‘We need to discuss this,’ Caroline said. ‘Let’s decide who ought to speak first.’
‘How about his mother?’ murmured Candy Fishcreek.
‘Yes,’ agreed Caroline, scanning the crowd surrounding her, out round the edge of this stuffy little cave of cloud. ‘His mother. Jade Redlantern. Where are you, Jade?’
A rustling came from the place where most of the Redlantern people were standing, and you could see which one was Jade because hers was the only face that was still looking forward.
‘I’m here,’ she said in a small wavery voice.
And it was an odd thing. Jade wasn’t just pretty, she was a great beauty. She knew how to stand and how to hold herself and how to move herself, so as to command envy and desire and love. If men spoke or came up to her — and women too — she could dismiss them, or tease them, or give them their heart’s desire just by the way she moved her face and her body. But now she was lost, she had no idea how to speak or to compose herself. It sounds harsh but what she reminded me of was a whitelantern fruit that looks all ripe and lovely till you turn it round and you see the hole where the ants have got into and hollowed it out inside.
‘Well, um, he’s not all bad, John isn’t . . .’ she began.
It was like she was talking about someone she didn’t even know that well.
I looked at John. He was watching her. You couldn’t read the expression on his face, but his eyes were sort of hard and shiny. Not shiny with tears but with something like the opposite of tears, I thought, though I suppose it didn’t make a lot of sense.
‘ . . . but it’s a bad thing he’s done,’ Jade said lamely, and she sort of made a face, like it really wasn’t all that much to do with her, and didn’t say anything else.
‘Can I speak, Caroline?’ said Bella Redlantern.
Caroline turned round to her.
‘Go on,’ she said coldly.
‘I didn’t know what he was going to do, and I haven’t talked to him about it,’ she said, ‘but he’s a boy who feels passionately about things, feels passionately about the future of Family especially. I don’t really understand why he did this, but he will have done it because he thought it would help.’
‘Help?’ asked Caroline. ‘Help?’
She looked around at us all, making an incredulous face, trying to get a reaction out of us. Some people tittered, some shouted out ‘Shame on you Bella! Shame!’, which was just what Caroline wanted.
‘I may be getting too old for this,’ Caroline said, ‘I may be missing something obvious. But if you take something that is dear and precious to other people and calmly destroy it, how can you call that helping them?’
She didn’t wait for an answer.
‘Who else wants to comment?’
‘Make him put Circle back again!’ called out a fat dim woman called Gela Blueside.
‘But it can never be what it was!’ Caroline said. ‘Think about it. We could make another circle. We could use a rope to measure it out and make something that looked pretty much the same. And I daresay that is what we’ll do. But it’ll never again be the stones that Angela and Tommy chose, never the stones they laid in place with their own hands.’
Gela Blueside began to cry like she’d been scolded.
‘And I’ll tell you something,’ Caroline went on. ‘If and when we do restore that Circle, no way will this wicked boy have the honour of coming anywhere near it.’
‘Do like David said,’ called a big dark gloomy Starflower man called Harry. ‘Spike him up. Like Hitler did to Jesus. That will repay Mother Angela for the hurt that’s been done her. Otherwise we’ll all bear the burden of it, on and on and on.’
‘Yeah, that’s right,’ called out a sharp little woman called Lucy Fishcreek. ‘If he doesn’t pay the price for it, we all will. Us and our children and our children’s children too.’
‘That’s true,’ said Julie the London leader, with the authority of Council in her voice, ‘that’s true true. He’s shamed all of us, not just himself.’
‘Angela is crying,’ wailed that horrible wet-eyed Lucy Lu from Redlantern. ‘Angela is crying out for our help.’
Harry’s dick, I thought, it could really happen. They really could spike John up like Jesus.
But Candy, the Fishcreek group leader, whispered: ‘Remember the Laws, remember the Laws on the trees. We mustn’t kill.’
Caroline nodded.
‘Who else that knows him wants to speak? He’s got no brothers or sisters, has he? How about his cousins?’
Gerry stood up. Poor kid. He was white white as anything but he wanted desperately to do right by his hero John.
‘John’s brave, don’t forget. He does stuff no one dares to do. Remember how he did for that leopard!’
Tears came from his eyes. How brilliant everything had seemed to him back then, when he’d been the one to witness John do for the leopard. How happy he’d been for John when whole Family praised him.
‘He’s braver than just about everyone in Family,’ Gerry said. ‘Maybe the bravest one of all.’
He looked round at his little brother, weird little clawfooted Jeff, who was younger than him, yet in a way much older. I think Gerry was hoping Jeff would think of better arguments than he could. And Jeff did speak, but all he would say was that weird phrase he came up with at the weirdest times, for no obvious reason at all.
‘We are here,’ he said. ‘We really are here.’
Some people laughed, some yelled out that if he wasn’t going to talk sense, he should shut up his bloody gob.
‘He means this isn’t a dream,’ Gerry tried to explain. ‘He means that this isn’t just some kind of story.’
‘You don’t say!’ someone called out sarcastically. ‘I never would have known that.’
But it was like a dream, in that gaping space, with the mist shutting us away from forest and from sky. It was like an evil dream. Either that, or everything else had turned out to be a dream and the only true thing in the world was this: Family, our miserable, bitter, lonely Family, full of stupid people, full of hateful, disappointed people, full of sour people, full of ignorant people who never thought anything through for themselves.
‘Why don’t you let John speak!’ I called out.
David turned on me. He was still out in front there, like he was another centre, separate and apart from Caroline and Council. Hateful hateful man, I’d often seen him secretly looking at me, longingly, knowing quite well that I’d never let him near me. But now he felt power on his side.
‘Oh-ho! I wondered when his little slippy girl would speak!’
‘Bella is right,’ I said. ‘He did it for a reason and you ought to hear what he has to say.’
Caroline frowned.
‘Why should we let him tell us his silly ideas, just because he’s done something wrong?’
But she was wavering and several people in the crowd called out.
‘Yeah, let him have his say.’
‘It’s only fair.’
Caroline nodded.
‘Alright then, John. You have two minutes.’
And she turned and looked at Secret Ree, who nodded and laid down the bark that she’d been scribbling on, and put her finger on her own wrist to count out one hundred and twenty pulses.