Mother of Eden (28 page)

Quietstream Batwing

We reached the warmth and treelight of the forest after an hour, and without ever stopping to think about which way to go, the men made their way through shining trees and drifts of starflowers, across streams and over hills, like they’d known this ground all their lives. We didn’t pass any houseplaces. We didn’t see a single shelter or a single human being. The only thing that told us human beings had ever been here was that from time to time we reached one of those paths the old Headman laid out through the forest, and cautiously cautiously crossed over it. Above us Starry Swirl blazed down from the awful emptiness of the sky.

The one-
eyed guy kept trying to talk to me—
“Lot of wing-
monkeys in this forest, aren’t there?
.
.
. We never get trees like that one where I come from!
.
.
. Gives you a sore bum, all this riding, doesn’t it?”—
and I couldn’t tell if he was trying to be kind or what, but it was impossible to pay attention to him when all the time I was worrying worrying worrying about my girls and my mum, and sometimes about poor Greenstone, too, all by himself, falling falling into the fire.

Up and down the hills we rode, shrieking starbirds clattering away from us through trees, treefoxes wriggling their noses at us as they watched us from branches with their flat black eyes. And at last, after half a waking or more—
it was hard to tell without the

“But you could be wandering about by yourself for—”

Snowleopard made an impatient noise. “Come on now, girls. No time for chatting. We’ve got to go.”

They turned their bucks round and started off down the slope through the trees and starflowers. The mother turned one last time and waved, and then they were gone.

Hmmmmph hmmmmph hmmmmph
went the trees.
Hmmmmmmmmmm
went the forest, stretching away around me for miles and miles.

I didn’t know which way to go. I didn’t know how to hunt. I didn’t even know which fruit to eat and which to leave alone.

Starlight Brooking

Filling up whole sky, the huge wheel of stars shone coldly down as our bucks descended to the edge of Pool. The air was warm warm and my toes and fingers weren’t freezing anymore, but I was shivering all the same. That horrible iciness was growing inside me, that stony lump of grief and shame. I pressed myself back against Snowleopard, not for warmth anymore, but simply in the hope that his body at least could give me some comfort, some sort of semblance of love.

I kept thinking about Greenstone: Greenstone all alone, Greenstone falling, Greenstone still alive and awake as his blood boiled and his skin burst into flames. It still wasn’t real—
it was
far
far from being real—
but I could feel it unwrapping inside me.

“Right then, girl, jump down,” Snowleopard said.

We’d dropped into a narrow, rocky crack that had cut its way into the slope, and it was easier to walk than to keep on riding in that tight, tree-
packed space, where we had to keep ducking down under shining branches. At the end of it, by the edge of the water, two big black rocks stuck up from a sandy beach like the rocks did on the edge of the Sand. The men had made a little camp beside them. There was a place for a fire, and a little cave in the rock where they’d stored things.

Now they moved immediately into a routine. First, without saying a word, they did for the bucks they’d been riding with a single hard spear thrust into the belly of each
: crunch, crunch, crunch.
The creatures sank shuddering to the ground, their mouth-
feelers blowing out green foam. While it was still lying there quivering, Snowleopard hacked three legs from his buck with a long metal knife, then started to cut off chunks of meat. Spear unwrapped a box of hot embers and set about making a fire. Blink began carrying things out of the cave. There were four heavy bags with lumps of rock clunking inside them—
when he put them down, I saw it was greenstone—
and some bags of dried food, and a whole bunch of greased water carriers, which Blink told me were full of badjuice for the journey.

I stood watching them, trembling, while the trees pulsed around us and the great Pool slapped against those two big rocks. There was a tongue of bright water reaching in between them, narrow but deep, and there was a boat hanging there above the green and pink light, gently rocking from side to side.

“I think I should go with Quietstream,” I said.

She’d been right not to leave her kids behind, it seemed to me, and I shouldn’t have left Greenstone until I was certain that he really was dead. I wouldn’t be so alone if I was with her, either. She would have let me cry, and I would have let her cry, too. We could have comforted each other. It didn’t even seem to occur to these men that I might be sad or troubled in any way.

