Starlight Brooking
Some of the ringmen who were already in the cave grabbed hold of Quietstream and held her, while more masked men came pouring into the already crowded space until there were ten of them squeezed in round the doorway, with their blank, unblinking metal eyes and blank, unsmiling mouths. One of them was taller than the rest and wrapped in blue. He pushed forward into the middle of the cave and pulled off his mask.
“Tom’s dick, Dixon, what do you think you’re doing?” demanded Greenstone. “I’m the Headman, in case you’ve forgotten. This is my house, and Quietstream is my helper.”
Dear Greenstone. He acted like a Headman, too. He acted like he was as strong and sure as his dad.
“I’m afraid your helper’s a whisperer, Headman.” Chief Dixon gave the smallest bow that it’s possible to give without it being invisible. “She must be taken to the Questioners before she whispers to anyone else. That’s unless the rules your grandfather made have changed without my knowing.”
“She stays in this house,” Greenstone said. “This is a Council. You can join us if you want, but these men here weren’t invited, and they must leave.”
Again Dixon gave his barely visible bow.
“I’m afraid there’s more,” he said. “You see, Quietstream isn’t the only whisperer in this wallcave. There’s another one who’s even closer to you.”
Chief Dixon waited, watching the troubled faces around the cave until he was sure that even the slowest had understood. Then he looked straight at me.
“That’s right, people. It’s your darling Ringwearer I’m talking about. The fishing girl Greenstone picked up from the Davidfolk. This helper here is most likely the one who first whispered the words to her. But did the Ringwearer report the woman? No, she did not. Did she at least keep the words to herself? No, quite the opposite; she told
everyone
! In Batsky, in Narrowdig, in Winghouse: All over New Earth she’s been standing in front of crowds and shouting out those wicked lies for everyone to hear. And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, she’s been doing it with our mother’s ring on her finger.”
I looked round at the faces in the cave. Some looked shocked and bewildered; I guessed they’d no idea that I had spoken words from the Secret Story, and now they felt I’d deceived them. Others looked guilty and scared, and I figured they’d known quite well where those words came from but had come along anyway, thinking that the Ringwearer and the Headman were powerful enough to keep them safe. I’d let them all down, the ones who knew and the ones who didn’t both. I’d moved these people like pieces on a board, knowing that me and Greenstone were taking a risk, but not really thinking about the risk I was putting them in.
“We can protect you!” I shouted out to them. “We can protect you from this man and his ringmen and all the others like him! But if you want us to do that, you have to stand by us. It’s you who give big people their power! Give your support to us and we’ll protect you. Turn to Chief Dixon, and we can’t.”
Some of them didn’t even look at me. They all knew the punishment for listening to whisperers, and why should they trust me now, anyway?
“It’s really
true!
” I called out to them. “You’ll see it’s true if you just think it through for yourselves. What can Chief Dixon do, if all of you stick with us?”
I saw a few people nodding, but not many, and even the ones who nodded didn’t otherwise move or shout out their support. After all, even if they
did
still trust me and Greenstone, how could they be sure of one another?
“She’s right,” called out Greenstone from over by his stone seat. “We warned you this could happen, but what can these few men do, if all you lot stay with us?”
Dixon pretended to shake his head sadly, as if he were more disappointed than angry to hear this nonsense coming from the mouths of the Ringwearer and the Headman. And then he put on a new and soothing voice as he spoke to the people in the cave.
“Many of you heard her saying those lying words in your houseplaces. And of course now you feel bad because you shouted and cheered. But no one will blame you for that, I promise you, because you were tricked. You thought you were listening to a true Ringwearer, and you didn’t know where the words came from. Of course you cheered. There’s no fault in that.”
I walked a little way in his direction, the people stepping back hastily to let me through, as if I was something dangerous to touch, like the scalding bark of a spiketree. I stopped in the middle of a bunch of ringmen who’d followed us down to Edenheart a couple of wakings ago, and had promised to fight for me and Greenstone against any chief that stood against him. But now their eyes darted uneasily between me and Chief Dixon, between Dixon’s masked ringmen and their own friends. One of them ran his tongue over his lips. Another chewed on a nail.
