Daughter of Eden E-Book

Chris Beckett

• Herausgeber: Corvus
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Dark Eden
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 645

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Angie Redlantern is the first to spot the boats - five abreast with men in metal masks and spears standing proud, ready for the fight to come. As the people of New Earth declare war on the people of Mainground, a dangerous era has dawned for Eden. After generations of division and disagreement, the two populations of Eden have finally broken their tentative peace, giving way to bloodshed and slaughter. Angie must flee with her family across the pitch black of Snowy Dark to the place where it all started, the stone circle where the people from Earth first landed, where the story of Gela - the mother of them all - began. It is there that Angie witnesses the most extraordinary event, one that will change the history of Eden forever. It will alter their future and re-shape their past. It is both a beginning and an ending. It is the true story of Eden.

Leseprobe

To my two daughters, with much love and great pride

Part I

One

I look back through all the things that have happened since, and it’s like looking out through the trees and lanterns of a forest. So many things in between, but there, far off in the distance, is me as I once was, Angie Redlantern, walking along the cliff path to Veeklehouse with my little Candy hopping and skipping and ­dancing along beside me. On our right is the glowing water, pink and green, stretching away to World’s Edge. On our left is the humming forest: dark trunks, shining lanterns, glittering starflowers, on and on blueway as far as the slopes of Snowy Dark. Above us, the huge spiral of Starry Swirl fills up the whole of the black black sky. I am carrying a bag of bone tools to trade. ‘Twinkle twinkle little star,’ Candy sings, and gives a little twirl. She is four years old: five wombtimes we’d have said when I was a kid, but that Angie back there on the cliff has been living so long among Davidfolk that she’s become used to thinking in years.

Ahead of us is Veeklehouse, the Davidfolk’s biggest trading place, sitting there on the clifftop in the spot where John ­Red­lantern once stood long long ago, wondering whether or not to throw Gela’s metal ring out into the water. Veeklehouse is bright with firelight – though it’s a rough dirty dangerous brightness, completely different from the soft light of forest – and it sits under a flat cloud of smoke that’s pretty much always there, glowing a faint dirty orange against the starry sky.

That’s me and Candy, long ago: little dots on the clifftop, between the shining water, and the shining forest, and the high cold light of the stars.

‘Look, Mum,’ says Candy. ‘Lots of boats!’

I’d first seen Veeklehouse some ten years previously. A bunch of us came down in a boat from the little sandy grounds I grew up in, way up rockway from Veeklehouse and ten miles out into the water. Me and my friend Starlight were so excited we ran up the cliff like little kids, leaving the older grownups behind us to follow the best they could. Gela’s heart! The colours, the people, the things they traded! It all seemed wonderful to us. And that was before we’d even seen the Veekle itself behind its high fence, that huge mysterious metal thing, steeped in the strangeness of Earth.

But that later me, the me walking along the cliff path with Candy, had lived near Veeklehouse about eight years. I came along this path every couple of wakings back then with a bag of the little things that my bloke Dave carved out from buckbone – knives, scrapers, earrings, beads – and Veeklehouse had come to be something ordinary. Things always do, I’ve found: you grow tired of the ordinary things and long for some bright and wonderful thing that you can’t reach, and then you find you can reach it, and it turns out to be just another ordinary thing. I never gave a second look at the buckfat lanterns any more, though their restless light had once seemed so strange and dangerous and full of possibilities. I didn’t look at the earrings made of coloured feathers, or the bats waiting in cages to be done for and cooked on the spot. I just went straight to the traders who would take the things I had to trade, and give me sticks in return, on to other traders who would swap those sticks for things we needed, and then back again to Michael’s Place.

As to the metal Veekle behind its fence, well, aside from taking my kids to see it – as well as Candy, I had my big boy Fox and my baby boy Mehmet: Metty as we usually called him – I never even thought about it. Yes, the Veekle was huge. Yes, it was made using skills we couldn’t even imagine. Yes, it came from Earth, and three men died in it. But all that was long long ago. I had people to look after now who were still in reach, real living people who needed me. And, when it came to people who’d gone, well, I had plenty from my own life to grieve over. There were three other kids for one thing, little Star, and Peter, and Happy. They all died a few wakings after they were born.

