Dark Eden (46 page)

‘I’ll just have to get closer to him,’ I decided. ‘Stop thinking of him as little Jeff and make him my friend. I’ll have to …’

But then I made myself stop. It was stupid thinking about this now. Jeff would keep for another waking. There were other things I had to do right now, and I needed to save my strength for them.

I stood up.

‘I need to talk to everyone together now,’ I muttered to myself. ‘Get things sorted so we can eat and sleep.’

The others were sitting by a small stream, many of them still crying, and many still with arms round each other. I went to a rock that stood above them all, next to the stream, and climbed up onto it. Tom’s dick, I was weary weary of having to be John Redlantern. Bad bad things had happened since I stuck my spear between the ribs of fat old Dixon Blueside, and I could have done with a rest. But at the same time I knew this was one of those moments yet again, one of those leopard moments.

Michael’s names, there were so bloody
many
of them! So many! One after another after another!

‘Hey, everyone, listen up!’

I was scared that they’d take no notice, or even that they’d shout me down: ‘You? Why should we listen to
you
?’

But that didn’t happen. They might be disappointed in me and some of them might even hate me, but they all did what I asked and went quiet.

‘Well, we
got
here,’ I said. ‘Maybe not to the other side yet, but to a new place. All of us except poor Suzie. And we would never have made it if it wasn’t for my
smart
smart cousin Jeff who thought of turning bucks into horses, and came back to find us when – let’s face it – we were
lost
lost. He got us there. He saved us. So thankyou, Jeff. Thankyou.’

Everyone cheered and yelled and clapped for Jeff. He smiled, and then suddenly laughed like it was all a big joke.

‘And what will save us in the future,’ I said, ‘what will keep us going and keep us moving along, is new ideas, like Jeff had when he decided he could turn bucks into horses.’

They weren’t so keen on that bit, with its hint that we would be moving on again.

‘What will save us in the future, John,’ Mehmet called out, ‘is not going up onto Snowy Dark without knowing what we might meet or where we’re going.’

He looked around, expecting some support, but everyone was silent. That had been a
bad
bad time up there in Dark, feeling our way along, not knowing whether snow leopards were out there ready to pounce, and I guessed it would probably keep coming back to all of us all our lives, over and over, in our dreams and when we were awake. But it had been too big big a thing to turn so quickly into quarrelling.

Mehmet shrugged, and crossed his arms, and kept quiet.

‘We need to sort out a few things,’ I said, more confidently now, ‘like lookouts, and building shelters, and hunting and making a fire. And we need a funeral for Suzie and that poor baby of hers that never got to be born. It’s sad sad we can’t bury their bodies, but we can still have a funeral. We can still make a pile of stones and write Suzie’s name on a stone.’

‘Yes, but when Earth comes,’ said Suzie’s brother Dave, in a flat flat voice, ‘Suzie’s bones won’t be there to be taken back to Earth, will they?’

‘So she’ll be left alone on Eden forever when everyone else has gone,’ Johnny said, ‘all because of what happened up there. Because of the path you took us on, John.’

‘It did sometimes happen back in Family, didn’t it,’ I said, as gently as I could manage, ‘with leopards and things like that, that there was nothing left for us to cover up with stones? We don’t really know what happens when we’re dead, do we? There are some, aren’t there, who say our shadows always return to Earth when we die, even when our bones stay here in Eden? But we don’t know. And of course what we’d all want, when we die, is for our bones to be kept in a place where Earth could find us. I’m sad sad for Suzie that we couldn’t do that for her.’

Mehmet gave an angry snort.

‘The way we’re going, there’s not much chance that
any
of us are going to find our way to Earth, dead
or
alive.’

A sort of sigh went up. Several people murmured in agreement with Mehmet and for a moment I feared again that I’d lost them. But I found I still hadn’t. Dave and Johnny were standing near Mehmet, along with Angie Blueside and Julie and Candy, and their eyes were cold, but yet they were all still watching me, expecting me to carry on, even Mehmet himself. Whatever their private thoughts and feelings, they were all still waiting for me to tell them what was going to happen. That was what my job was, and, though they might not
like
me for it, they still agreed it was my job.

But I knew that they needed more from me now than just a plan, so I took out Gela’s ring again.

‘Remember that Gela is with us,’ I said. ‘Not with Old Family but with
us
, with this new little family of ours, which is trying to make the best of dark Eden, just like she did herself. Gela is with
us
. She’s not with the ones who just sit and wait for sky-boats to take them home. She’s not with the ones that try and prevent anything new from ever happening. She’s with the ones who set out across Dark, not knowing what they’d find. And she is proud
proud
of you all.
You’re
the ones doing what she wanted her children to do.’

