Dark Eden

Harry’s dick, those two’s faces looked even
more
like they thought we were Shadow People come back from the dead than the faces of the Tall Tree people had done. As soon as they saw us, they stopped dead where they were, their muscles tensed up, ready to fight or run, and their fingers tightened around their spears. But Mehmet ran over to them, gabbling excitedly.
    ‘Who’d have thought it, eh? We thought maybe the rest of them hadn’t made it through Dark, after they left us here. But it’s John, look. Old John Redlantern himself, and Gerry and Jeff with him. Nice to see them, eh? Nice to have a chance to put old troubles behind us.’
    ‘Er . . . yeah . . .’ said Paul Fishcreek and Gerald Fishcreek, uncertainly, still fingering their spears.
    ‘So how is Family these wakings?’ I asked them. ‘Caroline still Head, is she?’
    ‘Caroline? Um. Yes,’ said Gerald, looking at Paul.
    ‘How about our mum?’ Gerry asked. ‘Sue Redlantern. She okay, do you know?’
    ‘Yeah. She’s good,’ said Paul.
    ‘You guys still hate us down there, then?’ I asked.
    Gerald and Paul Fishcreek looked at each other like they were in agony.
    ‘Oh no, no . . .’ they both began.
    Tom’s dick and Harry’s, there was weird stuff going on,
weird
weird, but I couldn’t tell exactly what it was. When we’d eaten Tall Tree’s buckmeat and the Tall Tree people had got to their usual sleeping time, I refused Mehmet’s offer of a space in one of their shelters and found somewhere else a little way from them, where me and Jeff and Gerry and our bucks could get some rest with solid rocks against our backs, and could get a good view of anyone that came near.
    ‘It’s not so cold that we need a shelter,’ I explained to the Tall Tree people, ‘and of course we’ve been keeping different wakings to you. We’ll be more comfortable out there where we can talk and get up and move around without disturbing you.’
    I told Gerry and Jeff I’d keep the first lookout, but none of the three of us had actually gone off to sleep when, after an hour or so, we heard someone creeping up. We grabbed our spears ready. But it wasn’t Mehmet or Dave or Johnny or the Fishcreek blokes, which I’d truly thought it might be, sneaking up on us with leopard tooth knives. It was Julie.
    ‘Hey, Jeff, do you want to slip with me?’
    I suppose life wasn’t much fun for them up there. It was cold, and nothing happened, and, when they didn’t have visitors, each of them only had four other people to talk to, apart from the little kids.
    ‘That would be good, Julie,’ Jeff said.
    And he did it with her, right there in the space beside the rock, slowly slowly and gently – and quietly quietly like you do when other people are near – and afterwards he held Julie in his arms on the sleeping skins and they talked, softly softly so as to let me and Gerry sleep if we wanted to. But I didn’t sleep. I lay there listening to the sound of their talking, while the strange tall trees hummed all around us.
    Most of the time, it was too quiet for me to hear the words, but once Jeff raised his voice slightly, not in anger (he was hardly ever angry) but firmly to make a point.
    ‘They were protecting me and Tina, Julie!’ he said. ‘They didn’t just do it for no reason! You know that!’
    I didn’t pick up any more of what they said after that but after a while I heard Julie begin to sob and Jeff comfort her. That’s why girls loved him, not only because of his beautiful eyes and his face and his golden hair and his long fine fingers and the way he could slip on and on until they’d had enough, but because he was kind.
    Maybe an hour later a kid began to cry over in one of the stone shelters, and Julie recognized it as her own.
    ‘Michael’s names, Jeff,’ muttered Gerry enviously, after she’d gone. ‘How do you bloody
do
it?’
    But Jeff had more worrying things to talk about.
    ‘John, Gerry, listen to this,’ he whispered. ‘Mehmet has been down to Family. It wasn’t so long after we left Tall Tree last time. Apparently David Redlantern is the only one who really decides what happens in Family now. He’s got a whole bunch of young guys called Guards, who make people do what he wants, and Caroline doesn’t matter any more. Julie says Mehmet’s done a deal with David to get the friendship of Family back. She doesn’t know what the deal is exactly, and she’s sure that Mehmet hasn’t told them whole story, but she reckons