Chris Beckett - Dark Eden

‘Yeah,’ said Tina, ‘this is what we’ve got.’

She moved over near me, and looked right up close into my face.

It was different now to last time. Sometimes boys and girls did a slide together just to stop themselves having to talk, and stop themselves having to notice what was happening. Sometimes it was like going to sleep, or stuffing your face with food. Sometimes it was like hiding from the leopard up the bloody tree. That was why I hadn’t wanted to do it before. But right now, if we did it, it would be different. It wouldn’t be like hiding away from the leopard. It would be like facing it. I leaned forward to kiss her sweet cruel funny mouth. I leaned forward. She moved towards me. I . . .

Paaaaarp! Paaaarp! Paaaarp!

The sound came from Family and echoed round the rocks. Paaaaarp! Paaaarp! Paaaarp! An ugly sound on many different notes that didn’t fit together. Paaaaarp! Paaaarp! Paaaarp! Up from Circle Clearing. Paaaaarp! Paaaarp! Paaaarp!

‘Gela’s tits!’ hissed Tina, sitting back up.

We’d heard it many times before. It was the signal for whole Family to come together. It was Any Virsry. Oldest must have finally agreed on their days and their years. They must have decided that this was the moment — this was three hundred and sixty-five days after the last Any Virsry — and called for Caroline and the rest of Council to get out the hollowbranch horns and get hold of all the newhairs and young men they could find to blow them.

Paaaaarp! Paaaarp! Paaaarp!

It was an ugly noise but it carried well. It carried all over the valley, querulous like Oldest themselves. If there were woollybuck hunters up by the snows at Cold Path they’d hear it. If there were people digging out blackglass out by Exit Falls they’d hear it. If there were people up by Dixon Snowslug looking for stumpcandy, they’d hear it and know what it meant.

Paaaaarp! Paaaarp! Paaaarp!

‘We don’t have to go straight away,’ Tina said.

‘We don’t have to go at all,’ I said.

She looked at me.

‘That’s true. What could they do to us?’

‘Nothing really. Nothing much.’

Tina smiled ruefully.

‘No. But if we don’t go now, that’s all we’ll be thinking about, isn’t it? The fact that we’ve been called to Any Virsry and haven’t gone.’

I nodded. Family was inside us, not just out there in the world. If we didn’t do what Family asked, Family out there wouldn’t need to say anything, because it would be accusing us already from inside our own skin. Kissing would be no fun, slipping would be no fun. I felt my dick shrivel just at the thought of it.

So we started climbing up the rocks away from Deep Pool and back to Family.

London was at the beginning of their waking. Blueside had been right in middle of their sleep. In Brooklyn, only the youngmums and oldies and clawfeet and little kids had been there in group, because everyone else was out on a big groundbuck hunt up Alps way. But it didn’t matter whether it was your waking time or your sleeping time or whether you were inside or outside of Family Fence. Everyone was now moving towards Circle Clearing.

As we came back through Family, we saw oldies, youngmums, little kids, newhairs, people who’d been sleeping, people who’d been eating, people who’d just been starting a new waking, all already on their way. And, though we couldn’t see them, we knew that, across forest, hunters and scavengers would be abandoning whatever it was they were doing too and turning back, though some would have a couple of wakings’ walk ahead of them. All the people in Eden, all the people in the world, were heading for Circle Clearing. That was how it was: you could be out in forest, or up on the edges of the hills, or over by Exit Falls where the water goes roaring down into darkness, but wherever you were, and whoever you were, you were still in Family .

By Dixon Stream, passing through old Jeffo’s place, with his logs and his gluepit and his skins, we caught up with Gerry and little Jeff.

Gerry looked at me like he always did, checking out my mood, getting ready to adjust his own.

‘Bloody Any Virsry!’ he said, as soon as he was sure that I was annoyed, and he slashed at a low-flying bat with a stick.

It was a lucky shot. He broke its wing. It fell to the ground, twitching and squealing and holding out its tiny naked little hands as it if was appealing to us for pity.

‘Gotcher!’ Gerry muttered, stamping out its life.

Jeff looked down at the little corpse for a moment — it was a silvertip, no good to eat — and he looked at his brother and at me and at Tina, then back at Gerry again.

Paaaaarp! Paaaarp! Paaaarp! went the hollowbranch horns, demanding our presence and our obedience.

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.’