Dark Eden

45 Sue Redlantern

I was grinding up seeds to make some cakes for dinner when a Batwing kid came running into Redlantern area, shouting out that Mehmet Batwing had come down again from Dark. He’d come down with two Fishcreek boys, Paul and Gerald, who’d been the latest two sent up by David across Dark to the place called Tall Tree Valley where Mehmet and his lot lived. Mehmet, Paul and Gerald had gone straight to Guards up along Greatpool, without walking through the rest of Family at all. But one of the Guards had told his sister about it, and news was spreading from her across Family about what had happened. Apparently Paul and Gerald had met John up there: our John, John Redlantern! He’d been visiting Tall Tree too, but from the other direction, from some other place on the far side of Dark, some other forest.

Harry’s dick, how many different places were there in the world?

Not that I was worrying about that just then. As soon as I heard the news I knew something bad bad was going to happen and I ran straight over towards Guards, yelling out the news on my way to everyone I saw.

‘They’ve found out where John and his lot are!’ I called out. ‘They’ll go over after them unless we stop them! Go after our boys and girls. Spread it about! Quickly! Come over to Guards now!’

It was already busy busy in Guards. They were getting out warm wraps for the snow and rolling them up. They were tying up bunches of arrows. They were taking out their strongest blackglass spears and their best leopard tooth knives.

‘What’s happening?’ I bellowed at them. ‘What in Gela’s name is going on?’

Guards laughed and went on gathering their things together and tying them onto their backs with string and buckskin straps.

‘Get out of our way,’ David said, stuffing some wraps into a bag. ‘We’re busy. We’ve got a job to finish, and we’ll have no time spare until it’s done.’

Mehmet was there beside him, already up on the back of his woollybuck, ready to lead the way back up Dark.

‘What job?’ Jade asked David.

I looked round, surprised. There were ten eleven mums there, and Jade had come running up with the rest of them.

‘You know what job, Juicy John’s mum,’ David told her. ‘You know perfectly well what job. We’ve found out where your juicy boy is hiding out with his chums, and we’re going to do what we should have done long ago.’

‘They’re our boys and girls,’ I told him. ‘They’re Family’s. They’re not yours to do what you like with!’

David came over to me and sneered into my face.

‘They’re our boys,’ he simpered in a fake little whiny whiny voice. ‘They’re part of Family. They’re not yours to do what you like with.’

Then he snorted and stepped back from me so he could talk to all us women together in his normal rough hard voice.

‘Everyone listened to that talk before, didn’t they? All that stuff about how dear sweet Juicy John was our boy, how he was one of us, how we mustn’t hurt him. And look where it got us, eh? Four people dead who’d be living and breathing now if it wasn’t for him! Four people! And a baby inside its mum’s womb. Now get out of my way, and don’t talk to me about being sorry for people.’

I ran forward and grabbed hold of his arms.

‘Listen to me, David Redlantern, I’ve known you since you were a little boy. I looked out for you. You know I did. I told you stories. I comforted you when the other kids teased you. I looked after you. So listen to me. You owe me that, and I’m not letting you go until you . . .’

He turned and called over his shoulder.

‘Mike! Get her off me and keep her off me.’

A hard young London boy called Michael came with his mate and dragged me roughly off David.

‘You’re in charge here until we get back, Mike,’ David said. ‘Meantime keep these blubbering oldmums out of our way so we can finish getting ourselves together and go.’

David had his Guards divided into two groups. One group was to go with him up over Snowy Dark, with Mehmet Batwing as their guide. The other group — about twenty of them, all with spears and big clubs — was to stay back in Family with Michael London in charge, so as to hold us back and to keep us under control while he was gone. But of course all of this lot that had been told to stay and control us were men and newhairs that we’d known for wombs (as were the lot that went with David over to Dark), and quite a few of them were cousins and uncles and even brothers of the group of kids who’d gone over to John all those wakings ago.

‘Back off, all of you!’ shouted Michael London, prodding at us with the butt end of his spear. This silly self-important kid was no older than my Gerry. But he was determined that if he was going to miss all the excitement across Dark, he was going to have fun back here instead.

‘Back off or we’ll use these clubs on you!’

And meantime David and the other lot of Guards — another twenty men and newhair boys — climbed onto their buckhorses with their weapons and their snow-wraps, two Guards on each buck, and started to head off Peckhamway.

‘David!’ I yelled after him. ‘David! Please stop!’

He didn’t even look back.

‘Mehmet!’ I shouted then. ‘Don’t lead him to them! He wants to do for them all!’

Mehmet Batwing did look round, and his face was strange strange because it was two things at the same time. He was trying to look cold and hard like David — and part of him really was enjoying the power he had — but part of him was troubled too. It was like he was only now really understanding what it was that he’d set loose, now that it was too late to stop. He had got a sort of power, a sort of importance, but he’d only got it by giving up having any real power at all.

‘Mehmet!’ I shouted, as he turned quickly away again. ‘You don’t want to do this, so don’t do it! We’ll back you up.’

All the other mums were yelling now, and other people were still arriving from groups, and they were yelling too, calling out to David, calling to people they knew among the twenty Guards on buckback: ‘Johnny! Mike! Dixon! Mitch! Pete! Don’t go with them! Don’t go!’

And some of the Guards looked back from the backs of their bucks, and some didn’t. But, either way, what could they do? They were in the same position as Mehmet. They’d gone too far. If one of them turned back, it would be him that the others would be spiking up next.

