Daughter of Eden Read online

  Brightwater shook her head. Wiping the tears from her own face with the back of her hand, Mary strode back into her circle in middle of the Meeting Place.

  ‘I’ll tell you what will happen, Brightwater. You’ll die one waking, as we all will, and your shadow will fly out from your body, and from our poor dark Eden, into the blackness between the stars. It’s cold cold out there, with no trees to warm you. You’ll be shivering, you’ll be lonely and scared, and you’ll search and search, as all our shadows must do, for the brightness and warmth of Earth. But look up at the stars, Brightwater. They’re like a forest, aren’t they? They’re like a huge huge forest, full full of lanternflowers. We know little Earth is hiding out there somewhere among all those thousand thousand stars, but do you know where to find it? Look up at the stars, Brightwater, and tell me. Do you know the way back to Earth?’

  Brightwater glanced fearfully upwards at the vast wheel of Starry Swirl, where the stars were packed so tightly that most of them were just a blur of light. She sobbed and shook her head.

  ‘Mother Gela will be calling out to you,’ Mary said, ‘but what use will that be if you’ve never got to know her, and never learned to hear her voice? You’ll have no one to guide you. And so you’ll wander, you’ll wander forever, out there where it’s a hundred times colder than Snowy Dark, a hundred times darker than Deep Darkness far out there in middle of Worldpool. And you’ll be all on your own, shivering, lonely, lost, forever and ever and ever.’

  Brightwater covered her face with her hands and sobbed. Again, Mary looked round at all of us, searching our faces, sizing us up.

  ‘You silly, foolish people,’ she said again. ‘Do you think you can hide from death? Do you think that Watcher of yours is going to show you the way home? The Watcher who looks out of your eyes? The Watcher ! How could it find the way anywhere, when you yourselves admit that it’s only inside your head? Only Gela can help you, and if you want her help, you need to reach out to her. Turn away from the ringstealers, turn from the ones who brought killing to Eden, turn away from John and his clawfoot cousin Jeff, and come back to the people of Gela and her son Great David, strong strong David, who held Family together when John and Jeff tried to break it apart.’

  She fell to her knees and again she began to shake. She wasn’t faking it, you could see that. She was really hurting, and at the same time she was listening listening listening to some faint voice that she could hear but we couldn’t.

  ‘Our Mother is begging me,’ she said. ‘She’s begging me. “Please, Mary, do your best,” she’s saying. “Please please do everything you can to bring these poor people back to me before it’s too late.”’

  Perhaps we’d got it all wrong, I thought. Jeff used to say (or so we’d been told) that the only place that was important was the one we were in right now, but maybe the opposite was true? Perhaps this wasn’t the real world at all, and the world that mattered, the world that would last, was out there somewhere across the stars, far far away from this dark sad place? Maybe that’s why this life seemed so empty, so full of sadness and disappointment. We were on a sort of journey, and hadn’t yet arrived at where we were going. The Davidfolk knew that, but we Kneefolk had huddled together out here on our little patch of sand with our backs turned, telling ourselves that we were already there.

  And as these thoughts were going through my head, Mary suddenly looked straight at me, like she’d noticed me for the first time. She stepped out of her circle again and walked right up to me. I was scared scared, thinking she’d be angry with me and tell everyone about some bad and shameful thing I’d done, but her face was kind and concerned. She took my hand in one of her own, and with her other hand she reached out gently and stroked my face, touching the edge of the ugly ugly hole where a proper face should be. She spoke to me softly softly.

  Five

  We’d heard screams in the distance, screams of terror and agony. We’d heard terrible roars We sank deep into ourselves as we headed away from those dreadful sounds, far far too slowly it felt, though we were going as fast as we could with our little kids clinging to us and our oldies and clawfeet perched on the backs of bucks so loaded up with pots and bags and skins and knives and spears they looked more like walking piles of stuff than living creatures. It seemed strange that Starry Swirl still shone down, the same as ever, and starbirds still shrieked and boomed to each other through the trees. Our whole world had changed completely this waking, but all round us, bats looped and dived, just as they always did, among the bright lanterns. We passed three huge nightmakers pushing through the trees off rockway to our left, cracking off branches as they pulled the shining flowers to their slowly chewing mouths, and far off alpway to our right, a leopard sang its sweet sad treacherous song. Eden didn’t care what was happening at Veeklehouse. It carried on its own life, just like it always had done, since long long before any human being had ever heard of the place.

