Dark Eden

40 Sue Redlantern

Paaaaarp! Paaaarp! Paaaarp!

I’d just got off to sleep when the horns started for another bloody Any Virsry: one hundred and sixty-sixth. Of course I knew it was coming but, Michael’s names, I’d been dreading that sound. I didn’t care much how many years it was since Angela and Tommy came to Eden, but what I hated hated was that each Any Virsry was another year since my two boys Gerry and Jeff and all those others disappeared from Cold Path Neck and never came back.

Paaaaarp! Paaaarp! Paaaarp!

I crawled out of my shelter to make sure everyone was moving, and to help the youngmums with the little kids. Fox was out there already hurrying people along. He was Redlantern group leader now. It had been David for a bit, but then he became Head of Guards, and he moved out of Redlantern and set up his own fires and shelters with the other Guards over beside Greatpool, like a group all of their own with only men in it, a group over all other groups.

Paaaaarp! Paaaarp! Paaaarp!

‘Come on, darling, don’t cry, mummy’ll be back out for you in a minute when she’s got your baby brother . . . Gela’s tits, Fox, give them a moment. Kids can’t wake up just like that. It takes them a bit of time . . . Here’s mummy look, darling, coming out of her shelter now . . .’

Paaaaarp! Paaaarp! Paaaarp!

‘Yeah, yeah. We know, we know, give us a break. It’s all fine and easy if you’re on London time, but we were deep asleep over this side . . . Come on, sweetheart, you can’t go back into your shelter now. Wait till we get to Any Virsry, eh, and then you can lie down and have a little kip again . . . Michael’s names, but you are a big big boy, Dixie, aren’t you? You look like you’re ready for a leopard hunt, mate, never mind an Any Virsry. What do you reckon? You could go out and do for a leopard easy easy, I’d say . . . Yes I know, Fox, but the Guards won’t kill you for giving the littles a few minutes to sort themselves out before they go.’

Paaaaarp! Paaaarp! Paaaarp!

‘Yes alright, Roger, you can lean on me. But don’t get any ideas, alright?’

And off we went, whole Redlantern group — Fox, blind Old Roger, Lucy Lu, Jade, all of us — through Spiketree (who were still getting themselves together) and Brooklyn and across Stream’s Join to Circle Clearing. I was doing my usual job of jollying people along — Fox might be leader but he hadn’t got a clue about all that — but inside me all the time it was cold and empty and dark, because I knew too well what I was going to have to see and what I was going to have to hear and what I was going to have to swallow.

There was a fug sinking down over us. It was warm and close and the rain was coming, just like it did that Strornry after one-sixty-three, when John destroyed the Stones. Such a terrible time that seemed then, the worst time, like everything was poisoned and spoiled: Gerry and Jeff and the others going off after John and Tina, Bella hanging herself like Tommy from a tree . . . But, looking back on it now, it wasn’t really so bad after that Strornry, not for about a wombtime. A lot of newhairs were outside of Family over Cold Path Valley way, it was true, and we missed them and things were tense. But we could still see them at Lava Blob and in forest round there, still see them and get news of them, and still look after them in a way.

But then, not long before one-sixty-four, horrible Dixon Blueside went off with our Met and with John Blueside and the three of them never came back.

Well, David obviously knew something that we didn’t know, something about where they went and what they meant to do. He and a bunch of his newhair boys — we didn’t call them Guards then, but that was what they were becoming — they all rushed off into forest with their spears and their clubs and their angry puffed-up faces. They found the bones that the foxes and starbirds had left — this side of Lava Blob, they all insisted, this side — and then they went on to the camp that John and the others had started over at the mouth of Cold Path Valley. They found all of them gone. It was obvious, David told us: they’d all gone up onto Dark to die of cold with Juicy John and Teasy Tina. ‘I’m sorry for those of you who’ve lost your kids,’ he said, ‘but didn’t I tell you we should have spiked that John up like Jesus? Didn’t I say it? “Spike him up until he burns,” I said. But you all said I was being too hard.’

He said the same things again at one-sixty-five and I knew, I knew, I knew, he’d say the same things again now, at one-sixty-six: they were all dead up in Snowy Dark, they were fools for following John, we were fools for not doing for John when we had the chance.

Anyway, here we were back in Circle Clearing in the space between the trees and the stones — the new stones: they’ve never seemed the same to me as the old ones — and there was Caroline inside Circle looking sort of tired and shrunken and old. Mitch was beside her, the last of Oldest, the last one of Tommy and Gela’s grandchildren, with his scrappy white hair and beard, and his blind eyes, and his hands that grabbed and groped around him all the time, like he was frightened he was sinking into the earth. Just outside Circle, Secret Ree stooped over her bits of bark.

