Dark Eden (24 page)

I went back to Spiketree, trying not to catch the eye of the lookout for that sleeping, who was a bloke called Rog that was always trying to get me to slip with him, and I crawled into my shelter.

My sister Jane said, ‘Everyone’s been talking about you, Tina. They’ve been saying that …’

‘Just shut up, Jane, alright?’

Pretty soon after that, the horn started.
Parp! Parp! Parp!

A woman in Blueside had had a heart attack and she and her daughters didn’t come to Strornry. A couple of blokes in Brooklyn couldn’t sleep. They’d set off hunting and didn’t get back until most of it was over. A few newhairs had gone out for a little bit of slip, like I thought was the plan for me and John when I went up to Deep Pool. But everyone else in the world was there, back in Circle Clearing, like Any Virsry all over again.

But the thing was that it wasn’t Circle Clearing any more, because there was no Circle. And that was really horrible. It was like you saw someone you knew in forest and you called out to them, but when they turned round towards you, you found out that their teeth and their tongue had fallen out, and their face had a big empty hole in middle of it. And the weird thing was that nobody wanted to go near that gap where Circle had been. People had always stayed round the edge of the clearing in any meeting, whether Any Virsry or Strornry, and always kept well back from the stones, but now they squeezed even
further
back, pressing up tight together right under the lantern trees to be as far as possible from where the stones had been. And that made the hole in middle look even bigger and emptier and more horrible.

Yes, and it was what we called a
fug
that waking. The cloud had come down low in the last few hours, right down into the treetops, making the highest lanterns into fuzzy blobs of light. And a fine rain was falling, not like the soaking rain you get in the hills round valley’s edge, but fine valley rain, like wet mist. And it was hot and stuffy. Everyone’s skin was shiny with rain and with sweat. It was like there was no sky, no forest even, and this sad lonely little scene, this clearing with a hole in middle, was all on its own in the world, a stuffy little cave with no air in it, surrounded by nothingness. There weren’t even any flutterbyes or bats coming in and out of the clearing, because they don’t fly when there’s a fug, they hide up and keep their wings dry, and wait for the cloud to lift.

People’s faces were grey and exhausted. They hadn’t left Any Virsry feeling happy, but they’d thought that at least they could get some sleep. And now this! Lots of women were crying, some men as well. Little kids and babies saw their mums crying and they cried too. Other grownups, instead of crying, had stone-hard faces. They were waiting for someone to shout at, someone to blame.

Oldest weren’t out in middle like they had been in Any Virsry. They couldn’t hack it. Their helpers had sorted out a little space for them on one side of the clearing, with their padded logs to rest their backs against. Old Stoop looked like he was about to die any minute.

But Caroline and Council were out there, far away from us all in middle of that empty space. And Caroline, that cold grey woman, was full full of rage. Her rage was like boiling sap inside a tree that’s about to fall, just waiting for someone to give it that last push when the sap would come spraying out to scald and maim anyone standing near. Jane the creepy little Secret Ree and Council were all around her and they all looked pretty much as angry as she was, except for Bella Redlantern, who just looked terrible, like she was about to be sick.

And then John came, poor old John, all by himself, coming from Londonside. There was a sort of gasp from all round the clearing and people standing on Londonside pulled hastily aside to let him past, like they were afraid of even touching him, like they were afraid of catching something from him if they stood too near to him.

A dreadful silence fell. Even the babies seemed to know to shut up crying. And he walked right out into middle, walking
stiff
stiff and straight straight with his head held up, as if to say he was ready to take whatever they were going to do to him. But his face was white, and he wasn’t looking anywhere but straight in front of him. (I bet he looked like that when he faced the leopard.) When he was three four yards in front of Caroline, he stopped.

He was only twenty wombs old. Only fifteen years in the old time.

‘You did this, didn’t you, John Redlantern?’ Caroline said.

And there were three four seconds of total silence.

‘Yes I did,’ he said then in a small quiet voice. ‘I did it because …’

‘I don’t wish to hear why you did it.’

‘I did it because …’

‘I don’t wish to hear, do you understand?’

‘I did it because I …’

Well, Caroline stepped right up to him and slapped him across the face so hard that he nearly fell over. You could see that she’d hurt her hand as well.

‘Those stones were laid here by your great-great-grandparents,’ she hissed into his face, ‘laid here to mark the special place where our Family arrived in this world, and the place we’re to wait for Earth to return. We’ve honoured them and kept them safe and clean for six generations, the special stones that Tommy and Angela chose and touched with their own hands and laid out in the exact spots where they’ve been ever since. And you, at twenty wombs old, you arrogant sneaky little tubeslinker’ (her voice went all ugly and twisted and choked up when she said that), ‘you think you know better than everyone else alive or everyone who’s ever lived.’

‘Don’t be too hard on him, Caroline,’ muttered Bella behind her. ‘Remember he’s only a kid.’

‘Only a kid?’ called out David Redlantern, striding out from the crowd into the clearing.