‘Mum, look!’ Candy said again. ‘Lots lots lots of boats.’

‘Yes, sweetheart,’ I said. ‘There are lots of boats here, aren’t there?’

I didn’t bother to look. Boats were always coming back and forth between Veeklehouse and the rest of Eden. My little Candy always always pointed them out and usually I obliged her by looking and making surprised or amazed or impressed sounds at what she’d spotted. But sometimes, when I was thinking about the past and the things I’d lost, it made me sad looking out over the water, and I preferred to keep my eyes on the things near me, the shining trees, the stones on the path, the waves right below us splashing on the rocks, with the supple branches of the shining watertrees, green and pink, swaying this way and that beneath them. It just seemed to make sense to keep my attention on the things that were nearby, not the ones that were far away and out of reach.

Out there on the bright water was where I’d last seen my friend Starlight. I’d stood crying down there on that rocky ledge and watched her boat, dark on the bright water, until World’s Edge swallowed it up. And out there too – out there and behind us, way, way up rockway – I’d said goodbye to everyone else I knew, in little peaceful Knee Tree Grounds in its little patch of water forest, far out in the bright water.

‘Come on, look, Mum!’ my little girl called out again, tugging impatiently at my hand. ‘Lots of boats! One-two-three-four-five boats! And they’re all together. You haven’t even looked once yet.’

So finally I looked, and I saw five boats side by side, strung out along World’s Edge: five dark shapes with their windcatchers changing from pink to green to pink in the waterlight shining up from beneath them.

‘So there are, Candy. Five boats. Clever girl. You’re getting good good at counting.’

It wasn’t at all unusual to be able to see five six boats all at once out there. Often there were more than that. Veeklehouse was a busy place, and boats came from all over Eden, but I’d never before seen five all together like that, all heading the same way. I wondered where they were from. Time had been when you knew that any boat with a windcatcher must have come from New Earth, but everyone was making them that way by then, and no one bothered with logboats any more, or with the little bark Knee Boats we used to make back on Knee Tree Grounds. Once again, I guess, the Johnfolk had led the way.

‘I wonder what they’re bringing,’ I said.

‘Metal,’ said Candy. ‘Or colour-stones. Or buckfat. Or bark.’

She knew these were things that pool-traders brought to Veeklehouse, because me and her dad had told her. Metal came from New Earth. Colour-stones came on boats from Brown River (though I’d heard that the stones themselves came from Half Sky, over on far side of Snowy Dark). Buckfat was brought in every waking from up and down poolside, wherever there were still fatbucks left to be hunted, to feed the hungry lamps of Veeklehouse. Bark came once in a while from my old home, Knee Tree Grounds, out there up rockway across World’s Edge. No one made boats with it any more, but it was pretty good for roofs.

‘I guess so, sweetheart,’ I said.

A nagging worry was beginning to stir inside me, like a tube­slinker inside a tree, scrabbling up an airhole with its hundred hard scratchy little legs. Why would five boats arrive all together and side by side? And why, I wondered, as they drew closer and I could see them more clearly, were there so many people standing on each one, looking out towards us across the bright water? So many people, and so little in the way of a load.

‘Look!’ cried Candy excitedly. ‘More boats.’

Oh Gela’s heart. There were another five of them behind the first lot, another row of five, appearing from across World’s Edge. My hand tightened round my little girl’s, and she glanced up worriedly at my face.

‘What’s the matter, Mum?’

‘Oh, probably nothing, dear,’ I said, ‘but let’s go and find your dad and your brothers.’

‘But we’re going to Veeklehouse!’

‘Another time, sweetheart.’ I pulled her back the way we’d just come. ‘I just need to . . . well, talk to your dad about those boats.’

‘Ow, Mum, you’re hurting me.’

I glanced back at the Pool. I could see the faces of the men on the first five boats now, lit from below by the waterlight, and I could see they weren’t faces, but metal masks.

