Mother of Eden (5 page)

“They would have
let
me, but
 
.
.
.”

He looked straight into my eyes. “If I can travel all the way here, Starlight, you can travel all the way there.”

I turned quickly away from him.

“How many people do you have with you?” I asked, looking out at the little shadowy bats as they swooped and dived over the shining water that stretched away to the long black line of World’s Edge.

Further along the cliff the shadowy shapes of Greenstone’s companions sat murmuring to each other.

“Forty at last count,” Greenstone told me. “Should be more, but we’ve lost a few. Lazy buggers didn’t fancy the paddle back, I suppose. They’ve run off into the forest, I guess, or joined up with the Davidfolk. I’m looking out for a few new blokes to replace them.”

“
Forty!
Where are all the others?”

“Some are eating and drinking in Veeklehouse. The others are down by my boats.”

“How many boats do you have?”

“Three. They’re full of metal and stuff, so we need to watch them all the time.”

“
Full
of metal?”

“Well, you saw me trading that piece of metal, didn’t you? I brought sixty pieces that size with me, and brooches and bracelets, too.”

“Why do you say ‘my boats’? Don’t they belong to these other men, too?”

He laughed. “Because I’m the Headmanson, and they’re my ringmen, and—”

“Wait. What’s a headmanson?”

“What it sounds like, Starlight. My dad is the Headman of New Earth. Don’t you have a headman out on that waterhill of yours? Maybe you use another name? Over here they call their headman the Head Guard.”

“No, we don’t have one, not under any name.”

“Well, who decides things, then?”

“Everyone does.”

“Everyone?”

He looked really surprised.

“What are ringmen?” Angie asked.

Since he never seemed to notice when she spoke, I repeated her question.

“Yeah. What
are
ringmen?”

“They come with me to keep me safe and paddle my boats for me.”

“Paddle them
for
you? What? You don’t paddle yourself?”

But Greenstone had been distracted by some more men with metal spears who had emerged from among the shelters of Veeklehouse, along the cliff. With them was a tall man,
tall
tall, with thick gray hair and a long, deep-
blue wrap. He looked across at us, and Greenstone looked back at him in a funny way that made me think of a naughty child. Then the tall man and his companions headed down one of the steep paths that led to the rocky ledge. When Greenstone turned back to me, I could see he had to struggle to get some cheerfulness back into his face.

“No, I never paddle,” he said.

“But
 
.
.
.”

“Mind you, we’ve got big windcatchers on our boats, and the wind always blows toward Old Ground, so no one needed to paddle on the way over. It’s on the way back that my blokes will have to sweat.”

What was a windcatcher? There were
so
many things to ask him.

“Why did you come to Mainground?”

“Gela’s metal ring, Starlight! You ask a lot of questions!”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean
 
.
.
.”

I hated to think I could have annoyed him. I might be scared by his talk of taking me back with him, but I did
not
want to drive him away.

“It doesn’t
matter,
Starlight!” He laughed. He’d seen the worry on my face. “Ask me as many as you want! Why did I come here? Well, I’ll be Headman one waking. My dad’s old, and he’s not so well. We’ve been trading a bit with Brown River and Veeklehouse this last hundredwake, and I thought I’d come over to have a look round while I still could, and
 
.
.
. Well, like I say, to have a look round.”

I could see that, whatever he’d said, for some reason he didn’t really want to talk about this.

“They look like guards, those ringmen of yours,” I said to change the subject. “Except they haven’t got dots on their heads.”

“Guards? Oh, no! We’re Johnfolk, remember! Guards were started by David to catch our people and do for them! Guards are our enemies.”

“The Davidfolk don’t seem to be fighting you now!”

“Well, they like our metal, don’t they? They haven’t figured out yet how to find it themselves, and we’re certainly not going to tell them, but we let them have a bit.” He shook his head. “Bloody Davidfolk. They moan on about how the Johnfolk broke up Old Family, but they don’t mind living in Wide Forest and Veeklehouse, which we found for them. And now we find metal and they want that, too. They’ve always wanted it both ways, ever since—” He broke off. “But maybe you Knee people are Davidfolk yourselves?”

