Dark Eden

slippy smile, like she might have given back there in Family, the first time we met up over by Deep Pool. And that made me sad sad for a moment because I could see how much all this other stuff – Circle, Bella, all of it – had put distance between how things were then and how they were now. It was as if when I destroyed Circle, I’d stopped just being John Redlantern and put on a kind of mask. Like I said, in the future people would tell stories about this time. Some woman would pretend to be Caroline, some girl would pretend to be Tina, some young guy would act me, just like John Brooklyn had acted Tommy Schneider at Any Virsry back when Circle still lay in place. But what I saw now was that it wasn’t just in the
future
that this meeting would become a story to be acted out. Even now, even when it was happening for the first time round, it had already become a story in a way, with me as an actor in it, playing a part, and not just being myself.
I
was acting me.
    Still, there was no time to think about that now.
    ‘No improvement in your manners then, newhairs,’ called out Caroline, glancing at the others with her with a tired look on her face. ‘No sign of you growing up yet.’
    They got up and came over to us in a weary, grownup way, like we were naughty littles refusing to settle down to sleep. And the three young men with their glass spears followed behind them. I knew them all: Harry, Ned, Ricky.
    ‘Nice move there, Caroline,’ muttered Tina, like we were watching a game of chess, ‘nice move: making us look like kids.’
    We pulled our feet out of the stream, shook the water off them and stood up.
    ‘We’ve decided to make an offer to you,’ Caroline said. ‘We’ve decided you can be a group on your own – Cold Path group – with your own group leader, and you can have your group over here apart from the rest of Family. But you will still be part of Family. You must still come to Any Virsries and Strornries, and you must still abide by Family decisions, and Family laws.’
    ‘How about David Redlantern and his friends,’ I said, ‘were they happy with that?’
    Caroline didn’t let any expression appear on her face.
    ‘They’re part of Family and they’ll abide by it,’ she said.
    ‘We’ll make sure of it,’ added blind old Tom Brooklyn with his eyes rolling about in no particular direction.
    ‘Good for you, mate,’ I said. ‘But we’re not a group. We’re another family. A separate family on our own.’
    Caroline snorted.
    ‘Don’t be ridiculous, John, you
can’t
be another family! There is only one. We all come from the same mother and the same father. That’s just a fact.’
    ‘Tom’s dick and Harry’s, Caroline!’ Tina burst in. ‘That’s a bit much coming from you! You told John
yourself
he wasn’t part of Family any more. The Laws wouldn’t apply to him, you said. He could be treated like an animal. Like a tree fox or a slinker, you said.’
    I put my hand on Tina’s to stop her. I appreciated her standing up for me but I needed her to be quiet because she was missing the point. This meeting wasn’t really about the rights and wrongs of things. I mean, I didn’t like Caroline and she didn’t like me, but this wasn’t about our personal feelings. Funnily enough, me and Caroline both understood that, and we were the only ones there that really did. We both knew we were there to try and build a shape out of words that her lot and my lot could both live with. It wasn’t personal. It wasn’t even a fight between us really, more like a job we were working on together, not so different from Old Roger sitting down with a bit of blackglass to make a spearhead, or one-legged Jeffo London starting to cut open a log to make it into a new boat.
    ‘We’ll follow the Laws,’ I said, ‘because we need laws the same as you do. But we won’t come to your meetings and we won’t do what you tell us.’
    ‘We can’t have you newhairs doing as you like,’ murmured Candy Fishcreek in her soft voice. ‘Otherwise any time anyone is told off back in Family, they’ll just run over here to you, or run off somewhere else and set up
another
family on their own.’
    ‘Well, who cares . . .?’ Clare started to say, but I interrupted her.
    ‘No, Caroline,’ I said. ‘We’re with you on that. We don’t want things breaking up either.’
    Caroline snorted.
    ‘Well, for goodness’ sake . . .’
    ‘So let’s make an agreement,’ I said, ‘an agreement between