I snatched Candy up and started to run.

Two

When I went to Veeklehouse that first time with Starlight and the others, I thought it was just for fun. We’d do a bit of trading, have a look at the Veekle, and then go proudly back again to tell the story to all the folk in Knee Tree Grounds who’d never been further than boring old Nob Head. That was what I thought would happen. Nothing would really change.

But in fact everything did. When we were there, Starlight met a strange, beautiful, powerful man called Greenstone. He was one of the Johnfolk from New Earth across the water and he talked English in such a weird way that at first it was hard to make out what he was saying. He had a brooch made of metal, and men with metal spears who followed him round and did whatever he asked of them. It was obvious from the beginning that he was a high high man, and it turned out that he was as high as could be, the son of the Headman of New Earth. Like all high men, he was used to getting what he wanted, and as soon as he saw Starlight, well, he wanted her. She was pretty pretty and smart smart, and, now I think about it, she was kind of used to getting what she wanted too, especially from men. She went away with him, far far away across the water, and the rest of us returned to Knee Tree Grounds without her.

I had lost my best friend. I had learned that there were things in the world that my best friend valued more than my friendship, and I had seen for myself that there were things that could happen to someone beautiful like Starlight that would never never happen to me. Because I am a batface. I can’t properly close my mouth because it’s joined up with my nose in a single messy hole that’s lined with twisted gums and twisted teeth. If I worked hard at it, people liked me when they got to know me, but no one was ever ever going to fall for me as Greenstone fell for Starlight, or as she fell for him. (Greenstone himself could barely bring himself to speak to me or look me in the face.)

And now Starlight was going to a new and wonderful place where they’d found how to make metal, and boats that blew with the wind – Greenstone said it would make bright Veeklehouse look small and dark – and I was going back to a little patch of sand to cut bark and gather waternuts with the same bunch of people that I’d known all my life. Good old Angie: she’s not much to look at, but she works hard and she has a kind heart.

Oh I felt sad sad, like a big aching hole had opened up inside me. But I still thought that life on Knee Tree Grounds would carry on as before.

I was wrong wrong wrong. The ripples from what happened in Veeklehouse were still moving outwards across the world. They would break over New Earth, they would reach Brown River, and along Brown River right through the mountains and into the ground called Half Sky. And one of the things they did was make the Davidfolk look at us Kneefolk in a different way. That changed Knee Tree Grounds for good.

You see, the people in Veeklehouse were Davidfolk, as were the people nearest to Knee Tree Grounds at Nob Head, along with all the other people along poolside from up Rockway Edge, down through Veeklehouse, and on until the edge of Brown River Ground, way down alpway. But of course the people from New Earth were Johnfolk. And yes, okay, the Davidfolk at that time were letting the New Earthers come to Veeklehouse and trade their metal, but that didn’t change the fact that the Davidfolk would never forgive them for stealing Gela’s ring, or for breaking the Circle, or for splitting up Family, or for bringing killing into the world. And nor did it mean that the Johnfolk had forgiven the Davidfolk for driving John Redlantern out of Family, and trying to do for him and his people. Never mind that all these things happened long before anyone still living was born, long before the parents of anyone still living were born, long before even their great-grandparents. That made no difference. The Johnfolk and the Davidfolk still hated each other.

We Kneefolk, in our quiet little grounds, ten miles out from Nob Head, weren’t on either side. We didn’t actually use the word when we spoke about ourselves – we just called ourselves Kneefolk – but, if the others were Davidfolk or Johnfolk, then we were Jeffsfolk. Our great-great-grandparents had followed not John Redlantern or David Redlantern, but Jeff Redlantern, and Jeff always said there was no point in fretting about the past, and arguing forever about which story was the true one. He and the people with him came to Knee Tree Grounds so they could get away from the fighting that was going on back then between the followers of David and the followers of John, and live their lives in peace.

