Mother of Eden (32 page)

Julie Deepwater

She’d slept right through a sleep time and a waking and into the beginning of another sleep so that when she finally emerged, most of the Kneefolk were snoring and snuffling in their shelters. I’d been dozing on the Sand against a warm tree trunk, a rolled buckskin behind me to protect me against its heat. I rose to my feet and hobbled a few steps toward her.

“Your bats are just there, look,” I told her, softly, so as not to wake the people in the shelters nearby. “They’re quite safe.”

The creatures were standing on a branch in the greeny-
yellow light of the treelanterns, rubbing their faces with their hands.

“I’ve never heard of a bat that could talk, I must say.”

“There are lots over there,” she said. “People use them to carry and fetch things.”

“Useful,” I said. “Anyway, like I say, they’re quite safe. And you are, too, Starlight. You’re back home. Whatever’s happened to you, you’re safe safe now.”

She laughed harshly. “Me? Safe?”

“Yes, of course. Who’s going to harm you here? Whatever happened to you, it was far away on the other side of Pool.”

“Listen, Julie. We need to move quickly. I need to get away from here. They’ll be over here looking for me soon soon. There’s only one way I can stop them.”

“Why would they come all this way, Starlight? What have you done that could possibly make them go to all that trouble?”

She felt in the pocket of her wrap and took out a metal ring. I remembered noticing it on her finger. I hadn’t been sure at the time why she’d felt the need to hide it, but anything made of metal was a novelty on Knee Tree Grounds, and I’d guessed she wanted to avoid having yet another thing that people would ask her questions about. Now she handed it to me.

“Oh, it’s beautiful, Starlight. It’s even two different colors, like the ring in the
 
.
.
.”

I felt that same dread that had come over me when I first caught sight of Starlight’s bats. Slowly slowly, hardly daring to do it, I felt with the tip of my little finger inside the ring and found the words inside.

“You’re not telling me that
 
.
.
.”

Starlight nodded.

“But
 
.
.
. oh, Tom’s dick, Starlight, what were you thinking? Why did you bring it
here
? You must know the Kneefolk came here in first place to get away from this thing!”

She didn’t speak for a little while, and when she did, it was slowly slowly, like she’d been practicing the words in her mind.

“I didn’t have a choice about bringing it. I wouldn’t have got away if those three guards from Mainground hadn’t taken me in their boat, and they only took me because of this ring.”

“The three guards you met at Veeklehouse?”

“Yes.”

“Well, what happened to them?”

“I did for them.”

“You
 
.
.
.
?”

“I drowned them. One, because they lied to me. Two, because they were going to hand me over to David Strongheart. Three, because they wanted to force their dicks on me. I don’t even feel sorry about it.”

She said that, but her voice was shaking and she was trembling all over.

“I thought about throwing the ring into the Pool,” she said, “doing the thing that John Redlantern didn’t dare to do that time he stood on the cliff at Veeklehouse. But
 
.
.
.”

“I suppose you figured that wouldn’t help, because the people in New Earth would still think you’d taken it and still come over here looking for it?”

“Exactly. And when they came I wouldn’t be able to prove to them that the ring
was
at the bottom of the Pool, would I? They wouldn’t believe me. They’d think that either we had it here, or we’d given it to the Davidfolk. And they’re not like Kneefolk over there, Julie. They take power seriously. They do whatever they need to do, even if that means hurting or killing.”

“Like the Davidfolk.”

“Or maybe even worse.”

I remembered I still had the ring in my hand, smooth and beautiful as a spearfish. I gave it quickly back to Starlight.

Starlight Brooking

I would have liked to have been the child there for a bit longer, let Julie comfort me and tell me that everything would be all right. She was the same age as my mum, after all. But when she gave me back the ring, I knew it was all up to me.

“I must take this away from here as soon as possible,” I told her, putting it back in my pocket.

“But surely wherever it goes, the Johnfolk will still come looking for it here?”

“Not if I give it back to them.”

Julie stared at me as if I’d gone nuts. “Give it
back
? You can’t cross the Pool
again
!”

