Dark Eden

28 John Redlantern

We didn’t have hollowbranch horns like they had in Family, but we’d made ourselves a drum out of a length of trunk and a bit of stonebuck skin. As soon as we’d got back to our camp — Gerry and Dix carrying Jeff between them to speed things up, and Harry and me carrying the dead buck Brownhorse — we got out the drum and Harry began to beat it, as hard and fast as he could.

BANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANG . . .

He was frantic frantic. His eyes were staring, he was panting like he couldn’t get enough air, his face was pouring with sweat, and he banged that drum so hard he nearly broke through the skin.

‘Easy, Harry. That’s enough, that’s enough,’ I told him. ‘We don’t want them guessing back in Family that something bad’s up.’

I didn’t feel much different from Harry myself, though. Every few seconds I heard the squelchy thud of my spear in Dixon Blueside’s back, the hissing noise of the air coming out from his lungs, the way he rolled over when I pulled it out, the choking gurgle when I shoved it right back again into his belly. But unlike Harry, I knew I had to get back in control of myself, or we’d all be done for.

‘They won’t miss Dixon and the others for another waking or two,’ I told everyone back at the caves.

Tall, grownup Gela Brooklyn was there, and her small little sister Clare with her baby on her hip, and Mike, and Suzie Fishcreek, and batfaced Janny, and Tina’s sister Jane, and Dave Fishcreek and Julie Blueside.

‘Not for another waking or two,’ I said. ‘And even then, they won’t know what’s happened. That’s why we had to do for all three of them, otherwise they’d have run straight back to David, and he’d have sent a whole lot more of them after us at once. We really had no choice. We really didn’t.’

I looked round at their shocked faces — Gela, Suzie, Janny, Dave, all of them — daring anyone to disagree.

‘As it is,’ I said, ‘we’ve got two wakings before anyone starts to worry, and by then a leopard or a fox will have got to the bodies, and then starbirds after that, so they won’t be able to tell any more that it was spears and a club that did for them. They’ll just be scattered bones.’

‘Yes, but their mates will guess, won’t they?’ Dix said. ‘David Redlantern and all of them.’

He had his arm round Tina. She was shaking shaking. I was shaking too.

‘Yeah, they will. They’ll know it was to do with us, because they’ll know that Dixon and Met and John Blueside came over this way and that the three of them came past Lava Blob on purpose to make trouble. David planned it with them, I’m sure. Maybe he hoped to get us to chase back after them into their part of forest. He’ll have been wanting to make trouble for a long time. He’ll have been wanting to be able to go to Caroline and Family and say the agreement wasn’t working.’

‘So if they know it was to do with us,’ said Gela in her slow deep voice, ‘they’ll still come after us when the three of them don’t come back. Even if they pretend to Family that they’re just trying to find out what happened.’

‘Yes of course. So we haven’t got much time. We need to get ourselves together and go.’

‘Go where?’ Dix asked.

Gela’s tits, where had he been all this time? What did he think this whole business was all about?

‘Over the top, of course. Over Snowy Dark. Like we’ve been planning, yeah? Like we’ve been planning ever since we came here.’ I looked round at their faces, and I realized that it wasn’t just Dix. Tom’s dick and Harry’s! None of them had really believed this was ever going to happen. Not one. It was always going to be somewhen off in the future, never ever now.

Still, it was too late for talking and explaining. They were just going to have to get it through their heads by themselves.

I started going through all the things we’d need to get together.

‘Gela, you sort out wraps for everyone. Mike, get all our spare skins and blackglass and rope. Dave, we need all our meat and stumpcandy and seedcakes. Clare, can you sort out some embers . . .’

In a couple of hours, the drum had called everyone back. All twenty-one of us were there, plus Janny and Clare’s babies, and we had the meeting, a sort of Strornry, our last in Circle Valley. It was a dark dark time. No one had ever argued with me about whether we would really go over the mountains, not once, but I suppose they’d all privately hoped that it would never really get to that. We had the agreement with Family written on bark after all, and for ten periods it had seemed to work. Family had handed over blackglass and skins to us as they’d agreed. We’d had plenty of meat to spare to keep our side of the deal. I suppose they’d all persuaded themselves that things would just go on in the same way forever with our own little family at Cold Path Neck, Old Family going its own way on the far side of Lava Blob and a bit of toing and froing going on between us here and our mums and friends and groupmates over there. Most of them seemed to have decided that going across Snowy Dark was nothing more than a weird dream of mine. Some of them had never even given it any thought.

‘How do we know there even is another side?’ said Lucy Batwing. ‘Dark might go on and on. And then we’d die, wouldn’t we? We’d die of cold.’

‘We know it doesn’t go on forever,’ I told her. ‘When Tommy and Gela and the Companions first saw Eden from their sky-boat, the thing they noticed was that it was all covered in light. Remember that? All covered in light, not just one patch of light and the rest dark. That was weird to them because Earth got its light from a star, and didn’t have lights of its own. So they noticed it, and it stuck in their minds. That’s why they talked about it to their kids, and why we still remember the story.’

‘Okay, so there’s more forest beyond Dark,’ said Clare Brooklyn, who was nursing her baby boy, ‘but we still might not reach it. Even with your wraps and woolly horses and all, we’re not going to be able to keep going more than a few wakings, are we? Not in freezing cold and pitch darkness. Not even us newhairs, let alone my little Fox and Janny’s Flower.’

The twenty of them were ranged around in a circle, most sitting, some standing. I was pacing around in middle. I couldn’t keep still, that was too much to ask of myself, only one two hours after I’d done for Dixon Blueside with my spear.