When I was born, of course, that fight had been over for genera­tions. There were still Johnfolk living way down alpway at Brown River, and we knew that John himself and some of his followers had disappeared over Worldpool with the ring, but when we paddled across to Nob Head to trade, the only people we ever met were Davidfolk. (Except for once twice, when there was a trader there from Brown River: ‘Look!’ someone would say. ‘That man is one of the Johnfolk,’ and we’d all stare at the guy in amazement, like he had two heads, or wings sticking up from his shoulders like a bat.)

So we Kneefolk were the odd ones out. The Davidfolk knew this, and sometimes they teased us for the funny way we talked, or for following someone like Clawfoot Jeff, but we were no threat to them out on our little patch of sand, and they liked the bark boats we brought them. They’d let us alone for generations.

She didn’t mean to, of course, but Starlight had changed all that. A lot of people in Veeklehouse had seen what was going on between Greenstone and our Starlight – well, of course they had: they’d watched the Headmanson of New Earth like a leopard watches a buck, they’d taken note of every little thing he did! – so the Davidfolk knew that one of our people had gone with Greenstone. And that reminded them that we Kneefolk weren’tDavidfolk but Jeffsfolk, and that actually Jeff was John’s cousin, and had taken John’s side when Family first split in two. So now they asked themselves whose side we were really on, and what it was that New Earth wanted with us. Among the Davidfolk, you see, the high men chose their shelterwomen from the daughters of men they wanted to have as friends.

What was more, the Davidfolk had learned that the Headman of New Earth was thinking of attacking them – some of the New Earth traders had boasted as much when they’d drunk too much badjuice in Veeklehouse – so now they wondered whether the Headmanson had chosen Starlight because Knee Tree Grounds would be useful to New Earth. A little place like Knee Tree, far out in the bright water: their ringmen could gather there, couldn’t they, after crossing Deep Darkness, before they pushed on into the Davidfolk Ground with their metal spears?

So Starlight going with Greenstone had moved the pieces on the chessboard that lay, so to speak, between the Davidfolk in Mainground and the Johnfolk over in New Earth. Suddenly Knee Tree Grounds had become an important square and the Davidfolk started to take an interest in it. They sent guards over with their big blackglass spears, they sniffed round, they asked us questions. Of course we tried to tell them that we really weren’t on the Johnfolk’s side. After all, whether or not Jeff had sided with John all those generations ago, we had far less in common these wakings with the New Earthers, who’d lived for generations on far side of the Pool, than we had with the Davidfolk, our trading partners, who lived just ten miles away. We pointed out to the guards who came over that Starlight was the only one of us that had ever ever gone to live in New Earth, while many many Kneefolk had crossed to Mainground to live among the Davidfolk.

The guards listened to all this. They smiled and nodded and agreed it was all true, but they still kept coming. And not just guards, but guard leaders. Traders came too when, up to now, we’d always crossed over to Mainground to trade.

And then one waking a shadowspeaker came.

Three

Michael’s Place, our little sheltercluster, was set back just a little bit from the Pool, so as to keep out of the way of the people who went back and forth along the cliff path on their way between Veeklehouse and all the other little poolside clusters up rockway. The guy it was named for had died before I ever came there, and the top people there now were his grandchildren and great-­grandchildren. It was in the ground of Leader Hunter who was the guard leader at Veeklehouse. He was our high man, and in fact he was one of the highest, for he was the third son of David Strongheart, the Head Guard of the Davidfolk Ground, and the many-greats grandson of Great David. As a trade for living there under his protection, we had to give him so many skins each year, so much dried meat, so much buckfat, so many bundles of dried starflowers. And, as was the case all up and down the Davidfolk Ground, we had to send all our boys, when their new hairs had fully grown, to go and be guards for him whenever he asked for them.

