Dark Eden

the smooth bright water, one just a little in front and to the side of the other. Their little arms were hanging down and their fingertips were trailing over the surface as they swerved and darted around the lilies looking for fish. If they saw one –
grab!
– they’d have it in a flash and then, all in one smooth smooth movement, they’d curve off up to the rocks and the trees to find a place where they could divide the fish up between them with their sharp little teeth and their nifty little hands. If I’d left the stones alone I could have been out here now watching those bats with Tina, with nothing at all to worry about. Life would have been easy for me. Family wasn’t going to starve yet, after all. Not for a long time. Not for another generation maybe.
    But it was like with the leopard. I’d made a decision that I knew could turn out badly, I’d taken a chance on it and now it was too late to go back. The leopard had to be faced.
    I started up the rocks, heading back towards Family.

16

Tina Spiketree

    The thing with John was that everyone thought he was so brave, and
he
thought he was too. I’m not saying he boasted about it because he didn’t, but that’s how he saw himself: someone who faced things, someone who never flinched or turned away.
    And in one way he was
brave
brave. He did things that no one else would do, like facing that leopard, and throwing the stones in the stream. No one else in whole Family would have done either of those things. Well, okay, some would face a leopard, but not on their own and not without a strong blackglass spear, and not when they were only twenty wombtimes old. But definitely no one
no one
else would have done what he did with the stones. No one else would have even dared to
think
about it.
    So he
was
brave in those ways, but there were other things, things that most people did every waking and didn’t think anything of, that John just couldn’t bring himself to do. People didn’t think of it as him being scared. And he didn’t see it that way either. But all the same he was.
    He didn’t really have any close friends was one thing. I mean, he was a good-looking bloke and he was smart smart and strong and a fighter and a leader – and no one had any complaints if he wanted to hang out with them, no complaints at all. So if you asked him to name his friends he could give a long list, and if you asked them, they’d say, ‘Yeah, sure, we’re friends with John Redlantern, he’s alright.’ But he didn’t have any particular kids he hung out with, except only his cousin Gerry. And Gerry, well, he was more like John’s shadow. John could handle Gerry up close to him because Gerry didn’t ask anything of him at all. Gerry wasn’t his equal.
    And then there’s the way he didn’t want to slide with me that first time up at Deep Pool. I reckon that was because he was scared too. I mean he was okay doing it with the mums around Family, like that Martha London, so why not with me? Well, it was that equal thing again, wasn’t it? I was equal to him, and that scared him.
    I don’t mean he didn’t
want
equals. I’m just saying it scared him. I mean those oldmums, they didn’t ask anything of him, did they, only his juice. He could say yes, he could say no, it made no odds. Either way he could just walk away. But it scared him if he couldn’t be in control of things. It really scared him.
    In that respect, not just some people but
most
people were braver than John was. I mean,
I
liked to get my own way too, of course. Everybody knew that about me. I liked to get what I wanted. But the thing was, if I didn’t get it, well, I just tried something else. It didn’t
scare
me. I didn’t have that fear that he had, which he didn’t even know was there, that fear which made him hold everyone at a distance, that fear of not controlling things.
    And now, all on his own, he’d decided to change the history of Eden forever. He hadn’t told me about it. He hadn’t told
anyone
about it. He chucked the stones in the stream all by himself, while I waited for him like a bloody idiot, not knowing what he was doing or why he was taking so long, and then he came up to Deep Pool and expected me just to accept what he’d done. He expected me to trust him. He expected me to support him and line up with him, even though he hadn’t trusted
me
enough even to tell me what he was planning. It’s that
equal
thing again. He just didn’t quite get it. He didn’t quite get