Snowleopard looked up. “Well, you can’t,” he said firmly, like I was a silly child.

“But—”

“It would take you three hours at least just to walk up to the top of the ridge,” he pointed out, “and how would you find her then? She’d be out in forest somewhere, perhaps eight ten miles away.” He shoved another chunk of meat onto a stick.

“I guess you’re right,” I said. “Okay. It’s just
 
.
.
.”

I needed to think. I needed to figure out what these men were playing at. They’d let down Greenstone. They’d even let down Chief Dixon. So why should I trust them to look after me?

“I have to take a crap,” I said.

Snowleopard looked up at me from the meat, his hands green and slimy with buck blood. Then he glanced back at the trees behind me, in that crack between the cliffs. He nodded and turned back to his meat. “Okay, but don’t go far. As soon as the meat’s cooked, we need to go.”

Blink had come over to squat down with him and Spear, and now the three men together began to push sticks through the bits of meat Snowleopard had been cutting up and hold them out over the fire.

Squeezed between walls of rock, the forest pulsed and hummed. Flutterbyes swarmed in the warm, damp air around the shining trees. A small slinker stuck out its bony head from an airhole and watched the flying creatures all around it, its head swaying slowly from side to side.

I wasn’t part of this place, the thought suddenly came to me, not part of New Earth, not part of Eden, not part of this forest with its black sky, its shining flowers, its sweet, damp, sickly smell. I didn’t belong here. No one did. It was a dark, horrible place where people should never have come in first place and would never never feel at home.

I looked back. The men were sitting side by side with their backs to me, chatting and laughing as they busied themselves with cooking their meat. I pressed my back against the rock and crept back toward them like we used to creep toward fatbucks out at the edge of our water forest. There was a boulder that had fallen against one of the cliffs, and I crawled behind it so I could peep through the crack between it and the wall of rock and watch the men without them seeing me, like I was looking into another world where Starlight Brooking didn’t exist.

“Gela’s tits, Spear,” I heard Snowleopard say. “You and your bloody moaning. We got here, didn’t we? And last time I checked, none of us had a spear sticking out of his back!”

Blink laughed loudly, but Spear wasn’t happy.

“We took a risk we didn’t need to, though,” he said. “We should have done for both of them straight off and then just taken the ring. I mean, all we were ever asked to do was figure out where the metal came from. Strongheart will be amazed we got the ring as well. Why do we need this extra hassle?”

He looked round at Snowleopard and, as he did so, he showed me the dead side of his face, as cold and expressionless as a corpse. I saw Snowleopard glance in my direction before he answered, checking to see if I was near, but I knew he couldn’t see me in my hiding place.

“Come on now, Spear,” he said. “Strongheart will be pleased pleased to have the Ringwearer as well as the ring. Imagine the things she could tell him with the right persuasion, the things she could be traded for. Or maybe he’ll want to keep her, eh? Maybe the Head Guard of Mainground will think it’s fun to shove his dick where the Headman of New Earth used to go.” Again he glanced back in my direction for a moment, then leaned forward to put the meat he was holding in a better position. “I mean, let’s face it, Spear, she’s been pretty useful to us so far, right back to the time we got that guy Mike to threaten her with his dick in Veeklehouse. Who knows if old Greenstone would have agreed to take us across the Pool with him if it wasn’t for that?”

Blink laughed. “Poor old Greenstone, eh? He was
useless
useless, wasn’t he? He had it coming to him all along.”

But Snowleopard was still working on Spear.

“Yeah, and anyway, Spear,” he said, “this isn’t like you, my old mate. You must be getting old! Never mind Strongheart; aren’t you interested in seeing a bit more of that pretty little butt yourself? I know I am.”

Blink gave another loud laugh, and even Spear, reluctantly, gave a short little snort of amusement.