Michael’s Place didn’t look so different, I guess, from where I used to live on Knee Tree Grounds, with its bark shelters arranged round a circle of open space where we lit our fires and sang our songs. I guess that’s how low people live all over Eden. But the ground it stood on was black dirt instead of pale sand, and the trees shining round it were Wide Forest trees – whitelanterns with their pure white shining globes, redlanterns with their long tubes of glowing pink, and spiketrees with their little bright blue flowers – and not the knee trees with their drooping branches and yellow-green flowers that grew out on the Grounds. And another thing that was different was that, right there in middle of the circle of open space the shelters stood round, there was another circle, a little circle of small round stones gathered from poolside, which no one ever stepped inside. Every Davidfolk cluster had one of these, even if it was only tiny. It was a copy of the original Circle of Stones, over there across the Dark, in Circle Valley, which marked the place where people from Earth had first come down to Eden, and to which, so the Davidfolk believed, Earth people would one waking return. About thirty of us lived there round that little ring of stones, including grownups, newhairs, oldies and little kids, and it was my home now. It was the new family I’d found, after I’d lost the one I had before, and after a lonely time with no one to be with at all. I’d become one of them, one of the Davidfolk, who believe that nothing is more important than family, and nothing matters more than keeping family together.

I was gasping for breath as I ran into the cluster, Candy still squirming angrily in my arms: ‘Let me go! Let me go! Let me go!’ Ten eleven grownups were sitting there peacefully working on this and that – Tom, the head of our cluster, was slowly chopping up a buck with his one hand, Lucy was sewing wraps, Kate was grinding up starflowers – and little naked kids were playing round them or helping with small jobs.

‘Dave!’ I screamed, as soon as I had the breath to speak. ‘Dave! Quick! Get the boys and the buck!’

Dave turned his long grey face towards me. He’d been sitting by the fire – he always seemed to feel cold – whittling away at buckbone, while Metty played nearby. Now he climbed uncertainly to his feet and took a couple of hobbling steps towards me, like he still hadn’t quite figured out what it was I wanted from him.

‘Kate! Davidson! Lucy!’ I screamed. ‘Get your kids! Blow the horn! They’re coming now! Now! Ringmen in masks! Johnfolk from across the water!’

What was wrong with them all? How could they be so slow?

‘The Johnfolk?’ asked Tom.

‘Yes, the Johnfolk, ten boats of them, with metal masks on their faces and metal spears in their hands! Come on, everyone, move! We need to get away from the poolside.’

Tom stood up. He was a big big man with a loud voice, and could hardly have been more different to his brother Dave. He’d been a guard for a long time until he lost his hand, and he was used to bossing people about.

‘Right everyone, pack up whatever you can carry, and we’ll head for Davidstand.’

Davidstand sat at the foot of Snowy Dark, and it was where David Strongheart himself lived when he wasn’t travelling about his ground, along with all his shelterwomen and most of their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. There were many guards there, and if there was any place in Wide Forest that was going to be safe from the Johnfolk, Davidstand would surely be it.

‘Oh Gela’s heart!’ Dave groaned. ‘I just sent Fox to Veeklehouse to get some glue. I’d better go after him.’

Fox liked to go to Veeklehouse along the little path that went through the trees, rather than the one along the cliffs. He liked to imagine he was a hunter, out by himself, far out in the depths of forest.

‘No you hadn’t, Dave,’ I said, ‘not with those clawfeet. You get the buck loaded up and the other kids ready, and head straight towards Davidstand. I’ll go after Fox.’

Kate’s man Davidson started blowing our old hollowbranch horn to bring in the people who were out scavenging or hunting in forest, and everyone began fretting about people they couldn’t get back, such as sons in the guards, and daughters who were the housewomen of guards.

‘They’ll know we’d go to Davidstand,’ Tom said. He had four sons in the guards himself. ‘They’ll be able to come and find us there if they need to. But I reckon that won’t be necessary. We’ll be back here soon. Our guards are more than a match for a bunch of ringmen.’

‘Dave, take Candy and Metty,’ I said. ‘I’ll go and get . . .’

But right then Fox came running back into the cluster: my own little Fox with his thin little arms and legs and his big big eyes.

‘Oh thank Gela!’ I murmured, grabbing him up with tears of relief welling from deep inside of me. Fox wriggled free. He was past the age where boys liked to be babied, and anyway he had news.