“No, but boats go back and forth between Brown River and Brightrest these wakings. I’ll go down to Brown River and find someone there who can take it.”

Julie ran her hands over her face. “Well, we won’t let you go on your own this time,” she said. “I’ll come, too, and we’ll get other people to help us.”

“Thanks, Julie. I couldn’t do it on my own, not alpway across the wind. We’ll have to be careful who we ask, though. They’ll have to be people who can keep a secret.” I’d thought about this a lot, out there on my own in Deep Darkness. “The Davidfolk must never know the ring came here,” I said. “Imagine what they’d think if they knew their precious ring had come back across the Pool, and we’d just sent it back to the Johnfolk! And it would only take one foolish person to say something stupid at Nob Head, and then they’d know.”

“You’re right. And it’s worse than you realize, Starlight, because the Davidfolk have started coming over here since you went away. Angie’s not the only one who’s gone over to them. There’s talk of us having guards here. Greenlantern even suggested we get a shadowspeaker of our own.”

“I guess that’s my fault.”

“Well,
our
fault. That smart sister of yours was quite right; our trip to Veeklehouse really did shake things up.”

“As if I hadn’t caused enough grief over there. Oh, Julie, I’ve changed the story of so many lives.”

Julie thought about that for a few heartbeats. “Well, no one can know what the consequences will be,” she said, “once their actions are let loose in the world. Even now you can’t know what will happen in the long run. None of us can. Who knows whether things would have been better or worse in a hundred wombtimes, if you hadn’t crossed the Pool with Greenstone?”

“You say that, but you don’t know what I’ve done. Someone over there is dead because of me.”

“You mean those three guards?”

The cold stone inside me shifted, sending out icy shafts of pain. “Them, too, and maybe others as well, but the one I’m talking about is
 
.
.
.” I could hardly bring myself to say his name. “The one I’m talking about is Greenstone.”

“
Greenstone?
I thought
 
.
.
. Well, it doesn’t matter what I thought. What happened?”

“I’ll tell you another waking.” There was no time now for crying. “We need to make plans. We need to fix that boat.”

“I had a look at it, Starlight. Its wind-
thing is broken, and the right-
hand part of the boat is coming away from the floor a bit, but apart from that it’s fine. It shouldn’t take more than a half waking to fix if a bunch of us—”

Someone had come up behind us.

“It shouldn’t take more than half a waking to fix what?” asked Glitterfish.

I guessed she’d come to take a turn at watching me so that Julie could get some sleep.

“My boat.”

“Your
boat
? You’ve only just got here!”

I took the ring from my pocket and handed it to her as she squatted down on the sand.

“Keep your voice down, Glits,” Julie cautioned her, as she stood up to leave us sisters on our own. “I know it’s a shock, but keep your voice down.”

I guess she was worried Glitterfish would start to yell when she saw the danger I’d brought with me, but my sister was completely still and quiet as she turned the little circle of metal in her hands and held it up to read the words. She was one of the few people on Grounds who knew how.

“To Angela, with love from Mum and Dad,” she read out softly.

Her eyes filled with tears as she handed the ring back to me.

“Such a simple thing,” she said. “And all that cruelty and killing over it.”

“I know,” I said, “but I’ll tell you what I’ve found out. The world is full full of people who go through their whole lives longing for a mother’s love.”

Glitterfish Brooking

People had called her Mother over there, Starlight told me, as if she were Gela herself. Hard fighting men had cried with happiness when they saw her. Women old enough to be her granny had reached out for her as if they were little children. Who would have thought it? My little sister, Starlight, who’d always said she’d never have kids, had ended up mother to half of Eden!

“I’d have thought you’d like that, Star. You always liked being the center of attention. Why didn’t you stay?”

Starlight looked quickly away from me. “It’s hard to explain without a long long story,” she said after a few seconds, “but one reason is that I thought that if I was playing the part of Gela, I should speak Gela’s real words.”

“Real words? You don’t mean
 
.
.
. You don’t mean the Secret Story, by any chance?”