Oh boy, what an ugly, evil brute he was with his thick short limbs and his red batface always oozing, always quivering. Not that all batfaces are like him. My own sister Jane was a batface, and she was as sweet-natured as anyone could be, but David, he was cruel and cold and hard, and his batface just made him seem crueller and colder and harder still.

‘Only a kid, you say, Bella,’ he sneered in his spluttery voice, ‘but that didn’t stop you from getting him to slip with you in your shelter, did it? It didn’t stop you having a little slide with him on the exact same waking he insulted Council here in front of whole Family. We thought you were calling him in to tell him off, but no, you got him in and slipped with him, with whole group awake all around you. We knew what was going on. We heard the silence. We heard your breathing getting fast. We heard you gasp. What kind of group leader is that?’

‘Is this true, Bella?’ demanded Caroline, turning round.

Bella’s head was hanging down.

‘We didn’t slip but we did, well,
touch
. I did tell him off but I wanted him to know also that he was valued and that his concern was …’

‘What nonsense,’ Caroline said, and we’d never in our lives heard Head of Family talking to a group leader like that. ‘I’ve never heard such total garbage. We’ll need to reconsider the leadership of Redlantern, because you obviously aren’t fit to lead anything. But we’ll sort
that
out later. For the moment …’ She turned back to John. ‘For the moment the business of Strornry is this. How do we deal with this selfish, stupid, arrogant little slinker of a boy, who has defiled the memory of Mother Angela and of Father Tommy and of the Three Companions? How do we deal with a silly boy who has deliberately broken something that was precious to every single one of us?’

‘Hang him up from a spiketree like we hang a buckskin out to dry,’ said David. ‘Spike him up to burn, like Hitler did to Jesus.’

He gave a hard laugh.

‘They say Jesus was the leader of the Juice,’ he said. ‘Which sort of fits when you think about it, because juice is about the only thing old Juicy Johnny here has ever been good for.’

There were a few cold little titters of laughter, but Caroline told him off.

‘This isn’t a time for jokes,’ she said.

‘I’m not joking,’ David said. ‘Spike him up.’

And he stayed there, out in the open space on his own, standing with his muscly arms folded and his thick stumpy legs apart. He wasn’t a group leader. He didn’t really have any more right to speak out than John did, other than the fact that he was a grownup. But he didn’t go back to the edge of the clearing with everyone else, and Caroline didn’t tell him to. She just turned her attention away from him, like she couldn’t face another fight.

And the thought came to me – well, I didn’t properly
think
it through, but I sort of glimpsed it in my head – the thought came to me that up to now it had been the women in Eden that ran things and decided how things would be, but now a time was coming when it would be the men. Some of them might be good men and some would be bad like David. But it would be men rather than women for the next bit. Something had changed, and it would never be how it was before.

‘We need to discuss this,’ Caroline said. ‘Let’s decide who ought to speak first.’

‘How about his mother?’ murmured Candy Fishcreek.

‘Yes,’ agreed Caroline, scanning the crowd surrounding her, out round the edge of this stuffy little cave of cloud. ‘His mother. Jade Redlantern. Where are you, Jade?’

A rustling came from the place where most of the Redlantern people were standing, and you could see which one was Jade because hers was the only face that was still looking forward.

‘I’m here,’ she said in a small wavery voice.

And it was an odd thing. Jade wasn’t just pretty, she was a great beauty. She knew how to stand and how to hold herself and how to move herself, so as to command envy and desire and love. If men spoke or came up to her – and women too – she could dismiss them, or tease them, or give them their heart’s desire just by the way she moved her face and her body. But now she was lost, she had no idea how to speak or to compose herself. It sounds harsh but what she reminded me of was a whitelantern fruit that looks all ripe and lovely till you turn it round and you see the hole where the ants have got into and hollowed it out inside.

‘Well, um, he’s not all bad, John isn’t …’ she began.

It was like she was talking about someone she didn’t even know that well.

I looked at John. He was watching her. You couldn’t read the expression on his face, but his eyes were sort of hard and shiny. Not shiny with tears but with something like the
opposite
of tears, I thought, though I suppose it didn’t make a lot of sense.

‘ … but it’s a bad thing he’s done,’ Jade said lamely, and she sort of made a face, like it really wasn’t all that much to do with her, and didn’t say anything else.

‘Can I speak, Caroline?’ said Bella Redlantern.

Caroline turned round to her.

‘Go on,’ she said coldly.

‘I didn’t know what he was going to do, and I haven’t talked to him about it,’ she said, ‘but he’s a boy who feels passionately about things, feels passionately about the future of Family especially. I don’t really understand why he did this, but he will have done it because he thought it would help.’

‘Help?’ asked Caroline. ‘
Help?
’

She looked around at us all, making an incredulous face, trying to get a reaction out of us. Some people tittered, some shouted out ‘Shame on you Bella! Shame!’, which was just what Caroline wanted.