Dark Eden

36 John Redlantern

I didn’t like Tall Tree Valley one bit. I knew that when we first followed Jeff down from Snowy Dark. I knew it when me and Tina and Harry and Dix sat up trying to get a fire going. I knew it when I lay down to sleep with Tina. And I still knew it when I woke up again on my own.

There was a smell of roasting buckmeat, and I could hear people already awake, but first thing I did was walk up the slope a bit, up near the bottom of the snow, so I could see out over the valley.

‘No,’ I said out loud as I looked down at this little bit of forest with Dark high high above it on every side, ‘there is no chance that I’m going to settle for this place.’

Tall Tree Valley wasn’t anything like a good enough trade for Bella’s death, and for bringing killing into the world. It might make us feel tiny tiny like ants under those big trees, but it was small small itself. You could walk from one side to the other in one two hours. And how many people could a place that size support, when there was hardly enough meat in whole of Circle Valley to feed Family? There might be lots of bucks here now — I could see five six of them just standing where I was — but there’d been lots back in Circle Valley too, hadn’t there, before Family did for most of them.

And anyway, who wanted to stay in a place where you had to cover up your skin just to keep warm?

I walked back down towards the others. They were already busy. Tina and Gela had been giving people jobs to do. Someone had done for a little buck and roasted two of its legs, and Jane Spiketree was cutting off strips of greeny meat with a leopard tooth knife, and tossing them onto a bark plate that Harry was holding out for her. Mike Brooklyn and Candy Blueside and Gerry were dragging branches over for a simple fence. Dave and Johnny Fishcreek, with those awful shadowy faces people have when someone they love has just died, were slowly slowly spreading out a pile of fading starflowers to dry, with Angie and Julie helping them. Jeff was sitting in front of Def, offering it handfuls of wavyweed from a heap he’d gathered from a pool. The woollybuck prodded and stroked each handful with its feelers before it gulped the stringy stuff down.

Sound carried a long way in the empty space under the trees, and I could hear them all talking when I was still ten twenty yards away.

‘There’s bucks everywhere in this place, aren’t there?’ said Janny. ‘Getting meat is going to be easy easy from now on.’

‘We’ll just wear a few more wraps than we used to and it’ll be fine,’ said Tina’s sister Jane.

‘Yeah,’ said Gela, ‘and we should be able to make shelters a bit stronger than usual to keep out the cold.’

‘Plenty of starflowers everywhere, I must say,’ said Julie Blueside.

‘But fruits are too high to reach, though, aren’t they?’ worried Lucy London, looking up at the trees with her bulging eyes.

‘Yeah,’ said Tina in a bright bright voice that didn’t sound like her normal way of speaking at all, ‘but we can use ropes, or make nets, can’t we? We’ll have plenty of time for jobs like that, when meat is so easy to get.’

That was the story they were telling each other: Tall Tree Valley was going to be fine fine. And if one of them started to tell another story, then someone else would straightaway put them right.

‘Whole time we’ve been here I’ve not heard one leopard,’ Janny said. ‘That’s a good sign, isn’t it?’

‘We’re going to miss Family,’ sighed Lucy London. ‘I wish we weren’t so far from them.’

‘But we’ve got each other, haven’t we?’ Jane said quickly. ‘We’ve got each other. And we’re nearly grownups after all, aren’t we?’

‘Do you reckon those snow leopards come down here?’ asked Lucy Batwing. ‘I couldn’t cope with them again.’

‘I don’t see why,’ Gela told her, in the same bright bright voice that Tina had used. ‘They didn’t ever come down into Circle Valley, did they? Not even as far down as the hills. If they did, we would have known about them before, wouldn’t we? And like Janny said, we haven’t even heard an ordinary forest leopard here, and you’d think we would have done by now, if there were any, wouldn’t you?’

‘I like it here,’ Tina said firmly. ‘I like these tall tall trees.’

‘Yeah. And did you see those flying monkeys?’ asked Mike, coming over from his work on the fence to get some meat.

‘I’m scared about having my baby here,’ said Julie Blueside, ‘with no oldmums near to help.’

‘We’ve got Clare and Janny,’ Gela said in that bright bright voice. She had a baby inside her too, and so she must have been worried about the same thing. ‘They might not be oldmums, but they’ve been through it, haven’t they? They’ll know what to do.’

‘But they had help from their mums over by Lava Blob, didn’t they?’

‘Try this buckmeat, Mike,’ Jane said loudly, ‘it’s good good.’

‘Harry loves it! Harry loves it! It’s the best meat ever.’

Of course they could all see just as well as I could that Tall Tree Valley was small and cold and lonely, but they didn’t want to let thoughts get into their heads about setting out again for somewhere else, not after what had happened up in Dark. So they were trying to squash each other’s doubts and fears, and talk themselves into feeling at home. But it was thin thin, this hopeful talk of theirs. It was thin thin thin. Just underneath the surface of it was the memory of that horrible cold dark place where Suzie Fishcreek died, and where they’d all almost died, groping their way like blind oldies through darkness and ice. Harry’s dick, they’d have talked themselves into any damn thing rather than face that again.

