It was like things were back to front with John, I sometimes thought. It was like he felt more comfortable and safe with cold and dark and lonely than he did with ordinary and friendly and warm. Ordinary waking-by-waking stuff seemed to make him restless and uneasy: the chit-chat, the joking about, the little arguments, the kids, the chores. (They do say Tommy was like that too. The first Tommy, I mean, the father of us all. They say he was afraid of his own family, though he’d been happy happy to spend his time in sky, where there was nothing to breathe outside the thin metal of the starship, and nothing to touch, and nothing that was kind or warm at all.)
So John kept himself busy going up to Dark. But for the rest of us, things went on pretty much like they had done back in Family, except for the fact that there were fewer of us, and that we were all young, and that we were living up on the slopes by Neck of Cold Path Valley, and that when we lay down to sleep we only heard the streams and forest, and not the sound of other groups coming and going around us.
Then one waking it all completely changed.
It happened when a bunch of us were out in forest, just outside of Valley Neck. There was me and John and Gerry and Dix and Harry and Jeff, along with the first and biggest of our three little bucklings. John had given Snowy Dark a rest that waking because we’d all agreed Jeff would try and ride whole of this trip on the buck’s back. He’d never ridden any of them for more than a short time before — he’d certainly never tried to ride one to really get anywhere — and John wanted to know how it would work out if Jeff rode a buck for a whole waking. He wanted to know it badly badly, because he was starting to realize that there was really no chance of us getting up and across Snowy Dark unless we could use woollybucks like Jeff had suggested, to guide us, to light our way, and to carry stuff for us.
Anyway, this little trip was meant to be more of a scavenge than a hunt, but when we’d been walking for a bit we saw a whole bunch of stonebucks off through forest, four or five of them at least. It was too good a chance of meat for us to miss, but me and Jeff and the little woollybuck weren’t up to running and spearing. My arm was in a buckskin sling because I’d fallen on the ice a few wakings back and twisted it, Jeff couldn’t run at all, and the buck had never been asked before to do anything but slowly walk with him on its back. So all the others went off Rockiesway after that little herd of stonebucks, leaving me and Jeff and the little buck behind.
I didn’t mind. I felt like taking it easy. I walked along next to the buck with Jeff on its back, and we looked for stumpcandy and low hanging fruits that could be picked without climbing. Jeff had a name for the animal. He called it Brownhorse, and he said ‘he’, not ‘it’, when he spoke about it. And now as we wandered along, he made woollybuck sounds from time to time as if he was trying to talk to it. But I felt kind of awkward with the creatures still. I didn’t like their flat flat eyes with those green glints inside them. Nor those feelers round their mouths. So I just walked along beside it, not saying much and just thinking my own thoughts. Truth be told I didn’t feel that comfortable with Jeff either, though his eyes were big and deep deep and not flat at all.
For himself, Jeff didn’t seem to need me there. He just sat quietly on the woollybuck’s back — him on the little buck was not much higher than I was walking on my own feet — and stared around him with those big big eyes, holding onto its wool with his hands and sometimes leaning forward and patting the soft warm lantern on its head.
Hrum, hrum, went the animal softly when he did that, and Jeff would repeat the same sound back to it. Hrum, hrum.
And then suddenly a glass-tip spear came flying through the air and landed — thunk — deep in the buck’s flesh, just in front of Jeff’s leg. It must have gone straight into one of its hearts because the green-black blood came spraying out like hot sap out of a cut tree. The animal sank down in a trembling heap and Jeff fell tumbling off it.
‘Good shot, Met,’ said a big deep voice from the trees. ‘Good good shot.’
It was big fat Dixon Blueside, and here he was, right up by Valley Neck, way way past Lava Blob where he and everyone else from Family were supposed to stop. With him were David Redlantern’s little buddy Met, and another silly brainless newhair boy called John Blueside. They all three came running over, laughing, to finish off the little buck that was shivering and threshing about on the ground.
‘What are you doing?’ I yelled at them. ‘This is our buck and you aren’t even supposed to be here.’
‘Leave him alone!’ Jeff screamed at them. ‘Leave my Brownhorse alone!’
I’d never seen him angry like that. He’s normally so calm, like he’s looking down on Eden from some faraway place from where everything can be clearly seen and everything can be forgiven and understood.
‘Brownhorse?’ mocked Dixon, driving his spear deep into the animal’s quivering side, pulling it out, driving it back in. ‘Brownhorse? Since when has a woollybuck got a bloody name?’
His two followers laughed.
‘Get off him!’ Jeff shouted. He had got up to his feet, and was trying to pull Dixon away from the buck.
Dixon’s face darkened.
‘You’ll get off me if you know what’s good for you, you little clawfoot creep.’
But Jeff wouldn’t let go until the two boys took hold of him and threw him to the ground. Even so he made three big bloody scratches with his nails down Dixon’s hairy back.
‘We’ve got an agreement,’ I told them. ‘You’d better leave us now and clear off to far side of Lava Blob. That was the deal we made with your Family Head. That was the deal that was written down.’
‘I’ll come to you in a minute, my little darling,’ Dixon said. ‘But right now we’re talking to clawfoot Jeff.’
He hit Jeff hard with the butt end of his spear as he said this, and his little friends laughed and began to join in.
‘This is really happening, Jeff!’ Met mocked. ‘You really are here!’
‘Gela’s eyes, Dixon! Stop this!’ I shouted. ‘You’ll do for Jeff if you carry on like that!’
Jeff was curled up on the ground with his arm over his face, all bloody.
‘Who says we don’t want to do for him, my darling?’
And now it was my turn to try and drag them back, pulling at Dixon’s shoulder with my one good arm and my one hurt one.
He turned to me.
‘Looks like we’re going to have to teach you a lesson too,’ he said, and he looked at me like David Redlantern sometimes did, like I was a juicy piece of meat and he was hungry hungry hungry. He gave me a cruel smile.
‘Come on, lads,’ he said. ‘Creepy clawfoot’s going nowhere. Let’s deal with the pretty one first.’
So now they threw me onto the ground and straight away Dixon was on top of me, straddling me with his big fat thighs.
‘Pretty pretty Tina,’ he hissed. ‘Pretty, pretty, pretty. All that power it gives you, eh? All that power. You can get boys to do anything you want just by smiling at them. You can pick them up and put them down again just as you please. Slip one waking, cold shoulder the next. However the fancy takes you. However it suits you best. Isn’t that right?’