Dark Eden (33 page)

‘Gerry!’ Sue yelled again. ‘Please come back! You’re my boy! I love you! Please come back to us!’

‘I love you too, mum,’ muttered Gerry, slowing down and half-turning towards her, like he was thinking of going back.

‘Gela’s sake, just keep going, Gerry!’ I told him. ‘Don’t even think about going back.’

I might sound harsh, but after all I had a mum too that I was fond of, and sisters and aunties and brothers, and I’d left them all behind as well.

But we had a laugh when we got back to John and Jeff because they’d made a whole set of wraps to cover up John’s legs and arms and body and feet, and even a wrap to go over his head with little holes for eyes and mouth. And they’d greased it all up to keep it dry in the snow, and they’d stuck layers of smooth stonebuck skin onto the bottom of the footwraps with a special bendy glue they’d made by mixing up melted buckfeet and hot grease.

‘It’s boiling hot when you’ve got it all on,’ John said, peeping out of the little eye holes of the headwrap. ‘And Jeff chucked water all over it lots of times and it doesn’t get wet at all.’

He pulled it off again. I’d hardly ever seen his face look so happy and excited.

‘Try it, Tina. You won’t believe how warm it is.’

Jeff squatted behind him, at the entrance to the cave. He was watching us but he was mainly looking at Gerry. It was as if Gerry’s troubled face was a bit of writing that Jeff only had to read to know exactly what had happened down there with his mum, without Gerry or me saying anything at all.

‘Mind you, it took hours for Jeff and me to get it all tied on,’ John said. ‘But I reckon we could do it quicker and better next time we make one. We could make it all so it comes off easily, like this headwrap.’

I put the thing on, looked out of the eye holes, peered at each one of the three of them.

‘It bloody stinks, John. It stinks like a woollybuck’s arse.’

John laughed. Gerry laughed. Jeff looked at me like he was trying to read me too, though all he could see of my face was my two eyes. Then he began to laugh too, really merrily, like a little child.

It was only a couple of wakings later that Janny Redlantern came to join us from Family, along with a friend of hers called Lucy Batwing, and Mehmet Batwing, who was a cousin of Lucy’s. (He was a funny bloke, that thin-faced Mehmet with his little pointy beard. He was friendly but always holding something back, and he had eyes that seemed to be waiting for you to make a fool of yourself.) And as for Lucy, Gela’s tits, she talked and talked and talked, and I thought she’d never shut up: I suppose it was because she was scared. But Janny was good to have there.

‘Thought you could do with a normal person for company, Tina,’ she told me, with a sideways look at John, all covered in glue and bits of string.

She’d cheer the place up, I thought.

And then, only a waking later, four Brooklyn kids came over: Mike, Dixon (we usually called him Dix) and Gela and Clare. They were all friends of mine back in Family, specially big tall grownup Gela, who I could really trust, and have a good laugh with too. And Dix, her younger brother, was a sweet pretty gentle boy that I’d had a little kiss and cuddle with once or twice.

And then, only a few hours later on, when everyone was asleep and it was my turn to keep watch, my own little batface sister Jane came over with my big slowhead brother Harry. I heard them calling down below in Valley Neck, ‘Tina! Tina! It’s us!’

I was pleased pleased to have Jane there, but Harry was a worry. He wasn’t good at thinking, and he got easily confused and upset like a kid, but because he had the strength of a big man, it could be a real job to calm him down.

‘It’s bad back in Family, Tina,’ Jane said, ‘it’s
bad
bad. Everyone’s arguing and blaming each other, and there’s all sorts of scary scary talk. Fat old Liz is even grimmer than usual and she’s always fretting that someone is going to try and push her out as group leader like Bella Redlantern got pushed out. Mum is frantic. Bloody David Redlantern and his lot are going round like they’re the real heads of Family instead of Caroline and Council. And the way people talk! Well, all I can say is you lot want to watch out. Some of them back there talk about coming over and forcing you lot to come back, some of them talk about driving you away forever, but I haven’t heard many say they should just leave you alone.’

‘What do you mean “you”?’ I said. ‘You’re here too now. You’re one of the ones they’re talking about.’

Jane shrugged and pursed up her nice ugly batface.

‘I know. I must be bloody nuts.’

John and me got people organized. We set up hunting parties. We had people look for clay to make pots for us, and look for blackglass, and gather wavyweed for ropes and string.

We knew that where we were was a secret that was spreading round Family, and pretty soon someone who didn’t like us would get to know about it, if they hadn’t done already. We had no idea what they’d try but John had the idea of hiding things that were valuable to us, like woollybuck skins, in lots of different places, so no one from Family could just walk over here and nick the lot. And he insisted we have lookouts all the time above and below our camp. We even dug fire holes in three different places and kept them full of glowing embers, so that even if they came over and stamped out our fire, we’d still be able to make another. No one wants to spend half a waking just trying to get a fire to start.

