Mother of Eden (25 page)

Starlight Brooking

I was feeling pretty shaken when I walked into the Writingcave. Quietstream had made me doubt everything I’d done in New Earth. But Greenstone greeted me with a happy smile.

“Here’s my smart smart Starlight,” he said to the chief, sending Purelight away on some other errand and setting other helpers to keep watch outside the doors.

Earthseeker stood and bowed, but the old guy looked a lot less pleased to see me. He didn’t smile or meet my eyes, and, when he sat down again, he looked away from me, and down at his big hands lying on his lap.

“Was I was right to speak those words?” I asked Greenstone. “The ones people aren’t supposed to say?”

Earthseeker was still looking at his hands, but I could see him tense, his big, thickly bearded face working away as his feelings fought one another inside him.

“I was surprised, and I was kind of shocked at first, but I thought to myself:
Starlight is clever. This is all part of her plan.
And I could see why you were doing it, too. It was another way of giving power back to the small people, not just from the chiefs, but from the teachers, too. You were letting them have their own ideas about Gela, and not just ideas from the teachers.”

Earthseeker shook his head. “I don’t mind taking those bloody teachers down a bit,” he growled, “but why do it in
that
way? Why do something that’ll make enemies of chiefs and teachers both? Your dad was always careful to split them up, and make them jealous of one another. And anyway, those words are surely—”

“Yes, Earthseeker,” Greenstone interrupted him, “but Starlight’s whole plan was to play a different game, not playing the big people off against one another, but going straight to the people who give them their power in the first place.”

A meal had been spread out for us on the table: chopped bucks’ feet cooked in melted stumpcandy, sweet-
bat hearts, flowercakes tightly wrapped in batwing skin. Neither of the men had touched any of it.

“Well, I won’t pretend I like this,” said Earthseeker. “I won’t pretend I’m easy with it at all. But I’ve always promised myself that I’d look after you, Greenstone, and I’ve always believed in supporting the Headman. And if that means—” He broke off with a shrug. He couldn’t even bring himself to name the thing that I’d done. All his life he’d been told that whisperers were bad, that whisperers told lies, that whisperers were enemies of Gela and New Earth.

“They tell the Secret Story on Old Ground as well as here,” I told him gently. “If you think about it, that means it’s actually older than some of the stories the teachers tell.”

Greenstone nodded. “It could even mean that it really does come from Gela. Think of that, Earthseeker! We say, ‘become like Earth,’ yet we punish women for speaking words that might have come from Earth itself.”

Poor Earthseeker squirmed in his seat. “I’m going to leave all that to you,” he said. “I’ve never been one for teacher talk. You’re the Headman, and you’re the nearest thing I’ve got to a son, so I’ll back you whatever you do. Just tell me what your plan is, and I’ll do what I can to help you.”

Greenstone looked straight round at me. It was one of those moments when you suddenly
get
something that’s been obvious for a while, but you’ve never quite got before. And what I got was that I was the leader here. Earthseeker knew he wasn’t a thinker, and he was happy to give his power and his loyalty to others who were. Greenstone
was
a thinker—
he was smart just like his dad—
but there was something inside him that meant he couldn’t really lead, either. His dad would have called it weakness, but you could say it came from a kind of strength: Greenstone deciding that he wasn’t going to be like his dad, no matter how hard the old man tried. Anyway, strength or weakness, it meant that right now everything was down to me.

“Well,” I said, “we’ve brought back more than a hundred fifty ringmen. Put them together with the ringmen we’ve already got here in the House, and Earthseeker’s men as well, and we’ve got far more fighting men than any of the chiefs. On top of that, we’ve spoken to ringmen in all those places and had them promise they’ll stay where they are until we call for them. You already told all those topmen that exact same thing, didn’t you, Chief, that time we brought them all down here? You couldn’t have been clearer: The ringmen must stay where they are until we call for them
.
So I reckon we’re pretty safe for the moment. First thing we need to do is talk to our new ringmen, keep them on our side, make some of them into new topmen, and then we need to think about calling that new Council we planned, a bigger kind of Council, not just with chiefs and teachers in it, but small people, too, to make new rules.”

