Mother of Eden (21 page)

Greenstone Johnson

A new Headman always calls a Council ten wakings after putting on the hat, and he always makes some new rules there to show he’s his own man. So, of course, as soon as my dad was in his box, chiefs and teachers came to visit me, all through every waking, to tell me exactly what those new rules should be. But me and Starlight figured out rules of our own, and in a couple of wakings, I would have the job of telling them all.

This wasn’t going to be like last Council, when I gave them stuff they wanted and felt strong. That had seemed hard at the time, but the only hard part was that I didn’t give all of them
everything
they asked for. No, this time I was going to sit there on my own and tell them things that most of them would hate, and the thought of it made me feel weak and small. I did my best to hide from Starlight just how much I feared it—
she didn’t seem to feel that same kind of fear—
but I found it hard to sleep, hard to eat, hard even to listen when people spoke to me.

“I’ll ride round my friends,” I told Starlight. “I’ll prepare them in advance. I think just this time it’s best I go alone.”

I set off on a buck with just four ringmen riding with me, and went straight to Chief Earthseeker. As soon as he saw me, he had his helpers fetch fishing strings and floats and hooks, and took me out to a favorite fishing spot of ours. It was a place where a small side stream came down into his cave from a crack in the roof, descending to the cave’s main stream in a series of little waterfalls and pools. One of the pools was deeper and wider than the others, and that’s where we headed. There was only one path to it, and Earthseeker had his ringmen guard it so we couldn’t be disturbed. Then there was just me and the old chief, with nothing else for company but the sound of water and the pulsing trees.

“So what’s your problem, Headman Greenstone?” he said as we settled down side by side on a rock, fixing meat onto our hooks and throwing them out into the glittering water.

Back when I was a kid, this would have been the beginning of two three hours of happiness, listening to his stories, talking about fishing, or just sitting together in silence and enjoying the feeling of being alive. But it wasn’t like that now. I knew quite well that Earthseeker wouldn’t like what I had to say.

“When new Council meets,” I said, “I want to make some new rules, which most of the chiefs won’t like. Probably not even you. And I’d like to give you a new job, too.”

“I see,” said Earthseeker. “Well, you’d better tell me, then.”

His tone was guarded, and the longer I spoke, the tenser he became, specially when I told him this would only be the first of several Councils, and that later on we planned to change the Council itself, bringing in topmen, ringmen, and other small people. Chief Earthseeker always treated his own small people with respect, remembering their names, asking after their children, making sure they were looked after when they were too old to work, but that didn’t mean he thought that small people should have more power.

“These are
big
big changes, Greenstone,” he said, pulling his hook in and throwing it back out again. “Most chiefs will be strongly strongly against them, and there will be a lot more talk than there already is about whether you should be Headman at all.”

Hmmmmph hmmmmph hmmmmph
went the trees around us. A nearby spiketree released some hot steam with a long, slow sigh.

“Is there a lot of that talk?”

Many different kinds of trees crowded round the pool and hung their lanterns over the water, so that the ripples from the little waterfall that fed it kept changing as they spread across the surface: white, blue, red, yellow.

“I’m afraid so, Greenstone. No one I speak to admits that it’s their
own
view, of course, because they know I’m your friend, but nearly everyone is keen to tell me that it’s what all the others are saying.”

This was scary news, of course, even if not surprising, but I tried not to show my anxiety.

“Well, that’s exactly why we need to start to make these changes. The chiefs are supposed to help me, not be their own little headmen in their own grounds, but if they won’t accept that, then I have to go over their heads and appeal directly to the small people.”

Again, this obviously troubled him a great deal, and it was some time before he answered me, his breath whistling in and out of his big, strong lungs as he tugged his hook about in the water, trying to tempt a fish.

“I don’t say the chiefs get everything right, Greenstone,” he said at last, “but the small people need chiefs. They wouldn’t sort out metaldigs on their own. They wouldn’t make plantstuff. Things like that take lots of people working together with someone on top organizing them. New Earth needs chiefs like a body needs a head.”

“They don’t have chiefs where Starlight comes from.”

He just shrugged at that, and then we sat silently for a bit, not easily and comfortably as we’d done in the past, but with a big, painful gap between us. Again and again we impatiently pulled in our hooks and threw them out again, unable to enjoy the slow slow pleasure of just sitting and watching and waiting.

“Perhaps I shouldn’t
be
Headman,” I said at length. “Perhaps Starlight and me should get in a boat and go back across the water to somewhere where they won’t know who we are.”

As I’d guessed, he didn’t like that at all, and his big face darkened. “Dixon would probably be made Headman, then,” he said in a tight, stiff voice. “Is that what you want?”

Something tugged at my hook and I pulled in a mudfish. Its six little arms waved about frantically as I took the little green hook out of its mouth and tossed it back. “No, it’s not what I want.” I put more meat onto my hook and threw it out again. “Dad said I should put Dixon to the Rock if he gave me any cause for it. Maybe that’s the answer.”

“And make poor Lucy live all over again what your father put her through? You couldn’t do that, Greenstone.”