Paaaaarp! Paaaarp! Paaaarp! The Council helpers were still blowing those old hollowbranch horns because the most important people hadn’t yet arrived and the meeting couldn’t start without them.

Paaaaarp! Paaaarp! Paaaarp!

Parp–parp–parp–parp! came the reply at last, and then into the clearing rode David Redlantern, the Head of Guards, in all his ugliness, up on the back of the woollybuck they’d managed to train for him over the last year. He glared round at us, and behind him his Guards, thirty forty young men, grinned and smirked at each other with their big blackglass spears over their shoulders. And he led them right round the clearing, right round the edge of Circle, so we could all see who were really the ones that decided things around here: the ones that could arrive as late as they liked at Any Virsry and still everyone would wait for them and not complain, however long they took. It wasn’t tired old Caroline any more who was in charge.

And then, when they’d made that point, they all stopped in a group together in the space between Circle and the rest of Family. Two of them helped David down from his buck, and they all squatted down, and David gestured to Caroline to carry on.

Tom’s neck, how did he get all that power? Why did we let him take it? He was only a Redlantern boy after all. I remembered him when he was a little kid and I was a newhair. I didn’t like him much even then. He was sort of loveless from the start, but when I was little I used to keep an eye on him. We batfaces took a lot of stick and we had to stand up for each other. I didn’t expect him to grow up into anyone nice or special, and I was right: he didn’t. He grew up into a sour sarcastic lump of misery. But sour and sarcastic is one thing, this was another. Who could have imagined this?

But anyway, it was time for the count. The leaders came out from their groups to report how many in their group were here now, and how many were out hunting or scavenging and all of that, and Secret Ree scratched the numbers down with a shaky hand, though she was nearly blind. Then we waited while they added up the group counts and worked out the count for whole Family. It went on and on, like it did every time. Harry’s dick, how hard can it be to add up the numbers from eight groups? Babies cried. Newhairs gave each other looks.

Then at last Caroline stood up.

‘There are five hundred and eighty-one people in Family,’ she announced, ‘more than ever ever before!’

My clever Jeff wasn’t in that count, was he? Nor my Gerry, nor Janny Redlantern, nor John. They weren’t part of it any more. And yet, even without them, the number had gone up. It was like they didn’t matter somehow, like they made no odds at all.

Caroline yelled the number into old Mitch’s ear, and they levered him up to his feet, and he began to quaver on about rememfer this and rememfer that, and how a big round boat came down from sky, and how there were only thirty people when he was a kid, thirty in whole world.

We were supposed to be impressed or feel sorry for them, for managing to keep going when they were so few. But there were only twenty with John that went up on Dark.

How does David know they died? I thought. How could he really know? John believed it was possible to cross right over or he wouldn’t have led them there, and who’s to say he was wrong? He was no fool. He figured out how to make warm wraps. And my own Jeff figured out how to turn a buck into a horse for them to ride. (David would never have thought of that, never, not if he lived for a thousand wombs, though he was happy enough to steal the idea from Jeff.) So who was to say that they didn’t make it over to the other side?

There was a new part in Any Virsry now. There was a special bit where bloody old Lucy Lu got up and started telling us the messages she’d had from Angela and Tommy and dead Stoop and all the other Shadow People.

‘John is with them now,’ she told us, ‘John Redlantern, and all his little gang. They froze up on Dark and now they’re Shadow People with the rest of them. But none of the other Shadow People . . .’

She broke off here, rolling her eyes and screwing up her face as if she was in terrible pain. That woman has always been a liar and a faker, ever since she was a little kid.

‘Gela’s heart,’ she cried, ‘Gela’s dear good heart, but they are lonely lonely. None of the other Shadow People talk to them because they broke up our Family. And they know now they did wrong. They know it, because all is revealed in the Shadow World, all is revealed. And they feel ashamed ashamed, and they hate themselves and they hate each other, and that’s how it’ll always be for them, poor things, poor poor things, for ever and ever and ever.’

David stood up, one hand on the back of his buckhorse. Michael’s names, I hated all this. It was my boys they were talking about, my boys and their friends. How dare they talk about them like that? But I knew from the past what would happen if I tried to speak out. Everyone would yell at me and shout at me. People would warn me I’d end up being an enemy of Family too if I wasn’t careful. People would ask whose side was I on. People would hiss that they could see where my boys got it from. So I kept quiet, with only silent tears to show how I felt inside.