  All of us were scared scared. The little kids kept crying. The older kids were silent and pale and grey. Young or old, we’d all heard the stories about the last time the Johnfolk and the Davidfolk fought. We all knew how cruel the Johnfolk had been. We knew they’d stolen children from their mums and dads to be ringmen for them, and the mothers of ringmen. We knew they’d done for dads in front of their own kids, and sons in front of their mothers. We knew they’d laid traps with long spikes inside them, and dipped the tips of their spears and arrows in human shit to make sure the wounds would go bad. Even back on Knee Tree Grounds, where the Jeffsfolk had hidden away from the fight, I’d heard these stories. The Davidfolk told them and retold them all the time.

  At least I had Dave and all my kids with me, though. Tom and Clare had four boys in the guards, two of them at Veeklehouse. They knew quite well that either those two were fighting right now with their glass-tipped spears against enemies with metal spears and knives, or they were already dead. It was same for most of the older parents who were with us.

  ‘Even if my boys live,’ Clare kept worrying, ‘how are me and Tom ever going to find them again if we can’t go back to Michael’s Place?’

  One time, some traders from Veeklehouse came past us. I knew them slightly because they’d sometimes had some of Dave’s bone tools from me, when I took a batch into Veeklehouse to trade. There was a man, his two shelterwomen and nine of their kids, all packed onto four big smoothbucks. They were headed to Davidstand too, but having no one among them who had to go on foot, they could travel much faster than we could.

  ‘We’ve lost everything,’ the man told us. He was a big guy with a black beard, and he always wore a long red fancy wrap like he thought he was one of the high people. ‘They burnt down our shelter, and smashed up every single bit of our trading stuff that they didn’t take for themselves. But we’re lucky to be alive. Bloke who traded next to us – you remember old David with the bald head? – well, he tried to stop them from taking his stuff, and ended up with a spear through his belly.’

  ‘They were like starbirds crawling over a dead buck,’ the older of his shelterwomen said. Her name was Kindness, which always made me smile, because she never seemed to smile and was hard hard hard when it came to trading. ‘They took all our food and our badjuice, and when they’d had enough, they flung what was left at one another and trampled it under their feet.’

  ‘Yeah, and then they propped dead guards up against the posts of shelters,’ the man said, ‘and pranced round them laughing, in women’s wraps and feathers. You’d never see our men behave like that.’

  Later, when Clare was busy with her little ones, her daughter Trueheart came to walk beside me and Fox.

  ‘I guess you’ve been to Davidstand before, Auntie Angie?’

  Trueheart was about fourteen fifteen years old, counting ages, as she did, in the Davidfolk way. I wasn’t really Trueheart’s auntie – I left my brothers’ and sisters’ kids behind me when I left Knee Tree Grounds – but Clare had always
been like a sister to me, even since her bloke Tom brought me back to Michael’s Place, and there’d always been a special connection between me and Trueheart because she was a batface like me. It’s not so easy being a batface. That’s as true among Davidfolk as it is among the Kneefolk, even though Great David himself was a batface. We’re teased as children, mocked as newhairs, passed over as grownups, and so of course we tend to stick together.

  ‘Yes, a couple of times,’ I told her as we plodded through the trees. ‘Back when I used to help that shadowspeaker Mary. We travelled all over the Davidfolk Ground back then. Way further than Davidstand. We even went as far as Circle Valley.’

  Trueheart had never been further than Veeklehouse herself, just a few miles from where she was born, and in her longing for new and exciting things, she reminded me of myself and Starlight when we were kids. Except that for us it was Veeklehouse itself that had been the wonderful far off place that we longed to see, while for her it was the boring ordinary place she longed to get away from.