My little sister looked at me in surprise. “Yes, I do, but how do you
 
.
.
.
?”

“Mum told it to me.”

“But when she told it to me she said—”

“She said that it was for you alone, yes? And that, whatever you did, you mustn’t tell your sister because she couldn’t keep a secret? She said the exact same things to me. Bloody old Mum. She was so desperate to tie each one of us to her that she divided us from each other.”

“I suppose she did.”

“Funny thing is that Julie’s mother told
her
the Story as well. Julie tried to pass it on to me. I told her I already knew it.”

Starlight managed a small smile. She was rested by her sleep, but she still looked weary weary, like she was carrying a big big load.

“I wonder how many other women on Grounds know it?” she said. “It’d be funny if it turned out we all did.”

“Yeah. If we all knew it, but we were all keeping it secret from one another.”

My sister looked straight at me. “I’m sorry I teased you and called you boring, Glits, for thinking about Mikey all the time. I mean, why would anyone care about this bloody ring, if being a mother wasn’t as important as you’ve always said it was?” Starlight turned the ring over in her hands. “And you’re right about Mum, too. We always fought for her love, didn’t we? She kept us hungry, and we were desperate to get whatever there was. And then I was jealous jealous of your love for little Mikey. But I can see now
 
.
.
. Well, I’ve seen how much longing there is out there, how many hungry people there are in the world, trying to fill themselves up. And I can see that what you do for Mikey is at least as important as any work that people do anywhere.”

My sister stopped for a moment, playing absently with the ring on her finger, like it was just any old ring.

“You’ve worked and worked, haven’t you,” she said, “to fill your little boy up with love? So he won’t be hungry, so he’ll be happy and strong. But me
 
.
.
. well, what have I done? I’ve bigged myself up for a short short while, like a flame that blazes up and then goes out, but what have I ever given to anyone? All I’ve done is cause harm.”

I was amazed. I couldn’t remember Starlight apologizing about anything before, not even once. And I couldn’t remember her ever admitting that there was anything I could do better than she could.

But she hadn’t even finished yet.

“Yes,” she said, “and I’m sorry sorry, too, that I didn’t listen to you when you told me not to go to Veeklehouse.”

I reached out to her, took hold of her hand. “You’d still go, though, wouldn’t you, Starlight dear? If you had the chance again, you’d still go. I’ve thought about that a lot, and I’ve realized I was wrong to try and hold you back, and wrong to think I could keep everything the same. I figure that these Grounds only ever stayed the same for as long as they did because smart, restless people like you always left them and went off somewhere else. People like me stayed, people who like things simple and safe. And people like Uncle Dixon. And people like Julie, who like to be quiet and on their own. But even so, sooner or later, something was going to happen that—”

“Listen, Glits,” Starlight interrupted me, “I
 
.
.
.” Then she stopped. “Oh, Tom’s dick, I’m going to be sick,” she muttered and threw up over the sand. “I’ve been feeling sick for wakings and wakings. I thought a sleep and a bellyful of food would help, but
 
.
.
.”

“Are you sore anywhere?”

“Yes, I ache all over. Even my breasts ache. How did you know?”

I laughed. “How long is it since you had a period, Starlight?”

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s so long since
 
.
.
. What do you mean, Glits? Are you saying it’s
 
.
.
.
?”

It was like she couldn’t even bear to say the word.

“Yes, a baby!” I hugged her and kissed her. “Why wouldn’t it be, Starlight dear? I’m guessing you and that Greenstone slipped together at least a few times? Men and women usually do!”

“Yes, but
 
.
.
. Oh, Gela’s heart! I don’t think I can
 
.
.
.”

“Of course you can. I’ll help you. We can be mums together. I’ve not told anyone else this yet, but I’ve got another baby coming, too.”

“I wish I could meet your new baby, Glits, I really do, and I wish my kid and your kids could grow up together, but I have to go again, and this time it will be for good. Even if I manage to send the ring back across the water, I can’t come back here. You see, it’s not just the ring that’s a danger to everyone. It’s me.”

And that was the cruelest thing. To find my sister, and then lose her again almost at once.