‘Yeah,’ David said. ‘Dying in the cold and hating themselves forever. That’s what you get for trying to break our Family, and that’s why we have Guards now to make sure it never happens again.’

‘Oh I know, I know,’ wailed Lucy Lu, ‘I know it has to be. But when you see them as I see them, you can’t help feeling sorry for them: always lonely, always miserable, always with the cold of Snowy Dark creeping through them and always . . . always . . .’

She stopped because we could hear shouting voices coming from forest behind us on the Peckham side of the clearing. In came three more of David’s Guards, dragging along another young man, with a buck on a rope following behind them.

The Guards didn’t take any notice of the fact that an Any Virsry was going on, and they paid no attention to the person in middle of Circle who was supposed to be Family Head.

‘David! David! Look who we found skulking around outside Family. Look who it is!’

Who was it? He looked familiar — that narrow, clever face with the wispy blond beard — but we hadn’t seen him for a long time, and he’d grown, and we’d never seen him looking so scared before. But Gela’s sweet heart, it was one of them! It was one of our lost kids!

‘Let go of me,’ snapped Mehmet Batwing, ‘I wasn’t skulking. I came down here to talk to you. I’ve got things you might want to know about.’

‘Talk then!’ growled David. ‘Talk!’

‘Never mind David, Mehmet,’ I yelled. ‘Talk to us! Where’s our kids? Where’s Gerry? Where’s Jeff? Where’s John?’

Other people started calling out and coming forward too, mums, sisters, brothers. The Guards quickly stepped in to keep us back and away from Mehmet and David, but they couldn’t stop us calling out.

‘Where’s Tina and Harry? Where’s Jane?’

‘What about Dix? Dixon Brooklyn, I mean? And Gela and Clare, are they alright?’

‘No, talk about Lucy first. Lucy Batwing. Tell us about her!’

David raised his hands for quiet before Mehmet could answer.

‘One at a time, one at a time!’

He turned to me.

‘And you can forget John,’ he said. ‘He’s not part of Family any more. He’s none of our business.’

‘That’s right,’ chipped in Lucy Lu, staring at us all with her weepy eyes. ‘Tommy and Angela told me themselves, remember? They told me we should forget that John Redlantern ever existed, and never speak of him again.’

‘Oh shut up, Lu, you silly woman, you just told us they were all dead!’ said a big Batwing woman called Angie. She was Mehmet’s auntie. It had been her who’d raised the boy up after a leopard did for his mum. ‘You come here, Mehmet my pet. Come to Auntie Angie.’

‘Yes, and I want to hear about John,’ called my sister Jade, ‘I want to hear about him!’

And she looked at me guiltily, as if she doubted her own right to get involved.

‘Gela and Clare Brooklyn,’ someone else was calling. ‘Are they alright? Tell us that they didn’t die in the snow!’

‘What about Julie Blueside? And Angie and Candy?’

Everyone was pushing forward, crowding round Mehmet and David and the Guards.

‘What about Dave and Johnny and Suzie Fishcreek. How are they? Suzie’s alright, isn’t she?’

It was weird. Even before I heard Mehmet’s answer I knew what it would be. Everyone was yelling yelling at the same time, but when Suzie’s mum called out, a kind of hollowness suddenly opened up in middle of all that noise.

‘No,’ Mehmet said, ‘Dave and Johnny are still alive, but Suzie is dead.’

And whole Family was silent then, completely silent. You could hear the hmmmmmmmm of the misty forest all around us, the hmmph, hmmph, hmmph of the trees nearby.

‘Dead?’ said Suzie Fishcreek’s mum, smiling broadly like he’d just told a joke. ‘Dead? No, that can’t be . . . You just told us . . . Well, you didn’t tell us but the fact that you’re here proves that . . . Well . . .’

She giggled.

‘No, not dead,’ she said firmly.

Poor woman. Mehmet had brought her sons and her daughter back to life for her when he came into the clearing, just like he’d brought Jeff and Gerry back to life for me. Suzie had leapt out of Snowy Dark for her, alive and well. And now, a few minutes later, she was dead again.

‘Yes, dead,’ said Mehmet. ‘That fool John led us up onto the snow. He had no proper plan. He didn’t know what to expect. It’s only luck that we didn’t all die. But Suzie did die. There’s a terrible kind of leopard up there, a white leopard that can throw its voice from one place to another. It did for her up there, her and one of our bucks, and it drove off the other one with Jeff on it, so we were all left in Dark.’

My heart went cold. The world closed in round me. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Was Mehmet going to kill off my child as well?

‘Jeff?’ I cried. ‘It drove Jeff off? What happened to him? Did he come back? Is Jeff alright?’