‘Everyone’s running away from Veeklehouse, Mum.’

‘I know, Foxy, I know,’ I told him as I let him go. ‘Your dad’s getting the buck ready, look, and then we’re all going to Davidstand. It’ll be safe there.’

Dave had thrown dried meat and bags of flowercakes over the back of our old smoothbuck, Ugly, and now he lifted up Candy and Metty onto its back before hauling himself up there behind them. He wasn’t being lazy. He knew that his clawfeet would hold us all back if he tried to walk.

Waves of grey were rippling across Ugly’s flat black eyes and its four mouth feelers were sniffing and snuffling at the air, like it was trying to figure out what all the humans were so agitated about. Then it tipped back its head and gave one of those little shrieking sounds that bucks make when they know they’re in danger.

A few of the other dads or mums had gone off to look for missing people, but the rest of them had loaded up bucks like we’d done, with dried meat, trading sticks, wraps, sleeping skins, spears and bundles of arrows. I scooped up some embers in a pot, so we could cook along the way.

As we set off towards Davidstand, we heard a huge roar rising up from somewhere in the distance, down alpway and towards the Pool. Tom nodded wisely, like he was the only one who could tell what that sound could possibly be.

‘That’s the guards on the cliff,’ he said, ‘shouting and yelling to ready themselves for a fight.’

It was strange to think about. At that moment every single one of those guards at Veeklehouse was still healthy and whole and strong, and so was each one of the ringmen on the boats from New Earth. But soon the arrows would be flying back and forth across the water: metal-tipped arrows one way, glass-tipped arrows the other, and then people would start to die, and bodies that now were fit and whole would be torn and broken. There would be fire arrows too. Our men would shoot them to set their windcatchers alight, and their fire arrows would come flying back in answer to burn the shelters in Veeklehouse.

Fox was terrified, but he was trying hard not to show it.

‘I wish I could watch the fighting, Mum,’ he shouted out in an odd, loud, excited voice, though I was standing right by him and would have heard him quite clearly if he’d simply spoken. ‘It would be exciting exciting, and I know our blokes are going to win.’

On Ugly’s back, little Metty cried in Dave’s arms, sensing the fear round him, while Candy frowned out from Ugly’s back and said nothing at all. Dave tried to catch my eye so he could give me one of his worried looks, one of those looks that grownups give each other over the heads of their children, but I avoided it. Gela’s heart, I thought, it’s not as if all of us don’t already know how bad things are.

As we started to walk away from Michael’s Place, we looked back one last time at the shelters we’d built for ourselves, the fence of branches we’d worked on for wakings and wakings, so as to make sure it was strong enough to keep out leopards.

Four

I was telling you about that shadowspeaker who came over to Knee Tree Grounds.

We’d never had one there before – Jeff didn’t believe in clinging to the past or talking to the dead – but we’d seen shadowspeakers from time to time when we went to trade over in Nob Head. They would cry and wail in middle of a circle of silent, troubled Davidfolk, or even have a kind of fit and roll on the ground with spit bubbling from their mouths. Sometimes, they’d pick out people in the crowd and tell them, in front of everyone, the bad bad things they’d done. We’d seen big grownup Davidfolk hanging their heads and crying like little kids who’ve been told off.

‘Mother Gela is reaching out to you!’ the shadowspeakers would wail. ‘But how can she help you if you don’t reach back? How can she guide you home through the emptiness between the stars?’

Sometimes they’d suddenly stop and listen, holding up their hands for quiet, so they could hear the voices of the dead loved ones of people in the crowd.

‘It’s . . . Yes, it’s your little boy, my dear, the one who died. He’s telling me his name – I can’t quite hear him. David, is it? Yes, I thought so, David – he’s begging me to tell you to be true to our Mother. He’s afraid that otherwise you’ll never find your way back to him.’

