To the place I come from

Wister Jinyer, mountain mother,

Take me home, Come Tree Row.

We sang it slowly, standing together round that circle that Clare had scratched on the ground, bringing the song round not just once but many times to the place where it came slowly to rest on that final note. Oldies sang, and little kids. Candy belted it out, beating time with her little strong arms. Everyone joined in, even Trueheart. She might think she’d seen through shadowspeakers, but she still liked the story the shadowspeakers told about going home to Earth. So did I, so did pretty much everyone on the Davidfolk Ground, and though we didn’t understand all the words of that song, we knew it was a song about home. You could tell that even just from the tune, the way it comes to rest on that last note.

We were scared scared – scared for our missing friends and sons and daughters, scared for ourselves – and we were grieving for our life at Michael’s Place. Tom’s dick, that life had seemed hard in its own right when we were living it, what with worries about finding enough stuff to satisfy Leader Hunter and still feed ourselves and our kids, worries about how it was getting harder to find meat, worries about sick kids, and births that go wrong, and so many other things, but it had seemed happy and peaceful and safe compared with now. So we needed home right then more than ever, the true home that we all long for, where Johnfolk wouldn’t come and smash our shelters, and leopards wouldn’t sneak through the fence, and death itself couldn’t reach out its cold cold hand and snatch away our babies and the ones we loved.

Everyone needs a home, even people like my friend Starlight, or old Juicy John Redlantern who set himself against whole of Family. People like them might seem to be turning their backs on their homes, but really they’re just looking for a better home, one that goes deeper, one that’s stronger and truer than the little flimsy things that most of us try to cling to. They’re looking in the wrong place, though, that’s what I learned from Mary. We human beings are just passing through this world, so of course it feels flimsy, of course it never quite feels like a proper home. And it’s no good trying to find one either, because it’s just not here to be found. We need to be patient and look after each other, and not ask too much, and listen for our Mother, and then we will go one waking to our real true home. Either a starship will come and take us back when we’re alive, or our shadows will fly there after we’re dead, and come alive and solid again in the warmth and brightness of Earth’s star.