Dark Eden

after waking after waking. Silly little slinker.
    ‘Yes, you head back to Batwing now, Flower. I’m going in just a minute myself. Good Any Virsry, I thought, though we’ll need to talk more about that Redlantern boy.’
    He was still in Clearing, I noticed. All of Redlantern was filing out, but John Redlantern was standing there by himself, like he was another Family Head who had to wait, like me, for everyone else to go first. I thought of going to talk to him, or maybe of telling him to leave, but I reckoned that would just make him feel even more important than he already did. He’d go in his own time. I’d think about how to manage him when I’d had some sleep; how to manage him, and how to manage Redlantern group. I noticed that Bella had slipped off without even saying goodbye.
    ‘Think I’ll head off now, Caroline,’ said Liz Spiketree, ‘get back to group and make sure they’re all settled.’
    ‘Yes, you go, Liz. Thanks for your work in Council. I’ll follow you in just a minute.’
    ‘Okay if I put the barks away now?’ asked little Jane London.
    ‘Yes, go on, Jane. I’m done with them now. You go back to London and get some rest.’
    Jane got on my nerves to tell the truth, with the way she kept correcting me and pointing to the bark all the time, and I was sure that she sometimes wrote down what she thought we ought to have said, and not what we actually said at all. Susan Blueside was right, it
was
ten yards Blueway that we said London could move, and not twelve like Jane wrote down. I’d need to speak to her about that. She could
not
be allowed to use her position as Secret Ree to help her own London group. One
more
problem for another waking.
    ‘I’m off, Caroline,’ said Tom Brooklyn. ‘See you back in group in a minute?’
    ‘Yes, I’ll be along soon.’
    I looked up and saw that John Redlantern was
still
standing there. A couple of his friends had stopped to talk to him, but now they headed off and left him on his own again, stretching and scratching and looking round, like he was in no hurry at all.
    I had a bad feeling. I always felt tired after an Any Virsry, and I always felt a bit sad too. (Like the people in Show feel sad, I suppose, when they have to stop being Michael Name-Giver or Tommy Schneider and have to go back to being themselves.) But I had a different feeling this time, like something new had crept into the world that wouldn’t ever go away again.
    ‘He’s only one silly newhair,’ I told myself. ‘Don’t fret about it. Just a silly newhair trying to get himself noticed. It’s not such a big thing. It just feels that way because I’m tired.’
    A Starflower oldmum called Clare came over.
    ‘Good Any Virsry, Caroline, thanks. Can’t have been easy handling that cheeky Redlantern boy.’
    She glared over at John. He had his back turned to me now, but he was still standing there.
    ‘Honestly,’ she said. ‘Newhairs these wakings! He does for one leopard, and he thinks he’s more important than Council and Family Head.’
    ‘I know, newhairs eh? But I suppose we were all young once.’
    ‘Well, we weren’t like him and his sort, that’s for sure. But anyway, thanks again, Caroline. I’m off back to make sure our whingy littles get settled down nice and quick.’
    As she walked off, John glanced over towards me, then looked quickly away.
    However much I told myself it was just because I was tired, I had a
strong
strong feeling that there was trouble stirring in Family that was different from any trouble we’d had before. And more than that, I felt it was something I’d been warned about. I just couldn’t think when.
    And then suddenly I did remember. It was in the Secret Story.

    The True Story we remembered at Any Virsries was only part of what had been handed down to us from the beginning. There were some things that Angela told to just two of her daughters, Susie and Clare, the ones she thought most sensible and grown up, and told them to pass on only to girls that they knew they could trust. That first Clare was the one who started Brooklyn group, and she was my mum’s grandmother. Angela’s words came down from her, through my mum, to me.
    And one of the secret things from Angela she told me – one of the many – was this.
    ‘Watch out for men who want to turn everything into a story that’s all about them. There will always be a few of them, and once one of them starts, another one of them will want to fight with him.’
    My