‘He was alright last time I saw him.’

‘Well, so’s Suzie then,’ said Suzie’s mum, smiling round at the people around her. ‘She’s not dead. Mehmet’s here, isn’t he? Mehmet is here to prove that they’re all okay!’

‘Suzie died,’ Mehmet said. ‘Last I heard all the others were alive. Dave Fishcreek was with me earlier this waking. He came down with me from Tall Tree Valley, but he ran off when you guys started yelling at us and waving spears. Johnny Fishcreek, and Julie and Angie and Candy Blueside, they’re all back up there in Tall Tree Valley. We’ve got our own little Tall Tree group up there. Three babies too.’

‘And Jeff? And Gerry?’

‘All the others stayed with John. He had to keep going, didn’t he? Tall Tree Valley is a good place — all the bucks you could wish for — but he had to go back up onto Dark again, trying to find the way across to the other side.’

So of course me and all the other mums and sisters and brothers and friends were calling out to know more again.

‘It gets cold up where we are sometimes,’ Mehmet said, ‘and snow comes down. But it doesn’t kill us, does it? It’s not cold like up on Snowy Dark. And it’s not dark either. But, first time the snow came down, off they all went, the bloody fools, Tina, Dix, Janny, Gerry, Jeff, dumb old Harry, all that lot, following that crazy John, that crazy killer John, back up onto Dark where Suzie died, and where we all nearly died, and would have done too if Jeff hadn’t come back for us. Good luck to them, they’ll need it.

‘But me and Dave and Johnny and the Blueside girls, we figured we could work out how to deal with a bit of snow. We have figured it out too. We wear thick wraps. We make strong shelters and big fires. We turn bucks into horses. It’s a good life up there. We get all the buckmeat we could ever want, and all the . . .’

‘My Jeff came back for you, you said,’ I called out. ‘What did he do? Where had he gone? Where did he come back from?’

But David stepped in before I got an answer.

‘Never mind that now. Tell us what you mean by killer John?’

Mehmet gave a weird little smirk. His head was cradled against his big fierce auntie’s enormous breasts — she’d pushed her way through the Guards like they were little kids — and he had other Batwing people standing round him, stroking him and touching him like they couldn’t believe he was real. He could tell he wasn’t in danger now and he was enjoying the attention and the power he had over us all.

‘Oh, didn’t you know, David?’ he asked. ‘Didn’t you know that John did for your friend Dixon Blueside? Speared him from behind when he was trying to get back here. And Gerry and Harry — you know, Gerry Redlantern and big old, dumb old Harry Spiketree — they did for the other two that Dixon had with him. Harry did for John Blueside. And Gerry, well, I’m afraid Gerry did for his own groupmate Met.’

Oh Gela’s crying eyes! What a thing Mehmet had let loose! We’d guessed that something bad had happened, something bad enough to make whole bunch of them suddenly head off up to Dark, but we’d never known what that something was. Now John Blueside’s mum, and all the rest of Blueside group too, began to yell and bellow across the clearing at Redlantern and Spiketree, pushing forward against Guards, who held them back with the sticks of their spears.

And Met’s mum, my own cousin Candice, turned on me.

‘No, no, no, no, no, no!’ she screamed. ‘I hate Gerry, I hate him, I hate him, I hate him.’

She snatched at my eyes with her nails like a tree fox, scratching my face so I bled. People pulled her off me then, but she carried on screaming. Other people were joining in too, screaming and screaming: Blueside people screaming at Spiketree and Redlantern people, Redlantern people screaming at one another, all in the little fuggy space of the clearing with the thick fug all around and the fake Circle in middle of it all.

And then Suzie Fishcreek’s mum finally heard in her mind what her ears had heard a little while ago. Suzie was dead. Her daughter had been torn apart by a white leopard that lived in Dark and the snow. Over all the other screaming and shouting, she let out one single horrible high-pitched shriek.

‘Silence!’ bellowed David.

Everyone was quiet.

‘Silence,’ he said again, glaring round at us.

Gela’s eyes, I’m a batface too and I’m no beauty myself, but he looked ugly ugly.

‘Screaming and yelling won’t solve anything,’ David said. ‘What’s needed now is to get that killer John and spike him up, just like I always said we should. Him and his creepy friend Gerry and that baby-man Harry. You all thought I was being hard, but if we’d spiked Juicy John up when I first suggested it, there’d be four people alive now who are all dead. This time we’re going to do it my way.’

‘Yes, but they’re right across the other side of Snowy Dark,’ I whispered to myself. ‘Thank Gela, they’re far away from here. David is only play-acting. There’s nothing he can really do.’

