Dark Eden

song?’
    ‘Leave me alone, Bella, alright?’ muttered John. ‘I don’t need this. Just leave me alone.’
    He said it two three times, and I backed him up as best I could.
    ‘He needs to go, Bella,’ I told her. ‘Let him be. He knows you love him. He does know.’
    ‘Let the lad deal with this, Bella my dear,’ said Old Roger, who’d come after me to help.
    ‘Let him be, Bella,’ called out Jade who’d come up behind Roger.
    ‘I don’t want this, Bella,’ John repeated, glancing down at her, and then looking away from all of us again at the path through the lanterntrees up ahead.
    ‘You don’t . . .?’
    Suddenly Bella understood. She let go of him. She stood back. For a moment she looked like she’d seen one of the Shadow People. Then she let fly a dreadful scream that they must have heard all over Family right up to Blueside, and flung herself to the ground, which was sodden wet from all that fuggy rain like it was soaked in tears, and writhed about in the mud till she was covered all over with it.
    No one in Redlantern knew what to do about her. But we did know that, right at that moment, John was the one we needed to concentrate on because he was the one that had to go. So all of us just sort of moved away from our old leader, and carried on with the business of saying goodbye to John.
    ‘Go on, John. We’ll sort this out. You get on your way, and remember that we’ll be working to get you back here as soon as we can.’
    John nodded, gripped his bark of embers against his chest and walked on without another word to anyone.
    But Jade, who of all people you’d think would want to concentrate on John, went over to Bella and squatted down beside her and comforted her. She’d finally found something useful she could do.

    When John was out of sight, all of us except Jade and Bella walked back into the space round the fire between our shelters, where David was sitting on a log, fixing a leopard tooth spearhead on a shaft with strips of dried buck gut, and making a big show of being busy. I noticed that Met, that lump of a boy, went over and sat by him. And near them, with her eyes rolled upwards to the grey-black fuggy sky, sat Lucy Lu.
    ‘We’ll need a new leader, I suppose,’ I said. ‘A new leader to help sort out this mess.’
    David snorted.
    ‘And preferably one that doesn’t slip with her own newhairs.’
    ‘I want to go after him, mum,’ sobbed Gerry. ‘He’s not just my cousin. He’s my best friend. They can’t expect him to be all alone forever.’
    ‘It won’t help him if you do,’ I said. ‘That will just confirm that he’s a bad influence on newhairs. Leave him be, and maybe we’ll be able to find a way of persuading Family to let him back, once things have calmed down.’
    David looked up.
    ‘What? Have him back? Are you nuts? Do you really think we’re going to let him destroy our Circle, hurt whole Family, shame his own group, and then let him back in again with nothing but a telling off?’
    ‘Mother Angela herself is telling me he had to go,’ cried Lucy Lu suddenly in that hollow voice she put on, like she was talking in a cave far away. ‘He had to go, but now that he’s gone, she’ll help us put Circle back, and make things how they were. Oh sweet sweet Angela, our dear good mother. She’s telling me that if Council wants me to, she’ll guide my hand to find the stones that bad John threw in the stream, and put them back exactly where they were.’

18

John Redlantern

    I walked and walked and walked, straight past Lava Blob with its funny shy hoppers waving their mouth feelers at me and wringing their hands, past the little pool where Tina first gave me that pink oyster. The bundle that Redlantern group had given me was heavy heavy, the fire-bark was hot, and the going was hard hard in that sticky fuggy air, but even so it was much easier to keep walking than to stop, however weary I was, because while I walked there was a rhythm, but when I stopped there would be nothing to do but think about what I’d done, and what I was going to do next.
    I walked without a rest for the time of a whole waking and a whole sleep, all the way to that place up the slope by Neck of Cold Path Valley, with the caves and the warm pool. I climbed up the slope, crawled into one of those caves, spread out sleeping skins under the little shiny rocklanterns, lay down and fell asleep at once. I’d worn myself down so much with that long long walk that even my worries