Earthseeker took one of the bucks’ feet, pulled it apart with his big hands, then decided he didn’t feel like eating and chucked it back down again. “Well, I hope it works,” he said. “Apart from me, and maybe one two others if you’re lucky, you must have got pretty much every single chief and teacher against you. Even young Roger has turned away from you, from what you say, and I’d have thought he’d have been the last to go over to Dixon.”

He wasn’t getting it, though. He was still thinking in the old way.

“That’s the thing, though, Earthseeker,” Greenstone said. “That’s what Starlight has figured out. It doesn’t have to be all about chiefs and teachers. Big people are only powerful because small people make them so. Without the small people, they’re just—”

“Yes, and the chiefs won’t necessarily all be against us in the long run, anyway,” I interrupted. “Firehand never gave them
exactly
what they wanted, did he? He just made sure they could see they’d be better off backing him than going against him. We can do the same. It’ll just take a bit longer.”

Earthseeker looked at Greenstone, then back at me. And then he laughed. “John’s brave walk, Greenstone, listen to her! She would have been a match for your dad!”

Greenstone looked across at me. “I know,” he said. “She’s like a new John Redlantern.”

They were Johnfolk, of course, so to them that was praise. But I couldn’t help thinking that it was John who brought killing into the world, and John who split a family that was living at peace into two groups of people who hated each other.

Greenstone Johnson

More than two hundred ringmen squeezed into the red housecave, some with metal masks and armguards tucked under their arms, others just with spears. Standing in front of the two stone chairs and the big whitelantern tree, Starlight raised the ring above her head to make them all cheer, held it out in front of her so the nearest men could kneel and kiss it.

I asked them all if they’d stand with me.

“Yes! Yes! Yes!” the men shouted happily.

Would they fight, if need be, against anyone who set themselves against the great-
great grandson of John Redlantern?

“Yes! Yes! Yes!”

Would they protect the Ringwearer, who spoke for Gela herself?

“Yes! Yes! Yes!”

Starlight spoke then, reminding them they came from the small people, people who wore undyed plantstuff or buckskin wraps, just as she’d done herself until she came here.

“We’ve got sons and grandsons of metaldiggers here, am I right?” she called out.

Some of the men cheered.

“And of flowergathers and stuffmakers?”

More cheers.

“And bat keepers and metalmakers?”

She told them she’d been raised by a man who gathered bark and made boats from it, and her mother had done the same.

“And my father was a fighting man, like all of you!”

Of course they all cheered at that.

She told them the only reason some chiefs might wish to stand against me was that I wanted to give more to the small people, people like their own fathers and mothers, and the big people were afraid that this would mean less for themselves.

“And they’re right to fear it,” Starlight said, “because it
will
mean that. But don’t you think they’ve got more than enough?”

The men roared their approval of this. And why wouldn’t they, when they had so little and us big people had so much? Starlight
was
like John Redlantern. And she was like the guy who first figured out you could make greenstone into metal. Her thoughts didn’t go back and forth along the same old paths like everyone else’s. And because of that, she’d found a whole new kind of power for us.

“Raise your spears, men, if you’ll fight for us,” I called out.

The men cheered again, and shook their spears above their heads.

“If enough of you ringmen stand by us, then there won’t even
be
a fight,” I told them. “Are the chiefs going to fight on their own?”

The men laughed and cheered and shook their spears again.

“Are there any topmen out there?” I asked.

Two men raised their hands, and I called them to the front.

“We need some more topmen to join these two,” I said, “but I don’t know most of you, so you tell me yourselves, all of you, who you think I should choose?”

They liked the idea that I’d trust them to pick their own leaders, and they began to shout out names: John this and John that, Harry Bignose, Mehmet from Batsky.
.
.
. I picked out four who seemed to have been cheered the loudest and had them come up to the front. Meanwhile Starlight began to move through the cave so that more men could kneel and kiss the ring, and take from it that calmness and sureness that everyone seemed to find in it. As each man knelt, she placed her hand gently on the back of his head.

“Gela’s proud of you,” she’d say.

“Long life, Mother,” he’d murmur dreamily back. “Long life and happiness.”

“And to you, my friend,” she’d softly answer, “and to you.”

“We’ll look after you, Mother,” one guy shouted out to her across the cave. “We’ll look after you like we’d look after our own mums.”

“And I’ll look after all of
you
, my friends,” she called back. “I’ll be a mother to you all.”

