Mother of Eden E-Book

Chris Beckett

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

Seitenzahl: 599

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Mother of Eden has been shortlisted for the British Science Fiction Association Novel of the Year Award, 2015. 'We speak of a mother's love, but we forget her power. Power over life. Power to give and to withhold.' Generations after the breakup of the human family of Eden, the Johnfolk emphasise knowledge and innovation, the Davidfolk tradition and cohesion. But both have built hierarchical societies sustained by violence and dominated by men - and both claim to be the favoured children of a long-dead woman from Earth that all Eden knows as Gela, the mother of them all. When Starlight Brooking meets a handsome and powerful man from across Worldpool, she believes he will offer an outlet for her ambition and energy. But she has no idea that she will be a stand-in for Gela herself, and wear Gela's ring on her own finger. And she has no idea of the enemies she will make, no inkling that a time will come when she, like John Redlantern, will choose to kill...

Leseprobe

About the Author

Chris Beckett is a university lecturer living in Cambridge. He has written over 20 short stories, many of them originally published in Interzone and Asimov’s. He is the winner of the Edge Hill Short Story competition, 2009, for The Turing Test, as well as the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke award, 2013, for Dark Eden.

Also by Chris Beckett

The Holy Machine

Dark Eden

Mother of Eden

Chris Beckett

ATLANTIC BOOKS

London

Copyright page

First published in the United States in 2015 by Broadway Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

Published in hardback in Great Britain in 2015 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright © Chris Beckett, 2015

The moral right of Chris Beckett to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback ISBN: 978 1 78239 235 4

Trade paperback ISBN: 978 1 78239 234 7

E-book ISBN: 978 1 78239 236 1

Printed in Great Britain.

Corvus

An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

Ormond House

26–27 Boswell Street

London WC1N 3JZ

www.atlantic-books.co.uk

Dedication

For my three sisters, with much love

Contents

Part I

Glitterfish Brooking

Starlight Brooking

Julie Deepwater

Starlight Brooking

Julie Deepwater

Starlight Brooking

Julie Deepwater

Starlight Brooking

Julie Deepwater

Starlight Brooking

Julie Deepwater

Starlight Brooking

Greenstone Johnson

Starlight Brooking

Julie Deepwater

Part II

Greenstone Johnson

Starlight Brooking

Luke Snowleopard

Greenstone Johnson

Starlight Brooking

Greenstone Johnson

Luke Snowleopard

Starlight Brooking

Greenstone Johnson

Starlight Brooking

Greenstone Johnson

Starlight Brooking

Glitterfish Brooking

Starlight Brooking

Part III

Luke Snowleopard

Starlight Brooking

Greenstone Johnson

Starlight Brooking

Greenstone Johnson

Starlight Brooking

Quietstream Batwing

Starlight Brooking

Julie Deepwater

Starlight Brooking

Greenstone Johnson

Lucy Johnson

Starlight Brooking

Clare Bluesigh

Starlight Brooking

Greenstone Johnson

Quietstream Batwing

Greenstone Johnson

Starlight Brooking

Luke Snowleopard

Part IV

Julie Deepwater

Starlight Brooking

Greenstone Johnson

Quietstream Batwing

Greenstone Johnson

Starlight Brooking

Greenstone Johnson

Lucy Johnson

Starlight Brooking

Quietstream Batwing

Starlight Brooking

Greenstone Johnson

Lucy Johnson

Starlight Brooking

Mary Starfler

Quietstream Batwing

Starlight Brooking

Greenstone Johnson

Starlight Brooking

Greenstone Johnson

Starlight Brooking

Part V

Julie Deepwater

Starlight Brooking

Quietstream Batwing

Starlight Brooking

Quietstream Batwing

Starlight Brooking

Lucy Johnson

Starlight Brooking

Lucy Johnson

Starlight Brooking

Greenstone Johnson

Starlight Brooking

Part VI

Julie Deepwater

Starlight Brooking

Julie Deepwater

Starlight Brooking

Julie Deepwater

Starlight Brooking

Glitterfish Brooking

Part VII

Starlight Brooking

Julie Deepwater

Starlight Brooking

Julie Deepwater

Starlight Brooking

Julie Deepwater

Starlight Brooking

Afterwords

Glitterfish Brooking

Quietstream Batwing

Lucy Johnson

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Part I

Glitterfish Brooking

The trouble began on the waking I left Mikey with his dad on the Sand for the first time, and went out gathering bark with my uncle Dixon, my brother Johnny, and my sister Starlight. Johnny had just come back over from Nob Head, and as we paddled through the trees, he told us the news he’d heard there.

“I’ll tell you a really interesting thing,” he said.

Hmmmph hmmmph hmmmph went the tall trees in the water all round us. Everything was the same as it had always been. The sky was black above us. The treelanterns shone. The wavyweed glowed beneath the water.

“Yeah, a really strange thing,” Johnny said. “I didn’t know what to make of it. I was speaking to that guy Harry over there—­you know, old clawfoot Harry with the missing fingers?—­and he said that blokes have been coming over to Mainground lately from right across far side of Worldpool. Not to Nob Head itself, mind you, but further down alpway to places like Veeklehouse and Brown River. And, if you can believe this, he said they bring metal with them. Not bits of metal from Earth, but metal they’ve found for themselves in the ground here in Eden.”

“Oh, Gela’s heart,” I whispered, suddenly full of dread.

Johnny’s news felt to me like the breeze that came in from Deep Darkness before a storm: It was nothing in itself—­all it did was make the lanternflowers sway a little on their branches—­but you knew it was just the start. Metal meant change. Metal was some­thing to fight over, like the followers of John and David used to fight and fight over that metal ring from Earth. I thought of my little Mikey back on the Sand, and I imagined a storm of blood breaking over him.

But Dixon just laughed.

“You don’t want to believe everything Harry says. He’d tell you a starship had come from Earth if he thought you’d swallow it.”

Splash splash splash went our paddles. And behind the rhythm of our paddles, which was a sound that stopped and started, came and went, was that older rhythm, which never never changed. ­Hmmmmph hmmmmph hmmmmph went the trees, as they pumped their sap down to the heat of Underworld, far far below.