“No. We’re
 
.
.
. well, we’re Jeffsfolk, you could say. Which I suppose makes us a kind of Johnfolk, too, seeing as Jeff crossed the Dark with John.”

For some reason Greenstone seemed pleased at this news, as if I’d solved a problem that had been worrying him.

“Johnfolk, too, that’s good. I’d been thinking that—” But he broke off and asked me another question. “Your mum and dad
 
.
.
. I don’t suppose either one of them is a holeface or a clawfoot or anything like that?”

“Holeface?”

“Or batface, as you people call them here.”

“No.”

He seemed relieved by this answer, too.

“Angie here’s my best friend, though,” I reminded him, “and she’s a batface, as you can see.”

He glanced toward Angie and looked a bit embarrassed, but before he could speak, a familiar voice called out from over in the flamelight.

“Hey! Starlight! Angie!”

It was Uncle Dixon with Johnny, Lucky, and Delight. Greenstone jumped up and bowed.

“I can assure you, Uncle, that we’ve only been sitting in full sight of everyone. And
 
.
.
. um
 
.
.
. her friend here with us all the time, as well. My two ringmen also.”

“Eh?”

We all looked at him blankly. None of us had any idea what he was talking about.

“A bloke gave us thirty sticks for our kneeboats,” Dixon said excitedly, turning back to me and Angie. “
Thirty!
Good job we didn’t take twenty-
five from that other fellow, eh?”

“That’s good.”

I wished he’d go. I wished they’d
all
go, even Angie, even those bloody ringmen, and leave me alone with Greenstone so I could touch him as I so badly wanted, and he could touch me.

“Julie’s keeping an eye on the boat,” Dixon said. “She said she’d be happy down there by herself. You know how she likes her own company.”

“We’re going to this place where they tell stories with little people made of wood,” Johnny said. “Why don’t you come with us?”

Jeff’s ride, why couldn’t they leave me alone? Why did they insist on getting in the way?

But Greenstone stepped in on their side.

“You must go, Starlight. I’ve seen those wooden people myself and they were
good
good. And anyway, you should listen to your uncle. He
wants
you to go.”

Julie Deepwater

On that long, low ledge where people pulled out their boats below the crumbly cliff, there was a band of shadow that was out of the light of Veeklehouse, but not so close to the water to be lit up by its glow. I sat there for some time, near our boat, watching jewel-
bats swooping in low, again and again, over the stretch of water right in front of me, their fingertips trailing the bright surface.

After a while I decided I’d go along the ledge a bit and look at the other boats that had been pulled out there. I wasn’t impressed. There were big boats and little ones, single ones and double ones, and even a couple of triples, but all of them, except for one old kneeboat, which someone must have traded from Nob Head, seemed to be made in that same dumb Mainground way, where they just scrape the muscle and tubes out of a length of tree trunk and then glue greased skins over the ends.

I was about to turn back when I noticed some boats ahead that
were
different. They were further along than I’d meant to come—
I was barely even in sight of our long-
boat now—
but I couldn’t resist going a bit closer for a look. There were three of them, and each was in three parts, the main body of the boat in the middle, and two big out-
boats joined onto the main body by planks. That itself wasn’t so different from the Davidfolk’s triple log-
boats, but what was new was the way the bodies were made. Neither the main bodies nor the out-
boats were made of whole logs, and they weren’t sections of bark fixed on a frame, either, like our long-
boat. Instead they were shaped from long, thin planks of wood, which had been fixed tightly together side by side somehow and then rubbed smooth. I could see these boats would cut through water like a knife through a lump of fat, not just better than those stupid log-
boats with their flat ends, but better than any of ours. The one thing I couldn’t figure out was the weird pole stuck in middle of each boat with another pole across it near the top. There seemed to be something bundled up under each of those crosspoles, buckskin maybe, or fakeskin, but I couldn’t think what purpose this might serve.