  ‘I never get how come you were with a shadowspeaker, Auntie Angie,’ she said. ‘You don’t seem the type to go for all that.’

  ‘Well, there were a lot of reasons I went with her. I’ve told you before about how my friend Starlight went away across the Pool.’

  ‘With that handsome guy with the metal brooch?’

  I wouldn’t have expected it, but when Trueheart said that, my head was suddenly full of tears, so that I knew if I spoke at all they would all come bursting out. It was a long time since Starlight had gone away, and many years had passed since I’d felt the pain all raw like that, gaping and bleeding like a new wound. I guess it had felt so sad and scary leaving Michael’s Place, that one more bit of sadness was all it took to open everything up all over again.

  ‘You’re upset, Auntie Angie!’

  I nodded, still not daring to speak. Trueheart studied my face in silence for ten twenty heartbeats as we trudged on through the shining forest.

  Hmmmph hmmmph hmmmph went the trees all round us, just as they always did.

  ‘I guess you knew a thing like that would never happen to you,’ she finally said, pointing at her own face. Trueheart had a lovely strong supple body, she could run fast, she could throw a spear further than many men and swim faster than any of the other newhairs in Michael’s Place, whether boys or girls, and, what was more, she was smart smart as could be, but her face . . . well, it was like mine. Her mouth opened up in a twisted scrunched-up gash into the place where her nose should have been, her top teeth stuck forwards and sideways out of her face, and when she said ‘upset’ it came out more like ‘uffthet’ because her mouth just couldn’t form itself into the shapes you need to make the word sound right. There are lots of batfaces in Eden, of course – maybe one out of every ten people – but no one thinks we’re pretty, and no one chooses a batface to slip with, if they can find someone halfway as nice who’s got a proper mouth and nose.

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ I said, getting a grip on myself once more. ‘I didn’t think anyone would ever come along and single me out. And then, all of a sudden, shadowspeaker Mary arrived and chose me out of all the people on Knee Tree Grounds.’

  Trueheart gave a scornful snort. ‘I can’t stand those women.’

  She got into a lot of arguments with her mum and dad for saying things like that, sometimes making her dad so angry that he’d take a stick and beat her until her mother Clare begged him to stop. Like all the other grownups from Michael’s Place, Tom and Clare feared and admired shadowspeakers. Like all the others, they would take presents to them when they came to give their shows in Veeklehouse, and then come back to Michael’s Place with tears in their eyes, and messages from Mother Gela and their dead. They were all Davidfolk, after all, and Tom especially, who’d lost his own right hand in the guards, was proud proud of being so.

  I looked round to see where Tom and Clare were, and saw they were some way behind us. ‘Well, just make sure you don’t say things like that in the hearing of any guards,’ I said. ‘They’re going to be touchy about that sort of thing, now that the fight with the Johnfolk is on again.’

  ‘I know, Auntie. I’m not a kid, remember, and I’m not stupid.’

  ‘Stupid is one thing you’re certainly not, Trueheart, my dear.’

  ‘So this shadowspeaker – Mary – came, and . . . ?’

  ‘Mary came out to our grounds, and in middle of her show she noticed me there among the people listening to her. She came right over to me and touched my face and . . .’ I broke off, once again finding myself suddenly so badly shaken that I was afraid I was going to cry. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘she said a few words, just to me.’

  Trueheart’s eyes narrowed as she examined my face. She really wasn’t stupid.

  ‘Yeah? So what did she say exactly?’

  ‘Well . . .’ Those tears were pushing pushing against the back of my eyes, trying to get through. ‘Well, okay then . . . What she said to me was “You’re beautiful!”’

  Trueheart went quiet for a few seconds. She understood, better than anyone could with an ordinary face, the huge power of those words.

  Then she snorted angrily. ‘Bloody shadowspeakers! They always figure out the one thing you most long to hear.’

  I shrugged. She’d just said exactly what me and Starlight used to say when we saw the shadowspeakers at Nob Head, but these wakings I didn’t think it was that simple.