Lucy Johnson

Dixon sent for me to come to the Headmanhouse, and I rode down in our car with helpers and ringmen all around me. I was so proud, so happy. We’d beaten Firehand! It had been a long long fight, but my dad, Harry, had won in the end.

We passed quickly through Edenheart. The small people didn’t yet know what had happened, and to them I was just another chiefswoman going up to the House for a meeting or a feast. But it would be a different story when I next came there with Dixon. I’d be wearing the ring on my finger, and they’d have a proper Ringwearer again, not some desperate little fishing girl who tried to win the small folk’s love by trying to be like them.

What a lie that had been, anyway! When she got back to the Headmanhouse after her little trip to the digs, she’d put on her fancy wraps again quickly enough, from what I’d heard. She’d had her helpers bathe her and bring her food. She’d slept in a wallcave in a wooden bed. If she really wanted to be like the small people, how come she didn’t sleep on the ground in a bark shelter, and gnaw her meat from a bone?

We crossed the river, stopped outside the House. The doors opened and, as a ringman was helping me to the ground, I heard Dixon come up behind me.

“Lucy
 
.
.
.” he said.

I turned and threw my arms straight around his neck. “Dixon, my dearest, you clever clever man. You always said you’d—”

I stopped. He was stiff stiff in my arms.

“Yeah, we got Greenstone all right,” he said. “He’s down in the holding cave at the Teachinghouse. But the bloody fishing girl got away, and she’s still got the ring on her finger.”

My blood turned as cold as the Dark Mountains. In one single moment, my new happiness was smashed.

“How could she have got away?”

“Snowleopard and some others were supposed to be taking her and her helper to the Teachinghouse, but they haven’t arrived, and the ringmen who were with them have been found dead in the river. Looks like those Old Ground men have gone off with her.”

I stared at him. “
What?
You let those Davidfolk take charge of her?
That
was your big plan?”

Dixon didn’t often cringe in front of me, but he did now. He cringed like a beaten child. “The job I gave Snowleopard was to come up to our cave and tell our ringmen that Earthseeker had told them to come down to Edenheart. And then he was to go back down there with them and watch out for a chance to get the fishing girl: I knew she trusted him, and I knew she’d go with him without a fuss. I told three of my blokes to stay with him all the time. It was just—”

“Three of your blokes against those three big men who won the Edenheart polefight? Tom’s dick, Dixon, how could you? And why didn’t you take the ring off her finger before they took her away? I thought you were supposed to be smart.”

He started to get angry now, as I knew he would. “Watch your tongue, Lucy,” he hissed, glancing round at the ringmen and helpers. “We had a lot to deal with. We had a whole bunch of ringmen and small people who still weren’t sure whose side they were on. We didn’t want to unsettle them by making a scene.”

“So you handed the ring to three Davidfolk instead? You were sure whose side
they
were on?”

“I didn’t hand it to them. They tricked us and took it, and now we’ve got everyone out looking for them.”

“Mother of Eden, Dixon, to think I was feeling proud of you as I came down here. To think I was imagining the stories people would tell in the future about Headman Dixon, who brought back the Headman’s hat to the true sons of John! I’ll tell you what the stories will say now. I’ll tell you the only thing anyone will remember Headman Dixon for. He was the dumb one who gave away the ring.”

Of course he slapped me then, hard hard, with a second slap to follow. But it was worth it. It was worth it just to see the shame on his face when I told what he’d done and he knew I was right.

Starlight Brooking

I crept back up between the cliffs a little way, then turned and walked back down to the men, kicking stones so they’d notice me coming.

“You ready now, Starlight?” Snowleopard called out when he saw me. “This meat is done enough. We’ll stick it in a bag and load up the boat, and then we’re set to go.”

They pulled the boat up to the narrow beach at the end of that tongue of water, and I helped them load it with the heavy bags of greenstone, the badjuice, the food, the cooked meat, the skins for warmth in Deep Darkness.

