Dark Eden (40 page)

‘I know,’ I said, ‘let’s do the story now. Let’s do the story of
Gela’s Lost Ring
. You can be the teller, Dix. I’ll be Angela. Harry, you can be the first Harry. Suzie Fishcreek and Lucy Batwing, you can be the first Suzie and Lucy. Clare, you can be the first Clare, Candy can be Candice. John can be Tommy.’

Everyone was puzzled by this at first. It was too sudden, I suppose, and they couldn’t see the point of it, and it sort of interrupted them in middle of looking at the wonderful perfect ring. But at the same time everyone could see it was, in a way, a suitable thing to do, to remember the story of this famous thing that had just been put in front of them. That was how we’d been brought up. Every Any Virsry we’d been told to remember things, to join the present up with the past.

As for John, when I peeked at him sideways, I could see that he was feeling just like I’d been feeling a few moments before. He was angry angry, he felt set up, he really didn’t want this at all, but at the same time he knew he had to go along with it. I hadn’t given him a choice, just like he hadn’t given me one.

Good! Serve him right. Let him see what it felt like.

‘So this is the story of Angela’s ring and how she lost it,’ began Dix, that kind pretty boy who had stopped to care for me and Jeff while John and the others went belting off to kill.

‘Gela never wanted to come to Eden. She and Michael were made to come here against their will by Tommy and Dixon and Mehmet. She decided to stay and start Family here with Tommy, because she thought it was better to live and see what the future would bring until Earth came back than to go into sky where it was pretty certain that she’d drown. But she was sad. She missed her mum. She missed her father. She missed her group, which was called London, like our first group here in Eden. She missed the great star – Sun – that filled up Earth with light. She missed being with people that she loved and knew. She was sad
sad
inside. But she didn’t show that to people. She made the best of things. She cared for her kids and did all she could to make their life happy. She even thought about us in the future and … and …’

He hesitated here, because he was about to say that Gela made Circle of Stones, which is what the story normally said, but he could see that it wouldn’t be right to say that any more (even though everyone knew quite well what it was that he was missing out), and that it was a part of the story that was now going to have to change.

‘ … and she made traditions and laws,’ he said, ‘that we still keep. She even made herself love Tommy, though he wasn’t the kind of man she normally liked, and even though he often got angry and sulky, and once twice he even hit her.’

He looked round at John and held out his hand for the ring. I could see John didn’t want to hand it over one bit, but once again he had no choice, not without spoiling the story. Clever Dix. Kind, pretty
and
clever.

‘Angela had a ring …’ Dix stumbled a bit in his words there, because of all the weird feelings that came with telling a story about the ring while the ring itself was right there in his hand, and his voice came out all thick and wobbly, like he was about to cry. ‘Gela had a ring, which was given to her as a present by her mum and her father. (They knew who their fathers were on Earth: they weren’t like we are here.) And the ring … the ring had writing inside it, tiny writing that said “
To Angela with love from Mum and Dad
”.’

He passed the ring to me and I could see that, although he was doing it for the story, he was doing it for my sake too, because he’d seen how I felt about John springing this on us like this, and he wanted to help me feel better. After all, we didn’t need an actual ring to tell the story. Normally when people do the story of
Angela’s Ring
, they don’t have a ring at all.

‘Then one waking, when she was out in forest scavenging, Gela lost her ring. It slipped off her finger somehow and she couldn’t find it. And then …’

And now it was my turn. I was Angela. I dropped the ring on the ground (out of the corner of my eye I could see John wince) and began running back and forth, back and forth, kneeling down, standing up again, moaning, muttering, beginning to cry.

‘Tommy! Tommy!’ I shouted into John’s face. ‘I’ve lost it! I’ve lost my ring!’

John screwed up his face. He
really
didn’t want to play. This was just timewasting to him, timewasting and unnecessary complication, and anyway he didn’t like the ring to be out of his hands.

‘I’m sure it’ll turn up,’ he said, without even trying to pretend to be Tommy.

‘What do you mean, you bloody idiot? What do you mean
it’ll turn up
, you useless lump? Help me look for it! Get it back for me. I’m not going to go on without it.’

I glared round at Harry and Suzie and Lucy and Clare and Candy.

‘What are you idiots staring at? Michael’s names! Find the bloody ring for me, can’t you? Do something useful for once in your whole life!’

So they began to look, some getting on their knees, some walking about. Clare and Candy began to cry. Harry was shaking all over and running about like he really did think it was lost.

‘I’ll find it for you, Gela, I’ll find it,’ he bellowed. ‘I’ll find it!’

‘Stop that racket, you snivelling kids,’ I yelled at them, ‘shut it now. I never wanted you, you know. I never wanted to be with him. I never wanted to touch him, never mind slip with him and have his kids … It’s my mum and dad and my friends on Earth I love, not any of you, not you stupid lot in this stupid dark dark Eden. And that ring, that ring was the only …’

‘Mum, please,’ went Clare, and she was really crying now.

‘Piss off, Clare. I can’t stand the sight of you. Do you know that? I can’t stand the sight of
any
of you …’

Whew! I
really
let rip, I can tell you. I screamed and yelled till my face was red and the tears were pouring down, and I was sweating and shaking all over. All five of my so-called kids were crying – even though one of them was actually my big brother – and a lot of the people watching were crying too. And the babies were yelling, and the bucks were going
eeeek! eeeek! eeeek!
in their cave. Even John looked scared.