Of course I knew from the start that these must be the boats that had brought the Johnfolk here, and when I got nearer I could see there were six seven Johnfolk beside them, sitting there with their metal spears. I would have liked to ask them about the boats, but there was something that scared me about these men—
they
were
just men; they had no women with them—
and I didn’t want to draw any more attention to myself or to us Kneefolk. So I stayed a little way off, watching them from the shadow of the cliff.

Presently three more of them came down from Veeklehouse. Two of them wore plain-
colored wraps and carried spears, like the men who’d been with Greenstone. The third was a tall man wrapped in blue, with thick gray hair. As soon as they saw him, the men beside the boats scrambled to their feet.

“All’s well here, Chief Dixon,” one of them said. “Will the Headmanson be down soon?”

The tall guy was another Dixon, it seemed. He wasn’t much like ours!

“I’ve no idea, John,” the tall man answered. “Right now he’s talking to a couple of little fishing girls with bare feet and nothing on them but bits of scraped buckskin round their bums. And one of them a holeface, too.”

He stopped and glared across at me where I hid under the shadow of the cliff, and then began to talk again, but in a softer voice so I couldn’t hear what he said. But I still watched. And pretty soon Greenstone himself came down with another two men following after him, and I saw the tall man stand up to meet him. They were angry with each other, that was obvious, the tall man
so
angry that he raised his voice enough for me to hear some of his words.

“Mother of Eden, boy, you’re Headmanson. You
can’t
just think about yourself! I know she’s pretty, but—”

Greenstone spoke then, too quietly for me to hear, and then the tall man said a weird weird thing.

“You’re heading for the fire, boy, the way you’re going! I mean that! You’re heading
straight
for the fire.”

But then he looked over at me again, pointed, and spoke to the men with spears. I took the hint and headed back to our own boat.

Starlight Brooking

“I never wanted any of you!” the wooden Gela screeched, while all of Family, inside their little wooden box, searched the ground around her on their hands and knees. “Least of all you, Tommy. Why would I want to be with a man who took me away forever from Earth?”

But they never found the thing she’d lost, and one by one they grew old and died until the box was empty and silent.

We all waited, and soon a new character appeared, a horrible creature with an ugly grin on its wooden face. None of us Kneefolk knew who it was, but everyone else there had recognized him at once, and they all stood up together and hissed and booed.

The ugly creature laughed.

“You know who
I
am, all right, don’t you?” it screeched. “I’m John Redlantern. I’m Juicy John. I hate sharing things. I hate having to fit in. And specially I hate—”

He broke off. He’d seen something on the ground.

“Harry’s dick!” he muttered as he bent down. “What’s this? Surely it can’t be
 
.
.
.
?”

Even though his wooden face couldn’t move, you could somehow sense the moment when he
knew
.

“It
is
!” he shrieked. “It’s Gela’s ring! It’s the ring of the Mother of Eden!”

Everyone jeered and hissed.

“Why should I care what you lot think?” John Redlantern sneered out at us. “I’ve got our mother to myself now! I’ve got the mother and all her power!”

“I don’t feel too good,” I told Uncle Dixon. I had to shout so he could hear me over the boos and jeers. “I think I’ll go down to the boat and have a rest.”

“I’ll come with you, sweetheart.”

“No, you traded sticks for this. Stay until the end. I’ll see you later.”

“
I’ll
come with you,” said Angie.

“No, you stay, too. I could do with some time on my own.”

As I made my way out, a wooden Great David was setting off over Snowy Dark.

“Who does Gela’s ring belong to, blokes?” he called out to the men who were following him.

“It belongs to Gela’s True Family,” the wooden men answered him. “It belongs to us.”

“I didn’t hear that,” the wooden David said. “Tell me again.
Who
does it belong to?”

