Dark Eden

8 Tina Spiketree

Soon everyone who’d been in or near Family when the horns began to blow was in Circle Clearing. Hunters and scavengers who’d been a bit further out were still coming in. Others might not be there for a waking or two.

In middle of Circle stood Caroline Brooklyn, the Family Head, and Oldest, and Oldest’s helpers. The rest of us stood in the space between Circle and the edge of clearing, each group in its own little clump with its leader at the front. And one by one these leaders — fat old Liz Spiketree, thin weary Bella Redlantern, blind Tom Brooklyn — went up to Caroline to say how many in their group were here already, and how many were out hunting or scavenging and not back yet. A woman called Jane London, who was known as Secret Ree, sat just outside Circle with a bit of white bark, listening to all this and scratching the numbers down. Then we all had to wait while they added up the group counts and worked out the count for whole Family. This went on and on, like it did every Any Virsry.

‘Harry’s dick,’ I said to my sister (who was also called Jane), ‘how hard can it be to add up the numbers from eight groups?’

There was a lot of muttering and a lot of going back and forth from the edge of Circle to the groups waiting around. Some babies cried. That Batwing kid with the burn was groaning and moaning. Newhairs were giving each other looks and chucking things.

Then at last all the group leaders gathered together with Caroline and Oldest in Circle, and Caroline shouted and raised up her hands to get our attention.

‘There are two hundred and twenty-six women in Family,’ she announced, ‘one hundred and fifty-six men . . .’

Same number of boys and girls are born, they say, but loads more boys than girls die when they’re still small. That’s why there are always more women, even though women sometimes die having babies.

‘ . . . and a hundred and fifty children under fifteen years,’ Caroline said. ‘That makes five hundred and thirty-two people in Family, with sixteen of them still on the way here.’

‘Five hundred and thirty-two,’ wavered old Mitch, leaning on Caroline’s arm in middle of Circle, like a skeleton covered in dry yellow skin, with wispy white hair and a thin straggly beard. Little wizened Stoop and fat Gela stood beside him. All three were held upright by a couple of those women that were always fussing round them.

‘Family has never been this big,’ Mitch said. ‘When I was a child there were barely even thirty.’

‘Imagine that,’ I whispered to Jane. ‘Imagine just thirty people in whole world. How could they bear it? Even five hundred and thirty-two is way too few.’

Now the count was done, we didn’t have to stay in our separate groups, so I whispered ‘See you later’ to my sister and started to make my way through Family towards John.

‘One hundred and sixty-three years it’s been,’ says fat Gela in her heavy wheezy voice, ‘one hundred and sixty-three years since Tommy and Angela came to Eden.’

‘In a boat they came,’ went on little Stoop, when Mitch had poked him irritably with his bony fingers. ‘First in the starship Defiant, a wonderful sky-boat that could travel across the stars, and then in the Landing Veekle that came down from Defiant to the ground.’

‘Remember!’ Mitch called out in his thin wavery voice. He had a batface, not the full batface split right up into his nose, but a little split in his upper lip, and ‘Remember’ came out more like ‘Rememfer’. He was about to say something else, but then began to cough, and his eyes went even more red and watery, and he couldn’t speak.

I had reached John meantime. He was standing with his cousin Gerry. I squeezed his hand. I could feel the grownups’ eyes watching us. I could feel them thinking, That’s no way to carry on in an Any Virsry.

‘In the round Landing Veekle boat they came,’ said old Gela, her blind eyes bulging as if she’d just swallowed a big fat flutterbye by mistake, ‘and this Circle marks the place where they came to land.’

Their helpers led the three of them slowly round Circle of thirty-six white stones, which were supposed to mark the outline of the Landing Veekle, and guided Oldest’s blind hands so they could brush each stone with a bundle of twigs.

Michael’s names, it took a long, long time! There were whispers and murmurs. A little child began to wail and was hissed at to be quiet. Another little announced he wanted a piss. John’s cousin Gerry farted loudly, and newhairs and children laughed. Even some of the adults had a job to stop themselves smiling. Any Virsry had only just started and everyone was already bored. Even our grandmothers and their men were bored, though they wore a mask of respect.

Round and round the thirty-six stones went Oldest, slowly slowly slowly. People whispered. People wrinkled up their faces as Gerry’s fart wafted past them. People yawned. Blueside had been in middle of a sleep when the horns went, after all, and Redlantern and Spiketree were both right at the end of a waking.

