Chris Beckett - Dark Eden

He looked tired. He looked tired tired .

‘And we need time,’ he said. ‘We need all the time we can get, if we’re going to get ourselves ready for Snowy Dark.’

I took his hand, sort of expecting that he’d shake me off again, but funnily enough he didn’t. He squeezed my hand back and later on, when we went to lie down on our skins under the cavelanterns, we reached out to one another and had a little slide together, not like we’d done before, all panting and sweating and grabbing, not like newhairs normally do at all, but slow and quiet like you sometimes see grownups doing in the starflowers, grownups who’ve known each other and been friends for a long time, having a little slip and a little chat and a little cuddle before going back to their groups again.

John was right about that agreement. We stuck to our side of it — we even sent a few kids back that tried to come over to us after those first five wakings — and it did give us some time. In fact it lasted ten periods or so, more than a whole wombtime, and in that time we got two more little bucklings, and the first one grew big, and we made all three of them into horses that would let us put things on their backs, and would come when we called them and would nuzzle up against us with their cool dry feelers when they wanted us to feed them.

And we got more skins, and we made wraps for all of us (there were twenty-one of us now, including five more girls who came over in those five wakings after the agreement: Martha and Lucy London, Julie, Angie and Candy Blueside). And some of the girls got pregnant, and Janny and Clare had babies, the first born outside Family. And John went up many times to Snowy Dark, usually with Gerry, sometimes with me, sometimes with others, and stayed up there often for a whole waking and a whole sleeping above the line of the ice and snow, figuring out how to keep alive up there, how to make the footwraps better, how to use spears point down in the snow to stop from slipping over, and how to tie people together with ropes so if one began to slip the others could hold them back. In fact he’d often hardly got down to where there were warm trees and bright lanternflowers and people to talk to, before he started busying about again, looking for dry wraps and rope and spears to take up once more to icy Dark.

It was like things were back to front with John, I sometimes thought. It was like he felt more comfortable and safe with cold and dark and lonely than he did with ordinary and friendly and warm. Ordinary waking-by-waking stuff seemed to make him restless and uneasy: the chit-chat, the joking about, the little arguments, the kids, the chores. (They do say Tommy was like that too. The first Tommy, I mean, the father of us all. They say he was afraid of his own family, though he’d been happy happy to spend his time in sky, where there was nothing to breathe outside the thin metal of the starship, and nothing to touch, and nothing that was kind or warm at all.)

So John kept himself busy going up to Dark. But for the rest of us, things went on pretty much like they had done back in Family, except for the fact that there were fewer of us, and that we were all young, and that we were living up on the slopes by Neck of Cold Path Valley, and that when we lay down to sleep we only heard the streams and forest, and not the sound of other groups coming and going around us.

Then one waking it all completely changed.

It happened when a bunch of us were out in forest, just outside of Valley Neck. There was me and John and Gerry and Dix and Harry and Jeff, along with the first and biggest of our three little bucklings. John had given Snowy Dark a rest that waking because we’d all agreed Jeff would try and ride whole of this trip on the buck’s back. He’d never ridden any of them for more than a short time before — he’d certainly never tried to ride one to really get anywhere — and John wanted to know how it would work out if Jeff rode a buck for a whole waking. He wanted to know it badly badly, because he was starting to realize that there was really no chance of us getting up and across Snowy Dark unless we could use woollybucks like Jeff had suggested, to guide us, to light our way, and to carry stuff for us.

Anyway, this little trip was meant to be more of a scavenge than a hunt, but when we’d been walking for a bit we saw a whole bunch of stonebucks off through forest, four or five of them at least. It was too good a chance of meat for us to miss, but me and Jeff and the little woollybuck weren’t up to running and spearing. My arm was in a buckskin sling because I’d fallen on the ice a few wakings back and twisted it, Jeff couldn’t run at all, and the buck had never been asked before to do anything but slowly walk with him on its back. So all the others went off Rockiesway after that little herd of stonebucks, leaving me and Jeff and the little buck behind.

I didn’t mind. I felt like taking it easy. I walked along next to the buck with Jeff on its back, and we looked for stumpcandy and low hanging fruits that could be picked without climbing. Jeff had a name for the animal. He called it Brownhorse, and he said ‘he’, not ‘it’, when he spoke about it. And now as we wandered along, he made woollybuck sounds from time to time as if he was trying to talk to it. But I felt kind of awkward with the creatures still. I didn’t like their flat flat eyes with those green glints inside them. Nor those feelers round their mouths. So I just walked along beside it, not saying much and just thinking my own thoughts. Truth be told I didn’t feel that comfortable with Jeff either, though his eyes were big and deep deep and not flat at all.

For himself, Jeff didn’t seem to need me there. He just sat quietly on the woollybuck’s back — him on the little buck was not much higher than I was walking on my own feet — and stared around him with those big big eyes, holding onto its wool with his hands and sometimes leaning forward and patting the soft warm lantern on its head.

Hrum , hrum , went the animal softly when he did that, and Jeff would repeat the same sound back to it. Hrum , hrum .

And then suddenly a glass-tip spear came flying through the air and landed — thunk — deep in the buck’s flesh, just in front of Jeff’s leg. It must have gone straight into one of its hearts because the green-black blood came spraying out like hot sap out of a cut tree. The animal sank down in a trembling heap and Jeff fell tumbling off it.

‘Good shot, Met,’ said a big deep voice from the trees. ‘Good good shot.’

It was big fat Dixon Blueside, and here he was, right up by Valley Neck, way way past Lava Blob where he and everyone else from Family were supposed to stop. With him were David Redlantern’s little buddy Met, and another silly brainless newhair boy called John Blueside. They all three came running over, laughing, to finish off the little buck that was shivering and threshing about on the ground.

‘What are you doing ?’ I yelled at them. ‘This is our buck and you aren’t even supposed to be here.’

‘Leave him alone!’ Jeff screamed at them. ‘Leave my Brownhorse alone!’

I’d never seen him angry like that. He’s normally so calm, like he’s looking down on Eden from some faraway place from where everything can be clearly seen and everything can be forgiven and understood.

‘Brownhorse?’ mocked Dixon, driving his spear deep into the animal’s quivering side, pulling it out, driving it back in. ‘Brownhorse? Since when has a woollybuck got a bloody name?’

His two followers laughed.

‘Get off him!’ Jeff shouted. He had got up to his feet, and was trying to pull Dixon away from the buck.