All around me, people began to shout.

“Us! Us! Us!”

Then I was back out among the shelters, and the voices of the wooden people disappeared into the restless Veeklehouse hum.

“Fresh-
killed sweet-
bat! Pick the one you want, and we’ll do for it while you watch!”

“The Car, the Jet Plane. Just like the ones back in Circle Valley. Just like the ones Father Tommy made.”

“You looking for that bloke from across the Pool?” asked a tiny old woman who was lugging a bundle of dried starflowers as big as herself.

I didn’t answer her, but that didn’t put her off.

“Michael’s names, this place is full full of people from far away these wakings.” Her small, wrinkled face peered up at me from under her load, friendly and curious. “There’s you people, and these new Johnfolk from across the water, and the Circle Valley people with their funny speech, and the old Johnfolk from down alpway. And I met a bloke a little while back who came from even
another
place, where they aren’t Johnfolk
or
Davidfolk but
Tinafolk
, if you can believe that! I’d never even heard of them, have you? Apparently you have to go down to Brown River where those other Johnfolk live, and then round Snowy Dark somehow, and
 
.
.
. oh, I don’t know, I lost him after that. Half Sky, he said the place was called. He said they have a Head Woman and a Head Man both, and everyone gets to choose them. Sounds good, eh? But perhaps he was just having a joke with me.”

I didn’t answer her. I just nodded and walked faster so I’d leave her behind.

She was right that I was looking for the man from across the Pool, and when I’d been all round the circle and not found him, I was bitterly disappointed. But the weird thing was that I didn’t look beyond that circle; I didn’t go over to the cliff or down by the boats; I just went round again. It was like I wanted to look for him but I was scared of actually finding him! It was horrible to think of just saying good-
bye to him and then going back to the Grounds to cut bark for the rest of my life, and make boats, and have babies on the Sand. But it was horrible, too, to think of going with him,
really
going with him, across the water to a strange place I knew nothing about.

When I came back round the second time the wooden people were done, and my friends had gone. In their place was one of those horrible women the Davidfolk call shadowspeakers, who roll their eyes and pretend to talk to the dead. I’d met them before at Nob Head, and I hurried off quickly before she could notice me and tell me she’d heard from my dead mum, as one of the others had once done.

Suddenly someone grabbed my arm.

“Greenstone?” I gasped.

But it wasn’t Greenstone. It was that big guard from the Veekle.

“Oh, hello, Mike.”

“Hello there, sweetheart. I’d remember those pretty tits anywhere! Come back here a moment.”

He didn’t give me any choice about it, just pulled me back through the shelters to a place behind, where there was a big oily fire of sticks and buckfat burning in a pit in the ground, and a small shelter where a tiny man traded stuff to drink.

“You said you’d come and see me, remember? You said you’d give old Mike a little slip.”

“I didn’t say anything about a slip.”

He tightened his grip on my arm. “What’s the matter? A True Family guard not good enough for you? Prefer a ring-
stealer from across the Pool?”

His breath had a weird smell, like fruit that’s gone bad.

“Mind you,” he sneered, turning to the drink-
trader, “her lot are circle-
breakers, too. These elbow folk, or arse folk, or whatever it is they call themselves. They followed Jeff clawfoot after Breakup. He was one of Juicy John’s crowd, wasn’t he? And brother to Gerry the guard-
killer.”

He turned back toward me.

“You’re going to have a slip with me whether you want it or not, my girl,” he said. “You people owe it to us.”

Suddenly another man’s voice called out from behind me.

“Hey! You! What do you think you’re doing?”

Three new blokes had arrived. The one in front had arms like tree trunks, fair hair, and—
a thing I’d only ever seen a few times before—
eyes that were bright bright blue. The other two with him were big blokes, too, closer to Uncle Dixon’s age than mine, but fit and strong. One of them had a missing eye and no teeth, and the other had a deep scar from his hairline down to his chin. All three had circles of dots on their foreheads.