Mother of Eden, I hated them, but hate made me stronger. It drove out fear and let me set my grief to one side, so that I could watch them calmly, like I was studying the pieces on a board. Snowleopard specially I watched. He even caught me once, looking at his face as I wondered why I’d ever thought of him as a man who hid nothing.

“What are you staring at, Starlight?” He grinned at me and winked.

Jeff’s shining ride, he’d actually thought I was admiring him! He’d thought I was finding him sexy. And actually, that was interesting. It was useful information, the fact that he
could
think that, so soon after I’d lost Greenstone. It showed that, as smart as he was, there were some things Snowleopard didn’t understand. My heart full of hate, I winked back at him and smiled a secret sexy smile.

He
loved
that, and he was about to speak when a loud screeching came from the cave, and Blink emerged from it dragging a big cage with two baby bats inside it, perhaps half my height, their wings flapping uselessly against the wooden poles that trapped them there.

“I’d just assumed these bloody things had died,” he said. “Either that or escaped. I mean, we haven’t had a chance to feed them for—
what?—
ten wakings or more, have we? But they’re still alive, look: thin but alive. Are we still going to take them with us? Or is that too much trouble?”

Snowleopard shrugged. “May as well, but let’s chop off those wings, or that flapping will drive us nuts.”

Blink slid out the pole that kept the cage shut, and he and Spear held the two creatures down while Snowleopard knelt on their wings and hacked them off with his metal knife. Then they shoved the bats back inside the cage and dumped it onto the middle of the boat next to the windtree, washing their hands in the water to make a small green cloud of blood.

The boat was much smaller than the boat that had brought me to New Earth, and was only two-
bodied: two sister-
boats, rather than a mother-
boat and two daughters. Two of us knelt in each of them, took up our paddles, and began to dig our way forward, out onto the open water.

That cold stone was heavy heavy inside me, but hate kept me sharp and gave me strength. I watched the men. I noticed where they’d put down their spears and where they’d laid their woolly skins to sleep. I noticed the things on the boatfloor: the bags of stones, the coiled-
up rope, the bats, with their stumps still oozing blood, huddled in their cage.

The windcatcher puffed up, collapsed, puffed up again, and then began straining forward, pulling against the windtree. It would have taken us forward all by itself, but we kept paddling hard for most of a waking, until the men were sure we couldn’t be seen from poolside. Only then did they climb out of the sister-
boats and settle down toward the back of the main boatfloor, Spear taking the steerpole, Snowleopard and Blink stretching out on their sleeping skins while the shining watertrees passed beneath us.

“Do you want to eat some of your meat now, boys?” I asked them. “And maybe have a little badjuice?”

All around us was bright water and black black sky.

“Why not?” said Snowleopard, studying my face. “We’ve got something to celebrate.”

“I’ll be honest with you,” I said. “I didn’t know what to think when you three tied me up outside the Headmanhouse. I was frightened you weren’t going to keep your promise. But I shouldn’t have doubted you, should I? You’ve got me out of New Earth safely, and now you’re taking me home. I just don’t know how to make it up to you.”

The men glanced at one another and grinned. Blink rubbed his hands. Spear ran his tongue over his dead lips.

“You’re doing all right so far,” Snowleopard said, smiling complacently and stretching out comfortably on the boatfloor. “You’re doing fine.”

They chuckled with pleasure as I fetched meat for them, filled and refilled their mugs, found fruit and cakes for them to fill their bellies.

“This isn’t so bad, is it?” crowed Blink.

“I’m so so grateful to you three,” I told them again. “I would have been falling toward that fire by now if you hadn’t got me out of there. I wish I could think of a way of showing you how grateful I am.”

I was playing a part, like one of those little wooden people at Veeklehouse, and the men loved it. Could they really not see the ice inside me, I wondered? Couldn’t they see my grief? Couldn’t they even recognize my hate? But these were the wrong questions. It just didn’t matter to them
what
was looking out from my eyes. As long as I played out this new role for them as well as I’d once played the role of Ringwearer, they didn’t care who pulled the strings or spoke the voices.

