Chris Beckett - Dark Eden

‘And that means that Defiant never left Eden at all. I . . . I suppose it must still be up there in sky somewhere, too high up for us to see. All this time, we’ve imagined it somewhere far out across Starry Swirl, but it’s been up there all the while. And that means . . .’

‘That means they’ll never come for us,’ wailed Lucy London. ‘Never, never, never!’

Pretty well everyone was crying — grownups, kids, men, women — crying and crying for that old old dream that would never never come true. Tina was crying, Gela was crying, Gerry was crying, Martha London was wailing wailing and rocking back and forth like a mum that’s lost a child. And there were tears running down my face too, even while I tried to get us past this. Only Jeff wasn’t crying. I think he’d understood what this meant from the moment we saw the Veekle, and now he was calmly watching everyone with his gentle interested eyes.

(Right behind him, on a whitelantern branch, a bat was watching too. Its head tipped slightly on one side, it watched, and fanned its wings and scratched its ear thoughtfully with a single thin black finger.)

‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘It means we have to give up on the idea that we’re waiting for Earth folk to come for us and take us back again to . . . back to . . .’

It took me three tries to get out the words, I was so sad sad. And yet it was me that that had destroyed Circle, me that had said we shouldn’t just sit and stew in Circle Valley, waiting for help from Earth.

‘ . . .back to that place where the light comes down from sky, bright as the inside of a whitelantern, and where they see clearly when we’re blind, and know about all those things that we have to try so hard hard hard to figure out.’

I was getting some control of myself now. I was pleased about that. And I could see them all looking at me, waiting for me to make it better for them, and I was pleased about that too.

‘But listen, everyone. We’re no worse off than we were before we found this thing. We’ve still got each other. We’ve still got fruit and meat to eat. We’ve still got Eden, just the same as it was last waking and all the wakings before, for all those generations. Nothing has changed except for one thing, and in a way it’s a good thing. Now we know for sure we can just get on with things and don’t have to wait around for Earth.’

I looked at Tina, and that reminded me of something she’d said to me once by Deep Pool, when we were newhairs back in Family.

‘It’s like when a kid gets lost in forest. The kid’s mum can’t rest, can’t get on with anything but searching and crying and searching, until they find the bones. And when they do find the bones and bring them to her, she’s sad sad, and she screams and cries and rocks and tears her wraps. But at least she knows there’s no point in searching any more, and slowly slowly she gets back to her life as it was before, and back to her other kids, knowing there’s no need to look out any more for the one that’s gone. We’ve always known that Earth might never come. We’ve always known that, even if Earth did come one waking, it probably wouldn’t be while we were alive. I mean, that’s what decided Tommy and Angela to stay here in the first place, isn’t it? But we’ve always deep down secretly hoped that Earth would come soon and carry us away from all our sadness and trouble, even if the odds were against it, and even though we knew — don’t forget this either — even though we knew that Earth had bad bad troubles of its own. We just couldn’t help it. We didn’t fully give ourselves to Eden because we were dreaming about that other place full of light. But now we can really be here.’

Jeff recognized that I’d got that last bit from him, and he gave me his funny little smile. Tina nodded. And Gerry, even though he was still crying crying, looked proud of me, and that always felt good. I nodded to myself. I thought I’d done well. I was pretty sure I’d got through to most of them.

I wiped tears from my own eyes and finished what I had to say.

‘We can’t stay here,’ I told them, ‘we’re still too close to Tall Tree ridge. And we can’t take this sky-boat with us. So we’ll just have to leave it behind us here. But it’s good that we found it. It’s good good. Those three have been sitting in there all this time like they were still trying to cross sky and finish their story, but now we’ve found them, that’s all over. They’re back in our story again and we can let them rest.’

They were back in our story. They existed again, and I was pleased about that, in spite of the sadness and loneliness of knowing they never even made it to Defiant , and the horrible sadness of losing even the hope of Earth.

For a moment I had a sense of people from the future all around us, generations and generations of them, watching this scene, calling to us in their faint thin voices. But I couldn’t make out what they were saying because living people right in front of me were shouting things out as well.

‘What will we do with the bones?’ asked Tina.

‘We can’t just go,’ sobbed Martha London, arm in arm with bulgy-eyed tear-stained Lucy. ‘There’s telly vision here, and lecky-trickity, just like Earth.’

‘We should take the bones out of the Veekle and bury them properly with stones,’ Gela said. ‘Give them a funeral.’

‘No time to find stones,’ I said at once, pulling myself back into the moment. ‘And anyway, remember why we buried people under stones when they died? It was so Earth could find them and take them home. And that’s . . .’ I stopped to steady my voice. ‘Well, like we’ve just talked about, that’s not going to happen, is it?’

Several people started to sob again at the thought that even our bones would never return to Earth. But one or two were already trying to figure out a new way of dealing with our dead.

‘Maybe we should just take them out and lie down them here, then,’ said Janny.

‘What?’ said Gela. ‘So David’s lot can find them and take them back for Lucy Lu to drool over?’

‘I know what we’ll do,’ said Tina. ‘We’ll put them in Worldpool, and all that swirly water will take them away.’

That was what we did.

Clare scratched their names on stones, with her tongue hanging out just like Secret Ree’s, and we laid them on the ground next to Veekle like the stones in Ash Clearing back in Circle Valley:

FIRST DIXON, ASTRONORT

MEHMET, ASTRONORT

MICHAL, ORBIT PLICE

Then we carried the bones down the rocks, and waded two three yards out to the place where the bottom of Worldpool dropped down into a deep deep waterforest. And we let them fall, twisting and turning and falling apart as they sank through the water lanterns and the shining shoals of fish, deeper and deeper into Eden.

We all clapped and cheered, except for sobbing Lucy and Martha London, who were still grieving for the telly vision and the lecky-trickity. And then we went back up the rocks and everyone started loading things up again onto the bucks. I didn’t even have to ask them to do it.

‘John? Alright? Everything’s ready now. Shall we go?’

Tina spoke in that pained voice she used when she could see I was troubled about something. Bloody old Tina, it was always the same: she wanted me to show myself more, but she wanted me to hide myself more as well, both at the same time.

‘Just a moment,’ I said. ‘Just give me a moment.’

I walked over to the edge of the cliff. The shining water of Worldpool was bright bright and three big fatbucks were swooping and swerving through the swaying branches and coloured lanterns of underwater trees.