The Kneefolk grownups always kept out of the way of the shadowspeakers. If we were over in Nob Head and came across a shadowspeaker giving a show, our grownups would go and sit on the cliff and talk among themselves until the shouting and crying was over and the speaker had collected her presents. This was Davidfolk business, they said, and nothing to do with us. But newhairs like to be different from their grownups and me and Starlight and our friends would sometimes sneak off to watch the shows. We were careful to keep a straight face, and avoid looking at one another – we understood that we were among the Davidfolk and on their ground, and mustn’t give them any reason to be upset with us – but afterwards we’d all go off along the cliff together and, as soon as we were alone, we’d burst out laughing.

‘Mother Gela is crying!’ Starlight would wail through her own tears of laughter. ‘She’s crying crying crying!’

‘You’ll all be lost in the cold cold darkness!’ our friend ­Poolshine would sob.

‘The starship will never come back for us,’ I’d moan, ‘unless you listen to our Mother and look after her family!’

We laughed and laughed. How could those stupid Davidfolk be so easily fooled, we wondered? Wasn’t it obvious that the speakers told people whatever they thought would either please them enough or frighten them enough to get good presents out of them?

But of course this was only obvious to us because our grownups had told us what to look for, and how to explain what we saw. It was only obvious to us because they’d told us, as Jeff had taught, that a single life was like a wave moving over the surface of the Pool – the wave disappears completely, but the Pool remains the same, shifting this way and that in its enormous bowl – and that Mother Gela was long dead, and that even when she was alive, she’d just been a person like anyone else, nothing more and nothing less.

Yes, and even though we told ourselves it was obvious that what the shadowspeakers said wasn’t true, I think one of the reasons we laughed so loudly was to shut out the little secret doubts that came to each of us. What if the Davidfolk were right? What if it really was true that when our bodies died, our shadows lived on, to wander through the emptiness between the stars, and maybe get lost there forever, all alone, with no hope of company or warmth?

After all, the Davidfolk were many and powerful. They’d built Veeklehouse and Davidstand. Their ground stretched from Worldpool to Circle Valley, and from Rockway Edge down to the White Streams. They had the Veekle, the Circle of Stones and all the other things from Earth except the ring. Their Head Guard was such a high man that he had seventeen shelterwomen and more than a hundred kids. Who were we to say that they were wrong and we were right?

So we’d seen shadowspeakers before, but when that shadowspeaker came over to Knee Tree Grounds, it was a different thing. This was our ground, not the Davidfolk Ground, and yet here she was. And there were guards with her too, guards who had suspicions that we Kneefolk were really Johnfolk in disguise, and who were watching us carefully to see how we’d behave. We gathered unhappily. Most of the grownups felt we had to go along so as not to upset the Davidfolk, but it felt all wrong that she was there.

‘Remember, no laughing and no smiling,’ mums and dads warned their children, just as our mums and dads had done when we went over to Nob Head. ‘Not unless the speaker smiles herself.’

There she was, the shadowspeaker, standing right in middle of our own Meeting Place, the same place where we Kneefolk met every waking to listen out, not for some long-dead person, or some far off voice calling out to us from Earth, but for the Watcher who was as close as can be, the secret awakeness that looks out from the eyes of everyone. I could see the tree right behind her where Jeff Redlantern’s own words were carved. WE ARE REELY HEAR, he’d written.

I heard one of the older grownups mutter that the shadowspeaker was trampling on purpose on the things that mattered most to us, trampling on the story that made us Kneefolk into who we were, and I must say it felt like that to me as well. But I’d decided the best way of dealing with this was to see the funny side of it. Just like we’d done at Nob Head, I’d listen politely, and then have a good laugh when she and her guards had gone.

But now we were actually faced with the shadowspeaker, things felt different. This woman wasn’t really ridiculous at all. You could see she was smart smart. You could see her studying our faces with her sharp sharp eyes, and it was like she could see right through us. Her name was Mary. She was a short, solid, fierce-looking woman, with a big square face, reddish hair that she’d cut short so it stuck out in little tufts and spikes, and small piercing grey eyes. She wore a longwrap made of fakeskin, woven from crushed starflower stems, much as the high people wore on Mainground, though without the fancy colours or the feathers and beads and dried batwings. We Kneefolk just wore little buckskin waistwraps, with bare feet and bare breasts.