We turned our attention to the Guards who were holding us back:

‘Let us go! Let us bloody go! They’re going after our boys and girls. They’re going after people that used to be your friends and your groupmates. They’re going to kill them! Is that really what you want?’

They just shrugged. A few laughed mockingly but you could see a lot of them were troubled by what was happening. It made no difference, though. They still wouldn’t let us get past them. How could they? It was the same for them as it was for their mates riding out towards Snowy Dark on their bucks. If they didn’t do what they were told, they were at risk themselves. So they frowned and avoided our eyes and prodded us and hit us with clubs and spearbutts if we pushed forward or tried to get round them. And then, pretty soon, it was too late for us to catch up with the bucks anyway, so they shrugged and let us go.

‘Do what you want,’ said Michael London. ‘Just get out of Guards area and stop that bloody yelling. You’re making my head hurt.’

And they turned their backs on us and walked off in different directions, pretending that they were busy and didn’t have time for our nonsense, but really just trying to get away from all of this, so as not to have to face us, or think about what they were doing.

Some of the mums ran straight off into forest after David and his lot, but there was no point in that. People can’t run as fast as bucks, and David had made sure sure that no one in Family had horsebucks to use except only for Guards. So I ran instead after the two boys, Paul and Gerald Fishcreek, who’d come down with Mehmet from Tall Tree Valley and were now part of the group of Guards who’d been told to keep us under control.

‘What did you see up there? Who did you see? What did they tell you?’

They looked at each other guiltily, and then looked round to see if anyone else was near.

‘John and your boys came up while we were there,’ Gerald said, with a silly fake shrug, pretending it was all nothing to him. ‘Gerry and whatsisname . . . Jeff.’

‘Gerry? Jeff? Both my boys?’

I was shaking now. It was weird weird, to be talking to someone who’d seen my two sons only a few wakings ago, but there wasn’t much comfort in it, not with David and his lot riding towards them.

‘How were they?’ I asked him.

Again Gerald looked at his groupmate. Then he shrugged again.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Pretty good. They’ve grown. Jeff’s a big bloke now, with a beard and all. Quite a looker, actually.’

‘Do you hate them?’

Gerald glanced at Paul.

‘Well, no,’ he muttered. ‘Of course not.’

‘But yet you came back here with Mehmet Batwing to tell David about them, knowing how badly David wants to spike them up to die?’

‘We didn’t . . .’

‘Come on, Gerald. You knew David would be after them the moment he got the news. Don’t try and tell me you didn’t.’

Gerald looked desperately at Paul. I looked at Paul too. I gave him the look I give to naughty children, and he looked guilty and scared for a moment and then straight away he frowned, making his face hard hard hard, a proper Guard’s face. It was like he was putting on a mask.

‘Back off, Sue Redlantern,’ Paul said. ‘Back off or I’ll use this club on you, alright?’

‘What?’ I hissed at him. ‘Club me for asking you why you want to do for my own sons?’

He cowered like I’d just hit him, but held his club tight in his hand.

I let them go, the silly weak kids. And then I cried and cried. I cursed First Tommy and First Dixon and First Mehmet for bringing human life to Eden. I cursed Tommy and Angela for deciding to stay here and slip together and so bring all of us from peaceful peaceful nothingness into this cruel dark world. This was a bad bad place. People weren’t meant to live here. People were meant to live on Earth where it’s fresh and bright and new as the inside of a lanternflower. This place was only good for creatures from dark dark Underworld, with flat eyes and green-black blood and six limbs with claws. Nothing good would ever come to us in this miserable dark Eden. Never. Never. Never. There would only ever be pain and misery and blood, blood, blood.

‘Sue,’ a voice whispered behind me. ‘Sue.’

It was Gerald Fishcreek back again, without his brother, without his spear.

‘Julie warned them, Sue. She slipped with Jeff up there, up at Tall Tree, and she warned him about David and Mehmet. She told him Mehmet would talk to David, and what David would do when he found out where they were.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Because I spoke to her. You’re right, I don’t hate John and your boys. In fact when we met them up there I really liked them, specially your Jeff. And after the three of them had gone and there was no one else near, I said to Julie that I wished I’d warned them what was going to happen. And she said, “Well, don’t worry, Gerald, because I did.”’

Well, I hugged him, and then I hit him hard hard round the face, because if John and the others were saved by that warning from Julie, it would be no thanks to this cowardly little slinker, whose conscience only started to prick him after it was too late, so that he could reassure himself that he wasn’t really bad without the trouble of actually doing anything that was any good. And then I hugged him again anyway for telling me.

He pulled away from me, looking round guiltily. And now he put on his hard Guard face too, just like his groupmate Paul had done.

‘Don’t ever speak to me about it again, alright?’ he said. ‘Don’t ever tell anyone I spoke to you, because I’ll call you a liar if you do.’

‘Did they say what it was like over the other side?’

He looked round again. He wanted to go. He was scared scared someone would see him talking to me.

‘Big,’ he said, ‘a big big forest. So big, they said, that you can’t even see where it ends. And there’s a pool there that’s just the same. You can’t see the ends of it. You can’t see across to the other side.’

Off he ran. I sank down against a whitelantern trunk and cried some more. But it was a different kind of crying now. I was crying with relief. They still had a good chance of getting away from David, into that big big forest, which they knew and David didn’t.

Yes, I thought, but it’s an odd thing, isn’t it, a sad sad thing, for a mum to be relieved that her sons can go further away from her, and hide in a place where she may never see them again?