Dark Eden (7 page)

We ate well in Redlantern at the end of that waking, and when I finally lay down in the shelter with Gerry and Jeff, sleep didn’t come to me for a long time. The leopard’s heart was heavy heavy in my belly and the leopard’s life, its echo, kept prowling prowling through my mind, like a blackness slipping by behind the little steady lights of my thoughts, singing its tricksy song. Every couple of minutes it was there in front of me again, about to strike. Every couple of minutes I lunged out at it again with my spear.

When that boy John had gone away with his dead leopard, Stoop and Gela went straight off to sleep, the dozy old fools. Those two were more dead than alive. But I felt out of sorts and I couldn’t settle. It was that Redlantern boy that had done it. He’d pretended to show us respect because we were Oldest, and because Caroline and the others made sure all our visitors acted polite, but he didn’t like us and he made sure sure he showed it, the little slinker.

You’d have thought the young ones would be interested in us. You’d have thought they’d want to know the things that only Oldest had got to tell, but they didn’t, the little fools. They didn’t want to know anything that came out from our blind old wrinkly heads, even if it was the story of their own Family.

Bloody Redlantern boy. But he wasn’t there for me to moan at, so I shouted at the women instead, telling them to take away the starship and the Veekles.

‘Leave them lying there, and someone will trip over them and do them damage. I’ve told you that before.’

‘Okay, Mitch dear, we’ll put them away,’ they went, as if they were talking to a little kid rather than the oldest one in whole Family. ‘Gela and Stoop are resting now. Aren’t you going to take a nap too?’

‘I don’t feel like it.’

‘What do you want to do then, love? What are we going to do with you?’

‘Get out Earth Models for me,’ I told them. ‘I want to make sure they’re being properly looked after. Last time I checked some fool had let water get to them.’

‘They’re dry now. We got a nice new log, remember? A nice dry log for them. And Jeffo London made a new greased lid to cover up the end.’

‘That one-legged fool. He probably broke the Models when he was shoving them back in with those clumsy hands of his.’

‘Oh dear, Mitch! We
are
out of sorts, aren’t we?’

They brought House over and put it into my hands so I could feel its funny square shape and its smooth sticky surface, and the door, and the little holes that Tommy called Wind Ohs. I held it up to my nose to smell the grease and sweat in it, going back to the times before anyone alive was born.

Not that I could smell anything much now. It wasn’t just my eyes that had gone. It was all my bloody senses.

‘Still all in one piece,’ I said, holding it out for them to take it back. ‘Don’t bloody drop it, mind, like that silly girl did a few years back. Remember that thing was made by Tommy himself before he went blind, and show it some respect. Angela helped him cut the bark and smooth it and glue it together. It’s older than me, that House. It was made before I was born.’

‘Older than you, Mitch,’ they chirruped, just like I was a bloody kid. ‘My, that is
old
old.’

‘Now give me Plane. Come on, get on with it.’

I felt the long flat wings of Plane and the two hard jets underneath.

‘Be careful with those jets,’ I told them as I gave Plane back. ‘They’ve been broken off too many times by clumsy people that don’t know how to look after old things properly.’

‘Don’t worry, Mitch dear. We’ll be careful careful. Here’s Car for you now. Got it safe? Holding tight?’

‘Of course I’ve bloody got it. Michael’s names, stop fussing, woman.’

I liked Car best. I’d liked it since I was a little kid, because of the wheels that turned. I liked to hold Car and press the wheels against my hand so I could feel them move. I liked to make it say
brrrm brrrm brrrm
.

‘Why don’t you tell us the story, Mitch? About what Tommy used to say when he played with Car and the sound he used to make?’

‘I’m too old for stupid kids’ games.’

‘Oh go on, Mitch. You know you like telling us. Show us how Car went along the ground, why don’t you? And then maybe you’ll be ready for your nap?’

‘Oh alright then, if it will stop you nagging. Give me House back.’

I took House from them and put it down in front of me. I put Car in front of House, with its wheels on the ground. I felt the back of Car and pushed it back and forth a little bit to feel that special way it moved so smoothly over the wheels. The wheels are made of bits of bark, which Tommy and Angela rubbed round and smooth against a stone, and glued to the ends of two straight sticks.

‘Right …’ I began, but then I got a tickle in my throat that made my body double up with coughs.

‘Right …’ I began again.

‘Mitch,’ one of the women said, ‘the round bit’s …’

I didn’t take any notice.

‘Like I was saying, Tommy himself told me about this Car. He was old and blind, like I am now, and he was sad sad, because Angela was dead and he blamed himself for it, and all his kids blamed him for it too. In the end he did for himself. But he liked talking to us littles sometimes. I suppose we were nicer to him than the grownups. And he told us … He told us …’

I had to stop and cough again.