“And it’s good to be with proper Mainground men, too,” I said, giving Snowleopard another lingering look.

“Tom’s dick and Harry’s, girl,” purred Snowleopard. “You really are a guard’s daughter, aren’t you? Come and give old Snow a kiss.”

My body was nothing more than a ringman’s metal mask, I told myself as I went over to him. It wasn’t me. It was just the thing I hid behind. And I made myself open my mouth to him when I kissed him, made myself soft and yielding for a moment in his arms before I wriggled out of his grasp with a teasing laugh.

“Hey!” grumbled Snowleopard, “I wanted more than that.”

“Yeah,” said Blink. “And if you really want to make it up to us, that’s the way.”

“There will be more,” I said. “I promise you that. I could use some comfort myself as well. But give me a waking, eh? Greenstone might not have been so great, but
 
.
.
.”

Snowleopard rolled over onto his side, watching me with a grin. “We can wait, boys, can’t we? We can wait.”

“Thank you,” I said. “You’re so good to me. Just give me a waking, and later, when we all need warming up out on Deep Darkness, I’ll really say thank you to all three of you.”

They were pleased pleased with that.

“Just like her mum,” Blink said quietly to Spear, and he grinned his toothless baby grin.

But Spear’s eyes narrowed slightly as he tore at a piece of meat with the side of his mouth. “How come you said you wanted to go
 
with Quietstream, though, Starlight, if you’re really so happy to be with us?”

I had to think quickly there. “I don’t know,” I said. “To be honest, I really don’t know. I guess I felt bad about Greenstone. We girls are funny like that. But he’s gone, hasn’t he? And now he
has
gone, I realize he wasn’t so great, anyway, and I’m just glad to be with you three men and heading back across the Pool.”

“That’s old Blackglass’s daughter.” Blink chuckled. “He didn’t give a bat’s dick for anyone or anything.”

“You finish that bag of badjuice, boys,” I said, remembering the stories Quietstream had told me about the competitions among the ringmen, “and I’ll bring you another one.” I filled up their mugs. “That’s a lot of greenstone you brought in those bags.”

Snowleopard laughed. “Strongheart is going to be pleased pleased with us when we give him that. He’s always wanted to know where metal came from, and now he’ll know what to look for.”

I let the wooden Starlight look sweetly worried. “But you are going to take me home first, aren’t you?”

“Oh, yeah, of course,” said Snowleopard. “We look after you first and foremost, Starlight, you should know that by now. Always have done, since the waking we first met you.”

He looked straight at me, his blue blue eyes looking into mine without a trace of shame. I’d been wondering how I could ever have thought of him as a man who hid nothing, but now I could see the answer. There was no conflict in those eyes. What he wanted, he took; what he could get away with, he did; and what was to his advantage to say, he said, easily and comfortably, whether it was true or not, without the slightest doubt or worry, and without the slightest shame. He had no feelings to hide.

Slap, slap, slap
went the windcatcher against its tree.

I must not show my rage,
I told myself, quickly moving my face so it would just look scolding.

“You are bad bad men,” I said out loud, raising my wooden fist in a playful, teasing way. “I bet you planned to get that metal stone all along.”

I was pretending to pretend to be angry, so as to hide my real rage. But none of them really cared what I felt inside. As long as I made the pretty wooden Starlight pretend to laugh and be impressed, and as long as I pretended well enough, that was fine with them.

“I’ll tell you
one
thing I can do for you,” I said suddenly, like I really didn’t think they’d have thought of it before. “I’ll give you this ring. I bet Strongheart will be pleased to have that.”

Snowleopard glanced at his friends, one eyebrow slightly raised. “That’s nice of you,” he said smoothly. “Strongheart will be glad glad.”

“It’s the least I can do for you, if you’re going to take me home and everything.”

Snowleopard reached up and stroked my cheek as I poured him some more badjuice.

