Dark Eden

Swirl.’
    It was funny. I hadn’t known myself what I was going to say when I started out, and I heard my own argument like it came from someone else. But it persuaded me. Yes, I thought, that really does make sense. It really
is
what Earth would expect! And I felt
relieved
relieved, because there was doubt nagging in my own heart too.
    But Gela Brooklyn, Tina’s closest friend, questioned what I said, not in an angry way like Mehmet might have done but in a slow and puzzled way, like she was really trying herself to understand.
    ‘Yes, John,’ she said in her deep voice, ‘but Angela was the one who always chose
not
to cross Starry Swirl when she had the chance. It was the Three Disobedient Ones who made her come to Eden, when she wanted to stay near Earth. And she and Michael did their best to make the three of
them
stay near Earth as well. Yes, and later, when she was here in Eden, she chose to stay here rather than cross back over Starry Swirl again with the Three Companions. She chose to stay and wait for Earth to send a new boat, rather than risk the old one, knowing that it might well sink.’
    I felt a scary stab of doubt, like the one I’d had when we first started out over Dark. Maybe Gela was right. Maybe what we were doing really was
exactly
what Angela had warned against. But I kept my face firm and certain. Whether we’d done the right thing or the wrong thing, we’d done it now and we couldn’t undo it. Our little group needed to feel that the choice we’d made was the right one, and I had to persuade them, as best I could, that it
had
been, whatever my own secret fears. I needed to put on a mask, and be certain certain certain. That was my job. That was my part in this story.
    ‘Yes, Gela,’ I said, ‘but she herself chose to go up into sky in the Police Veekle, didn’t she? And if she’d
really
been so set on not straying from Earth, she’d have tried to go back to Earth straightaway with the Companions, wouldn’t she? But she didn’t. She stayed here in Eden, because she was someone who took each situation and tried to make the best of it. And that’s what she wants us to do too.’
    I could see that a lot of them were looking puzzled and worried – I felt worried myself – so I quickly slipped the ring off my finger and held it out to them.
    ‘Gela is with us, remember. She didn’t give the ring to Caroline. She didn’t give it to David. She didn’t give it to Oldest. She gave it to
me
. Yes, and she told me she wanted us to spread out over Eden, and find new places to live, and new hunting grounds. She
told
me.’
    And it was weird weird, because I didn’t even ask them to, but one after another of them came forward to touch the ring in my hand, pretty much all of them, except only for Mehmet, and Tina, and Jeff.

35

Tina Spiketree

    We stopped there in that spot next to the stream, at the edge of Tall Tree forest. We got lookouts sorted, spread our wet wraps out to dry and gathered up some wood for fire. After that, most people crept off to sleep in whatever places they could find.
    But John stayed awake with Harry and Dix and me to take turns with the fire sticks. Tom’s neck, it took
hours
of rubbing them together to get a spark that would light anything. Our hands were all blisters with trying before we did. But even when we’d finally got some fires lit, John still wasn’t ready to sleep. He stood up and called to the lookouts to keep the fires stoked up, then he said he’d go for a walk.
    ‘I’m tired tired,’ he said, avoiding looking at any one of us, ‘but I’m going to find a pool to swim in before I lie down.’
    Dix glanced at me, but I stood up with John, and gave Dix a little sign that I’d be back to see him later. It would be good to feel Dix’s friendly arms around me before I let myself sleep, but I could see that John was carrying a heavy heavy load and it seemed unfair to leave him to do it all on his own.

    This forest was different different from the one we had grown up in. That great lonely empty space under the lowest branches was three four times the height of a man, so the bats and flutterbyes weren’t swooping and diving all around us like they did back in Circle Valley but were far far above our heads. Only sometimes a bird came blundering along at low level, squawking and screeching.
    ‘Makes me think of those Earth stories,’ I said. ‘Remember those ones about huge shelters that went up to sky, straight straight, as big as