Chris Beckett - Dark Eden

‘What do you mean I shouldn’t have brought Jeff? According to whose plan? According to what agreement?’

He looked up at me. He passed his hands over his face. I could see that we could go on and on with this or we could let it go, and I didn’t have the energy to go on and on. So, as a way of stopping things, I took his hand. Immediately he pulled me up against him and we were kissing and running our hands over each other, and ripping off each other’s bitswraps and pulling each other down onto the sleeping skins he’d got down there on the sandy floor. And then we were sticking our tongues and things into each other, and licking each other, and he was pushing into me like he’d die if he didn’t get in there quick enough, and I was pulling him up inside like he was still taking far too long. And we rolled over each other and pulled each other this way and that way into every possible angle and every possible way of tangling our bodies together we could think of. And it was sort of a way of getting close, but at the same time it was a way of keeping apart and not having to be close at all. And it was sort of a way of feeling we were alive and in the world, and at the same time a way of shutting the world away completely.

I didn’t want babies and he didn’t want them either, but he needed so badly to have someone he could be inside and not be alone, and I needed so badly to have someone fill up my emptiness, that we forgot all about that. He came inside me two times, the first time with a soft little groan and the second time with a big loud lonely cry, like a cry of pain. Pretty soon after that he was fast fast asleep. I guessed that he hadn’t slept much since he was chucked out of Family, however calm calm he’d pretended to be when we arrived, however cool cool.

Come to that I hadn’t slept much either, but I still couldn’t sleep now. I lay there for a long time looking up at the little shiny lumps of squishy rocklanterns on the roof of the cave with the little cave flutterbyes bumping and flapping around them, and I listened to John breathing and making little whimpering sounds in his sleep, and I wondered what would happen next.

Gela’s eyes, I thought. Family might have been bad — it was too small, it made me feel like I couldn’t breathe — but look at me now! I’d got myself into a world with just three other people in it, a world consisting of me and three boys: one of them cold and distant, one with no will of his own, and one who was just weird. You try to get away from something bad, and things just get worse and worse.

Well, they do get worse if you don’t think straight, I told myself. Look what you’ve bloody done. As if there wasn’t enough trouble to deal with already, you’ve come over here to the one person that’s made an enemy of everyone, and caused all the trouble in the first place. And he’ll cause more and more, you know he will, because he can’t leave a thing alone, he can’t bear anything that hasn’t got his personal mark on it.

And then I thought of cruel cruel David back in Family, and cold Caroline, who refused even to consider whether John had a point, and bloody old stupid bossy Liz Spiketree and the creepy Secret Ree, and I thought, I hate this whole world. I hate Eden, this miserable dark place we’re all trapped in for bloody ever. We shouldn’t be here, that’s the real problem: it wasn’t the world we were made for. We were meant to live in light.’

Pretty soon John started to snore and I couldn’t stand it in that lousy cave for a minute more.

There was more air outside, but of course not the bright light of Earth. It was dark like Eden always is, darker even than in the cave: dark except for the lanterns and the stars. In fact, I thought, it was still a cave really out there, still a cave, only with stars instead of rocklanterns. That was what Eden was like. We were trapped inside a dark little cave with no way out of it. And even though I’d never known anything else, and probably never would do, I longed and longed for that different world that was full of light. I don’t mean just longed for it in a sad wistful way. I longed for it like a blind person must long to see. I longed for it like you’d long for air if you couldn’t breathe. I had to stop myself from screaming out.

‘What’s keeping you, Earth?’ I muttered. ‘When are you going to bloody come for us?’

‘Hello Tina, are you alright?’

Weird Jeff was out there, sitting on a rock. He’d been looking out over forest of Cold Path Valley with the dark shadows of mountains all around it. A couple of starbirds were calling out to each other across it. Hoom! Hoom! Hoom! came from some way off and then, quite near, Aaaah! Aaaah! Aaaah! Two three monkeys were chasing through the trees below us, making their funny clicking noises, and flashing their bright blotchy skins.

‘Why are you up?’ I asked him, and it came out almost like I thought he’d done something wrong.

He looked at me with his big round eyes.

‘My feet hurt,’ he said. ‘They hurt too much for me to sleep.’

He wasn’t crying or anything — that wasn’t what Jeff was like — but he lifted up one of his twisted old feet to show me. It was all bloody and raw.

‘Michael’s names! That must hurt.’

I looked around to find some water. Streams in the hills could be really cold because they came fresh down from Snowy Dark, but I found a small pool just a bit below the caves that was warmed by hot spiketree roots. Water came into one side of it cold cold from Dark, and trickled out the other side warm warm, as it made its way down to Cold Path Stream. I led Jeff down there and helped him bathe and get all the dirt off. Then I mashed up some starflowers, which they say help a bit with raw wounds like that, and smeared the mixture onto his twisted old clawfeet.

I’m not someone who likes to look after people all that much. I never played mummies when I was a kid. I never wanted to help look after the littles back in group like some young girls do. I never looked forward to the time when I’d have kids of my own. But it felt good to have something to do. And after I had dried his feet off as best I could, I put my arm round him and we lay down by the pool there and pretty soon, what with the trickling trickling water and everything, we both went off to sleep.

‘What are you doing?’

I was really scared for a moment. Someone was standing over us with a spear.

Then I saw it was John.

‘Oh, it’s you.’

Jeff was still asleep but I released my arm from around him, rubbed it a bit because it had gone numb, and sat up. I don’t know how long we’d been there, but the dip had passed and sky was grey-black again like it normally was, with Starry Swirl hidden away again until the next dip. I didn’t want to wake up. I’d been having that lovely dream that everyone has, the dream about Earth, where there isn’t darkness behind everything but only light, light, light.

‘I don’t want women slipping with young boys in my new family.’

What? Gela’s eyes , there were so many different things wrong with that single statement that it was hard to know where to start!

‘I’m not slipping with him, you idiot. He’s a little kid, for Gela’s sake! His feet were hurting, I came down here with him to help him wash them, and we fell asleep . . . And another thing, I’m a kid too. I’m a newhair, like you are, not a woman. And another thing, what do you mean your new family ? A new family? Yours?’

He opened his mouth to answer but I hadn’t finished.

‘Yes, and what business is it of yours who I slip with anyway? You didn’t ask me when you went with Martha London or with . . .’