Dark Eden

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.
    And there
were
differences, I thought, kneeling above her but looking away across Family towards Batwing on the far side, and thinking about the groups between here and there. For example, the names. Blueside just means the group that’s furthest over Blueway, the side nearest Blue Mountains, Redlantern just means we’ve got a big bunch of Redlantern trees (which we’re slowly cutting down and replacing by chucking whitelantern seeds down the stumps). But London and Brooklyn were proud proud of the fact that
their
names came from across Starry Swirl, from Earth. The Earth folk had a
big
big Family, with many many groups in it. Angela’s group was called London and the people there had black faces like Angela did. Tommy’s group was called Brooklyn, though some people called them the Juice. (As for the Three Companions, who took
Defiant
back across Starry Swirl, leaving Tommy and Angela in Eden, we don’t know the group names of Dixon and Michael, but they say Mehmet’s group was called Turkish,