Dark Eden (8 page)

Redlantern grownups had decided I could have a no-work waking as a treat for doing for the leopard. The rest of the newhairs and men would go out foraging as usual but I could have whole waking to do whatever I wanted. What would I do with the time? I wondered as I chewed my breakfast off that bone. I wanted to go straight out into forest again and back to the edge of Dark. Or maybe down towards Exit Falls, that narrow gap between Blue Mountains and Rockies where Main River poured down all the water from all the streams in Circle Valley into whatever lay below. I was sort of interested in looking at it, because it was the only way out of Circle Valley apart from Snowy Dark. People of Old Roger’s age could just remember when it had been wider there, so that you could have climbed down from Circle Valley and found out for yourself what was below it. But no one did when they had the chance, and then there was a big rockfall. A great flat slab came sliding down on Rockieside of it, and now tons of water poured down between two sheer cliffs, and it wasn’t an exit at all.

But I’d only got one waking, and that wasn’t long enough to get to Exit Falls or anywhere else at the edge of the valley. And anyway I was sore sore and bruised in my chest from when the spear butt had hit me, so in the end I just stayed inside Family Fence.

I walked through Spiketree and over to Batwing. Batwing group woke before Redlantern and they were already on the go out there around their newly fallen tree, whacking at branches with blackglass axes. Glittery flutterbyes were flitting and flapping around the opening of the stump.

‘Hey John,’ called that strange smart boy Mehmet Batwing, with his thin face and his pointy beard, pausing with an axe in his hand. ‘Off to do for another leopard, eh?’

‘Think I’ll take a rest from leopard-killing for one two wakings, Mehmet. Leave a couple of them for the likes of you.’

‘Good candy?’ I asked a little clawfoot kid that was hanging round there.

He took a stick and banged it on the side of the stump to drive the flutterbyes away. Off they flittered, flashing their glittery wings.

‘Have a bit,’ he said, pleased to have a chance to give something to the big boy that did for the leopard, ‘see for yourself.’

I peered down into the stump. Its pipes had emptied themselves of sap in one last convulsion, and the soft pipeflesh had shrivelled up like it does when the sap has gone, so now there was nothing inside the hollow trunk but air, hot, moist, sickly-sweet air coming up from far below. I could feel the heat of it on my face. I picked up a small stone and dropped it in, putting my ear to the opening to hear it rattling down and down and down into the fiery caves of Underworld, where all life began: all life except our own.

‘Don’t you want any stumpcandy?’ the kid asked, banging the stump again to stop the flutterbyes from settling back down on it.

I looked back in. There were a few crystals of sugar forming inside, already smeared with flutterbye droppings and bat dung with bits of flutterbye wing in it. It wasn’t much of a candyfeast, not like you get with an old tree that’s fallen of its own accord. But I picked off a couple of crystals, wiped off the batcrap on my waistwrap and stuck them in my mouth to suck.

A wailing started up in one of the shelters. It was that little kid who’d got burnt when the sap spouted up. He’d been quiet for a little while – I supposed a time comes when you’re so exhausted that even pain doesn’t keep you awake – but now he was off again and I could feel whole Batwing group wincing around me. They were all worn out by it. They’d had enough. The little clawfoot kid beat his stick forlornly on the stump. The grownups and newhairs lowered their axes, looked up wearily, and then began hacking away even harder at the tree. The more noise they made, the less they’d have to hear that kid’s screams of pain.

Me, though, I didn’t have to be in Batwing at all, so I wandered off. But that screaming kid, it didn’t matter where in Family I was, I could still hear him. And even way over Blueside, as far away as you could get from Batwing and still be in Family, people were talking about it:

‘Boy called Paul, apparently, twelve wombs or so, burnt all down one side of his face and his chest. Sticky redlantern sap all over the place and those dumb Batwings didn’t even have a pot of water on hand to douse him down. You should always have cold water ready when you take down a hot tree.’

‘Yes, and wear skins all over, and keep kids out of harm’s way.’

‘Paul his name is. Nasty sap-burn. Batwings getting a bit careless lately, I reckon, a bit cocky and careless. They had something like that coming to them for a while, I’m sorry to say. Not that it was the kid’s fault of course. I blame the grownups.’

‘Tree coming down and no one keeping an eye on the kids! I ask you. But that’s Batwing for you, isn’t it? Not that the kid deserved it. Paul his name was, apparently.’

That was what Family was like. You couldn’t get away from other people’s feelings and thoughts about everything that happened. Gela’s tits,
every
bloody little thing that happened, in no time everyone in Family was talking talking about it and poring over it and prodding it and poking at it and clucking their tongues over it. Everyone was deciding who to give credit to and who to feel sorry for and who to blame, like these three boring questions were the only ones there were. I wished I’d just gone out bloody scavenging with all the rest and not even taken a no-work. At least then I would have been outside Family.

Still, I made the best of it. I got given some roasted birds stuffed with candy by the youngmums over in Blueside in exchange for telling them about the leopard. I got some dried fruits to chew in Brooklyn. I had a swim in Greatpool, and some little kids came and showed me their little toy boats made of dry fruit skins greased with buckfat.

In London everyone was in their shelters in mid-sleep, except for just the lookout, a big slow boy called Pete about a womb older than me, who was leaning on a bark rest against a tree stump and chewing the end of a twig from a spiketree.

‘Alright there, John?’

‘Not bad.’

‘Heard you did for a leopard, eh?’

‘Yes, up Cold Path way.’

‘Long way off then. You can’t get much further than that.’

‘No.’

