Dark Eden

John Redlantern

    Thud, thud, thud
. Old Roger was banging a stick on our group log to get us up and out of our shelters.
    ‘Wake up, you lazy newhairs. If you don’t hurry up, the dip will be over before we even get there, and all the bucks will have gone back up Dark!’
    Hmmph, hmmph, hmmph
, went the trees all around us, pumping and pumping hot sap from under ground.
Hmmmmmmm
, went forest. And from over Peckhamway came the sound of axes from Batwing group. They were starting their wakings a couple of hours ahead of us, and they were already busy cutting down a tree.
    ‘
What?
’ grumbled my cousin Gerry, who slept in the same shelter as me. ‘I’ve only just got to sleep!’
    His little brother Jeff propped himself up on one elbow. He didn’t say anything, but watched with his big interested eyes as Gerry and I threw off our sleep skins, tied on our waistwraps, and grabbed our shoulder wraps and our spears.
    ‘Get your arses out here, you lazy lot!’ came David’s angry spluttery voice. ‘Get your arses out fast fast before I come in and get you.’
    Gerry and me crawled out of our shelter. Sky was glass-black, Starry Swirl was above us, clear as a whitelantern in front of your face, and the air was cool cool as it is in a dip when there’s no cloud between us and stars. Most of the grownups in the hunting party were gathered together already with spears and arrows and bows: David, Met, Old Roger, Lucy Lu . . . A bitter smell was wafting all around our clearing, and the smoke was lit up by the fire and the shining lanterntrees. Our group leader Bella and Gerry’s mum, my kind ugly aunt Sue, were roasting bats for breakfast. They weren’t coming with us, but they’d got up early to make sure we had everything we needed.
    ‘Here you are, my dears,’ said Sue, giving me and Gerry half a bat each: one wing, one leg, one tiny little wizened hand.
    Ugh! Bat! Gerry and me pulled faces as we chewed the gristly meat. It was bitter bitter, even though Sue had sweetened it with toasted stumpcandy. But that was what the hunting party was all about. We were having bat for breakfast because our group hadn’t managed to find better meat in forest round Family, so now we were going to try our luck further away, over in Peckham Hills, where woollybucks came down during dips from up on Snowy Dark.
    ‘We won’t walk up Cold Path to meet them,’ said Roger, ‘we’ll go up round the side of it, up Monkey Path, and then meet Cold Path at the top of the trees.’
    Whack!
David hit me across the bum with the butt of his big heavy spear and laughed.
    ‘Wakey, wakey, Johnny boy!’
    I looked into his ugly batface – it was one of the worst batfaces in Family: it looked like he had a whole extra jagged mouth where his nose should be – but I couldn’t think of anything to say. There was no fun in the man. He’d hit you hard for no reason, and then laugh like he’d made a joke.
    But just then a bunch of Spiketree newhairs arrived in our clearing with their spears and bows, walking along the trampled path that linked our group to theirs on its way to Greatpool.
    ‘Hey there, Redlanterns!’ they called out. ‘Aren’t you ready yet?’
    Bella had agreed with their group leader Liz that some of them could come along with us and take a share of the kill. They were the group next to us Redlanterns in Family and, for the present, they were keeping the same wakings and sleepings as us, which made it easy for us to do things together with them (easier than with, say, London group, who were having their dinner when we were just waking up).
    I noticed Tina was among them: Tina Spiketree, who cut her hair with an oyster shell to make it stick up in little spikes.
    ‘Everyone ready then?’ Bella called. ‘Everyone got spears? Everyone got a warm shoulder wrap? Good. Off you go then. Go and get us some bucks, and leave us in peace to get on with things back here.’

    We went out by a path that led through a big clump of flickering starflowers and then into Batwing. A whole bunch of Batwing grownups and newhairs were in their clearing banging away at a giant redlantern tree with their blackglass axes, working in the pink light of its flowers. We walked round the edge of their clearing to Family Fence, dragged away the branches at the opening, and went out into open forest. No more shelters and campfires ahead of us now: nothing but shining trees.
    Hmmmph, hmmmph, hmmmph
, went the trees.
Hmmmmmm
, went forest.
    We