Dark Eden

will be until we get down the other side.’
    ‘Oh that’s just a load of . . .’ Mehmet began angrily, but John cut him off.
    ‘Snow leopards cry out before they attack, the same as forest leopards sing. We know that now, don’t we? They cry out to confuse their prey about where they are. And we know now that if we hear that sound up on Dark, we just have to yell and scream loud enough, and we’ll scare them off.’
    He looked around at the faces in the firelight, half-hidden under buckskins.
    ‘In fact those leopards up there are a
good
sign. I’ll bet you anything they’re there because the bucks are climbing out of Tall Tree Valley to find their way down to lower ground, like we know bucks do in cold dips.’
    He made all of us to walk to the edge of forest so we could look up and see for ourselves. He was right. The snow was barely falling now, and, on the huge dark slopes all round us, we could see the headlanterns of bucks moving in long lines up out of Tall Tree Valley.
    ‘You see?’ he said. ‘Look at them! Heading off for the big low valleys! Those ones over there are going back towards Circle Valley, aren’t they, but look at these ones here! Where are
they
going, Mehmet? What does that tell you?’
    ‘It tells me you’re crazy, John. It tells me that, if we let you, you’ll go on until you’ve done for all of us.’
    Mehmet turned to the rest of us.
    ‘Harry’s dick, can’t you see it? He’s doing it again! He’s trying to control our minds. He’s trying to make us think that the way he sees things is the only way to see things!’
    ‘You don’t have to . . .’ began John.
    ‘Oh, just shut up, John, will you, shut up and give us all a rest!’
    Mehmet had come right up in front of John. He was the shorter one of the two and he glared up into John’s face, and then shoved him, hard hard, so he staggered and nearly fell.
    But John was nimble. He recovered his balance quickly quickly, and, in one single movement, he passed his spear from his right to his left hand, grabbed Mehmet by the neck and flung him down into the snow. And then he was over him. Mehmet’s body wrap had fallen open and John pressed the tip of his blackglass spear into the smooth skin of Mehmet’s chest. Both of them were panting panting for breath. A bead of red blood trickled across Mehmet’s skin and under his wrap.
    ‘Gela’s heart, John, what are you doing!’ I screamed.
    ‘John! Stop!’ yelled Tina.
    And in the same moment she cried out, a leopard cried out too above us.
    ‘Go on then John,’ jeered Mehmet. ‘Do for me, like you did for Dixon Blueside. It’s getting to be a bit of a habit, isn’t it? That’ll make five, at my count, dead because of you. Or should that be seven, with the two little ones?’
    Tina stepped forward, yanked away the spear. I pulled Mehmet roughly up to his feet. The two of us pushed them apart.
    ‘It’s a choice,’ Tina hissed at Mehmet. ‘It’s a free choice. People can stay with you or they can leave with John. What’s so hard to understand about that?’
    No one spoke. The Fishcreek boys and the three Blueside girls went to stand by Mehmet, the boys clutching their spears tightly. The rest of us walked back to our camp and began to dig out our storage logs from under the snow, to get out dry food and spare wraps.
    I could see the six of them wavering as we loaded up. I could see them wondering what it would be like to be by themselves in this cold bleak place. I wondered if, at the last minute, they’d crack and come with us, as Mehmet had always done before. But they stayed.
    ‘Don’t think you’re the brave ones,’ Mehmet jeered after us as we set off behind John and Jeff and Jeff’s woollybuck, Def, ‘just because you’re the ones that are going. Angela stayed, remember, when the Three Companions left. She stayed in one place and made a go of things, like we’re doing. But you, John, and all of you that follow him, you just run run run.’

38

John Redlantern

    There were lights below us! There were lights and lights and lights, on and on, as thick as stars in Starry Swirl.
    ‘Gela’s heart, Jeff,’ I whispered, ‘this is the best moment in my whole life, the
best
best moment!’
    Bright bright lights, on and on, and not just ahead but to the left too, and to the right: red and green and yellow and blue and white. We’d never seen such a thing. We’d never seen a forest that bright and that big.
    I turned to shout to rest of them still