Dark Eden

Silly Martha London threw her arms round me and sobbed and sobbed. But some of them stayed away. Mehmet didn’t come near me, and nor did Dave and Johnny Fishcreek, whose sister had died because of my plan, nor Angie Blueside, whose cousin would never have been clubbed to death by Harry if I hadn’t split Family in two, nor her groupmates Julie and Candy.
    Even the ones who did talk to me soon walked away again, all except for Gerry, who squatted down and stayed by my side. And even with him things were different now. He knew I’d lost something too, but he was letting me know he’d stand by me anyway. He was always a kind boy, but he’d never had to show
me
that sort of kindness before, except maybe that time when I came out of Bella’s shelter, and most of Redlantern looked the other way.
    ‘I know you feel bad bad about what happened to Suzie and about us getting lost,’ he said, ‘but you did get us up on Dark. You got us sorted back at Valley Neck. You made sure we got all the stuff together.’
    ‘Yes, I did get us up on Dark, but it was your little brother that got us down.’
    And even while I was saying that to Gerry, half my mind was already thinking and thinking about how I should deal with Jeff.

    Weird clever Jeff: I’d known him since he was born, and me and him and Gerry had shared a sleeping shelter back in Redlantern for wombs and wombs. He’d never been a trouble to me (at least not apart from his clawfeet) but now he suddenly was. I was tired tired of solving problems, but he’d become yet another problem that I had to figure out how to fix.
    I don’t mean I thought Jeff would try to take over from me. He wasn’t like that. He wouldn’t even be interested in playing the part I played. But people were going to listen to him more from now on, and they might quite easily decide that what he said was worth more than what I said. And that wouldn’t just be a problem for me, it would be a problem for everyone, because they needed me to bring things together and make things happen, and to do that I needed them to go on believing in me.
    But how could I get that back? Apart from having saved us all, Jeff had another advantage over me, which actually came from the fact that he wasn’t interested in doing what I did. To do my job, you had to wear a mask and hide your feelings, you had to choose carefully what you said and what you kept inside. People could see that, and it made them wonder what it was that you were holding back. But Jeff could just be himself, and no one would ever doubt that what he said was what he really meant. So not only had he saved them all after I’d got them lost, but he’d always seemed easier to know, and gentler, and more genuine than me. Tom’s dick, how could I compete against
that
?
    I couldn’t fight him, that was for sure. I couldn’t push him away. I couldn’t put him down. I couldn’t turn the others against him.
    ‘I’ll just have to get closer to him,’ I decided. ‘Stop thinking of him as little Jeff and make him my friend. I’ll have to . . .’
    But then I made myself stop. It was stupid thinking about this now. Jeff would keep for another waking. There were other things I had to do right now, and I needed to save my strength for them.
    I stood up.
    ‘I need to talk to everyone together now,’ I muttered to myself. ‘Get things sorted so we can eat and sleep.’

    The others were sitting by a small stream, many of them still crying, and many still with arms round each other. I went to a rock that stood above them all, next to the stream, and climbed up onto it. Tom’s dick, I was weary weary of having to be John Redlantern. Bad bad things had happened since I stuck my spear between the ribs of fat old Dixon Blueside, and I could have done with a rest. But at the same time I knew this was one of those moments yet again, one of those leopard moments.
    Michael’s names, there were so bloody
many
of them! So many! One after another after another!
    ‘Hey, everyone, listen up!’
    I was scared that they’d take no notice, or even that they’d shout me down: ‘You? Why should we listen to
you
?’
    But that didn’t happen. They might be disappointed in me and some of them might even hate me, but they all did what I asked and went quiet.
    ‘Well, we
got
here,’ I said. ‘Maybe not to the other side yet, but to a new place. All of us except poor Suzie. And we would never have made it if it wasn’t for my
smart
smart cousin Jeff who