Dark Eden (25 page)

‘I may be getting too old for this,’ Caroline said, ‘I may be missing something obvious. But if you take something that is dear and precious to other people and calmly destroy it, how can you call that
helping
them?’

She didn’t wait for an answer.

‘Who else wants to comment?’

‘Make him put Circle back again!’ called out a fat dim woman called Gela Blueside.

‘But it can never be what it was!’ Caroline said. ‘Think about it. We could make another circle. We could use a rope to measure it out and make something that looked pretty much the same. And I daresay that
is
what we’ll do. But it’ll never again be the stones that Angela and Tommy chose, never the stones they laid in place with their own hands.’

Gela Blueside began to cry like she’d been scolded.

‘And I’ll tell you something,’ Caroline went on. ‘If and when we do restore that Circle, no way will this wicked boy have the honour of coming anywhere near it.’

‘Do like David said,’ called a big dark gloomy Starflower man called Harry. ‘Spike him up. Like Hitler did to Jesus. That will repay Mother Angela for the hurt that’s been done her. Otherwise we’ll all bear the burden of it, on and on and on.’

‘Yeah, that’s right,’ called out a sharp little woman called Lucy Fishcreek. ‘If he doesn’t pay the price for it, we all will. Us and our children and our children’s children too.’

‘That’s true,’ said Julie the London leader, with the authority of Council in her voice, ‘that’s
true
true. He’s shamed all of us, not just himself.’

‘Angela is crying,’ wailed that horrible wet-eyed Lucy Lu from Redlantern. ‘Angela is
crying out
for our help.’

Harry’s dick, I thought, it could really happen. They really
could
spike John up like Jesus.

But Candy, the Fishcreek group leader, whispered: ‘Remember the Laws, remember the Laws on the trees. We mustn’t kill.’

Caroline nodded.

‘Who else that knows him wants to speak? He’s got no brothers or sisters, has he? How about his cousins?’

Gerry stood up. Poor kid. He was white white as anything but he wanted desperately to do right by his hero John.

‘John’s brave, don’t forget. He does stuff no one dares to do. Remember how he did for that leopard!’

Tears came from his eyes. How brilliant everything had seemed to him back then, when he’d been the one to witness John do for the leopard. How happy he’d been for John when whole Family praised him.

‘He’s braver than just about everyone in Family,’ Gerry said. ‘Maybe the bravest one of all.’

He looked round at his little brother, weird little clawfooted Jeff, who was younger than him, yet in a way much older. I think Gerry was hoping Jeff would think of better arguments than he could. And Jeff did speak, but all he would say was that weird phrase he came up with at the weirdest times, for no obvious reason at all.

‘We are here,’ he said. ‘We really are here.’

Some people laughed, some yelled out that if he wasn’t going to talk sense, he should shut up his bloody gob.

‘He means this isn’t a dream,’ Gerry tried to explain. ‘He means that this isn’t just some kind of story.’

‘You don’t say!’ someone called out sarcastically. ‘I
never
would have known that.’

But it
was
like a dream, in that gaping space, with the mist shutting us away from forest and from sky. It was like an evil dream. Either that, or everything
else
had turned out to be a dream and the only true thing in the world was
this
: Family, our miserable, bitter, lonely Family, full of stupid people, full of hateful, disappointed people, full of sour people, full of ignorant people who never thought anything through for themselves.

‘Why don’t you let
John
speak!’ I called out.

David turned on me. He was still out in front there, like he was another centre, separate and apart from Caroline and Council. Hateful hateful man, I’d often seen him secretly looking at me, longingly, knowing quite well that I’d never let him near me. But now he felt power on his side.

‘Oh-ho! I wondered when his little slippy girl would speak!’

‘Bella is right,’ I said. ‘He did it for a reason and you ought to hear what he has to say.’

Caroline frowned.

‘Why should we let him tell us his silly ideas, just because he’s done something wrong?’

But she was wavering and several people in the crowd called out.

‘Yeah, let him have his say.’

‘It’s only fair.’

Caroline nodded.

‘Alright then, John. You have two minutes.’

And she turned and looked at Secret Ree, who nodded and laid down the bark that she’d been scribbling on, and put her finger on her own wrist to count out one hundred and twenty pulses.

‘You said I’ve offended Mother Angela,’ John said. ‘But I don’t think I have. She wanted the best for all of us, it’s true. But we all know that she sometimes felt trapped and stifled here and longed to break out. Remember the story of Angela and the Ring? Remember how she cried for nine whole sleeps and nine whole wakings? Remember how she said she hated Eden, and even hated her own … ?’

‘You’re calling Angela to your defence?’ interrupted Caroline, furious. ‘How
dare
you? If Angela cried for nine wakings when she lost a ring,
think
how she’d be crying now!’

‘She
is
crying,’ wailed Lucy Lu, in that fake dreamy voice of hers. ‘She’s crying like she’s never cried before.’

‘You said you’d give him two minutes,’ I yelled.