She really will win this for us,
I thought, just like she’d won almost every game of chess she’d ever played with me. Jeff’s brave ride, why would the ringmen
not
side with us?

Starlight Brooking

I’d done well, I told myself as I moved round the cave, bringing the ring to all those fighting men. Yet uneasiness crawled inside me like a slinker through the airtubes of a tree. And even as one tough ringman after another knelt and kissed my hand and promised his support, my eyes searched back and forth, back and forth, between the glowing red walls of that big big housecave, seeking out my three protectors, Snowleopard, Blink, and Spear.

“Where’s Snowleopard?” I finally asked one of the house ringmen when I’d reached the far end of the cave.

“He went out, Mother,” the man told her as he knelt down. “Him and the other two Oldgrounders, and a bunch of others. They said the topman had sent them.”

Later, Greenstone gave the ringmen metal from his store, so they could trade for things they needed, and had them set to work building shelters for themselves around the Headmanhouse. There wasn’t room inside for all of them, and we wanted to make them as comfortable as we could. Meanwhile, me and Greenstone went back to the Writingcave, taking Earthseeker with us, and all of the topmen in the Headmanhouse, old and new, except for a couple we left to supervise the building. An underteacher called Gerry came with us to write down what we decided.

“We’re going to have a new kind of Council,” Greenstone told them. “We want you to help us plan it. It won’t just be chiefs or teachers anymore. We’ll have topmen there as well, topmen from each chief’s ground.”

All the topmen were amazed.

“Topmen as
part
of the Council, you mean, Father?” asked one of the new ones suspiciously, a big, broad guy called Mehmet. “Not just there to watch the doors?”

“As part of the Council, helping to make the rules. And we’ll have ordinary ringmen and other small people, too, so everyone gets a say, women as well as men.”

The men looked at one another.

“
Women
, Father?” asked another one of them, like he thought he must have misheard.

“Yes, why not? Who would you go and talk to if you had a difficult problem and wanted advice, your mum or your dad?”

“My mum, probably, but—”

“So why not have women help decide the rules? The Ringwearer will be part of Council, too.”

They all looked at me.

“Well,” I said, “we all look up to Gela, don’t we? And she said women were as good as men.”

“I guess,” said the one who’d spoken, glancing uncertainly at the others.

“Believe me,” I told them. “Where I come from there are no big or small people, and men and women decide things together. It all works fine.”

“So chiefs will still be there,” Greenstone said, “and teachers will be there, but they’ll share the decisions with small people. We

Greenstone Johnson

We sent those barks out to every chief and to the topmen of every chief, to be read out in all the houseplaces of New Earth. Ringmen came and went from the Headmanhouse. A few small chiefs came to join us—
my old friend John, and his friend Gelason, and a young metal chief called Tom from out top, with just two digs in his ground—
and small people started to come in who’d been chosen for our new Council: ringmen, underteachers, diggers, and stonebreakers. We gave them all food and shelter until we were ready for Council to meet. They sat outside in the treelight of the Great Cave and sang songs or played football and games of chess. Something new and strange was just beginning, like nothing ever seen before in New Earth.

As people arrived, we kept hearing about chiefs going back and forth through the caves, meeting one another in twos and threes, and we heard a few stories, too, about splits among the ringmen, with some going to the houses of their chiefs, while others stayed in the houseplaces where we’d told them to wait. A few teachers came to us, including my old friend Harry, but they told us that the Head Teacher was traveling in his car out top or in the side caves, busy making trades and deals.

When we had about forty small people ready for the Council, we decided it was time. We sent messages to the chiefs and teachers to tell them the Council would meet at Second Horn next waking. Then we waited, while outside of the Headmanhouse, the ringmen practiced with their spears and knives and bows.

Everything seemed strangely bright and new. But Eden cared nothing for all of this. The trees still pulsed as they always did, and the river still flowed toward the fire.

As First Horn blew from the windholes above us and echoed up and down the cave, people started to gather for the Council. A couple more small chiefs came to the Headmanhouse, and a couple more teachers, but Dixon and Gerry and eleven others had all stayed away, and so had Teacher Michael and most of the other teachers.

Second Horn blew. There were well over a hundred people in the Red Cave, including me, Starlight, Earthseeker, six other chiefs, seven teachers, twenty topmen, fifty other ringmen, and about fifty other small people, men and women, from various caves and digs.