“It could be true, Uncle,” Starlight said.

She looked at our uncle with those beautiful, sharp gray eyes of hers that always seemed to see right through you. People told me mine were the same, but of course I’d never seen them.

“We know John Redlantern set out to cross Worldpool, don’t we?” she pointed out. “Him and some other Johnfolk. When they got tired of all the fighting on Mainground after Breakup.”

Dixon snorted.

“Yeah. They set out in little log-­boats to cross Deep Darkness. But you know what it’s like out there, Starlight. You know how big the waves are. No way could they have made it. No way. Their bones are somewhere out there on the bottom, no doubt about it, along with John’s precious ring.”

“We’ve always thought that,” Starlight said, “because no one has heard from them since. But perhaps they made it after all?”

A little jewel-­bat came darting by us just above the water, trail­ing its tiny fingertips in the smooth surface.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” said Johnny. “And it wasn’t just Harry who told me. Another guy said the same thing: John and the others did make it across Worldpool, and they figured out how to get metal from the ground.”

“And who was this other bloke, exactly?” Dixon asked with a knowing smile. “Not Harry’s batfaced friend Dave, by any chance?”

Johnny’s face went a bit red.

“Well, yeah, it was Dave, actually. But still. It could be true.”

Again Uncle Dixon snorted.

“It could be. Anything could be, but I’m sure it’s not. Even if John’s lot did make it to the other side, which I’m sure they didn’t, why would they come back? Whole point of going there was to make a new start without the Davidfolk to fight against.”

Splash splash splash. We paddled on. All around us the tall knee trees rose up, straight at first, then bending over toward Main­ground and letting down their greeny-­yellow lanternflowers over the shallow water. They made me think of mothers bending down over their children. But that waking, when I’d left Mikey behind for the first time, everything made me think of mums and kids.

Johnny had had me worried for a moment, but Dixon made me feel better. It was just a silly story, I decided, and I started to enjoy myself again, out on the water with the lanternflowers and their reflections all around me.

When we were kids, Mum used to tell us to half close our eyes and pretend we were in a starship with the lanternflowers as stars. And in few wombtimes, I would play that same game with Mikey. I imagined him screwing up his little eyes, just like Starlight used to do when she was little. It felt good good, thinking about those childhood pleasures coming round again, specially when I knew I’d give Mikey many many more of them than our mum had been able to give to us.

Uncle Dixon stopped paddling.

“That’s the first one,” he said. “That ought to be good and ready.”

There was a tree ahead of us that had a long oval cut into its bark right at the place where the trunk bent over: the knee, as we called it. We took the boat up to it and Uncle Dixon heaved himself over the side while the three of us leaned the other way to keep the balance.

“Come on then, you lot,” he said. “Let’s get on with it.”

There were pegs driven into the trunk. He put his foot on the lowest one, his hand on the highest one he could reach, and, big guy though he was, hauled himself nimbly straight up, carefully avoid­ing touching the hot trunk itself. Straight away, while we climbed out of the boat, he began tap-­tap-­tapping at the oval of bark, his white belly hanging out over the rough buckskin tied around his middle, and his face beginning to sweat and redden with the heat.

Harummmph sighed the tree and, from an airhole high above us in its eighty-­foot trunk, it released a puff of steam.

Hmmmph hmmmph went the trees all around, merging together into that deep, steady hmmmmmm that you could hear when you drew near to the Grounds from the open water beyond.

I imagined Mikey learning how to make boats when he grew older. I imagined him coming out here one waking with his kids and telling them to half close their eyes and pretend they were floating through the stars.

Starlight Brooking

My sister was different different from me. Soon as she heard Johnny tell that story about the metal and the people from across the Pool, you could see the dread in her face. Soon as Uncle Dixon said it wasn’t true, you could see her relax. Me, I was the other way round. When Johnny told the story it was like a way out opening up. I felt excited, and my head filled up at once with thoughts about new possibilities. And when Dixon laughed it all off, it was like that way out had been closed off and I was trapped once more in boring boring Knee Tree Grounds.

Uncle Dixon knocked carefully with his round stone, pausing after every few taps to wipe his hands on his buckskin waistwrap. Cut off from the hot sap that flows through the bark, the oval had shrunk away from the harder wood beneath and from the live bark around it. If we’d left it long enough, it should just come away.

“Shifting yet?” I called up to him.

“Nearly there, I reckon.” The sweat on his face glistened in the treeshine. “Let’s give it a go. Ready to catch?”

I cupped my hands to receive the heavy stone and placed it carefully in the boat. Stones were valuable things on sandy Knee Tree Grounds.

Dixon put his fingers into the crack in the bark and began to pull gently.

“Easy,” he muttered to himself under his breath. “Easy. Ah, here we go! You lot ready? It’s coming down.”

With a slow rasping sound, the long oval pulled away from the trunk: a whole new boat, or at least it would be once it had been scraped and rubbed smooth, and layers of sap and fatbuck oil spread over it to fill up the tiny holes.

“There we go,” Uncle Dixon said.

He had the same satisfied tone he used every single time a bark came cleanly away from a tree. However many times he did it, the pleasure was just the same.

“Okay, get ready for it.”

Panting with the effort and heat, he lowered the bark, carefully carefully, until the three of us could reach the bottom edge and hold it up out of the water. Then he clambered quickly down the tree.

“Jeff’s sharp eyes,” he sighed gratefully as he slipped back into the coolness, “that feels good good.”

He splashed his face and his pudgy body while we placed the hot piece of bark carefully into the spare boat. He must have said the same thing a thousand times.

“Came away nice and clean, that one. And there’s not one blem­ish on it. It’ll be a good good runner. Take it to Nob Head and it should get us five six glass knives at least.”

“I reckon we’ve been getting more trade lately than anyone else on Grounds,” Johnny said.

Uncle Dixon nodded comfortably as we all got back into the boat.

“Yeah. Well, that’s down to experience, isn’t it? I’ve been doing this since I was a little kid. I know a good knee, and I know when bark’s ready. These youngsters try to pull bark too early, thinking it’ll save them time, but of course it never does. What time have you saved if you rip a hole in your boat and have to start again? I’ve seen good trees ruined that way, too. Bark never grows back as cleanly, and ...”

