Chris Beckett - Dark Eden

‘What? Have him back? Are you nuts? Do you really think we’re going to let him destroy our Circle, hurt whole Family, shame his own group, and then let him back in again with nothing but a telling off?’

‘Mother Angela herself is telling me he had to go,’ cried Lucy Lu suddenly in that hollow voice she put on, like she was talking in a cave far away. ‘He had to go, but now that he’s gone, she’ll help us put Circle back, and make things how they were. Oh sweet sweet Angela, our dear good mother. She’s telling me that if Council wants me to, she’ll guide my hand to find the stones that bad John threw in the stream, and put them back exactly where they were.’

I walked and walked and walked, straight past Lava Blob with its funny shy hoppers waving their mouth feelers at me and wringing their hands, past the little pool where Tina first gave me that pink oyster. The bundle that Redlantern group had given me was heavy heavy, the fire-bark was hot, and the going was hard hard in that sticky fuggy air, but even so it was much easier to keep walking than to stop, however weary I was, because while I walked there was a rhythm, but when I stopped there would be nothing to do but think about what I’d done, and what I was going to do next.

I walked without a rest for the time of a whole waking and a whole sleep, all the way to that place up the slope by Neck of Cold Path Valley, with the caves and the warm pool. I climbed up the slope, crawled into one of those caves, spread out sleeping skins under the little shiny rocklanterns, lay down and fell asleep at once. I’d worn myself down so much with that long long walk that even my worries couldn’t keep me awake, so sleeping took up a bit more time before I had to think about what I was going to do next.

But when it did come, waking up was hard hard. It was like having a cold stone pressed down on my chest. I was completely alone. Everyone in the world was more than a waking’s walk away from me and forbidden to talk to me forever. I was cut off from Family like Family was cut off from Earth.

What if Earth comes now? I thought. What if that Landing Veekle finally comes down from sky after all this time and I’m not there?

It was scary scary thinking of being left in a world with no one else there at all. I’d always been the kind of person that tries not to rely on anyone. I’d always kept myself separate. You didn’t need to be chitter-chattering to other people all the time, was what I always thought. You don’t need to take all your problems to other people to fix, or tell other people every single little thought that comes into your head. But now I could see, easily easily, that everyone needs other people. People needed other people like they needed air. And for a while I felt so lonely I could barely breathe.

And all the scary scary things that had happened came back and filled up my head, so that it almost felt that they were all still happening. Over and over again I was standing by myself in front of whole Family. Over and over I was telling Tina what I’d done and seeing the icy anger on her face. Over and over I was walking away from Redlantern and hearing Bella wailing while the rest of them tried to make things seem okay. Over and over I heard her final dreadful scream.

It wasn’t even as if I was a proper grownup yet. I was only a newhair of twenty wombs. And I could easily have cried like a kid. But then I thought, No, this is one of those leopard moments if there ever was one.

I began to talk to myself out loud. It calmed me down and helped me concentrate.

‘Get a bloody grip, John Redlantern,’ I said. ‘What are the odds of Earth coming right now when they haven’t come for a hundred and sixty-three years? And even if they did come, I’d see the Landing Veekle from here, wouldn’t I, with all those lights on it? Yes, and anyway they wouldn’t go without me. Sue wouldn’t let them. Gerry wouldn’t, nor would Jeff, or Bella or Old Roger or Janny or Tina . . .’

It helped a lot, saying the names of people that wouldn’t agree to go back to Earth without me.

‘Or Jade,’ I added, as an afterthought.

Then I reached into that little pocket sewn on the bottom edge of my wrap, and took out the metal ring, and I turned it over in my hand, and slipped it on and off my finger, and held it near a whitelantern so I could see the tiny words: To Angela with love from Mum and Dad. I thought about Angela Young all on her own by the edge of Deep Pool, scrumpling up that lanternflower and throwing it into the water: kind, strong, lonely Angela, the mother of us all, who’d never wanted to come to Eden.

I pressed the ring to my lips and tears came into my eyes. I wiped them quickly away.

‘Tom’s dick, pull yourself together,’ I said. ‘If push came to shove, I could even trade my way back into Family with this ring. I could tell them I’d just found it and it was a present for all of them, to make up for Circle. They’d all think I was great.’

I squeezed the ring in my hand.

‘But I’m not that bloody desperate, am I? Not even close to it. Things won’t go on like this forever. I won’t always be on my own. One way or another, I’ll have people around me again, and I’ll bloody make things change, just like I planned.’

I nodded firmly to myself and slipped the ring back into its little pocket.

‘So what’s the plan?’ I asked myself.

I noticed that I sounded like Caroline Brooklyn running a Council meeting, and that made me smile.

‘What’s happening next?’ I said. ‘What’s on the Genda?’

I stood up and stretched myself. Sky was still grey-black and starless. Down to my left was the narrow opening of Cold Path Valley, with the hills rising up again on the other side. In front of me whole of Circle forest stretched out, half-buried in fug, but still shining shining all the way to Blue Mountains, and still, as ever, going hmmmmmmmm .

‘I’ll have a dip in that little pool first,’ I decided, ‘and then I’ll hide away my stuff, and then I’ll have a hunt and a scavenge, and get some fruit and some starflowers and maybe some fresh meat. I’ll concentrate on all that for a bit, and then I’ll eat, and then I’ll start thinking about the next step. How to get across Dark. How to make wraps warm enough. What I’ll do for light. How to find my way through.’

Horrible Lucy Lu Redlantern went from group to group with her weepy eyes and her fake echoey voice, saying that she’d heard from Angela herself, the mother of all of us, and Angela had promised to help her pick out the stones at the bottom of the stream that came from Circle and put them back exactly where they were before. Council pretended to think about it carefully, and pretty soon the groups heard from their leaders that they’d all decided to accept Lucy Lu’s proposal and let her do it. Oldest had agreed as well, apparently, though how Council got any sense out of them I don’t know, what with them quivering and whimpering and weeping over by Circle Clearing, and old Stoop gulping and gasping to get enough air to breathe.

So then Council got a bunch of newhairs together, one from each group, and a length of rope to make a circle, and Lucy Lu made a big thing out of reaching down into the water, and touching this stone and that stone, and shaking her head again and again, and then trembling and rolling her eyes and moaning when she sensed which stone was the ‘right’ one for each position in Circle. Afterwards everyone pretended they thought Circle was all mended and back to how it was before, but no one really believed it. It didn’t look the same, and I could tell for certain they weren’t the same stones, because when I was a kid I’d noticed that one of the stones on Blueside of Circle had a black line going right through it, like it was made of two halves, but now there wasn’t one stone there that wasn’t a pure white.