“No, I couldn’t, but if I’m going to do things a different way, then I’ll need your help. I have to get power from somewhere.”

The old chief tugged at his fishing string to make the meat move in the water. “Well, you can have my help,” he said at length. “I won’t pretend I’m comfortable with your ideas, but you’re my Greenstone, and you’re the Headman, and I’ll back you in every way I can.”

I put my arm round his big shoulders to tell him thank you. It was a generous thing he was doing, risking his own position among the big people of New Earth, for the sake of a plan that he himself wouldn’t have chosen, and I felt bad for even asking it of him, specially as there was more to come.

“You’re a good boy, Greenstone,” he said gruffly, “and I know each Headman has to find his own way of doing things.”

“Well, let me tell you my way, then. In this first Council, I’m going to say there’ll be no more bringing in of forest people for the present. I shouldn’t have agreed to that in first place, and I don’t want chiefs to be able to build up their power that easily.”

The chief nodded. He could live with that. He wasn’t the kind to force people to work for him at spearpoint, and he didn’t need any more small people himself. “Okay, but the metal chiefs aren’t going to be happy, so you’ll—”

“So I’ll need to find a way of keeping them in line. Yes, and that’s where your new job comes in. Remember how I made Dixon the Pool Chief?” I said. “Well, I want you to be the Ground Chief.”

He laughed uncomfortably. “What’s a Ground Chief?”

“I want you to be in charge of all the ringmen when they’re in the caves or the digs.”

He was so surprised by this that he stopped right in the middle of throwing out his hook. “I appreciate the honor, Greenstone, but do you honestly think the other chiefs will let me take charge of their ringmen?”

“I’m not trying to stop the chiefs being chiefs, Earthseeker. I’m just trying to go back to how it was in time of John, when chiefs were there to help him, not to tell him what to do. And to do that, I need there to be someone, apart from me, who talks to all the ringmen from all the caves, so they can think of themselves as being New Earth ringmen, and not just Dixon’s ringmen, or Gerry’s ringmen, or your ringmen. First thing I want to do after the Council is for you and me to bring all the topmen together at the Headmanhouse, without their chiefs, and agree some rules for all of them, right across New Earth.”

He finally threw out his hook. “You’re trying to stop the chiefs being able to come against you, like they did in the time of Headman Roger?”

“Exactly, because that’s what they more or less threaten, every time I do something they don’t like.”

“Okay, but you do know that it’s not just a question of telling them new rules? People don’t really think about what the rules are; they think about who it’s safest to follow. You need to persuade the ringmen and their topmen that you’re the man worth following, not their chiefs, if it comes down to a choice.”

“Well, that’s what I hope you’ll help us with. But we’ve got another plan, too. Me and Starlight are going to travel round the houseplaces in the caves and out top, making friends with the ringmen and small people and getting them on our side. I think I’m quite popular already with the small people, and of course they absolutely love Starlight.”

Earthseeker smiled. “Well, that is certainly true. My people are
crazy
about her. Would you believe, some of them even say that just being near her makes illnesses go away?”

I’d never heard that, and for some reason it moved me so much that, just for a moment, I felt as if I might weep.

“Another idea I had,” I said quickly, to move the subject on, “was that we’d show our friendship to the topmen by giving each of them, say, ten cubes every hundredwake on top of what their own chiefs give them.”

Earthseeker frowned. “But where will the extra metal come from, Greenstone? You’ve just told me the metal chiefs aren’t going to be allowed to bring in any more help in their digs.”

I felt myself reddening. It was such an obvious point. To give something to anyone, you had to take it from someone else. That was almost the first rule of being Headman.

“Well, obviously that’s something to think about later,” I said. “I guess one way would be to give up the plan to take back Old Ground. Then we wouldn’t need so much metal for spears and masks and arrowheads.”

“But that would—”

“I know. That would make the chiefs even angrier with me than they already are.”

Earthseeker chuckled. “Yes, and you’ll probably have upset them enough for the time being. Only thing I will say is that you haven’t done anything yet to upset the teachers.”

Not yet,
I thought.
Not until they hear that we’re no longer going to send whisperers to the Rock.

But I didn’t tell him that. I felt that he’d also had enough for the time being.

After I left Earthseeker, I went to see my friends Roger at Glass Cave and John at his dig out top. They both told me they agreed completely that we should give more power to the small people, and take some away from the biggest chiefs, but when I asked them for support in Council, they were careful careful not to commit themselves to anything that might make them unpopular with the other chiefs. Even Teacher Harry, back in Edenheart, who was maybe my best friend when I was little, said he’d rather not vote against all the other teachers in the Teachinghouse, seeing as he had to work alongside them every waking.

“Truth is, Starlight,” I said when I got back to the Headmanhouse, “there
are
big people who like us, and there are certainly big people who don’t like Dixon and his friends, but no one wants a fight, and no one wants to risk the fire.”