“Okay, that’s enough, Chief Dixon!” Greenstone called out from where he still stood by the Headman’s chair. “Or just Dixon, as I should call you now, because you’re no longer a chief of mine, and John Cave is no longer your ground. I’ll divide it up between the ringmen here who’ve promised to protect me. They keep their promises, and it seems you don’t. You, my friend, are on your way to the Rock.”
The ringmen around me glanced uneasily at one another. Chief Dixon laughed.
“Don’t talk to me about keeping promises, Greenstone. When you put on the Headman’s hat you promised to carry on the work of John and Mother Gela, and protect the rules of New Earth. And yet look what you’ve done. You stood there beside this false Ringwearer, and you did nothing to stop her lies. You’re not—”
“You say I told
lies,
Dixon,” I interrupted him, “but if you ask the people who were there, they’ll tell you I never once claimed my words came from Mother Gela. I just repeated some of them because they seemed to make sense. It’s the teachers, not me, who claim to know what Mother Gela thinks, just like the shadowspeakers do among the Davidfolk.”
He glared at me, his face dark with rage, but I could see that his eyes were unsure. He couldn’t know for certain which way this would go, after all, any more than I could.
“That’s a ridiculous—” he began.
“Excuse me, I haven’t finished. The teachers say they know what Gela wants, but all they do is write things down on their barks and then use those same barks to prove that what they say is true. I’m the Ringwearer, but I don’t know what Mother Gela thinks. All I know is that she was the mother of all of us, and I’ve never heard of a mother who said it was okay for her children to do for one another, or for some of them to live in big houses and others in dark dark clusters where there aren’t even trees to give out light.” I held the ring above my head, making myself as tall as I could. “This is our mother’s ring,” I called out, “and when I put it on, I promised to be a mother to everyone, not just to the big people.”
Many people nodded this time, and a few even clapped, but there was no cheering, no chanting “Mother! Mother! Mother!” Not with Dixon present, and those masked men. And the ringmen round me had backed away a little, leaving me in my own circle of empty space.
Dixon sighed, like a grown-
up dealing with a naughty child. “I repeat,” he called out to everyone in the cave. “No one will be blamed for hearing the fishing girl’s words when she was the Ringwearer, or for cheering her, or even for following her here. But anyone who stays with her from now on is doing so knowing that she’s a whisperer. You all need to think about that. Specially those of you who were nodding and clapping while she spoke.”
“He’s trying to frighten you,” called out Greenstone, still over by the Headman’s seat.
He would have said more, but the metal-
faced men round the doorway moved aside to let in a new arrival, and the bald, fat figure of Teacher Michael came striding into the cave. I guessed he’d been waiting outside for the right moment.
“Listen carefully, people,” he boomed out.
His boy, hurrying along behind him, placed a wooden box on the ground in middle of cave. Climbing on top of it, the Head Teacher stood in silence for several seconds, frowning down at us all while he caught his breath.
become like earth,
read the words on his pale longwrap.
“This man Greenstone is no longer your Headman,” he finally said. “His father only became Headman because a previous Head Teacher chose him over his brother, Harry. It was a bad choice, and the teacher who did it went crazy soon after. So now
I’m
making another choice. Chief Dixon is Headman now. He’s a great grandson of First John just as much as Greenstone’s father was and, unlike Greenstone, he’s been true to John and true to President and true to Mother Gela. You’re not Headman anymore, Greenstone. And the fishing girl’s not Ringwearer.”
He looked round at all the people in the cave, big, small, middle-
sized, all mixed together in that strange new Council of ours.
