Dark Eden

Gerry said, shivering. We only had waistwraps on, and buckskins round our shoulders, and our feet were hurting like they’d been skinned. ‘Shall we go back down to rest of them now?’
    My cousin Gerry was about a wombtime younger than me – his dad was giving his mum a slip, in other words, about the time that I was born – and he was devoted to me, he thought I was wonderful, he’d do just about anything I asked.
    ‘No, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Be quiet and listen.’
    ‘Listen to what?’
    ‘To the silence, you idiot.’
    There was no
hmmmmmmmm
of forest, no
hmmph, hmmph, hmmph
of pumping trees, no starbirds going
hoom, hoom, hoom
in the distance, no flutterbyes flapping and flicking, no
whoosh
of diving bats. There was no sound at all except a quiet little tinkle of water all around us coming out from under the snow in hundreds of little streams. And it was
dark
dark. No tree-light up there. The only light came from Starry Swirl.
    We could barely make out each other’s faces. It made me think about that place called Earth where Tommy and Angela first came from, way back in the beginning with the Three Companions, and where one waking we would all return, if only we stayed in the right place and were good good good. There were no lanterntrees back there on Earth, no glittery flutterbyes or shiny flowers, but they had a big big light that we don’t have at all. It came from a giant star. And it was so bright that it would burn out your eyes if you stared at it.
    ‘When people talk about Earth,’ I said to Gerry, ‘they always talk about that huge bright star, don’t they, and all the lovely light it must have given? But Earth turned round and round, didn’t it, and half the time it wasn’t facing the star at all but was dark dark, without lanterns or anything, only the light the Earth people made for themselves.’
    ‘What are you
talking
about, John?’ Gerry said, with his teeth chattering. ‘And why can’t we go back down again if you just want to talk?’
    ‘I was thinking about that darkness. They called it Night, didn’t they? I’m just thinking that it must have been like this. What you get up here on Snowy Dark: it’s what they would have called Night.’
    ‘Hey John!’ Old Roger was calling from the far side of the ridge. ‘Hey Gerry!’ He was scared we’d freeze to death or get lost or something up there.
    ‘Better go back,’ Gerry said.
    ‘Let him stew a minute first.’
    ‘But I’m freezing
freezing
, John.’
    ‘Just one minute.’
    ‘Okay, one minute,’ said Gerry, ‘but that’s it.’
    He actually counted it out on his pulse, one to sixty, the silly boy, and then he jumped up and we both climbed back over the ridge. Gerry went running straight down to the others, but I stood up there for a moment, partly to show I was my own man and didn’t go scurrying back for Old Roger or anyone, and partly to take in how things looked from up there on top of the ridge: the shining forest, with darkness all around it, and above everything the bright bright stars. That’s our home down there, I thought, that’s our whole world. It felt weird to be looking in on it from outside. And though in one way the bright forest stretching away down there seemed big big, in another way it seemed small small, that little shining place with the stars above it and darkness looking down on it from the mountains all around.
    Back with the others, Gerry made a big thing about his freezing feet, asking some people to feel them and rub them, begging others to let him ride on their backs until he had warmed up, and generally hopping and skipping around like an idiot. That was how Gerry dealt with people. ‘I’m just a fool, I won’t hurt anyone,’ that was his message. But I wasn’t like that. ‘I’m not a fool by any means,’ was
my
message, ‘and don’t assume I won’t hurt you either.’ I acted as if I didn’t feel the cold in my feet at all, and pretty soon they were so numb anyway that I really didn’t. I noticed Tina watching me and smiling, and I smiled back.
    On we went, just below the snow and along the top edge of forest, where there was a bit of light from the trees, Old Roger grumbling and moaning about how newhairs had no respect any more and things were different from how they used to be.
    ‘Old fool was scared he’d have to go back to Family and tell your mums he’d lost you,’ said Tina. ‘He was thinking of the trouble he’d be in. No more slippy for