It must have been scary scary that first time for those five kids, all those wombs and wombs ago, watching their mum fall apart like that and turn on them, when she and Tommy were all they had in the world. It must have been scary scary. Otherwise that story would never have kept going for so long, would it? Not when so many other things have been forgotten and lost, spreading out and out over the generations like the ripples from a stone chucked into a pool, getting smaller and fading away. And the weird weird thing about this story of
Angela’s Ring
was that it didn’t even have a point to it, no happy ending, no lesson to be learnt. It was like one person’s cry of pain, echoing out on and on and on through the generations, even after that person was long long dead.

So why
did
we keep doing it? I’d wondered that sometimes, but now I found out. It was because doing it felt
great
!

‘As for you, Tommy,’ I said, turning on John. ‘As for you, you selfish arrogant bastard. You took me from my mum and dad, you took me from my friends, you took me from my lovely Earth, without letting me in on your plans, without giving me a choice, without thinking about my feelings. And now you can’t even find my ring. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you and I always always will.’

But John just knelt down, picked up the ring and held it out to me.

‘Here it is, Gela, I’ve found it. I’ve found your ring for you after all this time.’

That threw me, I must admit. I wasn’t expecting that move at all.

‘What do you mean? You never found the ring, Tommy. You never did anything that useful in your whole life.’

‘No,’ said John. ‘I’m not Tommy. I’m John. I’m John Redlantern. I’m your great-great-grandson and these are your great-great-grandchildren, trying to make our home in dark Eden, just like you did. I’ve found your ring, Gela. I’ve ended that story. You don’t need to tell that story any more.’

‘Give it back then. Give it back to me now.’

But he had his answer to that as well.

‘No, Gela. You’re dead now. You’re dead and buried under a pile of stones, remember? The ring’s no good to you any more, is it? But I’ll look after it. We’ll look after it. We’ll take it with us over Dark and right to the other side, just where you want us to go.’

And he put the ring back in the pocket in his wrap and came and put his arms round me. Tom’s dick and Harry’s, you’d got to hand it to him! He knew how to stay in control.

My eyes were full of tears and I didn’t know if they were my tears really or Angela’s, just like I didn’t know if I felt comfort in his arms in spite of everything, or whether I hated him more than ever.

And then the story was over, and the decision was made and we were all busying about getting things ready to go up Cold Path into Dark and leave this place for good.

People tried to have things every which way, even smart honest people like Tina. They wanted the good bits and then they complained about the bad bits that had to go with the good bits. Well, the good bit about me was that I could make things happen, and that I stuck to a thing and didn’t ever give up or let go. That was the good thing that people got from me, along with all those other things people didn’t like.

When we had that meeting, I’d just done for a man. I’d killed a man I’d seen around Family ever since I was a little kid. I didn’t feel guilty about it exactly because I knew he’d happily have done the same to me, and to Tina and probably to the others too. But, Gela’s eyes, I was shaken
shaken
by it. All that meeting it was running through my mind over and over, my spear sticking out of Dixon’s back, my spear stabbing back again into his belly, the squelch of it going in, the hiss of air, the blood bubbling out of his mouth. I hadn’t stopped to look at him longer than the time it took to pull my spear out of him, and for him to roll over to look up at me, and for me to shove the spear in again to finish him off – his two friends were still running from us, and Gerry and Harry might have needed my help – but those couple of seconds were so fixed in my mind that it was like they kept happening – really happening – over and over again.

So I had that in my head, and I had all the practical things to remember, and at the same time I somehow had to make people
believe
in me, so that they’d accept being organized and they’d stay that way, and we’d have a chance of surviving. I had
all
that to think about – and there’s only so much a person can hold onto at one time – and then bloody Tina drops her little game with the Ring story on me, and – Tom’s dick! – I had to think about how to deal with
that
as well.

She’d say that was my fault for keeping the ring a secret, but I did that for a reason. I did it because I always knew from the beginning that when I showed it to people, it would give me power over them, but I also knew that the power wouldn’t last. So I saved it up for the moment when that power was most needed, not just by me but by all of us. It was like when the leopard came at me. I knew I only had one shot at it, so I waited till the best moment and didn’t just chuck my spear at it the first chance I got. And I got that right. I got it exactly right, whatever Tina thinks. I took out the ring just when we really needed it most – and it
worked
!

A couple of hours after I’d taken the ring back from Tina we were starting up Cold Path. There were twenty-one of us, plus two babies. The larger of the two bucks, Def, was in front with Jeff riding on it. After that came me and Tina, and then all the others, one by one, with the other buck, Whitehorse, at the end. Every one of us was covered up, except for our mouths and eyes, with buckskin wraps, so we didn’t really look like
people
, more like a herd of weird two-legged bucks. Every one of us had the greased buckskin footwraps that I’d been working and working on even before anyone came from Family to join me, with hard layers of skin and greasy glue on the bottom. Apart from Jeff on his buck, the two girls with babies (Clare and Janny) and the three girls carrying babies inside their wombs (Suzie, Gela and Julie), all of us were carrying things on our backs: rolls of rope, spare footwraps, bags of blackglass, bundles of buckskin, things that I’d thought about and organized over the past ten periods. And we were taking it in turns to carry some big flat pieces of bark, smoothed and greased, which I called snow-boats, each one loaded with useful stuff like meat and skins and spare wraps, except for one, which was holding a pile of embers on a big flat stone. They were hard work to carry over dry ground, but once we were up on snow they’d slide easy easy over the surface, and it would only take one person to pull them along.
They
were my idea too.