could ride down there in your car with you? My blokes can take care of my buck.”

He swung himself nimbly up into the car and directed us through the small cluster of shelters round his house to an open patch beside the stream where trees had been cut down and the holes filled up so as to make a space for games of football. On the far side of the stream, just in front of the shining cave wall, was a high, narrow waterfall, pouring down from the frozen darkness outside through a crack in the cave roof, and throwing up a fine mist that glittered in many different colors.

Thirty forty people were waiting, and they’d been shouting excitedly from the moment we came into view.

“Here’s your Headman, people!” Chief Roger called out.

The little crowd cheered.

“And here’s our beautiful Ringwearer. As she’s been telling everyone, she comes from a funny, gentle little place across the water, where they all wear nothing but skin bitswraps, and—
look!—
she’s wearing one right now!” The chief winked at me and Greenstone in a friendly fashion. “She’s come over here to our ground with lots of interesting new ideas that the Headman wants to try out here in New Earth. Like freeing all the bats.” He looked round at me. “That’s right, isn’t it? That’s one of your ideas that you spoke about up at Batsky?”

“It is,” I began, “but—”

“As soon as I heard that,” said Chief Roger, “I thought I’d better make a start on it.”

He waved to some men who were watching from the far side of the stream. There were lots of batholes in the rock beside the fall, and many young bats were caged there. The men waved back to their boss, then began to pull away the wooden poles that held the cage-
fronts in place. Hundreds of bats came bursting out, screeching and creaking and flapping wings that had never before been used to fly. About half of them managed to lurch up into the air, but many of these crashed almost at once into one another or into the rock. One dropped sideways into the stream and was washed away. Another blundered into the little crowd and was angrily flung aside to lie twitching on the ground.

The rest of the bats didn’t even attempt to fly, just stood there as if their wings had already been cut and they’d been roped together to work in the digs. Their flat eyes rippling, they gave out a steady stream of high-
pitched squeaks.

“Hard to imagine that lot with their own houseplaces, isn’t it?” observed the chief cheerfully to the watching small people.

He glanced quickly at me and Greenstone to give us another of his friendly winks. A childhood friend of Greenstone’s he might have been, and one of the few people, apart from Earthseeker, who Greenstone had reckoned he could rely on, but he wasn’t on our side anymore.

“You haven’t come to listen to me, though,” he said to his small people. “You can see me
any
waking, so I’ll stop now and let the Ringwearer speak. That’s right, isn’t it, Headman? You always let your housewoman talk first?”

“I’m not sure this is going to work, Starlight,” Greenstone said as we carried on toward the Great Cave and Edenheart.

“Why? Why wouldn’t it? Roger is just one guy. Look at all the people who cheered us in all those different places!”

“I guess. But this is a hard game to play, against some smart and powerful players. And some of the things you’ve said are things they’ll never forgive or accept.”

I guess he meant the words from the Secret Story. It was a strange thing, but even now, when I’d spoken them out loud to all those hundreds of people in all those different places, I couldn’t bring myself to speak of them by name.

“Are you saying I shouldn’t have said them?”

He laughed. “You’re the chess player, Starlight, not me! I’m not saying you’re wrong. We had no choice but to take some risks. But you’ve certainly taken us to a dangerous place.”

“This isn’t like chess, exactly. There are really no rules. It’s more like a game of dare. We’ll be all right if we just keep going and act like we’ve already won, because as long as the ringmen believe we’re winning, they’ll stay on our side. And what can any chief or teacher do to us then?”

Greenstone smiled. Behind us the metal faces changed from green, to pink, to blue, to white, as the ringmen passed beneath the shining trees of Glass Cave.

“You may be right. But I wouldn’t talk about bats again, if I were you. Whatever your Jeff might have said about animals, no one here cares about their feelings, and even the smallest are glad of having them there to do the work that they’d have to do themselves otherwise.”

“Yes, I’d kind of figured that.”

“And I suggest that when you talk in Edenheart, you don’t talk about metaldiggers or stonebreakers, either. People there are proud they don’t have to go down dusty holes, and they’re glad it’s other peoples’ job to get the metal they use. You might as well talk about bats as talk about diggers in Edenheart.”

“So I’ll just talk about stuffmakers and traders, yes?”

“That’s right. Those are the sort of people who live there. Stuffmakers, traders, spearmakers, builders, helpers. And younger sons and daughters of chiefs and teachers. Big smalls, they sometimes call themselves, or even small bigs.”

I nodded. I’d imagined that great pile of blocks called New Earth would topple over just as soon as the ones at the bottom under
stood that they didn’t have to hold it all up. But I was beginning to see that almost everyone, however small, had at least some reason to want to keep that wall standing.

“I think you should put your longwrap back on, too,” Greenstone added. “Most people in Edenheart wear at least a plain longwrap. They think skin waistwraps are for forest people and diggers.”