I walked up to the fire.

‘Hey there, John,’ said Tina and some of the others, but Mehmet busied himself with sharpening the tip of his spear and didn’t look up.

‘Yeah, we can definitely make something of this place,’ he said, carrying on with the talk they’d been having as if I hadn’t arrived. ‘We were lucky lucky to stumble on it.’

I fetched some starflowers and buckmeat for my breakfast, and sat myself on a stone next to Janny, whose baby Flower was sucking at her breast, almost hidden away inside the buckskin bodywrap that she’d made specially with an opening at the front. When I’d swallowed down the flowers and the meat I stood up.

‘We need to find out more about this valley,’ I said. ‘We need to see if there are ways out of it, and what lives here, and we need to check out the possibilities and the dangers before we dig in too deep in this one spot. I know we can’t spare many people from the jobs we’ve got on here. But I’m going to walk once round the edge of this place.’

I saw Tina look at me, wondering if I was going to ask her to go with me, and hoping hoping I wouldn’t. I saw Gerry looking at me too, part of him wanting me to ask him to come, but a bigger part hoping I wouldn’t take him away from the rest of them.

But I’d already made up my mind to take Jeff.

Me and Jeff took a spear, and a bow and some arrows, and we went up the slope a bit so we could get a view and then made our way round the valley at that level, me walking, him riding beside me on his buck. It felt weird being just with Jeff. He’d always come as a pair with Gerry. And it felt awkward because of course he knew quite well that I’d chosen to go with him alone for a reason.

‘There must be an exit from this valley,’ I said after a bit. ‘Or all this water from the snow would have turned it into a giant pool.’

I looked out over Tall Tree forest, with its white and yellow lanterns shining at the bottom of that steep dark bowl. Clouds of fug were rising up from middle of it, lit up by the lanternlight. Here and there the odd bird or bat was flying above the trees.

‘I know what you’re hoping, John,’ Jeff said, smiling. ‘You’re hoping that you’ll find us a nice wide exit full of bright trees, so we can just walk easily down to whatever’s at the bottom, and you won’t have to try and persuade us all to go back up over Dark.’

I didn’t answer that.

‘I can’t see a gap anywhere, can you?’ I said. ‘Dark seems to go all the way round without a . . .’

I broke off because I noticed three of those monkeys watching us from a tree. One by one they jumped out into the air. As they fell they reached out forward with their front hands, backward with their back hands, and straight out to the sides with their middle hands, so that their loose wrap-like flaps of skin were stretched out tight like the skin of a bat wing. They glided fifteen twenty yards and landed, one after another, on another treetrunk, with a little clack — clack — clack each time as their claws took hold.

‘That stretchy skin could be useful stuff,’ I said.

I put an arrow on my bow and lifted the bow to take aim . . .

But Jeff leaned over from Def’s back to push my arrow towards the ground.

‘Leave them be, John!’ he said, laughing. ‘You don’t have to make everything serve your purpose all the time.’

Gela’s tits, who was he to tell me what to do? He might have saved us from Dark, but he was still only a funny little clawfoot kid, with no new hairs even, except maybe a first bit of fluff above his dick.

‘You don’t get it,’ I said crossly, lifting my bow again. ‘We’ve got to use everything we can if we’re going to . . .’

But the monkeys jumped off again — one, two, three — down towards main forest. As soon as the last one had landed, the first one was off again, and then they were gone.

As I lowered my bow, I noticed I felt relieved that I hadn’t had to try and shoot them. I wouldn’t admit it to him of course, but bloody Jeff was right. It did feel good to just let things be for once. I took the arrow off the bow, and for a little while me and him stood there quietly, looking out over the valley.

‘There is a big waterfall somewhere,’ I said. ‘Can’t you hear it? That faint faint roar, under the sound of the trees?’

But though we went right round until we could see the smoke from the fire ahead of us again, softly lit up by forest, we found no break in the wall of rock that surrounded Tall Tree Valley. Where did the water go? Where was that waterfall roar coming from?

‘Do you remember once when we were little kids,’ I said, ‘you, me and Gerry used to make those little boats with dry fruit skins? We used to grease them to stop them going soft.’

‘Yes, of course. All the kids played with those.’

‘Remember one time we dug out our own little pool for them? But the water sank into the dirt and turned to mud, so we had to keep filling it up again, and in the end we gave up. Me and Gerry chucked stones into the mud, remember? Each one went splat and made a neat little hole with a ridge round it in a circle. This valley’s just like that, like a giant stone splatted it out.’

‘Well, that’s what probably happened,’ Jeff said.

‘Don’t be dumb, Jeff. A stone would have to be huge huge to make this.’

‘There are much bigger stones than that in sky, aren’t there? Eden is one, isn’t it, and so is Earth. Sky is full of stones.’