Finally, Oldest returned to the centre once again and Gela poked Stoop, who looked cross at first, but then remembered what he was supposed to be doing.

‘There were five people who came down in the Landing Veekle,’ he went on, ‘and three of them returned in it to Defiant to try to get back to Earth. They were the Three Companions.’

Stoop paused and gazed at us as if his brain was stuck. We waited.

‘Defiant was damaged,’ he finally said in his little high voice, ‘and they knew it might break. But it had a thing inside it called the Computer, which could remember things, just like a person can, and another thing in it called the Rayed Yo, which could call out across space, so even if the Companions died, Earth could get news of us. And . . . and even now . . .’

Again he stopped, as if thoughts had suddenly stopped happening inside his shrivelled old head.

‘And even now Earth may be finishing a new sky-boat like Defiant to come and find us. So . . . So . . .’

‘So we must stay here and be a good Family and wait patiently,’ said Gela impatiently, ‘so that they will be pleased with us and will want to take us all back home to Earth.’

‘Sky-boats take a long long time to build,’ wheezed old Stoop, holding up his hand to stop Gela. ‘Defiant was as long as Greatpool, remember. And made . . .’ He had to stop to cough. ‘And made . . . and made not of wood but of metal, which takes a long long time to find.’

‘Think how long we’ve been looking for metal in Eden,’ wheezed Gela, ‘and we still haven’t found a single bit.’

‘Rememfer!’ gasped Mitch, before he began another fit of coughing.

A flock of jewel bats darted back and forth across the clearing. The trees had been pruned for generations to encourage them to grow more flowers and give off more light, and that meant there were lots of flutterbyes for the bats to feed on.

John looked at me, and I gave him a little oyster smile. He seemed alive alive and new new new, next to this old tired boring Any Virsry, going slowly round the same old things.

‘Remember that Tommy and Angela stayed in Eden,’ Mitch said when he’d finally managed to clear his throat, ‘and they made four daughters: Suzie, Clare, Lucy, Candice — and one son, Harry. But Candice was bitten by a slinker when she was a little girl and she died before she had reached six years.’

‘And Harry slipped with his sisters,’ said Stoop, ‘and . . .’

‘But Tommy said we must remember that a man should not slip with his sisters,’ interrupted Gela, ‘nor his daughters, nor even his cousins, not if there are others to slip with.’

‘And Suzie gave birth to two daughters who lived: Kate and Martha. And Clare gave birth to three daughters: Tina, Candy and Jade,’ said Mitch.

‘And Lucy gave birth to three daughters, Little Lucy and Jane and Angela. And Harry was father to all of these, so he’s our Second Father. Just like Tommy, he’s the father of us all.’

I yawned, and John yawned, and Gerry yawned in imitation of John.

‘And Harry had to slip with these girls too,’ said Mitch, ‘though they were his own daughters, and the children of those unions were Janny and Mary and . . . and . . .’

A look of panic came over that bitter old shrivelled batface of his . . . He’d forgotten! The long string that held his precious years together was broken! He couldn’t remember the next name in his list.

And then he smiled. Of course, of course.

‘The children of those unions were Janny and Mary and Mitch . . .’

Silly old fool. The child he’d forgotten was himself! The older people laughed affectionately with him. A lot of the younger people didn’t laugh at all.

But for some reason I did suddenly laugh. It came out loud and harsh. And John looked at me in surprise and then laughed too, and then of course so did Gerry, and other newhairs also took it up as well, all round the clearing.

Old Mitch noticed the mocking bark of us newhairs and turned on us, his watery blind eyes wide with distress.

‘You mock, newhairs, you mock our memories. But think of this! I’m a great-grandfather to you, and though I’m old old, one hundred and twenty years, I’m standing before you now. And listen . . .’

He coughed and spluttered and had to have his back patted by one of the helpers before he could go on.

‘And listen to this,’ he went on at last. ‘When I was young like you, I knew an old man too. He was my father’s father, and my mother’s grandfather, and I saw him standing there in front of me, just as you see me. And — listen to this! — that old man, my grandfather, was Tommy who came from Earth. I saw him, I touched him, and he came from another world beyond the stars!’

Tears of frustration were running down his face. He knew that, whatever he said, whatever threats he made, the time would soon come when he was dead, and then the time when our grandparents were dead, and then our parents. And when that point came it would be up to us whether we kept the True Story alive or let it die.

