Dark Eden (39 page)

‘How do we know there even
is
another side?’ said Lucy Batwing. ‘Dark might go on and on. And then we’d die, wouldn’t we? We’d die of cold.’

‘We know it doesn’t go on forever,’ I told her. ‘When Tommy and Gela and the Companions first saw Eden from their sky-boat, the thing they noticed was that it was all covered in light. Remember that? All covered in light, not just one patch of light and the rest dark. That was weird to them because Earth got its light from a star, and didn’t have lights of its own. So they noticed it, and it stuck in their minds. That’s why they talked about it to their kids, and why we still remember the story.’

‘Okay, so there’s more forest beyond Dark,’ said Clare Brooklyn, who was nursing her baby boy, ‘but we still might not reach it. Even with your wraps and woolly horses and all, we’re not going to be able to keep going more than a few wakings, are we? Not in freezing cold and pitch darkness. Not even us newhairs, let alone my little Fox and Janny’s Flower.’

The twenty of them were ranged around in a circle, most sitting, some standing. I was pacing around in middle. I couldn’t keep still, that was too much to ask of myself, only one two hours after I’d done for Dixon Blueside with my spear.

‘It’s dangerous but we’ve got to try it,’ I said. ‘In a couple of wakings they’ll come after us. David Redlantern and all his friends in Family. Caroline and Council won’t be able to control them any more. They’ll be over here with clubs and spears. Look what they did to Jeff, look what they tried to do to Tina. And that was
before
we did for David and the others.’

‘Well,
we
didn’t do it actually, John,’ said Mehmet Batwing with an angry laugh. ‘That was you.
You
did it. You and Harry and Gerry. The first killings in Eden. Smart move, John. Smart smart move.’

His thin little face was hard and cold and there was suddenly a dark ugly feeling out in whole group that each person had been keeping hidden inside until then. Two or three people muttered in agreement with what Mehmet had said, including Angie Blueside, a cousin of John Blueside who was lying dead in forest right at that moment, with Gerry’s spearhole in his belly and starbirds and tree foxes feeding on his flesh. Why should we all freeze on Snowy Dark, was what a lot of them were thinking, just because John and Harry and Gerry lost their heads and did for three people who were already running away?

‘I think you’re forgetting, Mehmet,’ said Tina in her iciest voice. She was
angry
angry. ‘I think you’re forgetting what Dixon Blueside and his mates did to Jeff and what they tried to do to me. Do you think they’d have left us all in peace if we’d just …?’

I put my hand on her arm to tell her to leave it; I didn’t need her to defend me.

‘No, you’re quite right, Mehmet,’ I said, as calmly as I could with my tight tight throat. ‘And you’re welcome to stay here or to go back to Family, Mehmet.
All
of you are welcome to stay or go back. Take what’s yours, if you like, and walk back to Family. Tell them it was John and Harry and Gerry who did for Dixon and his mates, and that it was nothing at all to do with you. Which is true. It’s perfectly true. So go on if you want to. Go on. No one’s stopping any of you. You all came to me, remember, all of you, every single one, out of your own choice. I didn’t force you to come and I certainly won’t force you to stay.’

I folded my arms and stood and waited. Mehmet looked around awkwardly, but all his support seemed to have disappeared.

‘No,’ he said, ‘I just meant …’

‘You just meant what?’

‘Oh nothing. It doesn’t matter.’

He was sort of smiling but under the smile he was ashamed, and under the shame he was angry angry. He was going to be trouble, I could see, and it would actually be better if he left. But if I tried to
make
him go, that would have been trouble too. That would have been even
more
trouble. It might have made whole plan fall apart.

‘I’m not making anyone do anything,’ I repeated. ‘Do you all understand?’

There was silence for a bit.

Then Lucy London spoke. She was a short plump girl with bulgy anxious eyes.

‘But if we go over Dark we won’t ever see our mums again, or our sisters and brothers. I mean, it’s okay not seeing them every waking like now, when we
can
still see them if we want to, up by Blob. But if we go over Dark that won’t happen any more. We’ll
never
see them, never never, and we won’t even get a chance to say goodbye.’

‘No, you won’t,’ I said.

‘But that’s not fair!’ said Lucy London, and several people murmured crossly in agreement.

‘I’m not making you do anything,’ I repeated, as patiently as I could. ‘You can go back to Family if you want. Or you can stay here at Cold Path Neck if you think you can make a go of it. It’s up to you.’

‘Yes, but Family is horrible now,’ complained Lucy London. ‘And staying here would be no good if there were only a few of us. We’d be lonely, wouldn’t we? It wouldn’t be any good at all.’

‘Mother Angela would say it was wrong to go over Dark,’ said Julie Blueside. ‘Okay we came over here, and didn’t stay right next to Circle, but we’re still in Circle Valley, aren’t we, and we’d still be able to see if a Veekle from Earth came down from sky. Plus our friends in Family would tell Earth where we were.’

