Dark Eden

he’s promised he’ll help them to get to you. One thing Mehmet has told her and the other Tall Tree people is that David still wants to kill both of you two, and Harry as well. He still says he wants to spike you up to burn like Jesus, for killing Met and Dixon and John Blueside. And Julie says Mehmet’s told David about Gela’s ring. Apparently David hates you for that too, he hates you for keeping it for yourself.’
    ‘Bloody Mehmet Batwing,’ I said, taking my spear and jumping up. ‘That treacherous little slinker.’
    In my mind I saw that giant bat on the top of the tree, with the slinker creeping up towards it through the steam.
    ‘I’ll go and do for him now,’ I said. ‘I’ll kill him before he can do any more harm.’
    ‘That won’t work,’ Jeff said. ‘Just killing another person won’t work.’
    Well, no, I had to admit it wouldn’t. Not unless I killed
everyone
here: the two Fishcreek guys and Johnny and Dave and Angie and Julie and all their kids. Otherwise there’d still be someone left to tell Family that we’d been here and that our camp wasn’t so far away, somewhere just over the ridge.
    ‘Not all of Family is your enemy,’ Jeff reminded me. ‘And not all of these people here are either, not any more. But if you killed again you’d make
more
enemies, wouldn’t you? You’d make it easier and easier for everyone to see you as nothing but a killer, like a leopard that needs to be hunted down. You were the first one in Eden to kill a human being, after all.’
    Gerry just sat on his sleeping skin looking up at us. This was outside of his reach. This was difficult grownup stuff between me and his little brother.
    ‘Gela’s eyes,’ I muttered, after I’d thought about it for a bit. ‘I’ve got it all wrong, haven’t I? Things weren’t perfect before I chucked those stones into the stream, but look at it now! I’ve taken Eden and broken it up into pieces.’
    There are lots of different stories branching away all the time from every single thing that happens. As soon as a moment has gone, different versions of it start to be remembered and told about. And some of them carry on, and some die out, and you can’t know in advance which version will last and which won’t. It had never occurred to me before that the story of John Redlantern might end up as the story of a famous killer, the first one in Eden ever to do for another human being. But now that story suddenly took shape in my mind.
    I could see it being acted out in the future.
John the Leopard-Man
; John who killed a leopard and ate its heart and somehow the heart crept into him and became his own; John who sang sweetly and treacherously like a leopard does, and promised wonderful things, and made people leave everything and walk towards him, but really all he did was to lead them to their deaths. Death followed after him. It spread out from him across the world like ripples across a pool, like evil ripples. But then at last brave David Redlantern hunted him down, just like you’d hunt down a leopard that had taken to prowling around outside the fence and watching the kids playing inside. Brave ugly David hunted him down with his Guards, and then the world was safe again and Family was whole once more.
    ‘No, John, you didn’t break it, you opened it up,’ Jeff said. ‘That was why we followed you. It needed to be opened up. It needed to happen.’
    He looked at me with his big deep eyes, putting his hands on my shoulders. I’ll tell you, I was pretty near to crying.
    ‘Still,’ he said, ‘that’s not to say that you don’t sometimes make mistakes.’
    I nodded.
    ‘We’d better go then,’ I said. ‘Let’s just get straight on these bucks and go back over Dark.’
    Gerry looked at his brother, his eyes big and as gentle as Jeff’s but without the depth, waiting to hear Jeff’s judgement. Jeff shook his head.
    ‘That won’t work, though, will it, John? That’ll tell Mehmet we know something. It will tell him that someone here has told us something that worried us enough to make us leave in a hurry. If we don’t want that, we should stay till everyone wakes. We should let them have the widebuck skins and the fruit we’ve brought for them, trade them for some of the blackglass they get from Family. And then we should tell them we’ll come up and see them again soon soon, and hug and kiss them, and say goodbye, and go.’
    Gerry looked at me.
    I laughed.
    ‘I didn’t know you were capable