‘I saw and touched Tommy,’ old Mitch almost sobbed. ‘Think of that before you laugh, newhairs! Think of that!’

His sadness was so painful that I had to look away. Some of the younger ones around me actually wept, they felt so ashamed of laughing at him. I felt ashamed too but yet at the same time I was angry with myself for allowing the old bastard to touch my feelings like that. Gela’s tits, had he or the other two ever spared anyone else’s feelings? They spoke harshly to children. They told us we knew nothing. They prodded and poked us as if we were things.

‘The children of those unions were Janny and Mary and Mitch and . . .’ prompted Gela. She was bored and tired too, and when Mitch didn’t respond, she carried on herself. ‘And Stoop and Lu and Gela and . . .’ She named all the rest of the twenty-four brothers and sisters in her generation. ‘And Peter,’ she finished with a gasp. ‘And we were the ones who started the first seven groups in Family, and made the big fence. And we were the last to know Tommy who came from Earth, so you should remember us.’

And then at last Oldest were done. Their helpers settled them down on the ground with logs and buckskin to hold them up, and then the group reports began. One group leader after another gave their account of all the things that had happened over the year since the one hundred and sixty-second Any Virsry: the babies born; the people who’d died; the girls who’d got pregnant; the big hunts. It was boring boring. Bloody Batwing alone must have spent twenty minutes talking about that redlantern tree they’d chopped down and how they were shoving whitelantern seeds down the tubes in the hope that a whitelantern would grow up in its place.

‘Well I never!’ I whispered to John. ‘How unusual! Whoever would have thought of that!’

He smiled, and, seeing him smile, Gerry smiled too.

Two hunters from London came in from forest, so then there were only fourteen left to come, fourteen from Brooklyn still on their way back from their buck hunt out Alpway.

‘Now it’s time to discuss the Genda for Council,’ said Caroline, when the last report was done.

And now each of the group leaders came up with things they wanted to talk about: fish getting scarce in Greatpool, a leopard seen skulking half a mile from Batwing, an argument between Blueside and Starflower about some trees, a request from London for Blueside to move their group further up Blueway, so London could have a bit more space . . .

‘We’ll help you move the Blueside fence further out,’ said London leader Julie. ‘We’re not expecting you to do it all on your own. But our group is getting bigger.’

‘You’ve been helping with that, haven’t you, eh, John?’ I whispered to John. ‘You’ve been helping London get bigger. You and that woman Martha.’

He pulled a face at me and stuck out his tongue. I laughed.

‘We’ll help you pull down the fence and move it, Blueway,’ Julie repeated.

‘No chance,’ said Blueside leader Susan, who was round and solid and stubborn, like Lava Blob. ‘We’ve worked hard to get our group all nice with shelters and everything. Why would we want to hand it all over to you lot?’

‘Yes, but we can’t help that we’re in middle of Family. We haven’t got any new forest to move into.’

‘Maybe you should split your group into two. Start a new group beyond Blueside, like we did when Starflower started at hundred and fortieth Any Virsry . . .’

But Caroline stopped the discussion.

‘This is for Council, not for now. Right now we are just deciding on the Genda. What other things are going to be on it?’

Some little kids near to where me and John were standing started a silly playfight, chasing round and round the grownups’ legs.

‘Not enough meat any more,’ said old blind Tom from Brooklyn. He was the only group leader that was a man. ‘Not enough meat, not enough fruit and seeds and stumpcandy.’

‘So what are we going to do about it?’ Caroline said. ‘What do you want us to discuss?’

‘Last useful thing we did was back at Any Virsry hundred forty-five,’ Tom said, ‘when we stopped School.’

What he was talking about was that up to hundred and forty-fifth Any Virsry, there was School for kids between six years and twelve. Every waking, all the kids came together in Circle Clearing and a grownup called Teacher told them about writing and counting and the lost things from Earth and all that stuff. But at hundred and forty-fifth they’d decided they couldn’t spare kids from hunting and scavenging. So now most kids couldn’t write and Family relied on the remembering that happened at Any Virsries to pass on the old stories. There was a big argument in Council back then, apparently, when they finished with School, one of the biggest arguments ever.

‘We got more food in after that,’ Tom Brooklyn said, ‘with the kids to help, and no grownups tied up with being Teacher. Life was easier for a bit.’

‘So what should we give up now?’ asked Caroline.

‘That’s what we need to talk about.’

And then, Harry’s dick, John joined in the discussion!

‘It’s not a matter of giving something else up,’ he called out.