“So you’ll have the ring back for Mainground after all these hundredwakes,” I said in an impressed voice. “The ring,
and
greenstone,
and
bats. All the Johnfolk’s secrets.”

Again Snowleopard glanced at his friends. The ring, greenstone, bats,
and
the Ringwearer, I could almost hear him telling them. “That’s right,” he said. “All the Johnfolk’s secrets.”

Suddenly one of the cutbats gave a piercing screech. There were greatbats circling overhead beneath the great spiral of stars, and it was calling out to them. Snowleopard silenced it by kicking the cage.

“Shut up, you horrible creature, before I saw off your head.”

I made my wooden body pull a cute face. “Well, I think you deserve a bit more badjuice, you smart men, after all your hard hard work.” I opened another bag for them, like I was a mum giving her kids a treat. “You boys drink what you want.” Then I went over to Spear where he sat in the back with the steerpole and made myself squeeze his knee. “Go and have a rest with your mates,” I told him. “You’ve worked hard, too. I’ll do the steering for you.”

“What does a girl know about steering boats?” he grumbled.

I stroked his knee gently. “I’m from a little grounds out in Worldpool, remember? We’re on the water before we can walk.”

So then I sat by myself with that cold stone inside me, holding the steerpole while the men drank, and shouted, and laughed, and pretended to quarrel, and laughed again.

“Come on, then, Starlight,” Snowleopard called out after a while in a slurred voice. “Come on over here and let’s have a bit of that fun you promised us.”

“Give me one waking,” I said. “Just one waking. I promise you I’ll make it worth waiting for.”

The men looked at one another and grinned, their sweat shining in the waterlight.

“Is that all the badjuice you boys can handle?” I asked.

“Who said we’d finished drinking?”

“I wonder which of you can drink the most?”

Blink barked out his strange, childish laugh. “That’s easy,” he said. “I can take
way
more than either of these two.”

“No way, one-
eye,” jeered Snowleopard. “I’d like to see you try.”

I watched from the back, coldly coldly, but making sure my face looked as if I was enjoying their banter. The more they drank, the slower they’d be, I reckoned, and the faster I’d be by comparison. How I’d use that advantage I still hadn’t figured out.

“Go on, then, Spear!” shouted Snowleopard. “You show me, then. A whole bag in one go.”

“What’ll you bet me? First go with the girl?”

“For drinking one bag? No chance.”

I checked where everything lay on the boatfloor: the roll of rope, the bags of meat and stones, the windtree and the strings that held it up.

“Go on, then, down in one go, down in one go!”

“Not bad, scarface, not bad. But now watch me and learn.”

The bats sat silently in their cage. I’d slipped them some fruit and a mug of water. Now I kept the boat steady with the wind right behind it and the windcatcher bulging out ahead.

“
Two
bags. One after the other.”

“Go on, then, blue eyes. Do it, but whatever you do, I can do the same and more, I bloody promise you that.”

They’d almost forgotten I was there. They drank, they shouted. And finally they sank into snoring sleep, surrounded by empty juicebags, each one holding his spear, like sleeping children clinging to their favorite toys.

I waited. The stars shone down. The waves of Worldpool splashed against the boat. The windcatcher slapped and shuddered in the wind.

I waited.

A single bat cried out, high up above us. The baby bats creaked and squealed. Spear mumbled in his sleep. Shining water passed beneath the boat, the windcatcher changing from pink to green and back again to pink in its ever-
changing light.

I drew up the steerpole and laid it carefully on the boatfloor. I crept forward, picking up one of the bags of stones and lifting it right over the sleeping men to the front edge of the boat.

I went back for a second bag. As I was lugging it forward, Snowleopard muttered and snorted in his sleep, and I stopped and waited, glancing at the windtree to make sure that the wind was still behind us.

I picked up the rope and tied it tightly round the neck of the first bag of stones.

I paused. I checked the sleeping men. I glanced at the windtree. I looped the rope round the second bag and tied that tightly, too, testing both knots to be sure they wouldn’t slip.