Chris Beckett - Dark Eden

‘I need a glue pit. I need a load of redlantern sap. I need some buckfeet. I need some more skins. I need some grease.’

That was ten twenty wakings’ work for me right there, just getting all that stuff together.

‘I’ll dig a pit first,’ I decided. ‘Make a deep pit, line it with clay, and dig a fire trench round it in a circle.’

Then I thought maybe I should look for another buck first. That way I’d get skins, grease, feet and something to eat.

It suddenly struck me that there was a dip going on, and that Starry Swirl was shining down from most of sky. I’d been so busy thinking that I hadn’t noticed before that moment that the air was growing colder.

‘Yeah, another buck,’ I went on, ‘that makes sense. There’ll be woollybucks coming down now in the dip. I’ll go down into Cold Path Valley and look for them.’

I went to get my spears, the good spear that Redlantern group had given me, and a spare. It was strange. Now I’d paused from all that thinking thinking, I remembered something else that I hadn’t noticed at the time. It was a sound I’d heard when I was down in forest getting in some starflowers: a drum and horns that started loud and faded, the sound of a funeral. And then I remembered hearing the hollowbranch horns two three other times too: two short blasts and a long. Family had been calling back wanderers. I’d let it all go past me. I’d shrugged it off. I’d not even wondered who it was that had died, or who was being called back and why.

‘What does that mean?’ I wondered. ‘ Why didn’t I notice? Why didn’t it worry me?’

And yet it still didn’t seem to worry me. I just felt restless restless, pacing up and down, slapping the shaft of my spear against my hand, trying to think what else I should look for while I was out hunting bucks, down in forest in Cold Path Valley. No, I didn’t feel worried, but I wasn’t at peace either. There was no peace in me at all.

‘Some clay,’ I muttered. ‘Some soft clay for the glue pit. And maybe some . . .’

But then I heard a voice call my name.

‘John! Hey John! John! It’s me.’

It was Gerry, I could tell that pretty much straight away, and it was weird weird, because at first I wasn’t pleased.

Oh Harry’s dick, not Gerry, that was my first thought. I’m way too busy to bother with him.

‘Hey John! It’s Gerry and Tina and Jeff!’

I had shut all my feelings away inside me these last wakings, I suppose, shut them down so they didn’t get in the way. But now a little glimmer stirred inside me of being pleased and grateful. I was about to go down and meet them but then I changed my mind.

‘No,’ I muttered, ‘no. That’s not the right way to start things off.’

It needed to be them coming to me , not me going to them. I didn’t want to have to owe them anything, not when I had so many plans.

I cupped my hands round my mouth and called down to them.

‘Hi there, I’m just up here by the caves.’

I put my spears back in their place, and squatted down to wait for them in front of my game of chess.

John had made himself his own little camp up the slope of that rocky spur to left of Cold Path Neck. He’d got a couple of spears neatly propped up beside the mouth of a cave, one of them a real blackglass hunting spear that Redlantern had given him, plus wraps and skins and bags piled up neatly inside, and four stonebuck legs hanging on strings. He’d got a little fire going and had marked out a chessboard on the ground and — Gela’s tits! — when we got up to him he was calmly sitting there, playing chess against himself.

Tom’s dick, I thought, what a poser. He’d been alone all those wakings and as far as he’d known, he was going to stay that way. Surely anyone would feel relieved to have friendly visitors in that situation? And anyone else would have come to meet us. Anyone else, for that matter, would have thought that maybe we’d need a hand with Jeff. But no, not John. He’d thought it all out carefully and he’d chosen to wait and be found there like that, playing chess by himself as if he was resting after a good waking’s work.

Jeff stopped where he was, taking this all in, but Gerry disentangled himself from his little brother and went running straight up to John, giving him a big hug and kisses with tears running down his face. As for me, though I released myself from Jeff as well, I hung back, waiting for John, waiting to be given some attention. But it didn’t come. Considering all that we’d given up to be here with him, all that we’d quite possibly lost, John was so distant distant that it was just weird.

‘I thought I heard a funeral a couple of wakings ago,’ were his first words. ‘Is that right? Who was it that died,?’

Gerry looked round at me to see if I was going to answer, but I gave a little shrug to let him know that he should do it. John might want to make me do all the hard work, but I wasn’t about to let Gerry do the same thing.

‘It was old Stoop,’ said Gerry. ‘Old Stoop finally bought it. But . . .’ He looked back round at me like I had the power to take the sting out of the news somehow. ‘But it wasn’t just Stoop, John, it was . . . well, it was Bella too.’

At once John looked away from all three of us, out over Circle Valley. He kept his face still still, but his whole body tensed up tight.

‘Bella? You don’t mean our Bella? Not Bella Redlantern?’

‘Yes, ours,’ Gerry said, looking round at me yet again, hoping I’d help him out.

‘Did for herself, John,’ I said. ‘Hanged herself from a tree like Tommy did.’

‘Yes, but . . .’

He squatted down again by his chessboard and looked at the little carved pieces for a long time like he was considering his next move.

‘It wouldn’t have happened if I’d let her come with me, would it?’ he said after a time.

‘No, John,’ said Gerry, ‘but . . .’

‘It wouldn’t have happened if I’d not spoken out or destroyed Circle,’ he said. ‘She’d still be group leader then, wouldn’t she? Still leader, still best leader of the bunch.’

‘It wouldn’t have happened either, John,’ I said, ‘if she’d kept her hands off you. She might have been a good leader but no other leader in whole Family would ask a boy to slip with her that she’d helped to raise. Not even the worst of them.’

‘I didn’t slip with her,’ John began. ‘She just . . .’

But then he broke off.

‘They write something on a stone for her?’ he asked after a moment.

‘Yes. It said: “Bella Redlantern: group leader”,’ Gerry told him.

John nodded and swept his hand over his chessboard, ending the game he’d been playing against himself.

‘You three hungry? I did for a little stonebuck the other waking, and I’ve still got a couple of legs. I’ll get this fire going a bit and you can eat.’

So we ate, and then Gerry and Jeff went off to sleep in a cave about twenty yards off and John and I went into the cave where he’d been sleeping and kept his things. The walls and ceiling of all of these caves were covered in rocklanterns that glowed red, blue, green and yellow, so it was bright bright in there, brighter than outside in forest, and in all that light I saw his face in a different kind of way. I’d been intending to have a go at him for the way he treated me, but he looked so weary weary, and so worn down and wretched that I just didn’t have the heart for anything like that, though most probably I looked nearly as weary and worn down as he did.

He didn’t seem to have the same problem with having a go at me , though.

‘You shouldn’t have brought Jeff,’ he said. ‘How can we cross Dark with him?’