Dark Eden

now!’
    ‘She
is
crying,’ wailed Lucy Lu, in that fake dreamy voice of hers. ‘She’s crying like she’s never cried before.’
    ‘You said you’d give him two minutes,’ I yelled.
    ‘What I mean is this,’ said John. ‘Angela told us to wait by the stones because she didn’t know how long it would be before Earth came back. But she wouldn’t have wanted Family to stay huddled up in this little place for all this time, using up all the food, getting tired and bored, starting to hate one another. She’d have wanted us to find new places, new air, spread out, explore, make the best of things. That’s why . . .’
    ‘Two minutes is up!’ snapped Caroline briskly, though I could see that Secret Ree was still counting. ‘You’ve had your say and Council has heard enough evidence. Council will consider its decision. Except you, Bella, you can go back to your people over there.’
    So Bella had the shame of crossing the clearing to where the Redlantern people were, and squatting down among them as an ordinary person, while Council huddled together without her and conferred in whispers. It was like we were watching some kind of play, bunched up together under the trees. There was Council in the centre; there was John standing just out from the centre on his own, his face pale and blank, not looking at anyone; and then, to one side, and a bit further out, there was David, arms still crossed, legs still apart, scanning the crowd with hard hard eyes, as if he was checking each one of us out to see who was with him and who wasn’t.
    Pretty soon the huddle broke up. Caroline stepped away from the rest of Council.
    ‘We’ve made our decision,’ she said. ‘We’re all agreed. John Redlantern can’t stay in Family. He must leave within two hours. After that he won’t be part of Family any more. The Laws won’t apply to him, and if he’s found near here, he can be treated as we’d treat a troublesome animal. Like a tree fox or a slinker.’
    Then she looked around the crowd, searching for people that she knew had a connection with John – Gerry, Jeff, Bella, Jade, me.
    ‘And listen carefully to this. Redlantern group can give him whatever it wants to let him take with him, but after he’s left, no one is to give him anything any more – no food, no blackglass, no buckskins, nothing – and no one is to talk to him or look for him or spend time with him, or they too will be thrown out of Family.’
    She gave a firm little nod and a little sideways glance at John.
    ‘That’s our decision about John Redlantern. And that’s the end of Strornry.’

17

Sue Redlantern

    We made our way back through the fug to Redlantern clearing. It was a dreadful time, a time that was neither waking nor sleeping, neither real nor a dream, and it seemed as if it could never reach an end, but only sink downwards deeper and deeper into itself, until it swallowed up all memory of happiness, or fun, or anything else except this fuggy nothingness. We were exhausted and hopeless. Sweat and rain ran down our faces and we were too tired to wipe it off. Out of all of Redlantern group, only David seemed untouched by the misery, just as he’d been untouched by fun and happiness in the past. While we crept back with our shoulders hunched, he strode along beside us with a satisfied look that was almost a smile. But even David knew to keep his mouth shut, and hardly anyone else spoke at all, though many wept silently, including me. Even the littlest of littles must have understood that our safe familiar world had been torn in two. And some of them cried, and some were beyond crying.
    We had no leader to guide us. Bella normally got hold of any problem that faced our group and helped us see what we had to do – ‘This is the thing we need to concentrate on; this is what we need to do first; these are the questions we need to answer . . .’ – but now she walked silently among us, looking at no one. Old Roger wrung his hands together. Fox and the other young men and women trudged along in a little group of their own.
    John himself was in a daze. Jade, my sister, trailed along on one side of him and a little behind, but as ever she had no idea what to say to him, or how to approach the business of being his mum. My Gerry walked on his other side, weeping and pestering him with questions.
    ‘What are you going to do, John? Where are you going to go? I don’t want you to go. Haven’t you got a plan?’
    And my boy Jeff, the