Dark Eden

left it behind without even a moment of regret. Moving was what he liked to do best.
    ‘Now you’re talking, Tina,’ he said laughing. ‘It
could
work, couldn’t it? Just going a few hours further on each waking, perhaps, so we had time to hunt and scavenge and rest. We’d just need a few more bucks to ride on and carry our stuff, and we’d be fine, we’d never need to stop anywhere.’
    We walked on a bit.
    ‘You know,’ John said after thinking for a little while, ‘you really are right, Tina. It
would
be good to keep moving.’
    I’d hardly ever heard him so willing to discuss anything that another person had suggested to him.
    ‘But not heading
away
all the time,’ he went on. ‘Sooner or later we need to turn and face them. When there’s a few more of us, I mean. When we’re stronger. When we’re ready. It’s not good just to keep running
away
.’
    I shrugged. Why
should
we ever turn round? Why
should
we face them? Eight nine wakings’ journey from here, back in Circle Valley, Mehmet had probably already talked to David Redlantern. Now, or soon, David and his Guards would be gathering themselves together – their blackglass spears, their horsebucks, their bows and arrows, their knives, their clubs – and making their way up to Tall Tree Valley and on to the ridge beyond. And when they got there, they’d look down on Wide Forest as we had done. They’d be amazed amazed, like we’d been, and, for a while, their mouths would water at the thought of all that space and all that easy meat. But then they’d remember why they came, and they’d stop admiring Wide Forest for its own sake, and start searching searching searching for signs of us.
    They’d have ridden on the backs of bucks, which was Jeff’s idea, and they’d have followed the route that no one would have taken if it wasn’t for John, but that wouldn’t make any difference to them. They’d use the things we’d found, to hunt us down for daring to find them.
    I didn’t doubt, now Caroline was out of the way, that David Redlantern really would stick John onto a spiketree if he could, and let his skin burn off on its scalding bark, just as he’d always said he would. And I didn’t doubt that if he got hold of me, he would do to me what Dixon Blueside would have done if John and the others hadn’t come back to stop him. He’d hold me down and force himself up me and spurt his juice inside me, just to show how much power he had, and how little I had, however pretty I might be and however horrible and ugly he was. And if there was no one to stop him he wouldn’t just do it once. He’d do it again and again and again, until he’d used me up, and he could chuck me aside, like the empty husk of a whitelantern fruit with its sweet flesh eaten away.
    Why
should
we face all that, any more than we would choose to stick our arms down an airhole with a slinker hiding in it or pick up a piece of shit and force it down our throats? No, I thought, we should just go on and on and on. I even began to think that I’d go along with paddling out across Worldpool, if that’s what it took to keep us safe. In fact I could see myself agreeing to any plan at all that would distract John from his idea of turning round and facing David.
    But then my mood changed, and I thought that the further away we travelled from Circle Valley, the further we left behind all those other human beings too, the nice ones, like my mum, and nice batfaced Sue Redlantern, and all those others back in Family who weren’t like David Redlantern at all. And even though we hadn’t seen any of them since we left Cold Path Neck, it was sad to think that we might go so far far from them that there stopped being any possibility of contact again.
    Yes, and there was Earth to think about too of course. It was dreadful dreadful to think of Earth coming for us and not being able to find us because we’d gone too far, so that David and all the others went back to that world of light, and we few were left behind here like Tommy and Angela had been, all alone in dark dark Eden.
    And now I understood why John wanted to turn and face them. It wasn’t just about fighting and killing. That was part of it, but it wasn’t whole thing. It was also about staying
connected
. Even fighting was.
    ‘Jeff was just saying that maybe we could get some baby leopards somehow and train them up like bucks to protect us,’ John said, looking round at me for my opinion. ‘Sounds worth a go,