Dark Eden

rocklanterns. ‘They’re talking about
us
. They’re trying to decide what to do about us.’
    He shrugged.
    ‘They’ll spend a waking talking,’ John said, ‘and then, if they decide to come over, they’ll spend at least a waking and a sleep getting here. So I reckon we needn’t worry about them for a bit.’
    Paaaaarp! Paaaarp! Paaaarp!
    ‘But what then?’ I asked. ‘We know that David’s going to say we should all be spiked up like Jesus. And, okay, we know Caroline and Council won’t agree to anything like that. But what
will
they decide? After all, even Caroline said when they chucked you out that it was okay to hunt you like an animal. And how much longer will she be in charge anyway? How long before David calls all the shots?’
    John stood up.
    ‘A while yet, I should have thought. And no one has ever done for another human being, not since the Beginning. Even David is scared to be the one that changes that. After all he’s got to live among our mums and aunties and uncles and groupmates.’
    He pulled his bitswrap round his waist, picked up a pile of snow-wraps, and went out, without giving any explanation as to where he was going or what he was doing, like he wasn’t connected to me at all.
    Paaaaarp! Paaaarp! Paaaarp!
    I couldn’t sleep then, not with those hollowbranch horns going, and not in that lonely cave that John and me were supposed to share but didn’t. After a bit I got up too and went outside. Mehmet Batwing, that wiry little guy with the little pointy yellow beard, was sitting by the fire hole, sharpening his spear-spike with a stone.
    ‘Did you see where John went?’ I asked him.
    He shrugged. ‘Off into forest that way. After bucks, perhaps.’
    Mike Brooklyn was humming to himself on lookout on the shelf above the caves. Lucy Batwing was on the path below.
    ‘Yeah, John went up into forest with a bundle of those snow-wraps of his and his blackglass spear and some embers on a bark,’ Lucy told me. ‘Did you two have a fight or something?’
    She watched me with narrowed eyes. She was a great one for wheedling secrets out of people and then passing them on.
    But I didn’t say anything. I went back up the slope. Along from the cave where John and me slept, Jeff was inside the fence in the buckling’s cave. It was taking wavyweed from his hand.
    ‘Jeff! It’s finally eating!’
    He was totally absorbed with the animal and he jumped slightly when I spoke to him. Then he looked round at me with his big eyes and smiled.
    ‘This is really happening,’ he whispered. ‘We really are here!’
    In another little cave a bit further on, Dix slept with Mike Brooklyn.
    ‘Hey Dix,’ I whispered, ‘are you awake?’
    Paaaaarp! Paaaarp! Paaaarp!
came the horn again, from over by the fake Circle in Circle Clearing.
    Dix came out and I put my arms straight round him. I wanted to be with someone for a bit: someone that was kind.

26

John Redlantern

    I was torn torn all the time. We weren’t going to be safe where we were forever. We had to move as soon as we could, and that meant finding a way over Dark. So I was desperate desperate all the time to get up there, and I was working working all the time on how to do it, how to make better wraps, how to light our way. But at the same time, and for the same reason, we had to watch out for attack from Family. We had to make sure that all of us were protected, and none of us were left alone. So I needed to be up on Dark as much as I could, and yet I also needed to be keeping an eye as much as I could on our little group at Valley Neck.
    So of course as soon as I knew it would be three wakings at least before anyone came over from Family again, I went straight off to Snowy Dark. I didn’t have time to talk to Tina about it. As soon as I knew, I was hurrying hurrying up to the ice. And then I put on new footwraps stuck together with a new mixture of glue, and I lit up the new light I’d made, with a wet hollow branch packed with buckgrease – my idea was that the grease would burn but the branch would stay in one piece – and I walked up into Dark, until all I could see was the orange circle of snow around my light, and the steam from my breath, and all I could hear were the sounds I made myself echoing from walls of rock that I couldn’t see but only hear.
    But then the flame began to sputter, and I had to turn round. By the time I’d got back off the ice my footwraps were getting wet again, and the wood of the hollow branch