  ‘Well, I don’t know about that. But I do know that no one else had ever said those words to me before. Plenty of people had said the opposite, and plenty, wanting to be kind, had told me it didn’t matter how I looked—’

  ‘Oh Michael’s names, Mum does that and I really hate it! One moment she’ll say looks don’t matter and she loves me just as I am. Next she’ll come back from Veeklehouse all excited about how she saw Leader Hunter’s new shelterwoman and how she is pretty pretty pretty.’

  ‘My mum was the same.’

  Gela’s heart, I was the same. I told myself that it didn’t matter what my kids looked like, I would love them just as much, but when my Fox was little I couldn’t stop stroking his beautiful face, with its perfect nose and its perfect little mouth that made my heart ache with love.

  ‘So the shadowspeaker said you were beautiful . . . ?’

  ‘Yes. She was looking straight into my eyes, and it was like no one else was even there as far as she was concerned, no one else but me. “Mother Gela loves batfaces especially,” she told me. “Not only because Great David was a batface, but because all batfaces suffer, and all batfaces have to dig down inside themselves and become wise.”’

  Trueheart glanced at me, and decided not to speak the thought that had come into her mind. But I knew what she was thinking. She was thinking how easy it is for anyone to get round a batface, or a clawfoot, or a slowhead, or anyone else who wasn’t so sure of themselves, by telling them how special they are.

  But the fact was that when Mary went back into middle of the circle and carried on with her show, the words she spoke from then on didn’t seem so silly any more, and they still didn’t seem silly now, walking through forest with Trueheart, even though I’d since fallen out with Mary. Of course Mother Gela didn’t want her family to break up. What mother would? And why shouldn’t it be true, just as Mary and all the Davidfolk said, that Gela herself had come alive again back on Earth, and was reaching out to us through the emptiness between the stars? Earth people could do all kinds of wonderful things, after all, and we ourselves were proof of it. For wasn’t it amazing that human beings from across the stars should be here at all, living among creatures with green-black blood and flat flat black eyes, who are kin to one another but not to us at all? If Earth people could find a way of crossing that cold black sky, who was to say they couldn’t bring someone’s shadow home and give it flesh?

  ‘Well, I know you don’t like shadowspeakers, Trueheart
, but I liked Mary. She taught me things. You’ve got to remember that I didn’t grow up with the True Story as you did, so some things that seem obvious to you were fresh and new to me. We Kneefolk were Jeffsfolk, remember, not Davidfolk.’

  ‘So she said you were beautiful and she asked you to go with her?’

  ‘That’s right. At first I couldn’t believe she’d chosen me. After all, she travelled all over the Davidfolk Ground, including the big clusters like Davidstand and Veeklehouse, and every few wakings she stood in front of a different crowd of people. But yet out of all those hundreds of people she’d met, it was me she’d picked out and asked to be her helper. Of course, my mum begged me not to go, all my friends told me I was crazy, everyone was angry angry angry. And of course, when I sat in Mary’s boat, heading to Nob Head, I began to have doubts, wondering if I’d been a fool and done the wrong thing. But then I remembered how lonely I’d felt when that handsome man from across the water had asked my friend Starlight to go with him, and I felt a bit better. “Now it’s happened to me as well,” I told myself. “Someone has chosen me. And I’m doing as Starlight did, leaving everyone else behind for the sake of that someone who sees something in me that no one else has ever done. Starlight was scared as well – of course she was – and she must have had doubts too, but she didn’t let them stop her. And I’m going to be brave as her.” That’s what I said to myself, whenever I began to panic.’

  Trueheart glanced at me again, not speaking her thoughts, but thinking them so loudly I could almost hear them.

  ‘How far is Davidstand now, Mum?’ my Fox asked.

  ‘Too far to walk in one waking, my love. We’ll rest soon and have something to eat.’

  Presently Metty began to wail, and Dave gave me one of his long looks to let me know that he thought I should carry the boy for a bit and give him a break from the crying. Poor little Metty didn’t know what was happening, but he could feel the fear, and he could tell that this was different from any other waking he’d ever known. I held him to my breast while we walked.