“This is a new Council,” I told everyone. “The first of a new kind of Council.”

There weren’t enough seats, of course, for even half the people there, and, but for a few oldies, everybody stood.

“Remember the power of New Earth comes from the people who live in it, whether big or small,” I told them. “There would be no metal or plantstuff or houses without small people. There’d be no one to fight for us without ringmen. That’s why Gela tells us that small people are as good as big ones, just as women are as good as men.”

Earthseeker stood up next. He had to read from a bark to remind himself of the words he’d agreed to speak.

“This is a list of things we can make new rules about,” he said, “and the Headman promises not to go against our wishes. First, we can make rules about the way we get metal and flowers and divide them up between ourselves.”

“What about bats?” someone shouted out. “Will we share them, too, or will the chiefs keep them for themselves?”

“Second,” said Earthseeker, who didn’t know what to say about bats, “we can make rules about the way the ground is divided. Third, we can make rules about the way that ringmen answer to the Headman and the chiefs. Fourth, we can make rules about things people are punished for, and the punishments that are given.”

Lots of people started shouting out all at once, but Starlight raised her hands for silence, and told everyone that we’d need to go through the list point by point, with only one person speaking at a time. She told people to put up their hands if they wanted to speak, and wait until it was their turn. It was how they did things on her Knee Tree Grounds, apparently, when they met to decide things together.

“Let’s start with how we’re going to divide up metal,” she suggested.

Some little digger from way out top put his hand up straight away and suggested that the greenstone should belong to the people who dug it up, and everyone else should trade with them for it. Another said that was going too far, and that half should go to the chiefs so that the ringmen could be fed and paths through forest kept clear.

Me and Starlight sat in our stone chairs and watched, only stepping in to choose the next speaker when the previous one had finished.

“What about us stonebreakers?” asked a tough-
looking old woman from Highdig. “Not much point in getting greenstone out of the ground unless someone smashes it up and puts it in the ovens to get out the metal.”

Poor Earthseeker stood grim-
faced beside us, as he watched the world he understood being turned upside down.

“You can trade for the stone with the diggers,” the first speaker said, “and then, when you’ve made the metal, you can trade it on again to spearmakers and anyone else who wants it.”

“Why not let the chiefs have it all,” another man suggested, “but make them give a certain number of cubes each tenwake to everyone who works for them? We do need chiefs, after all.”

“
Why
do we need them?” one of our new topmen wanted to know, and I heard old Earthseeker groan. “Seriously, why do we need them?” It was Mehmet, the big guy from Whiteblade’s ground who’d met with us in the Writingcave two wakings previously. “Why can’t we decide everything like this in a Council? You don’t need anything above topmen to keep the ringmen organized, as long as they know what they’re supposed to be doing. And I reckon those first chiefs must have been more like topmen, anyway, back in John’s time, when there were only eighty grown-
ups in all New Earth. They must have had
less
men under them than most topmen do these wakings.”

I was amazed at the ideas people came up with, once they understood that they were allowed to say whatever they wanted. It was like all my life we’d looked out at the world from one narrow windhole, and imagined that this was the only way of seeing. This whitelantern tree must always be in front of that redlantern, it had seemed to us, and yet now, looking from different angles, we could see the two trees side by side, or with the redlantern in front, or both of them from straight above. We could even turn our backs on the trees completely and look at the rest of the forest that our one windhole had hidden from us.

After a long time, some time after Third Horn, Council agreed that, for the moment, half of the greenstone from the digs would go to the chiefs and teachers, to be used for ringmen and underteachers and for clearing paths, while the rest would go to the diggers, to trade with as they pleased.

“Okay,” said Starlight, “so we go on to the second question. How should the ground be divided?”

I glanced at Earthseeker, his hands gripped so tightly together that the knuckles were white, and gave him a reassuring smile. Chief Gelason had put up his hand, and I invited him to speak.

“I don’t think ground was ever supposed to belong to us chiefs,” he began, “but I do think—”

Suddenly we heard a woman’s voice just outside the cave, screaming in terror, and Quietstream came running in from the left doorway, followed by ringmen in metal masks.

“Whisperer!” the masked men shouted. “Whisperer! Stop her!”