‘It’s dangerous but we’ve got to try it,’ I said. ‘In a couple of wakings they’ll come after us. David Redlantern and all his friends in Family. Caroline and Council won’t be able to control them any more. They’ll be over here with clubs and spears. Look what they did to Jeff, look what they tried to do to Tina. And that was before we did for David and the others.’

‘Well, we didn’t do it actually, John,’ said Mehmet Batwing with an angry laugh. ‘That was you. You did it. You and Harry and Gerry. The first killings in Eden. Smart move, John. Smart smart move.’

His thin little face was hard and cold and there was suddenly a dark ugly feeling out in whole group that each person had been keeping hidden inside until then. Two or three people muttered in agreement with what Mehmet had said, including Angie Blueside, a cousin of John Blueside who was lying dead in forest right at that moment, with Gerry’s spearhole in his belly and starbirds and tree foxes feeding on his flesh. Why should we all freeze on Snowy Dark, was what a lot of them were thinking, just because John and Harry and Gerry lost their heads and did for three people who were already running away?

‘I think you’re forgetting, Mehmet,’ said Tina in her iciest voice. She was angry angry. ‘I think you’re forgetting what Dixon Blueside and his mates did to Jeff and what they tried to do to me. Do you think they’d have left us all in peace if we’d just . . .?’

I put my hand on her arm to tell her to leave it; I didn’t need her to defend me.

‘No, you’re quite right, Mehmet,’ I said, as calmly as I could with my tight tight throat. ‘And you’re welcome to stay here or to go back to Family, Mehmet. All of you are welcome to stay or go back. Take what’s yours, if you like, and walk back to Family. Tell them it was John and Harry and Gerry who did for Dixon and his mates, and that it was nothing at all to do with you. Which is true. It’s perfectly true. So go on if you want to. Go on. No one’s stopping any of you. You all came to me, remember, all of you, every single one, out of your own choice. I didn’t force you to come and I certainly won’t force you to stay.’

I folded my arms and stood and waited. Mehmet looked around awkwardly, but all his support seemed to have disappeared.

‘No,’ he said, ‘I just meant . . .’

‘You just meant what?’

‘Oh nothing. It doesn’t matter.’

He was sort of smiling but under the smile he was ashamed, and under the shame he was angry angry. He was going to be trouble, I could see, and it would actually be better if he left. But if I tried to make him go, that would have been trouble too. That would have been even more trouble. It might have made whole plan fall apart.

‘I’m not making anyone do anything,’ I repeated. ‘Do you all understand?’

There was silence for a bit.

Then Lucy London spoke. She was a short plump girl with bulgy anxious eyes.

‘But if we go over Dark we won’t ever see our mums again, or our sisters and brothers. I mean, it’s okay not seeing them every waking like now, when we can still see them if we want to, up by Blob. But if we go over Dark that won’t happen any more. We’ll never see them, never never, and we won’t even get a chance to say goodbye.’

‘No, you won’t,’ I said.

‘But that’s not fair!’ said Lucy London, and several people murmured crossly in agreement.

‘I’m not making you do anything,’ I repeated, as patiently as I could. ‘You can go back to Family if you want. Or you can stay here at Cold Path Neck if you think you can make a go of it. It’s up to you.’

‘Yes, but Family is horrible now,’ complained Lucy London. ‘And staying here would be no good if there were only a few of us. We’d be lonely, wouldn’t we? It wouldn’t be any good at all.’

‘Mother Angela would say it was wrong to go over Dark,’ said Julie Blueside. ‘Okay we came over here, and didn’t stay right next to Circle, but we’re still in Circle Valley, aren’t we, and we’d still be able to see if a Veekle from Earth came down from sky. Plus our friends in Family would tell Earth where we were.’

‘Yeah,’ said her younger sister Candy. ‘And my mum told me that First Angela and First Tommy and First Harry all came to Lucy Lu in a dream and told her that if we go across Dark we’ll be lost forever. We won’t have the Shadow People to watch over us any more, and even after we die, we’ll never go back to Earth.’

‘Oh yeah?’ sneered Tina’s sister Jane. ‘So how come Lucy Lu used to say that beyond Snowy Dark was where the Shadow People lived?’

‘Don’t bother, Jane,’ said Tina. ‘Once people start talking about messages from Mother Gela and the Shadow People, black can be white and white black and a thing can be true and its opposite true all at the same time.’

‘Well, you’ve got that wrong, Tina,’ shouted Julie. ‘You just don’t understand. Yes, in a way the Shadow People live beyond Dark, but not in that way . . .’

But then Harry started up again.

‘They did for Brownhorse!’ he yelled, sweating, redfaced, spit flying out of his mouth, and banging hard hard on the drum with every word. ‘They were bad bad. They did for Brownhorse! They nearly did for Harry’s sister too!’

‘Leave it, Harry!’ screamed Gerry. He was shaking shaking all over. ‘Just bloody leave it, alright?’

And now six seven people were all shouting at once.

‘Shut up, Harry!’

‘Brownhorse was just a woollybuck!’

‘Just because you don’t know anything about the Shadow People, Tina, doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I’ll talk about what I bloody want . . .’

‘Leave Harry alone. They did for Brownhorse, Jeff’s Brownhorse.’

‘Shut up, Harry!’

‘It matters to some of us what the Shadow People think, Tina, even if it doesn’t matter to you.’

‘Gela’s tits, can’t you see we haven’t got time for all that crap!’

‘They did for Brownhorse . . .’

‘Don’t you tell me what we’ve got time for!’

It was like a chess game when it gets stuck and won’t move forward. I needed to bring a new piece into play.

‘Everybody be quiet,’ I hollered. ‘Shut up now and I’ll show you something!’