Dark Eden

waking like now, when we
can
still see them if we want to, up by Blob. But if we go over Dark that won’t happen any more. We’ll
never
see them, never never, and we won’t even get a chance to say goodbye.’
    ‘No, you won’t,’ I said.
    ‘But that’s not fair!’ said Lucy London, and several people murmured crossly in agreement.
    ‘I’m not making you do anything,’ I repeated, as patiently as I could. ‘You can go back to Family if you want. Or you can stay here at Cold Path Neck if you think you can make a go of it. It’s up to you.’
    ‘Yes, but Family is horrible now,’ complained Lucy London. ‘And staying here would be no good if there were only a few of us. We’d be lonely, wouldn’t we? It wouldn’t be any good at all.’
    ‘Mother Angela would say it was wrong to go over Dark,’ said Julie Blueside. ‘Okay we came over here, and didn’t stay right next to Circle, but we’re still in Circle Valley, aren’t we, and we’d still be able to see if a Veekle from Earth came down from sky. Plus our friends in Family would tell Earth where we were.’
    ‘Yeah,’ said her younger sister Candy. ‘And my mum told me that First Angela and First Tommy and First Harry all came to Lucy Lu in a dream and told her that if we go across Dark we’ll be lost forever. We won’t have the Shadow People to watch over us any more, and even after we die, we’ll never go back to Earth.’
    ‘Oh yeah?’ sneered Tina’s sister Jane. ‘So how come Lucy Lu used to say that beyond Snowy Dark was where the Shadow People
lived
?’
    ‘Don’t bother, Jane,’ said Tina. ‘Once people start talking about messages from Mother Gela and the Shadow People, black can be white and white black and a thing can be true and its opposite true all at the same time.’
    ‘Well, you’ve got that wrong, Tina,’ shouted Julie. ‘You just don’t understand. Yes, in a
way
the Shadow People live beyond Dark, but not in
that
way . . .’
    But then Harry started up again.
    ‘They did for Brownhorse!’ he yelled, sweating, redfaced, spit flying out of his mouth, and banging hard hard on the drum with every word. ‘They were
bad
bad. They did for Brownhorse! They nearly did for Harry’s sister too!’
    ‘Leave it, Harry!’ screamed Gerry. He was shaking shaking all over. ‘Just bloody leave it, alright?’
    And now six seven people were all shouting at once.
    ‘Shut up, Harry!’
    ‘Brownhorse was just a woollybuck!’
    ‘Just because you don’t know anything about the Shadow People, Tina, doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I’ll talk about what I bloody want . . .’
    ‘Leave Harry alone. They did for Brownhorse, Jeff’s Brownhorse.’
    ‘Shut
up
, Harry!’
    ‘It matters to some of us what the Shadow People think, Tina, even if it doesn’t matter to you.’
    ‘Gela’s tits, can’t you see we haven’t got
time
for all that crap!’
    ‘They did for Brownhorse . . .’
    ‘Don’t you tell
me
what we’ve got time for!’

    It was like a chess game when it gets stuck and won’t move forward. I needed to bring a new piece into play.
    ‘Everybody be quiet,’ I hollered. ‘Shut up now and I’ll show you something!’

29

Tina Spiketree

    We were in terrible danger. Three people were dead. Harry and Gerry and John were killers, and they were all three shaking shaking all the time because of their heads trying to get hold of what they’d done. And there was going to be
more
killing, and any one of us could easily end up dead in only a waking or two. This was one of the most important meetings that anyone on Eden had ever had, but it looked as if it was going to become a pointless shouting match, not about what we needed to do but about the Shadow People, or about Harry being too noisy, or about how a woollybuck had died. We were facing death yet we were fighting about nothing at all.
    But then John silenced everyone. He absolutely silenced us. He took away our breath.
    ‘Angela has come to
me
,’ he said. ‘She came to me over by Deep Pool. She told me she wants her children to spread out over Eden and not stay in one place pining for Earth. She wants us to be at home here in Eden, not just in this valley but at home all
over
Eden, just like people are at home all over Earth. She says Earth would expect that of us, and will come looking for us wherever we are. She says Earth will be disappointed with us if we stay only in one place.’
    He looked round our dumbstruck faces. No one would have