Read Online Mother of Eden by Chris Beckett - Free Book Online

to hear.
    “Well   ... I   ... How do you know that? We’ve not even been here a waking!”
    Snowleopard laughed. “Well, I wouldn’t say this to most people, but I know that Jeff of yours was on John’s side.” He leaned even closer. “I’d be grateful if you’d tell that Greenstone Johnson we helped you. We’ve heard he’s short by a bloke or two, and we’d like to join him and help him paddle back across the Pool. One more adventure, eh? One more adventure before we get too old for it.”
    “My dad was a guard, like you,” I told him. “He was called Blackglass. Blackglass Lunnon.”
    Snowleopard gave a shout of laughter. “Blackglass Lunnon! That old slinker! I knew him well. He was a proper guard.” He turned to his friend. “You remember Blackglass, don’t you, mate?”
    “I never met him myself,” I told them. “I only heard about him from my mum.”
    Blink chuckled. “We remember her, too, don’t we, Snow? That pretty girl Blackglass used to go round with? She said she came from somewhere out in the Pool. Looked a lot like this girl here.”
    “Of course!” said Snowleopard. “What was her name? Vision? Story? ”
    “Dream,” I told him.
    “Dream! Of course! Of course! A beautiful woman. We all envied your dad, I must say. But never mind that now, eh? We need to get you back to your folks.”
    And once again, he glanced quickly around.
    Your father’s eyes were always moving, I remembered my mother telling me. Never, never at rest.

Julie Deepwater
     
    Angie and Johnny came back with a woollybuck leg for us to eat, and a big bundle of firewood. They’d been with Dixon, Lucky, and Delight, but when they’d seen from the clifftop that Starlight wasn’t with me, Dixon and the other two men had headed back into Veeklehouse to look for her.
    Johnny and Angie got a fire going, using the embers we’d brought from Grounds in our little clay firepot, and presently Starlight herself came down the cliff. She was a bit giggly, like an overexcited child, with a funny smell on her breath.
    “Remember that bloke Mike, Angie? The guard at the Veekle? He tried to force me to slip with him.”
    “He did what ?”
    Starlight laughed.
    “It’s all right. It’s all right. Don’t look so worried. Three other guards came and helped me. There’s two of them up there—look!”
    There were two shadowy shapes squatting at the top of the cliff, against the orange glow of Veeklehouse. Starlight waved to them, and they waved lazily back.
    “They want to go with Greenstone,” Starlight told us all, her eyes shining. “He’s short a couple of men to paddle back across the Pool, and I promised to ask him to take them. Do any of you know where he is?”
    “He was by his boats along the ledge not so long ago. But wait for Dixon and the others to come back first, eh? They must be worried about you.”
    Starlight shrugged. She could have argued, but she didn’t, and I felt she was a bit relieved to be able to put off the moment when she’d have to see that Greenstone again.
    “Maybe I’ll take a bit of a rest,” she said.
    Behind her, over by the water’s edge, a little jewel-bat was standing. It turned a fishtail in its hands as it munched off the pale green flesh, watching us all the time.

Starlight Brooking
     
    I went to lie down on the skins we’d stretched out to sleep on, turned my face away from the others, and looked out over the bright water, with no one to see my face but a single jewel-bat that stood there licking its hands and looking straight at me with its blank, flat eyes.
    I remembered something my mum had told me. She was a funny woman, one minute warm, the next full of bitterness and spite, and the stories she told were sometimes true, sometimes made up, and often a mixture of the two. But there was one particular thing she kept on at me to remember, over and over again. It was a secret thing she said had been passed down, mother to daughter, all the way from Mother Gela