Dark Eden

singing, like beautiful beautiful women’s voices singing a sad sad song. It was leopards of course, and not just one leopard this time, but two three of them, singing in harmony. They don’t often hunt together, but once in a while they do, usually when there’s a specially good catch. And of course Peckhamway is the direction of Cold Path Neck.
    David Redlantern came by with a couple of newhairs trailing behind him. All three of them had blackglass spears.
    ‘Sounds like those leopards have found something yummy to eat,’ said David, grinning his horrible cold batfaced grin at us. ‘What can it be, I wonder? Not by any chance our old friend Juicy John, do you think? What do you reckon? He did for one leopard, alright – credit where it’s due – but how would he cope if three of them came at him at once?’
    The boys with him laughed loudly.
    ‘I reckon that’d be a bit much even for John, Dave,’ said one of them. ‘Looks like poor old Juicy John might have ended up as a leopard’s dinner.’
    It was Met Redlantern, a stupid big empty-headed kid I’d often seen out with John and the other Redlantern newhairs, scavenging or hunting in forest.
    ‘You piece of shit, Met!’ Gerry hissed at him. ‘John was your friend. Only a few wakings ago he let you get the glory for that slinker when he could have had the glory himself!’
    Met looked sort of uncomfortable but he laughed that same loud laugh that he’d done before.
    ‘Glory for a slinker?’ he said. ‘I don’t think so, Gerry. What glory does anyone get for a lousy slinker?’
    ‘He’d have let you be the one to do for it even if it had been a buck,’ said Gerry hotly. ‘You know he would.’
    ‘What? Like he shared that leopard glory with you?’ said Met.
    ‘He let me have one of the hearts!’
    ‘Well, who wants to eat two?’
    ‘You three are arseholes,’ I told David and his little friends. ‘John is better than all of you put together, and what’s more you know that yourselves, if only you had the guts to admit it.’
    They laughed again, that horrible laugh. And all this time those leopards were singing that beautiful dreamy song. And of course for all we knew it really
could
be John out there, trapped between them, not knowing which one of them to face while they circled round him.
    ‘Arseholes, eh?’ said David, still grinning, and he looked straight at me. ‘That’s
good
good, coming from a silly little girlie who likes it up the arse as everyone knows. You’re going to have to change your tune one of these wakings, Tina Spiketree, and it won’t be so long now. It won’t be so long at all.’
    I looked into his eyes and I could see the rest of his thoughts as surely as if he spoke them aloud. A time was soon coming, he was thinking, when I would have to call him whatever he told me to call him, and treat him however he wanted to be treated: a time when he would do to me
whatever
he pleased and whenever he felt like it, with whichever bit of my body he chose.
    The time of men was coming, I could see. Women had run things so far, when there was just one Family, but that was over now, and in this new broken-up world it would be the men that would get ahead.
    And right there and then I finally made up my mind. I didn’t want to be in Family any more, not this Family, not with the likes of David rising up to the top.
    ‘Let’s go out and find John,’ I said to Gerry, when David and his two little shadows had moved away.
    I said it to Gerry and not to his little brother Jeff. Jeff had always made me feel uneasy, and anyway he was a clawfoot and I didn’t reckon he could walk that far.
    Gerry looked at me like I’d saved his life. He’d been longing to go after John ever since John left, and talking about going after him too, but he was one of those people that just can’t do a thing all on their own, but need someone to follow, someone to give them permission, someone to show the way. His whole face changed and he laughed out loud.
    ‘Harry’s dick,’ he said, ‘I
so
want to do that.’
    Then he glanced guiltily at his little brother.
    ‘You’ll have to tell mum,’ he said. ‘Tell her I love her and that, and that I’ll be alright.’
    Jeff looked up at him with his big naked eyes.
    ‘But I’m coming too.’

    Probably me and Gerry could have done the walk in one long long waking, but with his little brother hobbling along with us, we took three wakings and had to stop every hour to let him rest.