Dark Eden

rock from side to side.
    ‘What’s wrong with it?’
    ‘One of those round bits have come off, Mitch. Those
wield
things. I think you may have pressed down on it too hard when you coughed.’
    ‘What? The wheel’s come off?’
    ‘That’s right. But don’t worry. We can glue it back on again. We’ll get some sap boiled up now and glue it on.’
    ‘Why didn’t you tell me the wheel had come off? And why didn’t you take it out of my way when I coughed?’
    Everything breaks doesn’t it? Everything bloody breaks.
    My heart was pounding pounding so much it hurt, and tears were running down my face.

5

John Redlantern

    When I woke up Gerry and Jeff were still both fast asleep, and so were all the rest of group. I chucked off the woollybuck skin I slept under and crawled outside.
Hmmph
,
hmmph
,
hmmph
, went the old redlantern tree our shelter leaned against, as it pumped its sap down into hot hot Underworld, and pumped it up again.
Hmmmmmmmmmm
, went forest with all its thousands and thousands of shining trees that stretched all the way from Peckham Hills to Blue Mountains and from Rockies to Alps. No one else was awake in whole group, except for David who was on lookout, and he just grunted and walked off out of the clearing. I went to the food log in middle of our group, near the glowing embers of the fire, took the flat stone off the top of it and felt inside for a handful of dried starflowers and a bone to chew on.
Aaaah! Aaaah!
, went a starbird off in forest.
    Over on Blueside, Starflower group were just starting to wake up. Meanwhile London, which was just inside of those two groups, were coming in from forest and getting their dinner on the go. Soon the smoky smell of roasting stonebuck was drifting through whole of Family.
    I pulled a scrap of green fat off the woollybuck bone with my teeth and began to chew it. The air was warmer since last waking. The dip was ending. Cloud was coming back over sky like a big dark skin and only a little bit of Starry Swirl could still be clearly seen, way over by Alps. I looked round at our group’s little space among our redlantern and whitelantern trees, our circle of twenty little shelters made of bark laid over branches leaning against tree trunks. I looked at the glowing embers that we never let go out, the flutterbyes flipping and flapping around the lanternflowers, and at Old Roger snuffling and snoring on that skin he slept on out in the open because he didn’t believe in shelters. There were bones stacked in piles ready to be made into tools, and a little heap of blackglass (which Oldest called
obsijan
), and spears and axes and piles of logs and twigs for the fire. Over to one side was our old group boat that we sometimes used for fishing on Long Pool and Great Pool but we couldn’t use just now because the skins had begun to come off from one end of it and needed gluing on again. It all seemed small and boring after what I’d seen by the light of the woollybucks’ headlanterns. Whole
Family
seemed small and dreary and dull.
    Redlantern grownups had decided I could have a no-work waking as a treat for doing for the leopard. The rest of the newhairs and men would go out foraging as usual but I could have whole waking to do whatever I wanted. What would I do with the time? I wondered as I chewed my breakfast off that bone. I wanted to go straight out into forest again and back to the edge of Dark. Or maybe down towards Exit Falls, that narrow gap between Blue Mountains and Rockies where Main River poured down all the water from all the streams in Circle Valley into whatever lay below. I was sort of interested in looking at it, because it was the only way out of Circle Valley apart from Snowy Dark. People of Old Roger’s age could just remember when it had been wider there, so that you could have climbed down from Circle Valley and found out for yourself what was below it. But no one did when they had the chance, and then there was a big rockfall. A great flat slab came sliding down on Rockieside of it, and now tons of water poured down between two sheer cliffs, and it wasn’t an exit at all.
    But I’d only got one waking, and that wasn’t long enough to get to Exit Falls or anywhere else at the edge of the valley. And anyway I was sore sore and bruised in my chest from when the spear butt had hit me, so in the end I just stayed inside Family Fence.
    I walked through Spiketree and over to Batwing. Batwing group woke before Redlantern and they were