Dark Eden

thought it possible. He was just about the last person in Eden that you’d expect to say a thing like that. I was scared scared someone was going to laugh and it would all fall apart. And I think someone would have done too if he hadn’t said something else that was even
more
weird and even
more
unexpected.
    ‘If you don’t believe me, have a look at this. Gela has given me a sign.’
    He reached down, took something from the little pocket at the edge of his waistwrap and held it up between his finger and thumb. It was small small and at first I couldn’t think what it was.
    ‘You know the story of
Gela’s Ring
? You remember it? Angela’s lost ring? Well, this
is
the ring. I found it, soon after she first came to me.’
    I started shivering all over. Some of the others cried or laughed, like Angela herself might have done if someone had found the ring for her, long after she had given it up for lost. Some of them swore. Michael’s names! Harry’s dick! Tom’s neck! Even the two little babies picked up the strange feelings all around them and began to yell, first Clare’s little Fox and then Janny’s baby Flower. And after that, would you believe it, the two remaining horsebucks in their cave – Def and Whitehorse, Jeff called them –
they
started as well, like they could pick up the excitement too, and that made everyone laugh, even the ones who were crying, and even the ones who’d done for other human beings only a few hours before.
    But as John moved round everyone showing them the ring, and how tiny and smooth it was, and how it was really made out of metal, and how it had tiny writing inside with Angela’s name, tiny writing that could only have been done on Earth, I started to feel angry.
    John had done it
again
! He’d behaved again like he was the only one in the world that needed to know or decide anything! He’d destroyed Circle without asking anyone, and kept the ring for himself without telling anyone. He’d expected us to follow him and trust him, but he hadn’t trusted any of
us
at all.
    I was so angry I didn’t even care about the ring any more. All I wanted to do was scream and yell at John. But I couldn’t do that then, could I? Angry as I was, I knew that we were all in danger. And I knew that everyone here needed to be able to believe in John and trust him, because what he said was right. We
did
have to go. We
did
have to take the risk of going over Snowy Dark.
    But then an idea came to me. I realized there was something I could do to stop John having it all his own way, without messing up the things we needed to do.
    ‘I know,’ I said, ‘let’s do the story now. Let’s do the story of
Gela’s Lost Ring
. You can be the teller, Dix. I’ll be Angela. Harry, you can be the first Harry. Suzie Fishcreek and Lucy Batwing, you can be the first Suzie and Lucy. Clare, you can be the first Clare, Candy can be Candice. John can be Tommy.’
    Everyone was puzzled by this at first. It was too sudden, I suppose, and they couldn’t see the point of it, and it sort of interrupted them in middle of looking at the wonderful perfect ring. But at the same time everyone could see it was, in a way, a suitable thing to do, to remember the story of this famous thing that had just been put in front of them. That was how we’d been brought up. Every Any Virsry we’d been told to remember things, to join the present up with the past.
    As for John, when I peeked at him sideways, I could see that he was feeling just like I’d been feeling a few moments before. He was angry angry, he felt set up, he really didn’t want this at all, but at the same time he knew he had to go along with it. I hadn’t given him a choice, just like he hadn’t given me one.
    Good! Serve him right. Let him see what it felt like.
    ‘So this is the story of Angela’s ring and how she lost it,’ began Dix, that kind pretty boy who had stopped to care for me and Jeff while John and the others went belting off to kill.
    ‘Gela never wanted to come to Eden. She and Michael were made to come here against their will by Tommy and Dixon and Mehmet. She decided to stay and start Family here with Tommy, because she thought it was better to live and see what the future would bring until Earth came back than to go into sky where it was pretty certain that she’d drown. But she was sad. She missed her mum. She missed her father. She missed her group, which was called London, like our first group here in Eden. She missed