Dark Eden

secret that was spreading round Family, and pretty soon someone who didn’t like us would get to know about it, if they hadn’t done already. We had no idea what they’d try but John had the idea of hiding things that were valuable to us, like woollybuck skins, in lots of different places, so no one from Family could just walk over here and nick the lot. And he insisted we have lookouts all the time above and below our camp. We even dug fire holes in three different places and kept them full of glowing embers, so that even if they came over and stamped out our fire, we’d still be able to make another. No one wants to spend half a waking just trying to get a fire to start.

24

John Redlantern

    Janny, Lucy, Mehmet, Mike, Dixon, Gela, Clare, Harry, Jane, Tina, Gerry, Jeff and me. There were thirteen of us now, and yet it was only a few few wakings since I’d been all on my own. (We could have done without Harry, but there wasn’t anything I could do about that.) All the new people settled in quickly in their new living place above Valley Neck, chattering and laughing and squeaking and squealing and fooling about, just like newhairs did back in Family. Sometimes I felt a bit left out of all of that, like I did back in Family too, because I’m not often one for squeaking and fooling around. But when I felt that way, I would remind myself who brought them here.
    ‘They might think they came here to be with Tina or with one another,’ I said to myself. ‘But if it wasn’t for me, there wouldn’t be one of them here. Not one. They’d all still be in Family, and Circle would still be as it was, and nothing would be different from how it was for wombs and wombs and wombs. And it wouldn’t have occurred to anyone to live anywhere else but there, squeezed in around Circle Clearing between Greatpool and Longpool and the rocks.’
    It helped to remind myself of that. It helped me with pushing away that cold stone of Bella’s death and pulling myself out from underneath it, and it helped me to remember that I still needed to make things go forward. If I left it to the others, no plans would get made. They’d just eat and sleep and play and slip, until something happened to stop them. They wouldn’t try and figure out in advance what that something would be, or how to get round it when it came.
    Well, to be fair, maybe Tina would have done, and perhaps Gela Brooklyn, and maybe even Jeff if he thought anyone would listen to a little clawfoot kid whose new hairs hadn’t even properly started to grow, but none of the others.
    We felt another little dip coming on at the end of a waking, and I got seven of us together to miss sleep and go straight over to the bottom of Cold Path to look for woollybucks. We took spears and ropes and I took all the wraps me and Jeff had made, while Gerry and Tina took another two sets of wraps they’d made since with Jeff’s help. The way I arranged it, me and Gerry and Tina would go up the path towards the edge of the ice. Jane, Mehmet, Lucy and Mike, who just had bitswraps and shoulder wraps and bare feet, would wait at the bottom of the path for us to drive bucks down to them.
    The four of them laughed at me and Tina and Gerry when we pulled on those stinky wraps, specially when we put on the headwraps that covered up our faces, but they were impressed too, I could see. It was
new
new: new like nothing in Family had been since before any of us were born. There must have been a time when people figured out how to make blackglass spears and wavyweed rope and how to stick skins to the ends of logs to make boats, but for a long time it had been like we’d forgotten that there was any possibility that things could be different to what they already were.
    With our wraps on, looking like some strange new kind of creature, me and Tina and Gerry walked up the path. This wasn’t just a buck hunt to me, it was a first step to getting ourselves right up on Snowy Dark. There’s a faint picture, scratched on a tree near Circle Clearing, called ‘The Astronaut’ made by Tommy or Gela or one of the Three Companions. It’s a man in a strange Sky Wrap that lets him live in places so high up in sky that there’s no air left to breathe. It’s one of the people who found a way of getting outside of Earth. And I felt pretty much like an Astronaut now, walking up the path with Gerry and Tina in those stiff hot fuggy wraps. I felt like an Astronaut taking his first steps up into sky.
    And the