This was our whole life, I suddenly thought. This was what we did, these were our pleasures: bark that came away cleanly, a boat that was good runner, a trip once in a while to just one other little place, only a few miles across the water.

“Why don’t we go down to Veeklehouse?” I said as we finally paddled back toward the Sand. Behind us, in the spare boat, we were pulling four bark ovals. “We could trade boats there just like we do at Nob Head. And we could find out if Johnny’s story is true or not.”

Of course Glitterfish was completely against it.

“That’s a stupid idea, Starlight. It’s ten wakings of paddling each way, and it’s dangerous. And what would be the point? We can get all the things we need in Nob Head.”

Around us, and above and below, the greeny-­yellow lanterns shone.

“Well, you don’t have to go, Glits,” I told her. “I mean, I know you’re way too sensible and grown-­up, but why can’t the rest of us?”

She shook her head. “You need to get a kid of your own, Star­light: something to think about other than just having fun. Then you’d settle down and realize what’s really important.”

“You’ve always been settled down, Glits. You were an oldmum before you even had tits, and now all you ever think about is Mikey Mikey Mikey.”

“Tom’s dick, Star, that’s a bit harsh!” protested Johnny.

Glits pulled a face. “Don’t worry, Johnny, I’m used to it.”

We dug and dug and dug into the water. Hmmmph hmmmph ­hmmmph hmmmph went the trees.

“What’s the point of life,” I asked, “if as soon as we stop being kids all we think about is having kids? That’s like going round and round in a circle, and never getting anywhere at all.”

“Why do we need to get anywhere, Star?” Uncle Dixon asked. “Like Jeff Redlantern always used to say: We’re here. People always want to be there, but wherever you go, however far you travel, you can only ever be here. We might as well get used to it.”

“Jeff may have said that, but I notice he didn’t stay there in Circle Valley. And then he crossed over here from Mainground as well, didn’t he?”

That, after all, was the reason we were all here. Jeff brought a bunch of people over to Knee Tree Grounds to get away from the fighting over the ring that happened after Breakup, and they were our own great-­great grandparents.

Johnny laughed. “Star’s got a point, actually. Whatever Jeff said, he wasn’t really one for staying in the same place.”

“He was once he got here,” said Glits.

Four five yards away, a little claw-­bat swooped down to snatch up a fish from the surface of the water.

“I suppose if John and his people didn’t drown, then they’d probably still have Gela’s ring,” Dixon said after a while. “Odd to think, isn’t it? That ring from the old story, still out there some­where in the world.”

“I’d love to see it!” I said. “Imagine seeing a ring that came from Earth itself, right there in front of you, as real as these trees or this water.”

Uncle Dixon gave a grown-­up laugh. “I don’t think there’s much chance of that.”

“I’d hate to see it,” my big sister said quietly. “Think of all the grief it caused! Think of all the killing! I hope it’s down there on the bottom under Deep Darkness, out of the way for good.”

We paddled on for a bit without talking. I hadn’t forgotten about Veeklehouse, and I wasn’t planning on letting it go—­I never let go of anything once I made up my mind—­but I knew it was best to give Uncle Dixon a little time. He was the kindest of men, but no one would claim he was the quickest.

Sure enough, in due time, a new thought came to him.

“There is the Veekle, though!” he said in a surprised-­sounding voice. “If we went down to Veeklehouse, we’d see that. That comes from Earth, and it’s made of metal, and it’s a bloody great big thing as well. Not just some little ring.”

“Yes, and it’s a bloody long way away, too,” Glitterfish said. “Old Candy went there once, and she nearly drowned.”

Here it was again: the difference between her and me.

“Come on, let’s go there!” I cried. “Please. Just once. Even if it is a long way. Please, Uncle, please!”

Dixon thought about it for a few seconds.

“We could get there in nine ten wakings, from what I’ve heard,” he said slowly, “if we went the straight way, right across the Tongue.”

“But that would be stupid,” said Glitterfish. “It’d only take one of those giant waves to come along and you’d be done for, just like—”

“It’d be a risk, certainly,” agreed Uncle Dixon. “But big waves like that are pretty rare.” He went quiet, frowning to himself as he paddled steadily along. “I suppose when we’ve got enough boats to trade,” he finally said, “we could take them down to Veeklehouse one time instead of across to Nob Head.”

The boat nudged through some low-­hanging branches, and we ducked to avoid the shining globes.

“It wouldn’t be easy,” Dixon said. “Ten wakings alpway of hard paddling. And the same back, of course. It wouldn’t be easy at all. And we’d lose a lot of boat-­making time as well.”

“Exactly!” exclaimed Glitterfish. “Twenty whole wakings of hard hard work, half of it in the bloody dark. And, like you say, that would all be time when you could have been making new boats. It makes no sense. And it wouldn’t really be fair on the rest of us, either, when you think about it. Everyone else on Grounds would be getting on with useful work, while you’d just be paddling for no purpose at all.”

I ignored her. “You’d go, wouldn’t you, Johnny?” I said.

Johnny glanced guiltily at Glitterfish. “Yeah, I guess so. Why not? Just once.”

Our sister snorted scornfully. “She only has to talk to you in that cute baby voice, doesn’t she?”

“Go on Uncle, let’s do it,” I said. “Please. Eden is big big, and none of us has ever been anywhere apart from here and bloody old Nob Head.”

Tom’s dick, whole of our little water forest was only two miles across, and even Nob Head was only ten miles away.

“I would like to see that Veekle before I die,” Dixon said after a while. “I mean, Jeff’s eyes, that’s the boat that first brought people down from sky! It’s the sort of thing a person ought to see. Specially if you’re a boatmaker, like me.”

He seemed to think the Veekle from Earth wasn’t so different from his bits of greased bark!

“Might even learn a trick or two,” he said.

The Sand where we lived was little dry patch in middle of our water forest of Knee Tree Grounds. The trees just continued right over it and back in on the other side, as if they saw no difference between dry ground and ground that was three feet below the water. And why would they, if their roots reached a mile down, as people said they did, to the fiery rock of Underworld?