Janny, Lucy, Mehmet, Mike, Dixon, Gela, Clare, Harry, Jane, Tina, Gerry, Jeff and me. There were thirteen of us now, and yet it was only a few few wakings since I’d been all on my own. (We could have done without Harry, but there wasn’t anything I could do about that.) All the new people settled in quickly in their new living place above Valley Neck, chattering and laughing and squeaking and squealing and fooling about, just like newhairs did back in Family. Sometimes I felt a bit left out of all of that, like I did back in Family too, because I’m not often one for squeaking and fooling around. But when I felt that way, I would remind myself who brought them here.

‘They might think they came here to be with Tina or with one another,’ I said to myself. ‘But if it wasn’t for me, there wouldn’t be one of them here. Not one. They’d all still be in Family, and Circle would still be as it was, and nothing would be different from how it was for wombs and wombs and wombs. And it wouldn’t have occurred to anyone to live anywhere else but there, squeezed in around Circle Clearing between Greatpool and Longpool and the rocks.’

It helped to remind myself of that. It helped me with pushing away that cold stone of Bella’s death and pulling myself out from underneath it, and it helped me to remember that I still needed to make things go forward. If I left it to the others, no plans would get made. They’d just eat and sleep and play and slip, until something happened to stop them. They wouldn’t try and figure out in advance what that something would be, or how to get round it when it came.

Well, to be fair, maybe Tina would have done, and perhaps Gela Brooklyn, and maybe even Jeff if he thought anyone would listen to a little clawfoot kid whose new hairs hadn’t even properly started to grow, but none of the others.

We felt another little dip coming on at the end of a waking, and I got seven of us together to miss sleep and go straight over to the bottom of Cold Path to look for woollybucks. We took spears and ropes and I took all the wraps me and Jeff had made, while Gerry and Tina took another two sets of wraps they’d made since with Jeff’s help. The way I arranged it, me and Gerry and Tina would go up the path towards the edge of the ice. Jane, Mehmet, Lucy and Mike, who just had bitswraps and shoulder wraps and bare feet, would wait at the bottom of the path for us to drive bucks down to them.

The four of them laughed at me and Tina and Gerry when we pulled on those stinky wraps, specially when we put on the headwraps that covered up our faces, but they were impressed too, I could see. It was
new
new: new like nothing in Family had been since before any of us were born. There must have been a time when people figured out how to make blackglass spears and wavyweed rope and how to stick skins to the ends of logs to make boats, but for a long time it had been like we’d forgotten that there was any possibility that things could be different to what they already were.

With our wraps on, looking like some strange new kind of creature, me and Tina and Gerry walked up the path. This wasn’t just a buck hunt to me, it was a first step to getting ourselves right up on Snowy Dark. There’s a faint picture, scratched on a tree near Circle Clearing, called ‘The Astronaut’ made by Tommy or Gela or one of the Three Companions. It’s a man in a strange Sky Wrap that lets him live in places so high up in sky that there’s no air left to breathe. It’s one of the people who found a way of getting outside of Earth. And I felt pretty much like an Astronaut now, walking up the path with Gerry and Tina in those stiff hot fuggy wraps. I felt like an Astronaut taking his first steps up into sky.

And the wraps pretty much worked! They got a bit wet in places, specially round our feet, so that still needed working on. But even right up there by the ice, our bodies stayed warm warm, and even though our feet got a bit wet, they weren’t cold like they’d have been if our feet had been bare. They weren’t hurting like they did when we came up with Old Roger.

Five bucks came down from Dark with their headlanterns shining bright bright: four big ones and a little baby one trailing along at the end. We scrambled up the hillside off the path and waited until they’d gone right past us – I reckoned the wraps helped here too, because they made us smell of woollybuck and not of human being – then we crept down behind them, making starbird noises to signal to the others below to be ready for them. The bucks trudged slowly on with us behind them, their headlanterns fading to a soft glow as they left Snowy Dark behind them and got down into the light and warmth of the trees.

An hour later, near the bottom of the path, we did another starbird cry.
Hoom! Hoom!

Aaaah! Aaaah!
the others answered.

We found a place where the path went through a narrow gap in the rocks and hid up above there.

Aaaah! Aaaah!
the other four called again, and then suddenly they all stopped trying to sound like starbirds and began to yell like excited newhairs so we knew that the bucks must have spotted them and would now be running back towards us again up the path.

Gerry got the first one with his spiketip spear as it came up to the gap: a good shot straight up and under its neck into its chest. The spearhead went directly into one of its hearts and Gerry was covered in thick black blood.