Chris Beckett - Dark Eden

But I knew I needed to get back to Neck to be ready for whatever it was that Family had decided to do.

As it turned out, I didn’t need to hurry back so fast. I’d been back at the caves for a whole waking and a sleep after that and then half a waking again, before we heard a thing from Family.

Most of our lot were out hunting, and I was with Tina, Jeff, Gela and Clare in front of our caves, grinding seeds and sewing up buckskin wraps, when Mike called down from top lookout that six seven people were coming. He’d glimpsed them out there crossing a gap in the trees. Pretty soon, Dix called up from lower lookout that he’d just seen them too.

Well, it could have been kids coming over to us like before, but we’d never had that many come all in one go, so it sounded more like David and his lot were coming back with their clubs and spears. We hid our buckskins and all our other things in our various hiding places, then me, Tina and Gela grabbed our own spears and clubs and went down the path, leaving Mike, Dix and Jeff by the caves, while Clare went after the others to let them know what was happening.

The visitors from Family had heard us calling out to each other and had stopped and waited at the opening in the trees just past Neck where Cold Path Stream leaves Cold Path Valley and flows out into Circle Valley forest. It wasn’t David’s lot, though. Caroline herself, the Family Head, was sitting on a rock, with blind Tom Brooklyn and Candy Fishcreek on each side of her. Jane London, the Secret Ree, was squatting at her feet, and three young London guys with glass-tipped spears were standing around them. Hmmmmmm , went forest. The stream splished and splashed over the stones. Above them, a little hazy but still quite bright, Starry Swirl shone down.

We knew our part of forest much better than they did. We lay low in a starflower patch under the trees to watch them, just like we did when we were hunting buck. They couldn’t see us but they knew we were watching them and we could see they were playing up to that. Caroline and the two group leaders were chatting away like they were just having a little rest on a gentle walk through forest. Secret Ree was chipping in from time to time in her little fluty voice. The three young blokes looked bored and fiddled with their spears.

‘Clever,’ whispered Tina, ‘making us come to them.’

‘No way will we go to them, Tina.’

‘No. You’re right. But how about we just walk out like we happened to be out here hunting in forest?’

That seemed a good plan to me, so that’s what we did. We came strolling out from the trees, and we acted, not surprised (because that would be like admitting we didn’t have a proper lookout system), but like it didn’t matter much to us whether they were there or not.

‘Hi there, Caroline,’ I called out.

And then we sat down by the stream, some way short of where they were sitting, and put our feet in the water, like hunters after a long waking.

Of course they knew we were playacting, just like we knew they were. And we knew they knew, and they knew we knew. Really and truly this was a big big thing for them that was happening, just as much as it was a big big thing for us. Us and Family were big problems for one another and both sides badly needed to talk. But the pretending, the pretending on both sides that this wasn’t a big thing at all: that was part of that talk. It was an important part of it. It was a way of feeling our way forward.

But that didn’t change the fact that this really was a big thing, this was one of those moments that people would remember and act out far off in the future, like Angela’s Ring and Death of Tommy , and the departure of the Three Companions and me destroying Circle. It was one of those big big moments, and all of us — me, Tina, Caroline, Secret Ree — we were all in it together, we all had a responsibility together to try to make the story as good as it could be.

‘We’ve one or two things we wouldn’t mind talking to you about,’ Caroline called out.

‘Sure,’ Tina called back. ‘Just need to cool our feet a bit, though. Why don’t you come over?’

She looked sideways at me, and gave me a secret slippy smile, like she might have given back there in Family, the first time we met up over by Deep Pool. And that made me sad sad for a moment because I could see how much all this other stuff — Circle, Bella, all of it — had put distance between how things were then and how they were now. It was as if when I destroyed Circle, I’d stopped just being John Redlantern and put on a kind of mask. Like I said, in the future people would tell stories about this time. Some woman would pretend to be Caroline, some girl would pretend to be Tina, some young guy would act me, just like John Brooklyn had acted Tommy Schneider at Any Virsry back when Circle still lay in place. But what I saw now was that it wasn’t just in the future that this meeting would become a story to be acted out. Even now, even when it was happening for the first time round, it had already become a story in a way, with me as an actor in it, playing a part, and not just being myself. I was acting me.

Still, there was no time to think about that now.

‘No improvement in your manners then, newhairs,’ called out Caroline, glancing at the others with her with a tired look on her face. ‘No sign of you growing up yet.’

They got up and came over to us in a weary, grownup way, like we were naughty littles refusing to settle down to sleep. And the three young men with their glass spears followed behind them. I knew them all: Harry, Ned, Ricky.

‘Nice move there, Caroline,’ muttered Tina, like we were watching a game of chess, ‘nice move: making us look like kids.’

We pulled our feet out of the stream, shook the water off them and stood up.

‘We’ve decided to make an offer to you,’ Caroline said. ‘We’ve decided you can be a group on your own — Cold Path group — with your own group leader, and you can have your group over here apart from the rest of Family. But you will still be part of Family. You must still come to Any Virsries and Strornries, and you must still abide by Family decisions, and Family laws.’

‘How about David Redlantern and his friends,’ I said, ‘were they happy with that?’

Caroline didn’t let any expression appear on her face.

‘They’re part of Family and they’ll abide by it,’ she said.

‘We’ll make sure of it,’ added blind old Tom Brooklyn with his eyes rolling about in no particular direction.

‘Good for you, mate,’ I said. ‘But we’re not a group. We’re another family. A separate family on our own.’

Caroline snorted.

‘Don’t be ridiculous, John, you can’t be another family! There is only one. We all come from the same mother and the same father. That’s just a fact.’

‘Tom’s dick and Harry’s, Caroline!’ Tina burst in. ‘That’s a bit much coming from you! You told John yourself he wasn’t part of Family any more. The Laws wouldn’t apply to him, you said. He could be treated like an animal. Like a tree fox or a slinker, you said.’

I put my hand on Tina’s to stop her. I appreciated her standing up for me but I needed her to be quiet because she was missing the point. This meeting wasn’t really about the rights and wrongs of things. I mean, I didn’t like Caroline and she didn’t like me, but this wasn’t about our personal feelings. Funnily enough, me and Caroline both understood that, and we were the only ones there that really did. We both knew we were there to try and build a shape out of words that her lot and my lot could both live with. It wasn’t personal. It wasn’t even a fight between us really, more like a job we were working on together, not so different from Old Roger sitting down with a bit of blackglass to make a spearhead, or one-legged Jeffo London starting to cut open a log to make it into a new boat.