‘Yes, John is a killer,’ Mehmet said. ‘He could have killed any of us. That’s the only reason I went with him over the top in the first place. I didn’t want to go. I spoke out against it. I told him I didn’t agree with the killings. But . . .’

David took no notice of any of this.

‘You bring us down some of those buckhorses of yours, Mehmet, if you really want to be our friends. And bring us some of those warm wraps. And show us the way the others went over the mountains.’

‘Oh yes, I will,’ Mehmet said. ‘I surely will. I don’t want to break with Family. We Tall Tree people don’t want to break with Family. One of us was a cousin of John Blueside, don’t forget, and three of us grew up with him and Dixon Blueside in their group. We want to get back at their killers as much as you do.’

‘Then maybe we can sort something,’ David said, ‘us and you. Maybe you can be part of Family again.’

‘I don’t think that’s down to you, David,’ came Caroline’s voice from behind him. ‘It’s for Council to decide things like that, Council and me as Fam . . .’

‘Bucks and wraps and information,’ David said to Mehmet, completely ignoring Caroline — and from that moment on, we lost any last notion we had that her or Council counted for anything at all — ‘bucks and wraps and information. That’ll show us which side you’re on.’

‘Gela is talking to me,’ cried Lucy Lu. ‘Gela is talking to me now. She’s explaining things. And I see now why I thought that John and the others were dead. The truth is that they’re worse than dead. Even to the Shadow People they seem dead. Even to the Shadow People, think of that! In one way I misunderstood what the Shadow People were telling me, that’s true, but in a deeper way, I did understand, I understood too well. That’s what Angela says. They’re not just dead. They’re worse than dead.’

‘John says he talks to Gela too,’ Mehmet said.

Michael’s names, you should have seen how Lucy Lu changed when she heard that! All the dreaminess and weepiness disappeared in a moment. Her face went all twisty. She looked like she was crouching ready to pounce. She looked like a hunter about to make a kill.

‘Him?’ she snarled. ‘Him talk to Angela? Ha! Don’t make me laugh.’

‘Yes, but listen to this. He fools people because he’s got Gela’s ring!’

There was a gasp from whole Family.

‘What do you mean?’ demanded David. ‘What do you mean, her ring?’

‘The lost ring, like in the story. The one she lost and then cried and cried for wakings afterwards. I’ve seen it myself. You can tell it comes from Earth easy easy. It’s made of metal — it’s smooth smooth, and shiny — and it’s got tiny writing inside it: “To Angela with love from Mum and Dad”, that’s what it says. I’ve seen it myself. John found the ring in forest near here and told no one, kept it all to himself, and then he destroyed our Circle.’

‘You went over to him after he destroyed Circle, Mehmet,’ I called out. ‘Stop trying to pretend that you . . .’

But people yelled at me to shut up. They didn’t want to think about that. They didn’t want any complications. They wanted to think about the wonderful ring from Earth, the lost ring in the story, being found again, and they wanted to be angry angry with the arrogant newhair who’d destroyed Circle but kept the ring. He’d taken away our bit of the past without even asking us, and kept his own bit without even telling. He was my nephew and I loved him, but even I thought that was selfish and bad.

‘This is Gela’s Family,’ David said. ‘We’re her children. That ring belongs to us.’

‘Gela says we must get it back,’ Lucy Lu confirmed, rolling back her eyes so you could only see the whites of them. ‘I hear her now. Gela says we must get it back. Get the ring and punish wicked wicked John, who says he speaks in her name when he doesn’t, he doesn’t.’ Her voice rose into a shriek. ‘How dare he? He doesn’t! He doesn’t! He doesn’t!’

She began to shake and tremble, like people do when they’re having a fit.

‘He must be killed. He must be killed like a slinker,’ she hissed. ‘Him and Gerry and Harry, all three of them. Kill them! Kill! Kill!’

Other people began to yell out the same thing, ‘Kill! Kill!’ and gradually it turned into a chant:

‘Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!’

Jade reached out her hand to me and we held onto each other while the crowd around us shouted for the death of our own sons.

‘Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!’

Mehmet had a strange look on his face. Standing there with his auntie’s arm still around him, he looked half-pleased by the effect he had had, half-scared by what he had set off. He had done a terrible thing, coming down from Dark, and feeding our fear and hate to serve his own ends. But all the same, you couldn’t deny — even I couldn’t deny — that it was John who’d started it, John who’d killed another human being for the first time ever in Eden. And that was like the spark that lights a fire. There would be no end to the killing now, no end, not unless it killed us all.