Dark Eden

was only matter of time before we started getting the black burn and then the gang green like old Jeffo London did. We knew that most probably in another waking’s time we’d all be lying out here as dead as poor Suzie Fishcreek, meat for leopards just like she’d been. Tom’s dick, we didn’t even know that Def’s tracks were leading us anywhere we’d want to go. He might have taken Jeff right up to the top of one of the mountains, for all we knew. Woollybucks weren’t like people, were they? They were
meant
to live in Dark.
    Shuffle forward – wait – shuffle forward – wait – shuffle forward – wait – shuffle forward – wait.
    From near the back of the line Gela Brooklyn started to sing, an old song that they say was brought from Earth by Tommy and Gela and the Three Companions.
    ‘Row, row, row the boat, gently down the stream,’ she sang in her deep voice, ‘merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream . . .’
    And gradually everyone joined in, not loudly, not like we were singing round a fire, but like we were all muttering the song to ourselves inside our own heads.
    ‘Row, row, row the boat’ – shuffle forward, stop – ‘gently down the stream’ – shuffle forward, stop – ‘merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily’ – shuffle forward, stop – ‘life is but a dream.’
    That went on for one two three hours. One time someone in middle – it was Dave Fishcreek – slipped sideways into some sort of hole or crack in the ice, and we would have lost him if he hadn’t been tied on with ropes to the people in front and behind him. But they just hauled him back out, and muttered to the people following them to go a bit to the left, and shuffled forward again, taking up the song like nothing much had happened.
    Another time, we heard the cry of a snow leopard, and it sounded far off – though how can you tell with snow leopards how near or far they are, or which direction? – but we just lifted up our spears a bit, and raised up our voices a bit more and kept on singing.
    ‘Row, row, row the boat . . .’ –shuffle forward, stop . . .
    And then, some time later, John suddenly yelled out from the front.
    ‘Stop! Don’t come forward! Don’t push!’
    So we all stopped and the song died out.
    ‘I think there’s an ice crack across our path,’ John called back. ‘I think I nearly fell down it. Let me just test.’
    We waited. Some of us heard a faint splash.
    ‘Yes,’ called John, and, no matter how he tried to cover it up, his voice was all wobbly and scared. ‘It’s a . . . It’s quite a big crack. I just made a ball of snow and chucked it down. It’s a big crack there, with a stream down at the bottom of it. Five yards down, maybe. We can’t cross over it.’
    Everyone waited.
    ‘I think,’ John said, ‘I think I must have taken a wrong turn a bit back there. I must have mistaken some other dent in the snow for Def’s tracks. I think we need to go back a bit and . . . I’ll try and find the place where I went wrong.’
    Go back over snow that twenty people had trampled over and find where the shallow footprints of a woollybuck had branched off? In darkness? Who was he kidding?
    But we all stood there, waiting.
    ‘Unless someone has a better idea?’ John said.
    Lie down on the snow and sleep, I thought. Sink down into a dream and never wake up.
    I knew if I lay down I’d soon be quite numb, and then I wouldn’t feel cold any more and I could dream I was back with Jeff and Sue all my other brothers and sisters and friends back in Family, cuddled by a warm fire.
    ‘No suggestions?’ John tried again. Normally he’d ask a question like that to shut up any complainers, but this time you could hear he was hoping that someone would say yes.
    But no one said anything. Not Tina. Not Mehmet. Not anyone.
    It was
cold
cold.
    ‘I’ll . . . I’ll walk back to the other end of the line,’ John said. ‘The rest of you just turn round, and then you can follow me the other way . . .’
    No one said anything. No one moved. John walked down the line. Poor John, I thought. He’s failed us all and he knows it. I touched his arm as he went past. I felt disappointed in him – bitter bitter disappointment – but I felt sad sad for him too.
He
couldn’t just sink down into a dream and fade away. Not when it was him that had brought us to this. He’d have to struggle and struggle right up to the end.
    And anyway he wasn’t like the rest of us: he had no one back