Dark Eden

greeny-yellow – and it wasn’t warm in Tall Tree Valley. Even down at valley bottom where there were trees with warm trunks, you still needed to wear bodywraps.
    But still, there was dry ground to stand on, and it wasn’t so cold that you had to cover up your head, so we pulled the wet wraps off our feet and heads, and we had faces again, and not just buckskin masks. People looked at each other and saw friends they’d known all their lives, and, like children do when they see a friendly face again after they’ve been lost on their own, most of them started to cry. Angie cried. Gerry cried. Tina cried. Big strong Gela Brooklyn cried. Even Mehmet cried. Harry bawled like a baby in his big man’s voice.
    ‘Harry’s sad, Harry’s sad sad,’ he sobbed, while Tina cuddled him to try and keep him calm.
    And in middle of all of this, Dave and Johnny Fishcreek, in each other’s arms, began to wail out their grief for their sister Suzie, who’d been torn apart by that white leopard up on Dark.
    The only ones I noticed that weren’t crying were Clare and Janny, who had to feed their babies, and Jeff, who was lifting the bags off the back of his precious Def and smoothing down its fur.
    I wasn’t crying either. I felt sort of numb. I sat on a stone and rubbed my feet.
    ‘At least now there’ll be a story to tell,’ I said to myself.
    If we’d all died up there on Dark, then the only story about us that would remain would be the story they’d tell about us back in Family, and what kind of story would that be? It’d be a story about a bunch of stupid kids who wouldn’t listen to Council and Oldest and their own mums, and walked away from Family and were never heard of again. And that would have been where it ended, like the story of the Three Companions ended when they said goodbye to Tommy and Angela. But now that wasn’t how it was going to be. It hadn’t looked that way for a bit, but our story was still going on.
    It wasn’t the story I’d been expecting, though, because when we came down into Tall Tree Valley, it wasn’t me that was leading everyone, it was Jeff. That was how things had turned out, and that was how the story would be told in the future. People whose parents and grandparents weren’t yet even born would hear how the little clawfoot boy on his shining buckhorse came over the ridge to save his friends. They’d laugh and cheer when, up on some silly pretend mountainside, someone appeared on a pretend buck, playing the part of Jeff.

    When Jeff had smoothed down Def’s fur, he led it to the stream where it could graze, and then hobbled back to be among the others.
    ‘Oh Jeff, Jeff, you did
brilliant
brilliant!’ one after another of them told him. Even the Fishcreek brothers thanked him through their tears.
    ‘Thankyou thankyou, Jeff! We’d all have died up there like Suzie did, if you hadn’t come.’
    I’d lost something, and Jeff had gained something, that was obvious. They’d all heard me get scared. They’d all heard me admit that I’d taken the wrong direction. They’d all been there in Dark where I’d led them, and known that I had no idea where to take them next. Jeff had come and saved them.
    And now of course they were all over him, praising him, kissing him, hugging him, shaking his hand, patting his back. He’d probably never had so much attention before in his life, but he looked like he wasn’t sure he really liked it. I think maybe he felt a bit like I’d done that time we brought the dead leopard back into Family through Batwing gate.
    It was quite some time before anyone thought about me, sitting there by myself on my stone, watching them and rubbing my feet. But after a bit, Gela Brooklyn looked over and noticed me, and she came over and gave me a hug.
    ‘You did good good too, John, to get everything together,’ she said. ‘You worked hard hard for a long time back at Valley Neck, when none of the rest of us really believed we’d ever have to come up here.’
    Gela was one of those people who seem like grownups even when they’re little kids, and now she made me feel like a kid who a grownup’s being kind to.
    ‘
And
you figured out how to drive away the leopard too,’ she said.
    Tina saw Gela talking to me, and she came over and gave me a hug too, though it was a hug just like Gela’s, like the hug people give each other when they are just friends or groupmates.
    More of them came to talk to me after that. Dix shook my hand. Jane kissed me.