I looked out at them. I saw Janny frowning, trying to figure out whether she agreed with me. I saw Lucy London, her face all smeary with tears. I saw Tina with her arms folded, waiting to see what trick I was going to play this time.

‘And when sky-boats
do
come from Earth,’ I said, ‘they’ll come looking for us right across Eden, because they’d
expect
us to make the best of our time here, and not skulk away our lives in Circle Valley until all the food is gone. After all, Earth folk themselves left even the solid ground behind, and travelled far far further than we’ve done, right across Starry Swirl.’

It was funny. I hadn’t known myself what I was going to say when I started out, and I heard my own argument like it came from someone else. But it persuaded me. Yes, I thought, that really does make sense. It really
is
what Earth would expect! And I felt
relieved
relieved, because there was doubt nagging in my own heart too.

But Gela Brooklyn, Tina’s closest friend, questioned what I said, not in an angry way like Mehmet might have done but in a slow and puzzled way, like she was really trying herself to understand.

‘Yes, John,’ she said in her deep voice, ‘but Angela was the one who always chose
not
to cross Starry Swirl when she had the chance. It was the Three Disobedient Ones who made her come to Eden, when she wanted to stay near Earth. And she and Michael did their best to make the three of
them
stay near Earth as well. Yes, and later, when she was here in Eden, she chose to stay here rather than cross back over Starry Swirl again with the Three Companions. She chose to stay and wait for Earth to send a new boat, rather than risk the old one, knowing that it might well sink.’

I felt a scary stab of doubt, like the one I’d had when we first started out over Dark. Maybe Gela was right. Maybe what we were doing really was
exactly
what Angela had warned against. But I kept my face firm and certain. Whether we’d done the right thing or the wrong thing, we’d done it now and we couldn’t undo it. Our little group needed to feel that the choice we’d made was the right one, and I had to persuade them, as best I could, that it
had
been, whatever my own secret fears. I needed to put on a mask, and be certain certain certain. That was my job. That was my part in this story.

‘Yes, Gela,’ I said, ‘but she herself chose to go up into sky in the Police Veekle, didn’t she? And if she’d
really
been so set on not straying from Earth, she’d have tried to go back to Earth straightaway with the Companions, wouldn’t she? But she didn’t. She stayed here in Eden, because she was someone who took each situation and tried to make the best of it. And that’s what she wants us to do too.’

I could see that a lot of them were looking puzzled and worried – I felt worried myself – so I quickly slipped the ring off my finger and held it out to them.

‘Gela is with us, remember. She didn’t give the ring to Caroline. She didn’t give it to David. She didn’t give it to Oldest. She gave it to
me
. Yes, and she told me she wanted us to spread out over Eden, and find new places to live, and new hunting grounds. She
told
me.’

And it was weird weird, because I didn’t even ask them to, but one after another of them came forward to touch the ring in my hand, pretty much all of them, except only for Mehmet, and Tina, and Jeff.

We stopped there in that spot next to the stream, at the edge of Tall Tree forest. We got lookouts sorted, spread our wet wraps out to dry and gathered up some wood for fire. After that, most people crept off to sleep in whatever places they could find.

But John stayed awake with Harry and Dix and me to take turns with the fire sticks. Tom’s neck, it took
hours
of rubbing them together to get a spark that would light anything. Our hands were all blisters with trying before we did. But even when we’d finally got some fires lit, John still wasn’t ready to sleep. He stood up and called to the lookouts to keep the fires stoked up, then he said he’d go for a walk.

‘I’m tired tired,’ he said, avoiding looking at any one of us, ‘but I’m going to find a pool to swim in before I lie down.’

Dix glanced at me, but I stood up with John, and gave Dix a little sign that I’d be back to see him later. It would be good to feel Dix’s friendly arms around me before I let myself sleep, but I could see that John was carrying a heavy heavy load and it seemed unfair to leave him to do it all on his own.

This forest was different different from the one we had grown up in. That great lonely empty space under the lowest branches was three four times the height of a man, so the bats and flutterbyes weren’t swooping and diving all around us like they did back in Circle Valley but were far far above our heads. Only sometimes a bird came blundering along at low level, squawking and screeching.

‘Makes me think of those Earth stories,’ I said. ‘Remember those ones about huge shelters that went up to sky, straight straight, as big as mountains? Skyscrapers? Walking underneath those things must be a bit like walking under these trees.’