‘What I mean is this,’ said John. ‘Angela told us to wait by the stones because she didn’t know how long it would be before Earth came back. But she wouldn’t have wanted Family to stay huddled up in this little place for all this time, using up all the food, getting tired and bored, starting to hate one another. She’d have wanted us to find new places, new air, spread out, explore, make the best of things. That’s why …’

‘Two minutes is up!’ snapped Caroline briskly, though I could see that Secret Ree was still counting. ‘You’ve had your say and Council has heard enough evidence. Council will consider its decision. Except you, Bella, you can go back to your people over there.’

So Bella had the shame of crossing the clearing to where the Redlantern people were, and squatting down among them as an ordinary person, while Council huddled together without her and conferred in whispers. It was like we were watching some kind of play, bunched up together under the trees. There was Council in the centre; there was John standing just out from the centre on his own, his face pale and blank, not looking at anyone; and then, to one side, and a bit further out, there was David, arms still crossed, legs still apart, scanning the crowd with hard hard eyes, as if he was checking each one of us out to see who was with him and who wasn’t.

Pretty soon the huddle broke up. Caroline stepped away from the rest of Council.

‘We’ve made our decision,’ she said. ‘We’re all agreed. John Redlantern can’t stay in Family. He must leave within two hours. After that he won’t be part of Family any more. The Laws won’t apply to him, and if he’s found near here, he can be treated as we’d treat a troublesome animal. Like a tree fox or a slinker.’

Then she looked around the crowd, searching for people that she knew had a connection with John – Gerry, Jeff, Bella, Jade, me.

‘And listen carefully to this. Redlantern group can give him whatever it wants to let him take with him, but after he’s left, no one is to give him anything any more – no food, no blackglass, no buckskins, nothing – and no one is to talk to him or look for him or spend time with him, or they too will be thrown out of Family.’

She gave a firm little nod and a little sideways glance at John.

‘That’s our decision about John Redlantern. And that’s the end of Strornry.’

We made our way back through the fug to Redlantern clearing. It was a dreadful time, a time that was neither waking nor sleeping, neither real nor a dream, and it seemed as if it could never reach an end, but only sink downwards deeper and deeper into itself, until it swallowed up all memory of happiness, or fun, or anything else except this fuggy nothingness. We were exhausted and hopeless. Sweat and rain ran down our faces and we were too tired to wipe it off. Out of all of Redlantern group, only David seemed untouched by the misery, just as he’d been untouched by fun and happiness in the past. While we crept back with our shoulders hunched, he strode along beside us with a satisfied look that was almost a smile. But even David knew to keep his mouth shut, and hardly anyone else spoke at all, though many wept silently, including me. Even the littlest of littles must have understood that our safe familiar world had been torn in two. And some of them cried, and some were beyond crying.

We had no leader to guide us. Bella normally got hold of any problem that faced our group and helped us see what we had to do – ‘This is the thing we need to concentrate on; this is what we need to do first; these are the questions we need to answer …’ – but now she walked silently among us, looking at no one. Old Roger wrung his hands together. Fox and the other young men and women trudged along in a little group of their own.

John himself was in a daze. Jade, my sister, trailed along on one side of him and a little behind, but as ever she had no idea what to say to him, or how to approach the business of being his mum. My Gerry walked on his other side, weeping and pestering him with questions.

‘What are you going to do, John? Where are you going to go? I don’t want you to go. Haven’t you got a plan?’

And my boy Jeff, the sharpest and gentlest of us all, walked silently next to me, watching everything.

We ran into our shelters and felt inside our skin bags and storage logs for things for John to take with him: blackglass, spearheads, rope, skins, a net, some dried meat. There was no one else taking charge so I did my best to organize things, keeping an eye on Gerry all the time to make sure he left John alone and didn’t pester him when he needed to be able to think.

‘Let him be, Gerry. He knows you love him, but he can’t look after you as well as himself just now … Come on, Roger, you can spare him a couple of decent spearheads, for Gela’s sake … Tom, can you see if there’s some more string over there that he could take? Janny dear, I know you’re sad, but can you just wrap up that meat in a clean bit of skin?’

Meanwhile my pretty sister Jade stood helplessly and watched as we brought things to her son and he bundled them up together, as if she was waiting for instructions on how a mother should behave.

We said goodbye to him. Gerry hugged him. Jeff hugged him. Old Roger hugged him. I hugged him and told him to take care and be patient and not do anything else that would cause upset to Family. And meanwhile, I said, we’d work on Council to change its ruling, and let him come back again. After all, Council were the ones who kept telling us we had to keep whole Family together.

‘It won’t go on forever, John,’ I told him. ‘You’ve upset everyone
badly
badly, but when people have calmed down a bit, we can look at it all again, and try and find another way through.’

He didn’t anwer me. He didn’t speak at all. He shouldered his bundle, picked up the fire-bark with its smouldering embers, turned and and nodded to us, and then set off along a little path that went between Batwing and Fishcreek clearings and out into forest. (He didn’t want to have to walk through someone else’s group area.)