‘Bloody John Redlantern, why should I feel bad about him?’ I said. ‘He didn’t consult me about what he was going to do. He didn’t tell me a bloody thing. So why should I feel bad that I’m not out there with him, tossed out by Family, sharing the punishment for what he did?’
But then we heard a wail from Blueside across the water. It was that long low sound that people made when someone died.
‘Gela’s heart,’ I cried, jumping to my feet. ‘Not John. Surely not John?’
A bunch of Starflower grownups had had a nasty surprise out on a hunting trip. They’d found a dead body hanging from a tree by a rope, already half-eaten by starbirds. It wasn’t John, though. It was Bella Redlantern. She’d killed herself in the same way that Tommy did, the father of all of us, when he was old old and blind and couldn’t bear living with it all any more.
But we hadn’t even got all the stones ready to bury her when there was another death. Little old Stoop finally couldn’t get the air inside him quick enough any more and he keeled over and died with his skin turned blue and his eyes bulging out of his head like a frogbird’s. So they wrapped him in buckskins and laid him along with Bella, over in Burial Grounds, out in forest on the far side of Long Pool. And whole Family filed past each of them and each of us laid down the stones we had brought, first around them and then over them, until they were quite covered up. And then Caroline took two big flat stones that Secret Ree had scratched their names on, and laid on top of these two new heaps, squeezed in among all those hundreds of other heaps, with ‘Tommy Schneider, Astronaut’ and ‘Angela Young, Orbit Police’ side by side right in middle.
‘Bella Redlantern, Group Leader’, Secret Ree had written, ‘Stoop London, Oldest’, and now she beat slowly slowly on the big funeral drum — it was the other special duty of Secret Ree — while four five people blew on hollowbranch horns to make that special lonely funeral sound that begins loud and falls away.
PAAAAAaaaaaaaaaarrp! PAAAAAaaaaaaaaaarrp!
BOOM BOOM BOOM, went the tiny Secret Ree on her great big drum, and then she stopped and put her hands on the tight buckskin to silence it, and Caroline stood up and did the Funeral Speech about what fine people they both had been in spite of their faults, and how Bella’s and Stoop’s bones would now rest here peacefully until Earth finally came.
‘And then at last they will be taken home to Earth,’ she said, ‘and buried there to rest peacefully under the bright bright Sun in the world where human beings were meant to be.’
She paused, and looked around at all of us. The fug was still pressing in on us, and the sweat was pouring down our faces.
‘And let us all remember,’ she said, ‘that even if we die here on Eden before Earth comes, we will all still return, just so long as we do what we were asked to do, and stay here together in Family, next to Circle of Stones.’
That was the end of the funeral, and we all picked our way through the heaps of stones and hurried away from that horrible place with that stale and musty smell of death that crept out through the gaps between the stones.
On the way back to Family I caught up with Gerry Redlantern and his weird little brother Jeff. Gerry was in a bad bad state. He’d barely slept or eaten since John went away.
‘I can’t stand this,’ he muttered. ‘I’m going to go out and find him. I know where he’ll be. He’ll have gone out Cold Path way. There’s a place just inside main valley, Alpway from Cold Path Neck, near where he did for that leopard. He said it would be a good place to live. And he’s been on about Cold Path since we went up there. He’s been on about how the woollybucks get up and out of the valley that way, and over Dark, and how if they can do it so could we.’
‘If you go you’ll be chucked out of Family, same as he was,’ I said.
‘I don’t bloody care,’ he began, ‘I’ll . . .’
Then he broke off because we heard a familiar sound coming from Peckhamway: a sound like women singing, like beautiful beautiful women’s voices singing a sad sad song. It was leopards of course, and not just one leopard this time, but two three of them, singing in harmony. They don’t often hunt together, but once in a while they do, usually when there’s a specially good catch. And of course Peckhamway is the direction of Cold Path Neck.
David Redlantern came by with a couple of newhairs trailing behind him. All three of them had blackglass spears.
‘Sounds like those leopards have found something yummy to eat,’ said David, grinning his horrible cold batfaced grin at us. ‘What can it be, I wonder? Not by any chance our old friend Juicy John, do you think? What do you reckon? He did for one leopard, alright — credit where it’s due — but how would he cope if three of them came at him at once?’
The boys with him laughed loudly.
‘I reckon that’d be a bit much even for John, Dave,’ said one of them. ‘Looks like poor old Juicy John might have ended up as a leopard’s dinner.’
It was Met Redlantern, a stupid big empty-headed kid I’d often seen out with John and the other Redlantern newhairs, scavenging or hunting in forest.
‘You piece of shit, Met!’ Gerry hissed at him. ‘John was your friend. Only a few wakings ago he let you get the glory for that slinker when he could have had the glory himself!’
Met looked sort of uncomfortable but he laughed that same loud laugh that he’d done before.
‘Glory for a slinker?’ he said. ‘I don’t think so, Gerry. What glory does anyone get for a lousy slinker?’
‘He’d have let you be the one to do for it even if it had been a buck,’ said Gerry hotly. ‘You know he would.’
‘What? Like he shared that leopard glory with you?’ said Met.
‘He let me have one of the hearts!’
‘Well, who wants to eat two?’
‘You three are arseholes,’ I told David and his little friends. ‘John is better than all of you put together, and what’s more you know that yourselves, if only you had the guts to admit it.’
They laughed again, that horrible laugh. And all this time those leopards were singing that beautiful dreamy song. And of course for all we knew it really could be John out there, trapped between them, not knowing which one of them to face while they circled round him.
‘Arseholes, eh?’ said David, still grinning, and he looked straight at me. ‘That’s good good, coming from a silly little girlie who likes it up the arse as everyone knows. You’re going to have to change your tune one of these wakings, Tina Spiketree, and it won’t be so long now. It won’t be so long at all.’
I looked into his eyes and I could see the rest of his thoughts as surely as if he spoke them aloud. A time was soon coming, he was thinking, when I would have to call him whatever he told me to call him, and treat him however he wanted to be treated: a time when he would do to me whatever he pleased and whenever he felt like it, with whichever bit of my body he chose.
The time of men was coming, I could see. Women had run things so far, when there was just one Family, but that was over now, and in this new broken-up world it would be the men that would get ahead.
And right there and then I finally made up my mind. I didn’t want to be in Family any more, not this Family, not with the likes of David rising up to the top.
‘Let’s go out and find John,’ I said to Gerry, when David and his two little shadows had moved away.
I said it to Gerry and not to his little brother Jeff. Jeff had always made me feel uneasy, and anyway he was a clawfoot and I didn’t reckon he could walk that far.
Gerry looked at me like I’d saved his life. He’d been longing to go after John ever since John left, and talking about going after him too, but he was one of those people that just can’t do a thing all on their own, but need someone to follow, someone to give them permission, someone to show the way. His whole face changed and he laughed out loud.