Dark Eden

we’ve got on here. But I’m going to walk once round the edge of this place.’
    I saw Tina look at me, wondering if I was going to ask her to go with me, and hoping hoping I wouldn’t. I saw Gerry looking at me too,
part
of him wanting me to ask him to come, but a bigger part hoping I wouldn’t take him away from the rest of them.
    But I’d already made up my mind to take Jeff.

    Me and Jeff took a spear, and a bow and some arrows, and we went up the slope a bit so we could get a view and then made our way round the valley at that level, me walking, him riding beside me on his buck. It felt weird being just with Jeff. He’d always come as a pair with Gerry. And it felt awkward because of course he knew quite well that I’d chosen to go with him alone for a reason.
    ‘There must be an exit from this valley,’ I said after a bit. ‘Or all this water from the snow would have turned it into a giant pool.’
    I looked out over Tall Tree forest, with its white and yellow lanterns shining at the bottom of that steep dark bowl. Clouds of fug were rising up from middle of it, lit up by the lanternlight. Here and there the odd bird or bat was flying above the trees.
    ‘I know what you’re hoping, John,’ Jeff said, smiling. ‘You’re hoping that you’ll find us a nice wide exit full of bright trees, so we can just walk easily down to whatever’s at the bottom, and you won’t have to try and persuade us all to go back up over Dark.’
    I didn’t answer that.
    ‘I can’t see a gap anywhere, can you?’ I said. ‘Dark seems to go all the way round without a . . .’
    I broke off because I noticed three of those monkeys watching us from a tree. One by one they jumped out into the air. As they fell they reached out forward with their front hands, backward with their back hands, and straight out to the sides with their middle hands, so that their loose wrap-like flaps of skin were stretched out tight like the skin of a bat wing. They glided fifteen twenty yards and landed, one after another, on another treetrunk, with a little
clack
–
clack
–
clack
each time as their claws took hold.
    ‘That stretchy skin could be useful stuff,’ I said.
    I put an arrow on my bow and lifted the bow to take aim . . .
    But Jeff leaned over from Def’s back to push my arrow towards the ground.
    ‘Leave them be, John!’ he said, laughing. ‘You don’t have to make
everything
serve your purpose all the time.’
    Gela’s tits, who was he to tell me what to do? He might have saved us from Dark, but he was still only a funny little clawfoot kid, with no new hairs even, except maybe a first bit of fluff above his dick.
    ‘You don’t get it,’ I said crossly, lifting my bow again. ‘We’ve got to use everything we can if we’re going to . . .’
    But the monkeys jumped off again – one, two, three – down towards main forest. As soon as the last one had landed, the first one was off again, and then they were gone.
    As I lowered my bow, I noticed I felt relieved that I hadn’t had to try and shoot them. I wouldn’t admit it to him of course, but bloody Jeff was right. It did feel good to just let things be for once. I took the arrow off the bow, and for a little while me and him stood there quietly, looking out over the valley.
    ‘There
is
a big waterfall somewhere,’ I said. ‘Can’t you hear it? That faint faint roar, under the sound of the trees?’

    But though we went right round until we could see the smoke from the fire ahead of us again, softly lit up by forest, we found no break in the wall of rock that surrounded Tall Tree Valley. Where did the water go? Where was that waterfall roar coming from?
    ‘Do you remember once when we were little kids,’ I said, ‘you, me and Gerry used to make those little boats with dry fruit skins? We used to grease them to stop them going soft.’
    ‘Yes, of course. All the kids played with those.’
    ‘Remember one time we dug out our own little pool for them? But the water sank into the dirt and turned to mud, so we had to keep filling it up again, and in the end we gave up. Me and Gerry chucked stones into the mud, remember? Each one went
splat
and made a neat little hole with a ridge round it in a circle. This valley’s just like that, like a giant stone splatted it out.’
    ‘Well, that’s what probably happened,’ Jeff said.
    ‘Don’t be dumb, Jeff. A stone would have to be
huge
huge to make this.’
    ‘There are much bigger stones than that in sky,