‘Yeah,’ said her younger sister Candy. ‘And my mum told me that First Angela and First Tommy and First Harry all came to Lucy Lu in a dream and told her that if we go across Dark we’ll be lost forever. We won’t have the Shadow People to watch over us any more, and even after we die, we’ll never go back to Earth.’

‘Oh yeah?’ sneered Tina’s sister Jane. ‘So how come Lucy Lu used to say that beyond Snowy Dark was where the Shadow People
lived
?’

‘Don’t bother, Jane,’ said Tina. ‘Once people start talking about messages from Mother Gela and the Shadow People, black can be white and white black and a thing can be true and its opposite true all at the same time.’

‘Well, you’ve got that wrong, Tina,’ shouted Julie. ‘You just don’t understand. Yes, in a
way
the Shadow People live beyond Dark, but not in
that
way …’

But then Harry started up again.

‘They did for Brownhorse!’ he yelled, sweating, redfaced, spit flying out of his mouth, and banging hard hard on the drum with every word. ‘They were
bad
bad. They did for Brownhorse! They nearly did for Harry’s sister too!’

‘Leave it, Harry!’ screamed Gerry. He was shaking shaking all over. ‘Just bloody leave it, alright?’

And now six seven people were all shouting at once.

‘Shut up, Harry!’

‘Brownhorse was just a woollybuck!’

‘Just because you don’t know anything about the Shadow People, Tina, doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I’ll talk about what I bloody want …’

‘Leave Harry alone. They did for Brownhorse, Jeff’s Brownhorse.’

‘Shut
up
, Harry!’

‘It matters to some of us what the Shadow People think, Tina, even if it doesn’t matter to you.’

‘Gela’s tits, can’t you see we haven’t got
time
for all that crap!’

‘They did for Brownhorse …’

‘Don’t you tell
me
what we’ve got time for!’

It was like a chess game when it gets stuck and won’t move forward. I needed to bring a new piece into play.

‘Everybody be quiet,’ I hollered. ‘Shut up now and I’ll show you something!’

We were in terrible danger. Three people were dead. Harry and Gerry and John were killers, and they were all three shaking shaking all the time because of their heads trying to get hold of what they’d done. And there was going to be
more
killing, and any one of us could easily end up dead in only a waking or two. This was one of the most important meetings that anyone on Eden had ever had, but it looked as if it was going to become a pointless shouting match, not about what we needed to do but about the Shadow People, or about Harry being too noisy, or about how a woollybuck had died. We were facing death yet we were fighting about nothing at all.

But then John silenced everyone. He absolutely silenced us. He took away our breath.

‘Angela has come to
me
,’ he said. ‘She came to me over by Deep Pool. She told me she wants her children to spread out over Eden and not stay in one place pining for Earth. She wants us to be at home here in Eden, not just in this valley but at home all
over
Eden, just like people are at home all over Earth. She says Earth would expect that of us, and will come looking for us wherever we are. She says Earth will be disappointed with us if we stay only in one place.’

He looked round our dumbstruck faces. No one would have thought it possible. He was just about the last person in Eden that you’d expect to say a thing like that. I was scared scared someone was going to laugh and it would all fall apart. And I think someone would have done too if he hadn’t said something else that was even
more
weird and even
more
unexpected.

‘If you don’t believe me, have a look at this. Gela has given me a sign.’

He reached down, took something from the little pocket at the edge of his waistwrap and held it up between his finger and thumb. It was small small and at first I couldn’t think what it was.

‘You know the story of
Gela’s Ring
? You remember it? Angela’s lost ring? Well, this
is
the ring. I found it, soon after she first came to me.’

I started shivering all over. Some of the others cried or laughed, like Angela herself might have done if someone had found the ring for her, long after she had given it up for lost. Some of them swore. Michael’s names! Harry’s dick! Tom’s neck! Even the two little babies picked up the strange feelings all around them and began to yell, first Clare’s little Fox and then Janny’s baby Flower. And after that, would you believe it, the two remaining horsebucks in their cave – Def and Whitehorse, Jeff called them –
they
started as well, like they could pick up the excitement too, and that made everyone laugh, even the ones who were crying, and even the ones who’d done for other human beings only a few hours before.

But as John moved round everyone showing them the ring, and how tiny and smooth it was, and how it was really made out of metal, and how it had tiny writing inside with Angela’s name, tiny writing that could only have been done on Earth, I started to feel angry.

John had done it
again
! He’d behaved again like he was the only one in the world that needed to know or decide anything! He’d destroyed Circle without asking anyone, and kept the ring for himself without telling anyone. He’d expected us to follow him and trust him, but he hadn’t trusted any of
us
at all.

I was so angry I didn’t even care about the ring any more. All I wanted to do was scream and yell at John. But I couldn’t do that then, could I? Angry as I was, I knew that we were all in danger. And I knew that everyone here needed to be able to believe in John and trust him, because what he said was right. We
did
have to go. We
did
have to take the risk of going over Snowy Dark.

But then an idea came to me. I realized there was something I could do to stop John having it all his own way, without messing up the things we needed to do.