“Does it have to be a fight, though, Greenstone?” she said as we sat on her bed with a chessboard between us. “The chiefs need ringmen if they’re going to fight. We’ve already got all the ringmen in Edenheart, and we’ve got Earthseeker’s ringmen, and surely we can rely on your other friends at least not to send their ringmen against us, even if they don’t want to help? So now all we’ve got to do is persuade the other ringmen that it’s best to side with us or not take sides at all. I reckon we’re nearly there. Ringmen are small people, aren’t they, and the small people know we’re on their side. We just need to build on that by traveling round the caves and the ground up top, telling people what we’ll do for them if they help us.”

“You make it sound so easy, Starlight dear, but I’m not looking forward to this Council one bit.”

Starlight laughed. “Well, I’ll tell you what will help. Don’t look at them as scary chiefs and teachers; don’t look at them as your dad’s friends and enemies; look at them as funny pale little bearded creatures from a faraway place, hiding down a hole in the ground.”

Lucy Johnson

When Dixon came back from the Council in Edenheart, a bat was standing in his way with a jug of water, and he kicked the bat right across the floor. Then a helper asked him if he wanted anything and he bellowed at her that what he wanted was for stupid small people to leave him alone. He could be kind kind sometimes, but the whole house dreaded him when he was like this, and I dreaded it more than anyone. Sometimes he’d hit me. Sometimes he’d make me bend over for him so he could get rid of some of his tension with his dick, coldly and angrily shoving himself into me and then walking away, complaining that I was cold like stone, and why couldn’t I ever give him love?

But they say it’s better to face a leopard than show it your back, so I went to him where he was sitting in his writingcave, slapping that stick of his against the palm of his hand.

“Some bad person has annoyed my lovely, smart Dixon,” I whispered to him.

I knew it comforted him to be made to feel big. He was like a child who must be told how strong he is when he lifts up some small stone, or what a brave brave hunter he is when he catches some little crawling creature: like a child, but big, and with muscles much stronger than mine.

He glanced up at me. “Well done, Einstein,” he growled.

He didn’t say anything else. It was my job to coax the rest out of him, so he could call me a fool if I guessed wrong and be sarcastic if I guessed right.

“I guess maybe Greenstone?”

“Of course bloody Greenstone, woman. That’s who I’ve just been to meet!”

He slapped the stick fiercely against his hand. I wished he’d put it down. Once twice he’d used it to lash out at me.

“We should have stopped him being Headman in first place,” Dixon growled. “We should have faced him out that first Council after he came back with the fishing girl. Or pushed him out as soon as the old slinker died. But Gerry insisted on caution, didn’t he? ‘He’s no threat to us,’ he said. ‘He’s more of a woman than a man. We can walk all over him, and let him build his own grave.’ Stupid bloody Gerry.”

“So
 
.
.
. Greenstone has done something bad?”

“Oh, well
done
, woman! John’s walk, you’re smart this waking. You are
smart
smart. Maybe you should be chief in my place?”

He stood up suddenly—
I tried hard not to flinch—
but, to my relief, he didn’t come toward me, just paced about, still hitting that stick against his hand.

“Yeah, he’s ‘done something bad.’
” Dixon copied the way I’d said the words in a silly, dumb voice like a slowhead. “He’s got more of his dad in him than we thought. Which I warned Gerry about. ‘The Headman’s hat can change a man’ were my exact words. Mind you, I reckon the fishing girl has got a lot to do with it. Greenstone may be more of a man than we thought he was, but there’s no doubt that she’s tougher than he is, the little slinker. And of course she’s got Greenstone right where she wants him. All my listeners tell me about the noise she makes in bed when he shoves himself up her at the end of every bloody waking. And about the hours they spend there talking talking talking, too low for anyone to hear.”

He paced about a bit more and then, without any warning, he snatched up the chair he’d been sitting on earlier and flung it against the stones of the wall. It was so sudden I just couldn’t help flinching this time. Dixon noticed this, and gave an ugly little grin.

“Yeah, he’s done something bad,” he said. “Three things, in fact. First of all, he’s made bloody Earthseeker the Ground Chief, like I’m Pool Chief, in charge of organizing the ringmen in all the caves. We can get round that, of course—
the old fool’s no match for me and Gerry—
but it’s an insult and it will slow us down. Secondly, he’s had Earthseeker call a meeting of all the topmen in Edenheart, all of them: mine, Gerry’s, everyone’s. Which is
outrageous
. When has a Headman
ever
gone over the heads of the chiefs to their topmen? And thirdly, he’s called a stop again to us bringing in the forest people. He’s stopping it, he says, until he’s had time to give it some more thought. We can get round that, too, of course, but if he tells the topmen directly that they’re not to bring them in, it’s going to be awkward. They’ll have heard one thing from him and another from us, and we won’t be able to pretend to be doing what the Headman wants.” He stopped and looked straight at me, his eyes shining, and that ugly grin spreading on his face. “So is that bad enough for you, sweetheart? Or is old daddy Dixon just making a silly fuss?”

I could see the change in the way he was looking at me. I could see he was thinking of some of that hard, cold slip. Mother of Eden, I hated that, I
hated
hated it. But it would be worth enduring, I told myself,
all
his anger would be worth enduring, if it drove him to throw down my cousin Greenstone and his fishing girl, who wore the hat and ring that should be ours.