Chris Beckett - Dark Eden

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.