Chris Beckett - Dark Eden

Dixon’s face darkened.

‘You’ll get off me if you know what’s good for you, you little clawfoot creep.’

But Jeff wouldn’t let go until the two boys took hold of him and threw him to the ground. Even so he made three big bloody scratches with his nails down Dixon’s hairy back.

‘We’ve got an agreement,’ I told them. ‘You’d better leave us now and clear off to far side of Lava Blob. That was the deal we made with your Family Head. That was the deal that was written down.’

‘I’ll come to you in a minute, my little darling,’ Dixon said. ‘But right now we’re talking to clawfoot Jeff.’

He hit Jeff hard with the butt end of his spear as he said this, and his little friends laughed and began to join in.

‘This is really happening, Jeff!’ Met mocked. ‘You really are here!’

‘Gela’s eyes, Dixon! Stop this!’ I shouted. ‘You’ll do for Jeff if you carry on like that!’

Jeff was curled up on the ground with his arm over his face, all bloody.

‘Who says we don’t want to do for him, my darling?’

And now it was my turn to try and drag them back, pulling at Dixon’s shoulder with my one good arm and my one hurt one.

He turned to me.

‘Looks like we’re going to have to teach you a lesson too,’ he said, and he looked at me like David Redlantern sometimes did, like I was a juicy piece of meat and he was hungry hungry hungry. He gave me a cruel smile.

‘Come on, lads,’ he said. ‘Creepy clawfoot’s going nowhere. Let’s deal with the pretty one first.’

So now they threw me onto the ground and straight away Dixon was on top of me, straddling me with his big fat thighs.

‘Pretty pretty Tina,’ he hissed. ‘Pretty, pretty, pretty. All that power it gives you, eh? All that power. You can get boys to do anything you want just by smiling at them. You can pick them up and put them down again just as you please. Slip one waking, cold shoulder the next. However the fancy takes you. However it suits you best. Isn’t that right?’

‘Get off me!’ I screamed.

‘So how do you like it when the power is the other way round, eh, Tina? How do you like it when fat old Dixon Blueside has the power?’

He looked at the boys.

‘Slip or no slip, eh? Slip or no slip with pretty pretty Tina? Which is it going to be, eh, my mates, now we’re the ones who’ve got the choice? Pretty Tina, who isn’t even in Family any more so the Laws don’t apply. Slip or no slip? Hmmm, let me see. Let me see. What’s it going to be?’

Michael’s names, I could feel his fat dick hardening under his wrap.

‘Slip her one, Dixie,’ said Met.

‘Yeah, slip her,’ said John Blueside, with his nasty little eyes all shiny with hate.

Dixon started to pull at my wrap. Well, I screamed and screamed and screamed and suddenly — blam! — my boys were back: John, Gerry, my Dix, my Harry, bursting out from the trees, yelling and shouting and waving spears and clubs.

‘Gela’s tits!’ went Met and John Blueside and off they ran, back towards Family as fast as they could, while Dixon was still clambering to his feet.

Dixon’s mouth was hanging open. He wasn’t smiling any more. He could see he was all alone against three angry boys and one big big angry man that was my brother Harry. (And Harry was a big man when it came to a fight, even if he was a kid in other ways.) Dixon gave me one look, one weird blank look — it was as if, just for a moment there, he was actually wondering if he could ask me for my help — and then he was off too, running through forest on his big fat heavy legs.

‘No you bloody don’t!’ said John, and he and Gerry and Harry were straight off after him.

But my Dix stopped, my gentle Dix, and he squatted down between me and Jeff.

‘Tina? Jeff? Are you okay?’

Jeff was sitting up. He was all bruised and bloody and trembling, but not badly hurt. He crawled to his Brownhorse.

‘Poor old Brownhorse,’ he murmured, and he made a soft little buck noise in his mouth. ‘Poor old Brownhorse.’

The creature was pretty much dead already. It wasn’t moving its limbs, just trembling a bit all over, but Jeff gently stroked its wool and went on talking to it like maybe its mother would have talked to it: Hrum , hrum , hrum .

And while Jeff stroked Brownhorse, Dix put his arm round my shoulder and gently stroked me . I really wasn’t badly hurt at all, just had a few scratches and bruises, and my hurt arm aching badly again like it had done when I first fell: nothing more than that. But something horrible had nearly happened to me, something that we didn’t even have a name for. I was shaking shaking all over, my teeth rattling together. And I leant my head on Dix’s shoulder and let him comfort me, while little Jeff tried to comfort the dying animal.

And pretty soon, back came John and Gerry and Harry.

As soon as we saw them we knew something big had happened. They’d changed . They’d changed completely. They were trembling worse than me, they were shaking all over, and their faces were all blotchy and twisted and puffed up, so you couldn’t tell if they were scared or angry or excited or ashamed or what, but you could see that whatever it was, it was big big big.

‘What?’ I demanded. ‘What? Gela’s heart, what have you done?’

‘Yeah, what’s happened?’ Dix asked, gently releasing me, and jumping to his feet.

John stared at him, like he was having difficulty seeing he was there.

‘We . . . er . . .’ he began, and then stopped.

‘You . . . er . . . what? Gela’s heart, John, tell us?’

‘We . . . we . . . did for them,’ he said.

He turned to me, then to Jeff, then to me again with weird wide staring eyes that he couldn’t keep still.

‘You what? You did for them? No, no, you couldn’t have. That wouldn’t . . . What? You did for them? You mean . . . What? . . . Like animals, you mean? All three? Like animals?’

We were the fifth generation of Eden, the fifth generation after Father Tommy and Mother Angela. But no one had ever killed another human being. No one, not ever.

‘Yeah, all three,’ said John. ‘I did for Dixon with my spear while he ran.’

His voice came out all jerky and strange.

‘Then . . . Then Harry did John Blueside. He turned to try and face us with his spear, but . . . Harry . . . Harry was on top of him with his club before he could throw it, and he did for him too. He cracked his head open. And . . . and . . . Met . . . well, Gerry did for him, didn’t you, Gerry? He did for him with his spear, like I did Dixon.’

John held up his own blackglass spear with his shaking hand, like it would do the rest of the talking for him. He touched the tip with his finger and held it out to show me the blood. Not greeny-black Eden blood, not blood born down in Underworld, not the blood you see when a spear comes out of a buck or a starbird or a bat, but real red blood that came down from sky. Real red blood from Earth.

‘We are here,’ said Jeff, like he’d been thinking carefully all this time about what dead Met had jeered at him, and was finally agreeing with him. ‘Yes, we really are here.’

We didn’t have hollowbranch horns like they had in Family, but we’d made ourselves a drum out of a length of trunk and a bit of stonebuck skin. As soon as we’d got back to our camp — Gerry and Dix carrying Jeff between them to speed things up, and Harry and me carrying the dead buck Brownhorse — we got out the drum and Harry began to beat it, as hard and fast as he could.