It was weird. I knew all that stuff, the same as he did. It was part of the True Story. But I’d never once before thought of those stones as really being in the same world as me.

‘Let’s follow a stream,’ Jeff said, ‘and see where the water goes.’

He led the way downhill. Soon we heard the waterfall roar quite definitely ahead of us beneath the humming of forest. A bit later we started to feel drops of spray on our faces. And then, in the lowest part of the valley bowl, forest just stopped and there was a huge jagged hole right in front of us, with water pouring into it over steep cliffs from streams on every side, and warm steam rising up from below.

The bottom of the hole was full of steam, but, as we stood at the edge of it looking down, the steam thinned out for a few seconds, enough for us to make out the blurry lights of trees far far down below, red and blue and yellow and white.

‘Michael’s names,’ I murmured.

It was a way down into Underworld, where all life on Eden began, all life except for us.

Def was restless with all the noise, and Jeff was stroking its head to calm it down, all the time looking down into Underworld. I saw his lips move and, though I couldn’t hear him, I knew quite well what he was saying.

‘We are here,’ he was murmuring to himself. ‘We really are here.’

Then he pointed. Four monkeys had gathered on the edge of the cliff over to our left. They were peering down into the steam with their flat Eden eyes, and, strangely, each one of them had shoved a big stone right up to the edge. Suddenly they jumped into the hole, not stretching out their arms to fly like the ones we’d seen in the trees, but grasping their stones beneath them with all six hands, so that the flappy skin puffed out between their arms and slowed their fall as they disappeared into the steam.

‘We could do that,’ I said to Jeff, after a bit. ‘We could sew up skins and make something like that to break our fall.’

That made him laugh. He laughed and laughed, until even I couldn’t help smiling.

‘I never give it a rest, yeah? Is that what you’re thinking?’

‘No, you bloody don’t, John. It’s like everything in the world is just stuff for you to use for your plans.’

He carried on stroking Def, and watching the water dropping down through the steam.

‘And anyway, how would we get back out again?’ he said after a bit.

‘We could make ropes.’

This made him laugh again.

‘Big big ropes they’d have to be.’

The woollybuck groaned and snorted, and Jeff turned to attend to it. I leaned over the edge to look straight down. The steam had cleared a bit again, and I could see those shining trees again, way way down below: red and blue and yellow. And then I saw something moving down there, a row of ten twelve red lights weaving through the lights of the trees.

‘Jeff! Quick! Look!’

But steam blew back before Jeff had a chance to turn away from Def, and when it next cleared the moving lights had gone. It was only me that saw that long long creature winding its way through the trees.

‘What did you see?’

‘Just those trees down there again,’ I said.

Suddenly I jumped to my feet with a gasp and backed away from that dreadful hole. It was weird. I was shaking. It was like it had almost sucked me in.

‘What’s the matter, John?’

‘I don’t like this place.’

‘This hole, do you mean? Or Tall Tree Valley?’

‘Neither.’

‘You really don’t, do you?’

Still standing with Def by the edge of the hole, Jeff looked back at me and smiled.

It was horrible to think that, even for a moment, I’d suggested we might go down into that hole. It was like Underworld had been trying to trick me, to suck me away from sky and Earth.

‘We can’t stay here, Jeff. We’ll have to go back up on Dark and carry on to other side.’

‘No one will go up Dark with you now, John,’ Jeff said, climbing back onto Def’s back. ‘Not even Gerry.’

I pulled off Gela’s ring and started to twist and turn it between my fingers.

‘Okay, so I’ll just have to wait till the time’s right. But we can’t stay here forever, Jeff. We can’t!’

He didn’t answer. He just watched my fingers playing with Gela’s ring.

After a bit, feeling calmer, I passed it to him to hold. He studied it for a few seconds and then handed it straight back to me, the ring that Angela was given on Earth by her mother and father, like it was nothing more than a nice stone or a pretty bit of shell.

‘If we were there on Earth,’ he said, ‘then we’d call Earth here, and it would be the ordinary dull place we were stuck in, and Eden would be the strange wonderful place that was far far away.’

‘I don’t get you.’

‘I mean, wherever you are, that’s here, and that’s the only place you can be. Here or nowhere.’

I put the ring back on my finger.

Another monkey pushed a stone to the edge of the hole and dropped down through the steam.

‘Are you with me, Jeff?’ I asked.

Jeff laughed.

‘Yeah, of course I am.’

‘No, I mean are you on my side?’

‘Your side?’

I could see straight away that it wasn’t the right question to ask him. I always wanted to narrow things down, shut things out, concentrate all my effort on one point so as to get things done, but Jeff was the opposite of that. He was always reminding himself to lift his eyes from the things we all got absorbed in, and to see the wide world beyond. He’d never settle for seeing only one side of a thing.

‘I mean, are we friends?’ I finally asked lamely.

This made him laugh and laugh.

Then we heard a scared cry from back where the others were. We hurried back to find that Julie Blueside’s baby was on its way.