“So we’re going, then?” I pressed Uncle Dixon as we pulled the boats up onto the beach. “So we’re definitely going once we’ve made enough boats?”

He said nothing as we took out the newly cut barks and carried them to his boat shelters, and he said nothing as we laid them care­fully in a pile. It was only when we were making our way across to the Meeting Place that he finally made up his mind.

“Yeah, let’s do it. Why not?”

I threw my arms round him. “Oh, thanks, Uncle Dixon. Oh, thanks, thanks, thanks! You’re the best uncle on Grounds.”

He laughed and kissed me. “I’ll see if I can talk Julie into com­ing with us. It’s not for nothing she’s called Deepwater. She’s good out there, and I’d feel safer if she came along.”

Glitterfish burst into tears. “Please don’t go, Uncle! Please!”

Dixon laughed uncomfortably and tried to hug her, too, but she wouldn’t let him.

“We’ll be careful Glits, I promise you.”

“Please don’t go! Apart from the danger and the waste of time, why draw attention to us? We want Mainground to leave us alone, don’t we?”

“People on Mainground already know we’re here, Glits,” Johnny pointed out.

“Some do, yes, but why tell more of them? Why can’t you lot be happy with what you’ve got?”

“It’s just for a visit,” Uncle Dixon said, trying again to reach out to her.

She pushed him away. She was not going to help him feel okay about this.

“All I want is for my little boy to have a peaceful life. We don’t need anything else. Why risk unsettling things for our kids?”

Dixon and Johnny both hated upsetting people, and their in­stinct was always to try and smooth things over. But me, I was angry with my sister.

“Tom’s dick, Glits,” I said. “Mikey’s not the only thing in the world.”

“No, of course not, but I love him, and it’s my job to care for him. I know you don’t care about anyone like that, but I do.”

As she walked quickly away from us, still crying, to find her darling boy, I told myself how boring she was for settling so readily for being a mum and nothing else. And I tried not to notice how jealous I felt of the love she gave that child.

Julie Deepwater

There were about seventy of us living in Knee Tree Grounds. We shared pretty much everything and, unlike over on Main­ground, where there was always someone asleep and someone awake, we all kept the same sleeps so that we’d be able to come together at the end of every waking in the Meeting Place in middle of the Sand.

I was already sitting there when my cousin Dixon came over to me. About half the Kneefolk had already arrived, and the others were coming in.

“Me and Johnny and Starlight are thinking of taking a boat down to Veeklehouse,” Dixon said. “I was wondering if you’d be interested in coming along, too? You’ve been over to Mainground more than pretty much anyone, and you’ve been further out in Darkness, too. It would be interesting to go there just once, don’t you think? Plus, Johnny’s heard some story at Nob Head about the Johnfolk coming back across the water, and we could find out if it’s true.”

I laughed. “Where did that idea come from, I wonder? Let me see if I can guess.”

“It was Starlight.”

“Well, what a surprise!”

“Glits hates the idea,” Dixon said. “She’s angry angry with all of us.”

I nodded. Glitterfish had her own reasons for wanting every­thing to stay the same, but she certainly wouldn’t be on her own. Most Kneefolk, including me, thought we should keep quietly to ourselves as much as possible. You could even say that was whole point of Knee Tree Grounds. There’d been no killing among us since our great grandparents came to Knee Tree Grounds, no one speared or beaten or tied to scalding trees. It wasn’t just Glitterfish who remembered that.

“Maybe,” I said to Dixon. “I’ll think it over.”

I sat back and watched the people coming in. Some had been out in the forest, like Dixon. Some had been fishing or hunting fatbucks in the open water beyond the trees. Some had spent the waking on the Sand itself, washing wraps, looking after kids, or working on boats, like me.

I saw Starlight arrive and find some friends to sit with. She was a strange girl. She didn’t quite know where she belonged, or who she belonged to, but her cleverness and her beauty and her uncle’s love had taught her to believe that, whatever she wanted, she could get: so different from her sister, Glitterfish, who was as smart and beautiful as Starlight, but settled so easily and so gratefully for the simplest and most ordinary things.

“My uncle and my brother and me are going down to Veekle­house,” I heard Starlight telling her friends in a loud voice. “Any of you want to come with me?”

And then I saw Glitterfish arrive with her little baby, and the baby’s dad, Met. They settled down as far away from Starlight as they could, and I could see that Glits had been crying.

She and Starlight shared the same mother—­her name was Dream—­but they had different dads. Glits’s dad was a boatmaker, like Dixon; Star’s was a guard from Mainground who Dream met in Nob Head. His name was Blackglass and I remembered him as a foolish, vain man who thought only about himself. He’d lied and boasted and strutted about the Grounds for a little while, then got bored and went back to Mainground before Starlight was even born. We heard later that he’d died in some kind of fight. Dream grieved horribly, and, for the rest of her life, she always insisted that he’d been the perfect man for her, and that the rest of us had driven him away to his death. And she’d always told Starlight that she was special, that she had Blackglass’s spark inside her.

“Uncle Dixon!” called Starlight, looking toward us with her beautiful, sharp, restless eyes. “Angie says she wants to come, too!”

Someone nearby told her to hush. The last people were arriv­ing now—­the last who would make it, anyway; there were always a few who were too far away—­and we all settled down to be still and quiet. Later we’d eat the fatbuck that was roasting over a fire in middle of the Meeting Place. While we ate, we’d sort out worries or problems—­Did we need more blackglass for tools? Who would do the next buck hunt?—­but, ever since the time of First Jeff, we’d always started with silence.

“We’re really here,” said a woman called Caroline, as someone always did.

It was what First Jeff used to say, and his words were carved on the bark of a big knee tree on one side of the Meeting Place.

we are reely hear, the letters said, though only a few of us could read them. Most people preferred their kids to learn more useful skills.

The quietness deepened. People stopped looking at one an­other and let their eyes rest on their hands, their feet, the sand. They listened to the pulsing trees, the crackling fire, the waves breaking in the distance on the outer edge of forest.