I pulled on my white and yellow wrap and smoothed down my hair, readying myself for this one last job before we returned to the Headmanhouse.

“Perhaps you’d better be the one to speak first,” I said. “So they won’t say it’s me who’s in charge.”

“Good idea. And when it’s your turn, Starlight, be careful. Remember the Teachinghouse is in Edenheart. There’ll be ringmen and underteachers listening to us who work at the Teachinghouse, and some who help when people are questioned for breaking the rules. Maybe some of those words would be better left for another time?”

Mary Starfler

I saw the mother at Narrowdig. I had my little boy John with me. He’d been coughing and coughing for wakings, and he had a fever, too. We were all afraid it was the beginning of the lung sickness. I’d lost seven of my sixteen babies, and it looked like it was going to happen again.

People told me the mother could heal sicknesses. There were stories coming from Batsky about headaches and bad backs that had been eased just by being near her, and it was said that, over at a place called Johndigs on far side of the Great Cave, a woman who couldn’t walk at all stood up and walked just like you and me when the mother touched her with the ring.

So when I heard she was coming, I got six big, strong digger men together—
my five brothers and my cousin Tom—
and we persuaded our dig ringmen to let us go early early to the meeting ground, when there was still a bit of room to move, promising them we’d do extra work the next three wakings.

Soon as we got there—
me, my mum, my kids, and our six big men—
we pushed our way to the front. People were okay about it when they saw the state of our little John: He was so thin, so pale, and he was hacking away all the time like he wanted to cough out his insides. So we got right up there, right up next to the old car they’d put there for the mother and the Headman to stand on.

she knew what it was to break stones all waking long, and never see your kids until you were so tired that all you wanted to do was lie down and sleep. She might not have any kids of her own, but she was a
true
mother just the same, a mother to all of us. And there on her finger—
right there in front of us!—
was the ring that Mother Gela brought from Earth.

Well, she talked to us for a bit, and the Headman talked to us, and then the time came that we’d been waiting for. The mother came to the edge of the car and knelt down so that people could see the ring and touch it. She went first to the front and then to the far side of the car from us. But then she stood up straight—
the Headman leaned across and said something to her in her ear—
and I was afraid for a moment she wasn’t going to get to us at all.

“Mother!” I shouted out. “Please touch my little boy!”

Would you believe she turned and looked straight at me? She looked straight into my eyes, just like you’d look at someone who lived in the same cluster as you! And then she smiled and came over. It was hard to hear over all the shouting and yelling all around us, but she knelt down right next to us, and spoke to us alone.

“There’s a poorly little man,” she said. “What’s his name?”

I told her he was John, and straight away she reached out her hand with the ring on it and touched it gently gently against John’s poor hot forehead.

“Hello there, little Johnny man, you are a poorly chap, aren’t you?”

“Thank you, Mother, thank you, thank you, thank you.”

I was crying and my mum was crying and my kids and brothers and cousin were all crying, too.

She moved on then, of course. Well, she’s a mother, isn’t she? A mother has to look after all of her kids. Having nine myself, I understood.

But that same waking, when we got back to our shelters, John lay down and slept like he hadn’t slept since the cough first started, slept right through until the First Horn blew. And when he woke, the fever was gone.

Quietstream Batwing

When the Headman and the mother had finished with the crowd in Edenheart, they crossed the river, with all those ringmen after them, and came back to the Headmanhouse, just after the timehorn blew the end of the final quarter.

“Paaaaaaaaaaaaaarp! Paaaaaaaaaaaaarp!”

The sound was echoing up and down the cave as helpers ran out to meet them.

“Paaaaaaaaaaaaaarp! Paaaaaaaaaaaaarp! Paaaaaaaaaaaaarp!”

“Where’s Quietstream?” the mother asked as she climbed down from the car. “I am
tired
tired. I could really do with a bath.”

“I’m right here, Mother.”

I stepped forward, and bowed, but I couldn’t bring myself to return her smile or meet her eyes. I just turned and led the way.

“We’ve been working hard hard,” she told me as she followed me into her sleeping cave. “I swear I could sleep for two whole wakings, one after the other.”

“Could you, Mother?”

“What’s the matter, Quietstream? Are you angry with me?”

Hmmmmph hmmmmph hmmmmph
went the tree. The stream tinkled into the pool.

“Angry, Mother? It’s not for me to be angry with the Ringwearer. Let me take off this longwrap.”

The mother raised her arms. “You’re
angry
angry,” she said, her voice all bright and brittle now with anger of her own. “I don’t mind people being angry with me, but I hate it when they lie and pretend they’re not.”

She stepped into the warm water under the whitelantern tree and sunk down into it. I knelt beside her as usual and began to scoop up water and pour it over her lovely shoulders. My fingers were aching badly. They always got worse when I was upset.

“Yes, I am angry, Mother,” I suddenly said.

Well, that surprised her! She sat straight up and glared round at me.

