As we started to walk away from Michael’s Place, we looked back one last time at the shelters we’d built for ourselves, the fence of branches we’d worked on for wakings and wakings, so as to make sure it was strong enough to keep out leopards.

Four

I was telling you about that shadowspeaker who came over to Knee Tree Grounds.

We’d never had one there before – Jeff didn’t believe in clinging to the past or talking to the dead – but we’d seen shadowspeakers from time to time when we went to trade over in Nob Head. They would cry and wail in middle of a circle of silent, troubled Davidfolk, or even have a kind of fit and roll on the ground with spit bubbling from their mouths. Sometimes, they’d pick out people in the crowd and tell them, in front of everyone, the bad bad things they’d done. We’d seen big grownup Davidfolk hanging their heads and crying like little kids who’ve been told off.

‘Mother Gela is reaching out to you!’ the shadowspeakers would wail. ‘But how can she help you if you don’t reach back? How can she guide you home through the emptiness between the stars?’

Sometimes they’d suddenly stop and listen, holding up their hands for quiet, so they could hear the voices of the dead loved ones of people in the crowd.

‘It’s . . . Yes, it’s your little boy, my dear, the one who died. He’s telling me his name – I can’t quite hear him. David, is it? Yes, I thought so, David – he’s begging me to tell you to be true to our Mother. He’s afraid that otherwise you’ll never find your way back to him.’

The Kneefolk grownups always kept out of the way of the shadowspeakers. If we were over in Nob Head and came across a shadowspeaker giving a show, our grownups would go and sit on the cliff and talk among themselves until the shouting and crying was over and the speaker had collected her presents. This was Davidfolk business, they said, and nothing to do with us. But newhairs like to be different from their grownups and me and Starlight and our friends would sometimes sneak off to watch the shows. We were careful to keep a straight face, and avoid looking at one another – we understood that we were among the Davidfolk and on their ground, and mustn’t give them any reason to be upset with us – but afterwards we’d all go off along the cliff together and, as soon as we were alone, we’d burst out laughing.

‘Mother Gela is crying!’ Starlight would wail through her own tears of laughter. ‘She’s crying crying crying!’

‘You’ll all be lost in the cold cold darkness!’ our friend ­Poolshine would sob.