“I’m really here,” we were supposed to repeat to ourselves in­side our heads, and I guess we all knew from experience, at least to some degree, that if we did, and really paid attention, then our worries and squabbles would fade, and we wouldn’t feel the lack of things anymore. And sometimes, if we managed to find that hard balancing point between concentrating properly and straining too hard, our eyes would cease to seem like our own, and become in­stead the eyes of the Watcher, the world looking out at itself, want­ing for nothing, quietly observing itself unfold.

But that wasn’t really Starlight’s thing at the best of times, and now she was in no mood for it at all. Her eyes were darting around, her fingers drumming on the ground.

I thought about the stories at Nob Head about the Johnfolk coming back across the water. I’d heard a few myself, but I’d put them out of my mind. The Nob people were always trying to wind us Knee­folk up with stories like that, knowing how much we relied on them for news about the rest of Eden. I remember one time a bunch of Kneefolk came back from there all excited because they’d been told that people from Earth had arrived in Circle Valley!

But maybe it was true that the Johnfolk had come back? They’d crossed the Dark of the mountains, after all, when no one else thought it was possible. Who was to say they couldn’t have crossed the Darkness in the Pool as well? And if they’d survived the cross­ing, I found myself thinking, then presumably they must still have the ring as well, the ring that so many had died for, that belonged to the mother of us all.

We speak of a mother’s love, but we forget her power. Power over life. Power to give and to withhold. The Johnfolk and Davidfolk had fought over that ring like brothers and sisters vying for their mother’s favor, bitterly, desperately, and without any regard for the blood they spilled.

But the ring had never held any power over our Jeff, whose own mother loved him with all her heart.

“It’s just a ring,” he said. “Okay, it came from Earth, okay, it belonged to Gela, but it’s still just a ring.”

Starlight Brooking

Ordinary kneeboats aren’t so good for deep water, so Dixon got ready a long-­boat, made of bark pegged onto a frame, with a little out-­boat fixed onto its right-­hand side so as to keep us steady.

He worked away at it and me and Johnny worked with him, but, Jeff’s eyes, how the other Kneefolk fretted and worried about our plan! Did it make sense to stop boat-­making for so long? Wasn’t it just silly to take such risks? Was it really a good thing to go down there and remind so many people about the existence of Knee Tree Grounds? Some people even compared us to the Three Foolish Men who stole the starship from Earth.

Tom’s dick, what a crowd! I thought. But I made quite sure that Uncle Dixon wouldn’t even think of changing his mind.

“We make more boats than most people, anyway,” I pointed out. “And who knows what we’ll find down there that would be useful for everyone?”

There were seven of us in the end: Uncle Dixon; Johnny; me; tall Julie with her strong, clever face and her twisted feet; my friend Angie, born the same exact waking as me; and two more of Dixon’s friends: Lucky, with his pointy head, and short, fat Delight. It was slow and awkward getting that boat through the trees with that out-­boat on one side of it and eight kneeboats trailing behind it in two stacks, but we did it eventually, crossing the breaking waves at the edge of the shallow forest and emerging onto the bright water that stretched out ahead of us, glowing pink and green, until it met the black sky at World’s Edge. After that we could move more quickly, with seven of us paddling together in a steady rhythm, and it wasn’t long before the little water forest was just a patch of light behind us on that long straight line between bright bright water and black black sky.

And then even that was gone.

“We’re on our way!” I yelled out. “We’re going to Veeklehouse.”

“Yeah! And we’re going to see the Veekle!” shouted Angie, her funny batface lit from below by the glow, changing constantly from pink to green and back to pink again, that came up from the lan­terns of watertrees twenty feet below us.

“What sort of people will they be in Veeklehouse?” Angie asked, after we’d been paddling quietly for a little while.

With no trees near us, the only sound now was the splash of our paddles and the water slapping against our boat. Angie’s voice sounded strange in so much silence and so much space, like some­thing breaking through from another world.

“All sorts, I suppose,” Uncle Dixon said vaguely. “Same as anywhere.”

“What I mean is, on Mainground some places have David­folk living in them, and some have Johnfolk. So which are they at Veeklehouse?”

“It was John and Jeff and their lot that first found the Veekle, wasn’t it?” offered Johnny.

“Yeah, but it’s Davidfolk who live there now,” Julie said impatiently.

When she walked on solid ground, Julie’s clawfeet made her hobble and sway, but when she was in a boat she sat up taller and straighter than anyone, except maybe for me.

“Come on, guys,” she said, “you know that. The Davidfolk took over there long long ago, when they first came over from Circle Valley. The only Johnfolk still living on Mainground are way down alpway at Brown River.”

Angie was still confused. “But aren’t we going alpway?”

“Yes, but you’d have to go way way further than Veeklehouse to get to Brown River. All the rest of Mainground is full of Davidfolk, except for the odd trader passing through.”

“I never really get the difference between Davidfolk and John­folk,” said Delight.

“Oh, you must do,” Julie said. “The Johnfolk think that John Redlantern saved us all when he led the First Followers out of Cir­cle Valley. The Davidfolk blame him for breaking up Old Family, and—”

“Oh, of course I know all that. But what’s the difference now? What do they do that’s actually different? Why do they hate each other so much?”

“That’s harder to say,” admitted Julie. “I’ve met lots of David­folk, and I’ve met a few Johnfolk from Brown River, but they seem pretty much the same to me. More alike to each other, anyway, than either is like us. Yet they do still hate each other.”

“They won’t bother too much with all that stuff in Veeklehouse, though,” said batfaced Lucky, nodding his pointy head. “They’re traders down there, and traders will deal with anyone, Johnfolk or Davidfolk or whatever else.”

“Just don’t talk about Mother Gela and her ring,” advised Julie, in her slow, deep voice.

We all chuckled at that, because one thing we did know about the Davidfolk was that they hated John Redlantern for taking the ring.

“Yeah,” agreed Lucky. “Nobody’s to even mention that bloody thing.”