Well, everyone looked at him, every single person in whole Family. Even the little kids mucking around the legs of the grownups stopped and stared, because every single person in Family that was old enough to talk knew that, when the Genda was being agreed, the only ones who spoke out were the group leaders. Okay, maybe once twice in the past at an Any Virsry, a group leader had asked a grownup in their group to comment on something, but there was no way a kid or a newhair would ever have said anything, no way that they’d even have been asked. And no one, newhair or grownup, had ever ever just shouted something out.

So now everyone was looking at John. But they all looked in different ways. His mum Jade was looking across at him with a funny puzzled face, like she didn’t know what to feel. Gerry was looking at him like he was some kind of hero. David Redlantern, that hard batface, was glaring at him like he was a piece of buck shit. Bella Redlantern, standing out there with the other leaders by Circle, looked embarrassed but also a little bit proud.

And that, I suppose, is how I felt too. Embarrassed but a bit proud.

‘It’s not a matter of giving something up any more,’ John went on. ‘We haven’t got anything else to give up now anyway. We all scavenge and hunt every waking anyway, don’t we? What else are we going to do without? Sleep?’

Caroline looked at Bella Redlantern as if to tell her: ‘He’s one of yours. You sort him out.’

‘I think what John’s trying to say . . .’ Bella began.

‘We need to find a way of getting past Snowy Dark,’ John called out, ‘find new places for people to live.’

Tom’s dick and Harry’s, that settled it for me! John wasn’t one of those people who only do one brave thing.

‘Past Snowy Dark?’ exclaimed Caroline. ‘Past Snowy Dark? Oh come on, boy, everyone knows that’s impossible.’

She looked firmly away from him.

‘Anyway,’ she said briskly, ‘that’s enough time wasted. Let’s move on to . . .’

But John still hadn’t finished!

‘How do we know it’s impossible?’ he said. ‘How do we really know? We’ve never tried, have we? Not for a long time anyway. You should talk in your Council about having another go at it. Trying somehow to get across Dark. Or down Exit Falls. Or something.’

‘We certainly should not. For one thing you’re just a newhair boy and you can’t tell us what to talk about, and for another it’s a stupid idea. We’ve just talked now about how we had to give up School to have more time for hunting and scavenging, and how the hunting has got hard again. How could we possibly spare people for trips up onto Snowy Dark when we need all the grownups and newhairs and big kids to find food? It makes no sense at all.’

‘It makes no sense not to,’ John said. ‘There’s going to be more and more people and less and less for us to eat. We’ve got to find more to eat somewhere else.’

Everyone was embarrassed and uncomfortable by now. Quite a few people shouted out to John to shut up.

‘Leave it, boy, we need to get on with the Genda.’

‘Shut up, newhair! It’s not your place to talk.’

But he still kept on.

‘Well, if we don’t try and get past the mountains, then why don’t we at least spread ourselves out a bit across forest? Send one group over to Cold Path Valley maybe. One up by Dixon Snowslug.’

Now Caroline lost her temper.

‘Be quiet, boy!’ she snapped. ‘Be quiet now. Whole Family is here, whole Family, and it’s not the business of one silly newhair to stand up and tell us what we should discuss.’

With a mighty effort, and the assistance of two helpers, old Mitch rose up to his feet.

‘What’s the newhair saying?’ he demanded to know.

‘He says we should send groups over to different parts of the valley,’ said Bella, ‘so as to make it easier to find food.’

‘No!’ blind Mitch cried out into the pitch darkness around himself. ‘No, no, no, no!’

Stoop and Gela were also getting up now, staggering to their feet with their helpers fussing round them.

‘We must stay here,’ Stoop cried, and then gasped for air. ‘This is where they’ll come to find us! This is where they’ll come! And we must remain one, one Family, that’s what Angela taught us. One Family that does things together.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Caroline said, putting a hand on Stoop’s shoulder. ‘No way are we going to ever break up Family. We have one mother and one father. We always have been one Family and we always will be. If we break up then things will turn bad, one group against another, that’s what Angela said. But it is not going to happen and that’s final. So no discussion. No argument. We — all — stay — here.’

David Redlantern was pushing grimly towards John through the Redlantern people.

‘But Family can’t go on growing and growing,’ called out John, ‘and . . .’

David grabbed his shoulder.

‘Enough!’ he hissed.

Caroline pretended she hadn’t heard.

‘So what other things do we have to put on the Genda?’ she asked briskly.