“
Why?
” she demanded.

I checked there was no one at the door.

“Because you spoke about things you promised not to speak about.”

I’d never in my life discussed the Secret Story with anyone. I hadn’t even passed it on to my daughters. When it came to the moment, it always seemed unfair to make them carry that burden.

“I don’t think I promised never to speak the words, Quietstream. I think I promised not to say where they came from.”

I scooped up some water, poured it over her back, and began to rub her down. Then suddenly I stopped.

“You came here across the Pool only a hundredwake or so ago, Mother, and yet you think you know better than we do who have lived here all our lives.”

She said nothing.

“The chiefs know where those words come from, Mother.” I began to rub again. “They know it because every time a whisperer is caught—
every time one of
us
is caught—
she’s given to the Questioners in the Teachinghouse, and they beat her, and burn her with hot metal, and threaten her kids, until she tells the whole story.”

“I know, but—”

I’d never interrupted the big people, never, but now I did. “And they write it all down every time. They have the Story right there in the Teachinghouse, written down, again and again, on hundreds of barks, which the Teachers show to the chiefs. The old Headman even used to joke about it sometimes with the Head Teacher. They’d put on women’s voices and screech out the words to each other.

“ ‘Women are just as good as men,’ the Headman would squeal.

“ ‘It doesn’t matter what color you are,’ the Head Teacher would squawk.

“ ‘Red, purple, green, or blue,’ the Headman would cackle back.

“Then they’d roar with laughter. And I had to stand there waiting in case they wanted anything, not speaking a word, and not showing anything in my face. It didn’t seem to occur to them I might recognize the words myself.”

I could see the mother tense as I told her this, but she shrugged like she didn’t care.

“Maybe the mistake we’ve all made,” she said, “is whispering those words instead of shouting them out loud. I mean, what’s the point of remembering them at all if we don’t do anything with them?”

I began to rub her back again. “But they can be changed once they’re out there where everyone can hear them,” I said. “They can be mocked. They can be twisted round to mean something different from what our mother meant. Like
 
.
.
.”

I looked down at her hand, hesitating, but then deciding I’d gone too far already to worry about being careful now.

“Like the ring on your finger there: taken by the big people for themselves, though Gela was the mother of all of us. Our mother knew this would happen; that’s why she wanted us to keep her words safe until Eden was ready to hear them.”

“Yes, but if we don’t—” She shook my hands angrily off her back. “Gela’s tits, Quietstream! Do you want to make a hole in my skin?”

“I’m sorry, Mother. It’s just—”

“I’ll tell you why I said the words. I said them because if I’ve got to stand in for Mother Gela, then I should say what Gela really
would
say. Otherwise I’d be doing exactly what you’ve just complained about: speaking words in the name of Gela that Gela would never have said.”

“But you
know
that she wanted us to keep the story secret, Mother. That’s part of the story.”

The mother snorted. “If the story’s true at all, that is. I know my mother changed it. ‘Always look out for men who like the story to be all about them,’ she told me. ‘
They’re
the ones you should try to be with.’ That’s not what you were told, is it? And if one woman can change it, probably others did before. Maybe it didn’t even start with Gela at all. Maybe some other woman made it up. Or some man.”

“So why did you say the words then, Mother, if you don’t think they’re real?” I began to scoop warm water over her hair. “Did you
really
do it for Gela, do you think, Mother? Or did you do it because you thought it would help get the small people on your side to help you with your trouble with the chiefs?” Never in my whole life had I spoken like this to one of the big people. “Or was it just because it was exciting to say them, Mother, when everyone was watching and you had nothing on but a skin wrap?”

She whirled round angrily. “Well, you’re certainly speaking your mind this waking, Quietstream, I must say! I thought small people weren’t supposed to—”

“And
I
thought, Mother, that there weren’t supposed to
be
big people and small people.”

She laughed angrily at that. “There shouldn’t be, but me and Greenstone seem to be the only people in New Earth who are willing to do anything about it.”

Then she stood straight up, the water dripping from her body and her eyes fiery as she dared me to deny what she’d said.

But when I’d wrapped her, she suddenly changed.

“Please don’t be angry with me, Quietstream!” she burst out, turning and throwing her arms round me like I was her mum. “I’m trying to do the best I can, I really am.”

For a second or two, I held out, stiff and unyielding, but then I couldn’t help myself and I gave way, taking her in my arms and kissing her on her wet hair.

“I know you are,” I told her. “But you need to be careful. You’re playing with things you didn’t grow up with and you don’t really understand.”

Then a voice called from the door, and my blood turned cold with fear.

“Mother?”

It was Purelight, a woman I’d never liked or trusted since she first came to the Headmanhouse. How long had she been waiting there? What had she heard?

“Mother, the Headman says food is ready for you in the Writingcave,” she said, “and he hopes you’ll come and eat with him and Chief Earthseeker.”