Four five hours later we passed from the shallow, bright water into the tongue of Deep Darkness that reached in between the end of Nob Head and the rest of Mainground. (We just knew it as the Tongue.) Suddenly, with no watertrees beneath us to give light, everything went completely dark. Even the stars were covered up by cloud, so the sky was black as well, and all that was left of the light of Wide Forest, over on Mainground to our left, was a faint pink glow on the clouds above it. Soon there wasn’t even a World’s Edge anymore, no way of knowing where black water ended and black sky began. We could feel ourselves rising in the darkness to the tops of hills made of water, and sinking back down again into deep valleys, but we couldn’t see any of it at all. We couldn’t even make out one another’s faces.

Splash splash splash went our paddles, out there in the darkness.

“What do you think the Veekle will be like?” I asked Angie.

“I’ve heard it smells of blood,” she said. And she put on a spooky voice, like one of those horrible shadowspeakers they had over at Nob Head. “The blood of the three men who died in it.”

We both made disgusted noises and laughed.

“There couldn’t really be any of their blood left,” Dixon said. “They were long dead even when John and Jeff found them, and that was generations ago.”

“I’ve got a blister on my thumb,” muttered Julie.

“Shall we have something to eat soon?” asked Delight.

“It’s weird,” I suddenly said. “I made you all come, didn’t I? Angie, Lucky, Johnny, Delight, Dixon, Julie. I got you all to give up twenty wakings of working time, say good-­bye to your friends, risk the deep water.”

“Yeah, you did, Starlight,” said Julie. “And I reckon we must have been nuts. My bum is sore already, and my legs are stiff stiff stiff.”

Julie Deepwater

That was a strange thing Starlight had said, I thought as we pad­dled on through the darkness, a strange thing for a grown-­up woman to say. More like a little child.

Thinking about that, I went back in my mind to when she wasn’t the tall young woman she was now but just a skinny little girl. And I remembered a terrible waking, which was surely the worst in Starlight’s whole life.

Dixon had taken her and her brother and sister out fishing on the bright water beyond the forest. They’d had a good catch and, best of all, they’d got a redfish, a big ugly redfish with huge, flat eyes and six clawed hands. It was almost as long as Starlight herself, but that didn’t stop her from standing up in the boat with it as they approached the Sand, and searching the beach for people to call out to.

What she didn’t know, what none of them yet knew, was that we’d been trying to find them for the last half waking. People had gone out through the forest in every direction—­peckway, blueway, rockway, alpway—­but somehow Dixon and the kids had missed all the people looking for them, and had managed to reach the Sand itself without learning what had happened while they were away.

I was one of the people waiting for them on the beach.

“Hey, Julie!” little Starlight bellowed out across the water. Her eyes were sharp and bright even then. “Look what we got! It was my spear that did for it! Uncle Dixon says it’s the biggest he’s ever seen!”

Her brother and sister were beaming proudly beneath her.

“Starlight,” I said as they pulled their kneeboat onto the beach. “Glitterfish. Johnny. I’m really sorry, but something bad’s hap­pened. Something bad bad.”

I watched their smiles falter. Gela’s heart, my mouth was so dry I could hardly speak.

“A spearfish came,” I told them. “Your mum was in the water gathering nuts.”

“Did it bite her? Is she hurt?”

“I’m afraid it did bite, dear ones, but she’s not just hurt. I’m afraid it did for her. I’m so so sorry, but your mum is dead.”

Johnny had stared at me with an awful, meaningless smile. Glit­terfish had shriveled like fishskin in a fire. But little Starlight had been different.

“No, she isn’t,” she’d told me firmly, her face dark with rage. “It’s not true. My mum isn’t dead at all.”

And it was that same firmness that was driving her forward now, it seemed to me: driving her, and driving the rest of us as well. This was a huge huge thing we’d taken on. Waking after waking we sat there with our paddles and worked and worked and worked. Waking after waking, we took it in turns to sleep, while the others kept on digging our way forward, scooping up pool water when we needed a drink, and clambering out on the poles of the out-­boat when we needed a piss or a crap.

It was a huge huge thing. And Starlight was right. We wouldn’t be doing any of it if it wasn’t for her.

Starlight Brooking

“Look!” Angie cried out, her funny, squished-­up face looking round at me excitedly. “There! Fires!”

We’d been paddling for nine wakings, and for the last five had been back over bright water again. Gela’s tits, we were tired tired! We ached from our necks to our feet, and we’d only kept going by sinking down into a rhythm and not talking for half a waking at a time. But when we looked up, there was an orange glow ahead of us on the clifftop, redder and brighter than the glow of lanternflowers from Wide Forest, a hot, burning light, with glowing smoke lying above it in a low, flat layer.

“Tina’s spiky hair! How many fires have they got over there?” muttered Delight.

We started to pass other boats—­those big clumsy log-­and-­skin boats the Maingrounders used—­and presently we made out shelters on the cliff ahead, big solid square things, way bigger and stronger than our little bark shelters back on the Sand.

There was rocky ledge below the cliff where we pulled our boats out of the water: the one we’d been sitting in so long, and the eight we’d been towing behind us.

“Remind me never to listen to your crazy ideas again, Starlight,” Angie said, stretching out her arms.

“Me, too,” said Julie, rubbing her sore bum.

Lucky was jumping up and down, Johnny rubbing his stiff shoulders with his hands.

I laughed. “You don’t fool me. You’re glad glad I made you come.”

Dixon drew lots to decide who’d have to stay and look after the boats, and Johnny and Lucky lost.

I grabbed my friend’s hand.

“Come on, Angie, let’s go!”

There were no trees at the top, no shining lanternflowers: They’d all been cleared away. All the light came from fires and from buck­fat burning in big clay bowls. It was a feverish, restless sort of light, and what it lit up was people, people, people. There were more people in front of us than we’d seen in our whole lives, and they all looked different. Some had painted faces. Some had bat wings hanging from their ears. Some had noses pierced with pegs of wood or bone. Many wore fakeskin wraps in different colors, cover­ing them from their shoulders to their knees. Most had skin wraps round their feet, again in different colors, which no one ever wore at all on our sandy Grounds.

I put my arm round Angie’s shoulders.

“This is going to be great,” I told her, and she laughed and gave me a big wet batface kiss.

