Chris Beckett - Dark Eden

So why did we keep doing it? I’d wondered that sometimes, but now I found out. It was because doing it felt great !

‘As for you, Tommy,’ I said, turning on John. ‘As for you, you selfish arrogant bastard. You took me from my mum and dad, you took me from my friends, you took me from my lovely Earth, without letting me in on your plans, without giving me a choice, without thinking about my feelings. And now you can’t even find my ring. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you and I always always will.’

But John just knelt down, picked up the ring and held it out to me.

‘Here it is, Gela, I’ve found it. I’ve found your ring for you after all this time.’

That threw me, I must admit. I wasn’t expecting that move at all.

‘What do you mean? You never found the ring, Tommy. You never did anything that useful in your whole life.’

‘No,’ said John. ‘I’m not Tommy. I’m John. I’m John Redlantern. I’m your great-great-grandson and these are your great-great-grandchildren, trying to make our home in dark Eden, just like you did. I’ve found your ring, Gela. I’ve ended that story. You don’t need to tell that story any more.’

‘Give it back then. Give it back to me now.’

But he had his answer to that as well.

‘No, Gela. You’re dead now. You’re dead and buried under a pile of stones, remember? The ring’s no good to you any more, is it? But I’ll look after it. We’ll look after it. We’ll take it with us over Dark and right to the other side, just where you want us to go.’

And he put the ring back in the pocket in his wrap and came and put his arms round me. Tom’s dick and Harry’s, you’d got to hand it to him! He knew how to stay in control.

My eyes were full of tears and I didn’t know if they were my tears really or Angela’s, just like I didn’t know if I felt comfort in his arms in spite of everything, or whether I hated him more than ever.

And then the story was over, and the decision was made and we were all busying about getting things ready to go up Cold Path into Dark and leave this place for good.

People tried to have things every which way, even smart honest people like Tina. They wanted the good bits and then they complained about the bad bits that had to go with the good bits. Well, the good bit about me was that I could make things happen, and that I stuck to a thing and didn’t ever give up or let go. That was the good thing that people got from me, along with all those other things people didn’t like.

When we had that meeting, I’d just done for a man. I’d killed a man I’d seen around Family ever since I was a little kid. I didn’t feel guilty about it exactly because I knew he’d happily have done the same to me, and to Tina and probably to the others too. But, Gela’s eyes, I was shaken shaken by it. All that meeting it was running through my mind over and over, my spear sticking out of Dixon’s back, my spear stabbing back again into his belly, the squelch of it going in, the hiss of air, the blood bubbling out of his mouth. I hadn’t stopped to look at him longer than the time it took to pull my spear out of him, and for him to roll over to look up at me, and for me to shove the spear in again to finish him off — his two friends were still running from us, and Gerry and Harry might have needed my help — but those couple of seconds were so fixed in my mind that it was like they kept happening — really happening — over and over again.

So I had that in my head, and I had all the practical things to remember, and at the same time I somehow had to make people believe in me, so that they’d accept being organized and they’d stay that way, and we’d have a chance of surviving. I had all that to think about — and there’s only so much a person can hold onto at one time — and then bloody Tina drops her little game with the Ring story on me, and — Tom’s dick! — I had to think about how to deal with that as well.

She’d say that was my fault for keeping the ring a secret, but I did that for a reason. I did it because I always knew from the beginning that when I showed it to people, it would give me power over them, but I also knew that the power wouldn’t last. So I saved it up for the moment when that power was most needed, not just by me but by all of us. It was like when the leopard came at me. I knew I only had one shot at it, so I waited till the best moment and didn’t just chuck my spear at it the first chance I got. And I got that right. I got it exactly right, whatever Tina thinks. I took out the ring just when we really needed it most — and it worked !

A couple of hours after I’d taken the ring back from Tina we were starting up Cold Path. There were twenty-one of us, plus two babies. The larger of the two bucks, Def, was in front with Jeff riding on it. After that came me and Tina, and then all the others, one by one, with the other buck, Whitehorse, at the end. Every one of us was covered up, except for our mouths and eyes, with buckskin wraps, so we didn’t really look like people , more like a herd of weird two-legged bucks. Every one of us had the greased buckskin footwraps that I’d been working and working on even before anyone came from Family to join me, with hard layers of skin and greasy glue on the bottom. Apart from Jeff on his buck, the two girls with babies (Clare and Janny) and the three girls carrying babies inside their wombs (Suzie, Gela and Julie), all of us were carrying things on our backs: rolls of rope, spare footwraps, bags of blackglass, bundles of buckskin, things that I’d thought about and organized over the past ten periods. And we were taking it in turns to carry some big flat pieces of bark, smoothed and greased, which I called snow-boats, each one loaded with useful stuff like meat and skins and spare wraps, except for one, which was holding a pile of embers on a big flat stone. They were hard work to carry over dry ground, but once we were up on snow they’d slide easy easy over the surface, and it would only take one person to pull them along. They were my idea too.

‘None of this would have happened but for you, would it?’ Tina said to me, looking back at all this.

‘No,’ I said crossly. ‘It bloody wouldn’t. I brought you all to Cold Path Valley. I sorted out the agreement with Caroline so as to give us time. I worked out how to make the wraps to cover our bodies. I had the idea of the snow-boats and organized people to cut the bark and make the ropes to pull them. I went up Snowy Dark over and over again to work out how to live up there and what we’d need, even when you moaned at me for going away by myself all the time. And you all chose to come with me because you all know quite well that you wouldn’t have made this happen without me. None of you would, not even you , Tina, and certainly not your precious Dix down there. So how come I get to be Tommy in the story and you get to be Gela? I’m the Gela here. I’m the one holding it all together.’

She shrugged.

‘It was how I felt, that’s all. It needed to come out somehow or I would’ve burst. Most people are like that, John. They just have to let things out sometimes, whether it’s right or wrong. Not many people can keep it all secret inside like you do. And, Gela’s eyes, it would be lonely lonely if we did.’

We came to the place where all that time ago we’d come with Old Roger and seen those shining woollybucks, so high up in Dark that I’d thought at first they were a sky-boat from Earth. Then we went past it, and that was the end of being in Cold Path Valley and in Circle Valley where we were born. And for one moment I had the thought that perhaps I’d made a terrible mistake, perhaps we really did need to stay by Circle of Stones, perhaps Earth would come down from sky and Family would tell them that we’d all disappeared on Snowy Dark, and they’d return to Earth without us. But I pushed that thought out of my mind. There’s got to be a point where you choose your path and stick to it no matter what.