Free Mother of Eden by Chris Beckett Page A

of Edenheart and all New Earth. And I’ll be Headman after him.”
    “So then I would be the Headman’s   ... what did you say?... I would be the Headman’s housewoman ?”
    “And you’d have lots of good things because of it: fine wraps, helpers   ...”
    “Helpers?”
    “People to do things for you, like   ... like my ringmen do for me here. And not just people, but—”
    “Could I ever come back again? Could I ever come back across Worldpool?”
    “No, of course not,” said Chief Dixon from behind me. “Never. You’d—”
    But I cut him off. “I hope you’d never come back to live here. But you can see for yourself that I’ve been able to cross the water, so, yes, you could come back one waking and see your brother, Johnny, here, and your uncle, and   ...” I looked at her friend again—it struck me that she was a good friend, too—and made myself remember her name. “... and your friend Angie.”
    “How much time do I have to decide?”
    “Whatever you need, Starlight. The only thing is, my dad’s not been well, and I don’t want to leave him too long. And   ...”
    I hestitated. She had no idea what kind of place I’d be taking her to, or the dangers that waited there for people like us who played the game of power, and I knew I ought to warn her, but I was scared scared of putting her off.
    “Listen, Starlight, I don’t want to deceive you. It can be dangerous being with the Headman. You can make enemies, and   ...”
    She glanced over my shoulder at Dixon for a moment, then turned back to me, her gray eyes looking straight into mine as she tried to understand. “It’s like with the Davidfolk, is that what you’re trying to say? People hurt one another? People do for other people they don’t like?”
    “Yes, I guess that’s it,” I said, and I managed to persuade myself that she’d got it, and that I really had told her all she needed to know, though I hadn’t even mentioned the fire. “That’s just it,” I repeated. “It can be kind of tough.”
    Starlight nodded. Then, without saying anything at all, she walked off a little way, back along the ledge and out of the light of the Johnfolk’s fires, and stood there in her long blue wrap, looking down first of all into the water, where it dropped down steeply from the edge of the ledge, then lifting her head and looking out to where World’s Edge divided Eden from Starry Swirl, her face lit up by the water’s glow.

Starlight Brooking
     
    John Redlantern himself had once stood on that cliff up there, I remembered, soon after they first found the Veekle. He’d stood there playing with the metal ring and wondering whether to keep it or throw it into the water and get rid of it for good. And just as I was being watched now, he’d been watched by Jeff and Tina and Gerry and all the others who’d followed him down from Snowy Dark.
    “I could hear the people from the future calling to me,” he once told Jeff. “Some of them were saying, ‘Throw it away!’ Others were saying, ‘Keep it! Keep it! Keep it!’ And it was like I was standing at the joining place of two whole worlds. Only one of those worlds could live and grow and become real. The other would fade away. And it was up to me.”
    Right now it was like there were two different people, both called Starlight Brooking, but only one of them could have my body to live out her life in, and the other would end up as just a shadow. I couldn’t know what it would be like over there in New Earth, and that made this hard. But I did know what a life would be like on Knee Tree Grounds, I knew exactly, and I knew that if I went back to that, back to the bark ovals and the gatherings every waking on the Sand, I would wonder as long as I lived about the other life, beyond World’s Edge, that I could have lived.
    I turned back to the rest of them. Everyone’s eyes were on me: Greenstone’s, Angie’s, Chief Dixon’s, and all those big, tough ringmen. Tom’s dick, there