Then Dixon came puffing up behind us, with Delight panting after him and Julie hobbling at back. I loved my uncle Dix—­he had cared for me for half of my life—­and I loved Julie, too, but in that moment, seeing them standing there, looking all worried and out of place, with their bare bellies and their bare feet and their simple skin waistwraps, I was so ashamed of them that it almost felt like hate, and I couldn’t even bring myself to meet their eyes. Without saying a word, I tightened my hand round Angie’s, turned back into Veeklehouse, and strode on, leaving Dixon and Julie and Delight to decide for themselves whether or not they wanted to try and keep up with us.

Angie laughed uncomfortably. “That was a bit hard on your uncle, Star. He did make a boat specially to bring us here. And take a lot of nagging from folk who thought we shouldn’t come.”

“I did him a favor. He’s always wanted to come here, but without me he’d never have got round to it, not in a thousand wombs.”

I was starting to make sense of the place. Veeklehouse had two rings of big square shelters, one inside the other. Inside the inner ring was a high fence, where the Veekle must be. Between the inner and outer rings of shelters was a path, busy busy with people. I say shelters, but they were nothing like the ones on Grounds, which were just a few flat strips of bark propped up at a slope on a frame of branches. These were taller than the height of a grown man and had flat roofs, so you could walk around inside them without having to stoop. A few even had another whole floor made of wood which people could climb up to by a ladder and stand on as if it was more ground! We’d never seen anything like them, except for those little models of Earth houses that folk gave to children, with their doors and windholes.

But it was what was inside them that most interested us. All of the shelters were open at the front, and had things laid out on tables. There were black leopard teeth cut into knives and axes, and feathers sorted by size and color, and carvings of animals made from wood and stone. There were pins and pegs in many colors for pierced ears and noses. There were spears and arrows. There was a great stack of cages in which stood little sweet-­bats, gripping the wooden bars with their wrinkly hands and clicking their tongues as they gazed out at the people going by.

“Come on, people, get yourself a little House or a Car with wheels,” shouted a woman standing behind a table piled with mod­els of things from Earth. “It’ll bring you close to Earth, my dears,” she called out to us in the odd, flat Veeklehouse way of speaking. “Close to dear bright Earth and dear dear Mother Gela.”

“Get your fresh-­killed batmeat here! Delicious sweet-­bat. Done for and cooked on the spot.”

“Come on over, my friends! Best feather wraps in Vee!”

“New spears! Best blackglass!”

“Just for you, my darling! Rings and bracelets. Touched by the heart of Mother Gela.”

Angie took hold of my arm and gave me another kiss.

So many things! So much to see!

“Hey, wait for us, you two,” panted Dixon as he came up be­hind us. “Don’t just go running off again. Julie can’t walk as fast as the—”

He broke off as an enormous black-­skinned animal came by. It was four times the height of a man, with its long long neck topped with a big head and a pair of muscly arms. But it was being led along by a small boy all by himself, and no one else so much as glanced at it.

“Hey, you heard of kneeboats?” Dixon asked a trader. “We got eight ten-­foot ones to trade. All new-­made. Know anyone who might want them?”

The trader wore a longwrap of woollybuck skin, his gray hair tied in a ponytail and decorated with feathers. Paddles and nets lay in piles in front of his shelter.

“Eh? Kneeboats, did you say? Slow down, mate. You talk funny. Where do you come from, anyway?”

“We’re Kneefolk. We the ones who make those boats.”

“Kneefolk? John’s spear, I’ve met all sorts, but I never met one of you lot before. I get my kneeboats from a bloke called Dave up Nob Head way. They’re new-­made, these boats of yours? I’d need to see them, of course, but I could probably give you twenty sticks or so for the lot of them. Maybe twenty-­two twenty-­three, if they’re really good.”

Big, gentle Dixon glanced back at me and Angie and Delight and Julie and gave what he thought was a superior smile. “We don’t need sticks, buddy. We’ve got all the sticks we need back on Grounds. And if we did want sticks, we’d want a few more than twenty for eight boats.”

The trader shook his head sadly. “This isn’t some little swap­ping place like Nob Head, mate. People trade here from all over Eden, and they always always trade for sticks.”

“Why? What do they want sticks for?” I asked, pushing forward before Dixon could say something dumb.

The man laughed. “Mother of Eden! You people don’t have a clue, do you? They want sticks to trade with, of course.” He reached under his table and produced five short lengths of wood. “There you are, look. I’m a fool, but I’ll offer you twenty-­five for your eight boats, if they seem all right to me when I take a look.”

He held them out to Dixon.

“We don’t want” began Dixon, then he broke off. “That’s not twenty-­five sticks! Jeff’s shining ride! We might not know much about how you do things here, but we know how to bloody count!”

The trader sighed. “These are each worth five sticks,” he ex­plained slowly, as if he was talking to a little child. “That’s what these marks here mean, look. Just one of these would get you four good blackglass spears.”

Dixon took one of the lengths of wood from him, then gave it to Julie. I held my hand out so she would pass it on to me.

The wood was super-­smooth and shiny, and had five deep grooves carved across it, each groove stained bright purple with some kind of dye. As I frowned at the thing, trying to understand, I felt a flush of shame spreading across my face. What fools we must look, standing here with our mouths open in our silly buck­skin bitswraps, trying to figure out something that was obvious to everyone else there.

“So what you’re saying—” began Dixon slowly.

I cut him off. “So instead of trading the boats for blackglass or skins, we just trade them for these sticks,” I said, “and then ... what? Other traders will take the sticks in exchange for the things we want?”

I was taller than the trader, and I looked straight down into his eyes. I was not going to let him get the better of me.

“You’ve got it, Einstein,” he said, trying hard to hold my gaze. “It means you can still trade with someone even if they haven’t got anything you want.”

I thought about this, trying to shake off the stupidness that came from living on a little patch of sand where no one came and nothing ever happened.

“But why couldn’t someone just cut more sticks like these and use them for trading?”

“Three reasons. One: You can’t ‘just cut’ these sticks. The wood comes from far side of Snowy Dark, and the dye from right up rockway. Two: We traders are pretty sharp at spotting the sticks that haven’t been properly made. Three: If anyone is caught trying to copy them, guards smash their fingers flat with a big rock, and then they don’t copy anything ever again.”