Mary stood there waiting until we were all silent, and then, without speaking a word, she took a stick and drew a circle in the sand, the way that Davidfolk always do when they find themselves in a place where there isn’t already a circle of stones. Then she stood up straight again and looked round at us. She’d made the Davidfolk sign, right there in middle of the place where we met to tell our own stories, and it was like she was daring us to object. None of us did – we knew better than to do anything that might upset the Davidfolk, and in any case, Mary wasn’t the kind of person you’d want to argue with – so then she stepped inside her circle, which was something that only shadowspeakers and Head Guards were supposed to do.

‘Do you know what the Circle stands for?’ she asked.

No one wanted to answer, but she just waited, knowing quite well that sooner or later someone wouldn’t be able to bear the silence any longer. And sure enough, a woman called Fire finally spoke.

‘The Circle of Stones,’ she muttered.

Mary nodded.

‘Thankyou. You’re right. It stands for the Circle of Stones, where the Veekle from Earth landed and where one day people from Earth will come again. But it doesn’t just stand for that. It stands for the one True Family of Eden, and how we’re all linked together. John Redlantern tried to break that Family but, though he stirred up trouble among us, it’s still one Family. Jeff Redlantern tried to break up that Family.’ She paused to look round at our faces, daring us to rise to this challenge to our precious Jeff. ‘And he stirred up trouble among us too. But it’s still one Family all the same, one Family with one Mother. And our Mother still loves us all.’

Again Mary paused, the stick still in her hand, searching our faces, figuring out who would be easiest to reach and who would be hardest. Then suddenly she took up the stick, snapped it in two and flung the pieces out at us to her left and right.

‘Oh you foolish, silly people! You babies!’ A little bit of spit flew from her mouth. ‘Hiding away out here in the bright water! How do you think that’s going to help you, eh? What do you think it’s going to save you from?’

She paused just for a moment while the questions sank in, and then she carried on. ‘Oh you can hide away from trouble out here, I’ll give you that. You can hide from playing your part. But do you really think you can hide from death?’

I could see some angry faces round the Meeting Place. I could see people who were fighting back the desire to shout out in our defence. But I could see many faces that were scared as well. Not just the kids who were there but grownups too looked like children who had been told off. I was close to tears myself. Mary had made me ashamed of being one of the Kneefolk.

‘You’re lucky lucky,’ she told us. ‘Your Mother still loves you. In spite of everything. You might have turned your back on her. You might have stamped on her face. You might have stood back and let her precious ring be taken from her. But she still loves you. She still . . .’

Mary broke off, like something inside herself had interrupted her, and suddenly she began to shake all over. At first we thought she was having some kind of fit, but then we saw in amazement and horror that she was shaking with sobs of grief.

‘I can hear her,’ Mary said, struggling to get her voice under control. ‘I can hear her now. Mother Gela is crying, but . . . but – oh our dear good Mother! – she’s not crying for herself, however much you’ve hurt her. She’s crying for you. She’s crying crying crying for her foolish children. And she’ll never stop crying until every single one of you turns away from wicked John and foolish Jeff, and comes back to True Family of Eden.’

I could feel my own tears running down my face now, and I could see others crying all round the Meeting Place. Well, we had been hiding out here, hadn’t we? We’d been hiding out here for generations! The world went on without us across the water, Eden grew and changed, but we refused to be part of it, staying here on our own, cutting bark and fishing just as our parents and their ­parents had done, and turning our backs on everything else.

Mary walked over to a girl called Brightwater and asked her name.

‘Do you know why our Mother cries for you, Brightwater?’ she said.

Brightwater had been crying and crying. ‘Because . . .’ She sniffed. ‘Because we’re bad!’

Mary shook her head, half-smiling through her own tears.

‘No, it’s not because you’re bad, Brightwater. It’s because if you don’t reach out to her, she can’t reach back to you. And do you know what will happen then?’

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, ever 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.

Hmmmphhmmmphhmmmph 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.’