‘Only maybe Exit Falls. That’s further, isn’t it?’

‘No, it’s nearer, but of course there’s also whatever’s below Falls, as well. And whatever’s across Dark.’

‘Below Falls? I’ve never heard of that. Are you sure … ?’

Then a slow smile spread over his face.

‘Below Falls! Michael’s names, you’re winding me up aren’t you, you slinker? There’s no such place as Below Falls, is there? You had me for a minute there.’

‘Well, of course there’s something below it, Pete. Where do you think the water goes? You could even climb down next to it once, until that big slab slid down on Rockieside, and Fall Pool filled up.’

Pete shuddered.

‘Who’d want to climb down? There might be
anything
there. And we’ve got everything we need right here in Circle Valley.’

A woman in one of the shelters heard us speaking and stuck her head out, a plump big-breasted grownup woman two three times my age with, I guessed, five six kids sleeping there in the shelter with her.

‘You’re John, aren’t you? The boy that did for the leopard out there?’

Out she came smiling. She didn’t have her wrap on.

‘I’m Martha,’ she said. ‘Would you like a little slide, my dear?’

Pete looked away politely and began to hum.

‘We could go over there in the starflowers,’ Martha said, pointing to a big bright clump growing over beside the stream.

A lot of women thought if you did a slip with a young guy who was fit and healthy, it would stop you having batface babies, or clawfeet. Us young guys didn’t argue.

‘Yeah, okay,’ I said.

We went over to the clump of starflowers and she knelt down so I could give it to her from behind. This wasn’t about pleasure for her. She didn’t move or moan, only gave the odd tiny little sigh for the sake of politeness. And we could hear that kid over in Batwing all the while we did it, wailing and crying in pain.

‘Kid called Paul, apparently,’ she said while I was still pushing in and out of her. ‘Nasty sap-burn when they got down that big old redlantern tree.’

She considered this while I kept on humping away behind her.

‘Wouldn’t happen here in London. We keep our kids under control. No way would a London kid be let near a tree that was about to come down. And we’d always have a pot of water ready just in case as well.’

‘Keep the littles under control, eh? It’s got to be the …’ I muttered but then I came in her with a shudder, and she rolled over on her back among the flowers, lifting her knees and cupping her hand over herself to keep the juice that she hoped would make her another well-behaved London kid with straight lips and unclenched feet to live its life out in that particular little trampled clearing called London, among those particular bark shelters and that particular little group of people, who liked to think there was something different about them from everyone else in Family.

And there
were
differences, I thought, kneeling above her but looking away across Family towards Batwing on the far side, and thinking about the groups between here and there. For example, the names. Blueside just means the group that’s furthest over Blueway, the side nearest Blue Mountains, Redlantern just means we’ve got a big bunch of Redlantern trees (which we’re slowly cutting down and replacing by chucking whitelantern seeds down the stumps). But London and Brooklyn were proud proud of the fact that
their
names came from across Starry Swirl, from Earth. The Earth folk had a
big
big Family, with many many groups in it. Angela’s group was called London and the people there had black faces like Angela did. Tommy’s group was called Brooklyn, though some people called them the Juice. (As for the Three Companions, who took
Defiant
back across Starry Swirl, leaving Tommy and Angela in Eden, we don’t know the group names of Dixon and Michael, but they say Mehmet’s group was called Turkish, even though his last name was Haribey. I don’t why.)

So, yes, London were different from Blueside, Blueside were different from Batwing, Batwing were different from Redlantern. Each Family group woke at a different time, slept at a different time, had its own particular way of doing things and deciding things, its own little things they were proud of about themselves (like London and Brooklyn being the names of groups on Earth), its own particular combination of strong people and weak people, kind people and selfish people, batfaces and clawfeet. But the differences were so small, I thought, and so dull dull dull. Really we were all alike. In fact, we were so on top of one another, so in each others’ lives and in each others’ heads, we were hardly separate from one another at all. Like Oldest always banged on and on about, we were
all one
. It was really true: one Family, all together, all cousins, all from one single womb and one single dick.

‘I’ve got some milk if you want some,’ Martha said, cupping her hands under her breasts.

‘Yeah, okay,’ I said, and I bent down while she held one of them for me to kneel and suck the warm sweet stuff.

‘That’s better,’ she said after a bit. ‘They were beginning to hurt.’

She stroked my hair briefly, without much interest.

‘Had a new baby die on me,’ she explained. ‘Twenty thirty sleeps ago. Little batface baby. Really bad batface, poor little thing. His little face was practically split open from top to bottom, and he couldn’t suck, no matter how hard I tried to help him. In the end he just …’

I felt her shaking as she began to cry. That was the reason she’d been awake. She couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t think of anything else but the dead baby. That was what it was like for mums when a baby died. They couldn’t think of anything except the gap where the baby had been. Martha London didn’t know how to fill up the time. She didn’t know how to let the baby go.

‘Ten kids I’ve had in all,’ she said. ‘All but two of them were batfaces. And, well, you love them anyway, but …’

She released the breast she was holding and scooped up the other one for me.

‘Only three of my kids are still alive,’ she said. ‘Three girls. All the rest died. All my boys died. Last three all died as babies.’

I sat up.

‘Well, maybe your luck will turn now.’

She nodded, lying there under the flickering starflowers, her face all smeary with tears. The flowers were so bright that their stems made little lines and shadows, always moving and changing, all over her body. Her hand was still cupped between her legs to hold in my lucky juice.

‘If I have another boy a wombtime from now,’ she said, ‘I’ll call him after you.’