We knew they had cruel punishments on Mainground, but it was still a shock to hear about them like this. If someone did some­thing bad on the Grounds we all told them so, and that was about as far as it went. But I could see that wouldn’t work in a place like Veeklehouse, where people came and went who didn’t know or care about one another. They’d had to find another way. And it was the same with the system of sticks, the same with the play-­acting of the traders who coaxed in strangers with words that only pretended to be friendly. Veeklehouse was hard and cold compared to Knee Tree Grounds. But that was how it came to be so bright and big and full of wonderful things.

“I reckon what we need to do,” Julie suggested, “is ask some of the other traders here how many sticks they’d give us for our boats. That’s how we work out if we’re getting a good deal. It’s not so dif­ferent, really, from how we trade at Nob Head. It’s just that there’s a sort of gap between the giving and the taking.”

The trader shrugged and we’d started to walk off when another voice spoke from behind us, a young man’s voice, speaking in yet another strange new way, which none of us had ever heard.

“Hey there, trader, what will you give me for this?” it said.

He wore an amazing colored wrap that reached down to his feet. He was a bit older than me, but still young. And he was abso­lutely beautiful.

Julie Deepwater

Starlight caught his eye straight away, that was obvious, and it was even more obvious that she was instantly fascinated.

He was about ten wombtimes older than her. He had bright, cheerful eyes, and his red hair and beard were cut and greased so they stuck out from his head in little spikes, each one tied with a little string of dyed buckskin. He wore green footwraps, too, and a full-­length wrap like nothing any of us had ever seen, made from three different colors of that stuff made with plants that the Maingrounders call fakeskin. Two older men were with him. They were carrying spears and wearing wraps of the same sort, but their wraps were shorter and made in a single shade of brown.

“Well ... um ... let’s see ...” began the trader. He couldn’t quite hide his amazement at the fist-­sized object the man had un­wrapped in front of him.

“You can use it for knives or spears,” said the cheerful man, and, for some reason, he turned back toward us Kneefolk and winked, as if we were in on his secret.

“I know what you can use metal for,” said the trader shortly. “I’ll give you eighty sticks.”

We stared at the lump in the young man’s hands—­it was red­dish, but flecked with pale green—­and slowly took in what the trader had said. That thing was worth three times more to him than all our eight boats.

“Eighty sticks,” the trader repeated.

The young man just laughed.

“It’s those Johnfolk from across the Pool,” muttered a man be­hind us. “Ring-­stealers. I don’t know why Strongheart lets them come over here.”

“That’s the reason right there in his hand,” a woman observed sourly.

She hadn’t meant for the man in the three-­colored wrap to hear her, but he did, and he looked round at her and laughed.

“It is the reason,” he said, “but this guy here doesn’t seem to know that.”

“Ninety sticks,” the trader muttered grudgingly.

“You’re having a joke with me, buddy,” the young man said, glancing back at us again and giving us, and specially Starlight, another wink. “I’ll take a hundred and twenty, but even that’s way less than it’s worth.”

I noticed now that the brooch that held his wrap together at his throat was made of the same red metal, polished to a shine and with a smooth blue stone set in it. The men with him had badges made of the stuff—­they were circles with triangles inside—­and their spears had long metal tips. No way could you cut blackglass into a shape like that. It would shatter the first time it was used.

So the stories were true. There was metal in the ground of Eden as well as in the ground of Earth. And John Redlantern hadn’t drowned. And Gela’s ring wasn’t lying on the bottom of Deep Dark­ness. I felt a strange, dark dread. What else would change? What else would come bubbling back up from the past?

“Metal’s not trading for as much as it did when you guys first came over,” the trader said stubbornly.

“Possibly, possibly. But I’m not asking you for two hundred, am I? I’m asking for one hundred twenty. You know I could get a hundred fifty at least if I could be bothered to walk round all the other traders.”

The trader pursed his lips for a second or two, then nodded, took the lump of metal, and reached under his table to bring out twenty-­four of the notched lengths of wood.

“Thank you, my friend,” said the red-­haired man, handing the sticks over to one of the men with him.

Then he laughed. He knew his own power. He knew he was fascinating. He knew he was protected by two fighting men with metal-­tipped spears. And he knew that among the little crowd that had gathered round was a beautiful young woman, watching every­thing he did with shining shining eyes.

He reached out again toward the bag of sticks his companion was holding for him and took some sticks back out. Then he made a little bow to Starlight and put them in her hands. There was a gasp from all the people watching, Kneefolk and Veeklehouse folk alike.

“You have these,” he said to her, closing Starlight’s hand around the sticks with his own. “Trade them for some colored wraps and rings. You’re pretty pretty, prettier than anyone I’ve ever seen, but plain buckskin doesn’t do you justice, if you don’t mind me saying.” He smiled and winked, a wink for Starlight alone. He was really noticing her now. “My name is Greenstone,” he said. “Greenstone Johnson. See you later, I hope.”

And then, with a bow to Dixon, Delight, Angie, and me, he turned and walked away, his two companions hurrying behind him with their metal-­tipped spears.

Starlight looked down at her hand. There were five pieces of wood there, with five notches on each, exactly the same as we’d just been offered for those eight ten-­foot boats that had taken us forty wakings to make, and nine hard wakings to bring here.

“You can look after these, Uncle Dix,” she muttered. “Put them together with what we get for the boats.”

Dixon nodded stiffly as he took them.

“Jeff’s twisted feet, Uncle Dix!” Starlight’s eyes filled suddenly with tears. “Would you have preferred me to refuse them?”

“I’m not ...” began Dixon. “I’m not ...”

He looked across at me, hoping I’d know what he wanted to say.

“Your uncle’s not cross with you, Starlight,” I said.

“I’m really not, dearest,” he said. “It’s just ... Well, if I’m cross with anyone, it’s that Greenstone man. He had no business ...”

“No business to do what?” Starlight demanded. “To wear bright things? To have a nice face? To give someone a present?”

Again Dixon looked helplessly at me, and I searched for a word that would describe what the smiley man had done. It would have had to have been a word that meant something like “getting some­thing just by handing over sticks for it.”