‘Mitch,’ that annoying woman said again. ‘I just wanted to …’

‘Gela’s tits, girl, will you
stop
interrupting me!’

That shut her up.

‘What Tommy told me,’ I went on, ‘was that when they want to go somewhere on Earth, they don’t walk like we do.’

I stopped to try and remember exactly what Tommy said, and then I remembered something else instead. I remembered I was the first kid in whole Family to have a batface, and the other kids used to tease me, but Tommy was nice about it. He said he had an auntie just like me back on Earth, and I mustn’t worry about it. He said it was just a
hare lip
. I thought that was a good word for it, but when I told the other kids, they laughed, and said they didn’t know what a ‘hare’ was, but anyone could see I looked like a bat.

It made me sad sad, thinking about that.

‘Back on Earth,’ I said after a while, ‘they didn’t just have bark shelters like we do. Their shelters had sides that went straight up like a cliff, maybe for five six times the height of a man, or more than that even.’ I touched the greasy roof of House. ‘And there were shelters
inside
the shelters called rooms. And some of the rooms were on top of other rooms, with hard ground in between them called floors. And they had telly vision in the rooms, which let them see moving pictures of things happening far away. And when they wanted to cook meat they didn’t even have to light a fire. They had hard boxes made of white metal that were always hot inside because of lecky-trickity, so you could just put the food inside and it would be cooked.

‘And if you wanted to go somewhere on Earth, you didn’t walk the way we do. Once, in the old old times, Earth people used to go about on the backs of animals called Horses that let people ride them. They were as big as woollybucks, with sharp pointy teeth. But there weren’t enough horses, so in Tommy’s time, people mostly went in cars like this one. You got inside them, like a shelter, and they ran along by themselves on their wheels, as if they were alive.’

I felt in front of me again for House, and found the door in it. And then I made two of my fingers walk from House to Car, like Tommy had done when I was a little boy.

‘One step, two step!’ I sang out, like Tommy had done.

I reached for Car.

‘Mitch,’ that woman said again, ‘that round bit …’

‘Will you
shut up
when I’m telling a story!’ I shouted at her.

I was angry angry. As I put my hand on Car, my heart was racing like it was going to burst, but straight away I could feel something was wrong. Car should roll forward smoothly, not rock from side to side.

‘What’s wrong with it?’

‘One of those round bits have come off, Mitch. Those
wield
things. I think you may have pressed down on it too hard when you coughed.’

‘What? The wheel’s come off?’

‘That’s right. But don’t worry. We can glue it back on again. We’ll get some sap boiled up now and glue it on.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me the wheel had come off? And why didn’t you take it out of my way when I coughed?’

Everything breaks doesn’t it? Everything bloody breaks.

My heart was pounding pounding so much it hurt, and tears were running down my face.

When I woke up Gerry and Jeff were still both fast asleep, and so were all the rest of group. I chucked off the woollybuck skin I slept under and crawled outside.
Hmmph
,
hmmph
,
hmmph
, went the old redlantern tree our shelter leaned against, as it pumped its sap down into hot hot Underworld, and pumped it up again.
Hmmmmmmmmmm
, went forest with all its thousands and thousands of shining trees that stretched all the way from Peckham Hills to Blue Mountains and from Rockies to Alps. No one else was awake in whole group, except for David who was on lookout, and he just grunted and walked off out of the clearing. I went to the food log in middle of our group, near the glowing embers of the fire, took the flat stone off the top of it and felt inside for a handful of dried starflowers and a bone to chew on.
Aaaah! Aaaah!
, went a starbird off in forest.

Over on Blueside, Starflower group were just starting to wake up. Meanwhile London, which was just inside of those two groups, were coming in from forest and getting their dinner on the go. Soon the smoky smell of roasting stonebuck was drifting through whole of Family.

I pulled a scrap of green fat off the woollybuck bone with my teeth and began to chew it. The air was warmer since last waking. The dip was ending. Cloud was coming back over sky like a big dark skin and only a little bit of Starry Swirl could still be clearly seen, way over by Alps. I looked round at our group’s little space among our redlantern and whitelantern trees, our circle of twenty little shelters made of bark laid over branches leaning against tree trunks. I looked at the glowing embers that we never let go out, the flutterbyes flipping and flapping around the lanternflowers, and at Old Roger snuffling and snoring on that skin he slept on out in the open because he didn’t believe in shelters. There were bones stacked in piles ready to be made into tools, and a little heap of blackglass (which Oldest called
obsijan
), and spears and axes and piles of logs and twigs for the fire. Over to one side was our old group boat that we sometimes used for fishing on Long Pool and Great Pool but we couldn’t use just now because the skins had begun to come off from one end of it and needed gluing on again. It all seemed small and boring after what I’d seen by the light of the woollybucks’ headlanterns. Whole
Family
seemed small and dreary and dull.