“Just trying to teach this little circle-
breaker some manners,” Mike muttered as he let me go.

“She isn’t one of the Johnfolk,” said the blue-
eyed man, “and even if she was, you know quite well that Strongheart’s done a deal and they’re allowed to come here and trade with us.”

“Maybe,” Mike grumbled, “but they should show some respect. And what business is it of yours, anyway? You’re not Veeklehouse guards.”

“No, you’re right. We guard David Strongheart over at Davidstand, and up in Circle Valley. My name is Snowleopard. This one-
eyed beauty here is Blink, and the fellow next to him is called Spear.”

“I was only playing with the girl. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“Well, Spear here will take you to your guard leader,” Snowleopard told him, staring straight into his face with those blue blue eyes, “and let’s see if
he
reckons you were only playing.”

“That’s right, mate,” said Spear, “we’ll have a little chat with your boss.”

On the left side of his face, the tip of his tongue came out and felt along his upper lip, as if he needed to remind himself that the numb flesh was really there.

Snowleopard turned toward me. His blue eyes were wonderfully open. It was like he’d removed all the fences inside himself so that everyone could look as deep inside him as they wanted.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Yeah, thanks. I’m okay.” I rubbed my wrist. “I’d better go and find my people, though.”

“That guy won’t be a guard much longer,” Snowleopard said.

Blink laughed loudly, planting the end of his spear on the ground and leaning forward to peer into my face.

“Give yourself a moment, eh?” Snowleopard told me. “Sit down and catch your breath.”

There was a log there—
I think the trader had put it there for people to use while they had their drinks—
and I sat down on it. I was shaking all over.

“Maybe she’d like a drop of badjuice,” suggested Blink, still peering into my face with his one eye. There was only a dark hole where the other one should have been.

Snowleopard nodded. “I don’t know if you’ve ever tried this new badjuice stuff,” he said to me, “but a bit might settle your nerves. Bring a mugful here, trader, and let’s see if it helps.”

He straddled the log I was sitting on in a single graceful movement. He was a real fighter, like my dad must have been, a man who’d practiced and practiced the art of moving quickly, just as my uncle had practiced and practiced the art of making a boat. The little trader hurried across with a clay mug. I looked down at the murky stuff inside and recognized the rotten smell that had been on Mike’s breath.

“I gather you’re pretty friendly with this Greenstone bloke,” Snowleopard said, leaning forward and talking softly so the drinks guy wouldn’t be able to hear.

“Well
 
.
.
. I
 
.
.
. How do you know that? We’ve not even been here a waking!”

Snowleopard laughed. “Well, I wouldn’t say this to most people, but I know that Jeff of yours was on John’s side.” He leaned even closer. “I’d be grateful if you’d tell that Greenstone Johnson we helped you. We’ve heard he’s short by a bloke or two, and we’d like to join him and help him paddle back across the Pool. One more adventure, eh? One more adventure before we get too old for it.”

“My dad was a guard, like you,” I told him. “He was called Blackglass. Blackglass Lunnon.”

Snowleopard gave a shout of laughter. “Blackglass Lunnon! That old slinker! I knew him well. He was a
proper
guard.” He turned to his friend. “You remember Blackglass, don’t you, mate?”

“I never met him myself,” I told them. “I only heard about him from my mum.”

Blink chuckled. “We remember her, too, don’t we, Snow? That pretty girl Blackglass used to go round with? She said she came from somewhere out in the Pool. Looked a lot like this girl here.”

“Of course!” said Snowleopard. “What was her name?
Vision?
Story?
”

“Dream,” I told him.

“Dream! Of course! Of course! A
beautiful
woman. We all envied your dad, I must say. But never mind that now, eh? We need to get you back to your folks.”

And once again, he glanced quickly around.

Your father’s eyes were always moving,
I remembered my mother telling me.
Never, never at rest.