“Let’s get this straight, everyone,” he went on. “Let’s get this absolutely straight. I have read many thousands of barks. I have read every single word written by John Redlantern and his companions. You just heard the fishing girl admit with her own tongue that she doesn’t really know what Mother Gela wants, but I
do
. I
know
what she wants. I
know
what President, her father, wants. I
know
what’s true and what’s false. So you need to listen to me carefully. Like the new Headman says, you’re not in trouble yet, none of you are, and you won’t be in trouble just so long as you do
exactly
exactly what he asks of you from this moment on. I don’t need to tell you what will happen otherwise.”
“
Remember,
ringmen!” I yelled out. “Remember, topmen! Remember we warned you about this! Remember how we said that some of the chiefs might turn against us. Remember you promised you’d help us if they did!”
I raised my hands above my head and pointed to the ring. Only a short time ago, in every houseplace in New Earth, that would have been enough to make a whole crowd roar and roar. But now there was silence.
“Who are you going to listen to?” I shouted, though I could feel people moving further and further away from me, moment by moment by moment. “Are you going to listen to the Headman and the Ringwearer of New Earth? Or are you going to listen to a chief and a teacher who’ve pushed their way into the Headmanhouse and acted against all New Earth’s rules?”
How different my voice sounded now, how different from the strong strong voice that had called out across those meeting grounds. It had been true what I said to Greenstone, truer than even I had understood: Power
did
come from the small people, and without them, I had no power at all.
“That’s right,” said Greenstone from the far end of the cave. “Where in the rules of New Earth does it say that a teacher can take the hat from the Headman and give it to a chief?”
Chief Earthseeker had stood up also: poor Earthseeker, who’d never asked for this fight in first place, and didn’t even agree with what we were trying to do. But he’d never liked the teachers.
“That’s right,” he bellowed. “You show me where it says
that
in all your barks?”
The Head Teacher looked across at him. “With pleasure,” he purred. “Come down to the Teachinghouse next waking, Chief Earthseeker, and I’ll show you where your own great grandfather John Redlantern wrote it down with his own hand.”
Greenstone made a sudden move toward me, but he didn’t get far. Three ringmen grabbed hold of him and held him back. They were topmen, all of them, and not only that, they were men he’d
made
topmen only two wakings previously. Of the new topmen, only big Mehmet still seemed to be holding back.
“Mehmet!” I shouted. “Get your men to help us! I know you don’t like the chiefs, and this is your chance to stand up to them.”
He looked at me unhappily, glanced across at Dixon, looked back at me again.
“Starlight,
go
!” Greenstone shouted.
Many eyes turned uneasily in my direction.
“Run, Mother!”
screamed Quietstream from where she was still being held by men in masks, twelve fifteen feet away.
I didn’t run, but I began to walk quickly toward the main door of the Cave. No one tried to stop me. Men and women, ringmen and small people, stood aside to let me pass. “Good luck, Mother!” quite a few whispered to me now, or “Long life!” And, though none of them spoke up for me out loud, a few followed after me, so that when I came into the Tall Cave, a little line of maybe fifteen people was trailing anxiously behind.
Six men were waiting outside in the Tall Cave. They had metal faces and metal spears in their hands.
Hmmmph hmmmph hmmmph
went the great shining tree. From the windholes above people were looking down interestedly to see what would happen next. Time moved slowly slowly.
“Starlight!” whispered a Mainground voice.
“Snowleopard?”
One of the metal faces leaned toward me. “Do exactly what I tell you and we’ll get you out of here,” he murmured softly. “Send these people back, first of all.”
I told the people who’d followed me to go back into the Red Cave.
“Do what the Headman asks you,” I told them, and left them to figure out which Headman they’d choose to obey.
As soon as they’d gone, Snowleopard grabbed me with both arms and spoke to me out loud.
“Gotcha!”
“Snowleopard! What are
.
.
.
?”
“Shut up, whisperer.”
His metal face couldn’t smile or frown.
“We’re taking you to the Questioners, girl,” called Blink.
I could see an empty eye socket through one of the eye holes in the mask, like there was just another empty mask behind it.
“And if you’ve got any sense, you’ll answer them straight away,” said Spear, whose face was always half a mask.