Dark Eden

Spread it about! Quickly! Come over to Guards now!’
    It was already busy busy in Guards. They were getting out warm wraps for the snow and rolling them up. They were tying up bunches of arrows. They were taking out their strongest blackglass spears and their best leopard tooth knives.
    ‘What’s happening?’ I bellowed at them. ‘What in Gela’s name is going on?’
    Guards laughed and went on gathering their things together and tying them onto their backs with string and buckskin straps.
    ‘Get out of our way,’ David said, stuffing some wraps into a bag. ‘We’re busy. We’ve got a job to finish, and we’ll have no time spare until it’s done.’
    Mehmet was there beside him, already up on the back of his woollybuck, ready to lead the way back up Dark.
    ‘What job?’ Jade asked David.
    I looked round, surprised. There were ten eleven mums there, and Jade had come running up with the rest of them.
    ‘You
know
what job, Juicy John’s mum,’ David told her. ‘You know perfectly well what job. We’ve found out where your juicy boy is hiding out with his chums, and we’re going to do what we should have done long ago.’
    ‘They’re
our
boys and girls,’ I told him. ‘They’re Family’s. They’re not yours to do what you like with!’
    David came over to me and sneered into my face.
    ‘
They’re our boys
,’ he simpered in a fake little whiny whiny voice. ‘
They’re part of Family. They’re not yours to do what you like with
.’
    Then he snorted and stepped back from me so he could talk to all us women together in his normal rough hard voice.
    ‘Everyone listened to that talk before, didn’t they? All that stuff about how dear sweet Juicy John was
our
boy, how he was one of us, how we mustn’t hurt him. And look where it got us, eh? Four people dead who’d be living and breathing now if it wasn’t for him! Four people! And a baby inside its mum’s womb. Now get out of my way, and don’t talk to me about being sorry for people.’
    I ran forward and grabbed hold of his arms.
    ‘Listen to me, David Redlantern, I’ve known you since you were a little boy. I looked out for you. You know I did. I told you stories. I comforted you when the other kids teased you. I looked after you. So listen to me. You owe me that, and I’m not letting you go until you . . .’
    He turned and called over his shoulder.
    ‘Mike! Get her off me and keep her off me.’
    A hard young London boy called Michael came with his mate and dragged me roughly off David.
    ‘You’re in charge here until we get back, Mike,’ David said. ‘Meantime keep these blubbering oldmums out of our way so we can finish getting ourselves together and go.’
    David had his Guards divided into two groups. One group was to go with him up over Snowy Dark, with Mehmet Batwing as their guide. The other group – about twenty of them, all with spears and big clubs – was to stay back in Family with Michael London in charge, so as to hold us back and to keep us under control while he was gone. But of course all of this lot that had been told to stay and control us were men and newhairs that we’d known for wombs (as were the lot that went with David over to Dark), and quite a few of them were cousins and uncles and even brothers of the group of kids who’d gone over to John all those wakings ago.
    ‘Back off, all of you!’ shouted Michael London, prodding at us with the butt end of his spear. This silly self-important kid was no older than my Gerry. But he was determined that if he was going to miss all the excitement across Dark, he was going to have fun back here instead.
    ‘Back off or we’ll use these clubs on you!’
    And meantime David and the other lot of Guards – another twenty men and newhair boys – climbed onto their buckhorses with their weapons and their snow-wraps, two Guards on each buck, and started to head off Peckhamway.
    ‘David!’ I yelled after him. ‘David! Please stop!’
    He didn’t even look back.
    ‘
Mehmet!
’ I shouted then. ‘Don’t lead him to them! He wants to do for them all!’
    Mehmet Batwing
did
look round, and his face was strange strange because it was two things at the same time. He was trying to look cold and hard like David – and part of him really
was
enjoying the power he had – but part of him was troubled too. It was like he was only now really understanding what it was that he’d set loose, now that it was too late to stop. He had got a
sort of
power, a sort of