Dark Eden

of being so devious, Jeff.’
    To my surprise, Jeff hung his head. He really hated lies and tricks.
    ‘I know. But I don’t think we have a choice.’
    We looked out at the strange tall trees, humming and shining, with the bats and flutterbyes diving and swooping among their high branches.
    ‘We are here,’ Jeff muttered, as if to remind himself of a truth that stayed true no matter how much we lied and tricked each other. ‘We really are here.’
    I touched Gela’s ring on my little finger, felt its hardness, turned it round a bit. We were brothers and sisters really, all of us, that was the weird part. Me, Mehmet, David Redlantern: every one of us in Eden came from the same mother and the same father.

    So when Mehmet and the others began to stir and poke up their fire and get things ready for another waking, we went down to them, pretending that nothing had changed.
    ‘We need to get back to our own people,’ I told Mehmet. ‘It took us a long long time to get here, and they might think a snow leopard has got us if we don’t show our faces soon. But maybe you’d like to trade with us a bit before we go? We’ve got these skins, look, like woollybuck skins but smooth. And fruit, like you get down in Circle Valley. What can you trade us for this lot?’
    And then we were off again, up over Dark, till we came to the ridge looking out over the Wide Forest.
    ‘Look at that!’ I said. ‘Even from here you can see the smoke of our fire down there. They could easily find us.’
    The air was still, and the smoke went straight up like a tree trunk, lit up clear and white by the lanternlight of Wide Forest.
    ‘Yes, and look at
that
!’ said Jeff, pointing back.
    I looked round. On the snowy slope behind us were three patches of light from the headlanterns of three woollybucks. It was Mehmet and a couple of the others. They’d been behind us all the way, following to see which way we’d go. They’d only need to come as far as this ridge we were on now to see Wide Forest below them, and the smoke rising up from our fire, all lit up by the firelight and by the lanterns all around it. And then Mehmet would know where we were living and he’d know we’d been lying when we said our camp was far away.

44

Tina Spiketree

    When he came back down from Tall Tree Valley John was full full of himself, like he hadn’t been for a long long time. He had all his authority back. He knew exactly what he was doing and how to carry everyone with him. And the funny thing was, he didn’t have good news at all. He had
bad
bad news, but he was happy happy happy. It was just like when the snow came down into Tall Tree Valley: he liked having trouble to deal with.
    ‘We need to leave this place,’ he told us. ‘David Redlantern and his lot could soon be down here after us. We need to get far enough away from here that they can’t see the smoke from our fire from the top of the ridge. Where we are now, they could be here within twenty wakings if they put their mind to it.’
    He looked back the way the three of them had just come down. There was a dip going on and Starry Swirl was filling up sky, bright bright and big as whole world, with the black shadow of Snowy Dark sharp up against it.
    ‘We won’t always run from them,’ he told us. ‘Time will come when we’ll turn round and face them. And, if we need to, when that time comes, we’ll fight David and his lot and beat them. But we’re not ready for that now. There’s only sixteen of us here, not counting little kids, and he could bring maybe fifty sixty grownup men and newhairs with him over the ridge, with blackglass spears and bows and everything. We’re not ready for that. But a waking will come when there’ll be more of us, and we’ll have found our own blackglass, and then . . .’
    ‘And then,’ said Gela with a sigh, ‘there’ll be a lot more killing. There’ll be lots and lots more red red blood. Harry’s dick, John, you don’t have to apologize for telling us to run away! Surely there’s enough space in Eden for people who feel like doing for each other just to move apart and keep out of each other’s way?’
    ‘Yeah, and let’s stop talking about killing, if you don’t mind,’ Clare said. ‘What’s poor Fox and Flower going to make of it, eh?’
    The two children were both listening intently, their faces stiff. Poor things. It was never like that when
we
were littles. We might have been scared of leopards or slinkers sometimes, we