‘Yes, John,’ she said in her deep voice, ‘but Angela was the one who always chose not to cross Starry Swirl when she had the chance. It was the Three Disobedient Ones who made her come to Eden, when she wanted to stay near Earth. And she and Michael did their best to make the three of them stay near Earth as well. Yes, and later, when she was here in Eden, she chose to stay here rather than cross back over Starry Swirl again with the Three Companions. She chose to stay and wait for Earth to send a new boat, rather than risk the old one, knowing that it might well sink.’
I felt a scary stab of doubt, like the one I’d had when we first started out over Dark. Maybe Gela was right. Maybe what we were doing really was exactly what Angela had warned against. But I kept my face firm and certain. Whether we’d done the right thing or the wrong thing, we’d done it now and we couldn’t undo it. Our little group needed to feel that the choice we’d made was the right one, and I had to persuade them, as best I could, that it had been, whatever my own secret fears. I needed to put on a mask, and be certain certain certain. That was my job. That was my part in this story.
‘Yes, Gela,’ I said, ‘but she herself chose to go up into sky in the Police Veekle, didn’t she? And if she’d really been so set on not straying from Earth, she’d have tried to go back to Earth straightaway with the Companions, wouldn’t she? But she didn’t. She stayed here in Eden, because she was someone who took each situation and tried to make the best of it. And that’s what she wants us to do too.’
I could see that a lot of them were looking puzzled and worried — I felt worried myself — so I quickly slipped the ring off my finger and held it out to them.
‘Gela is with us, remember. She didn’t give the ring to Caroline. She didn’t give it to David. She didn’t give it to Oldest. She gave it to me. Yes, and she told me she wanted us to spread out over Eden, and find new places to live, and new hunting grounds. She told me.’
And it was weird weird, because I didn’t even ask them to, but one after another of them came forward to touch the ring in my hand, pretty much all of them, except only for Mehmet, and Tina, and Jeff.
35
Tina Spiketree
We stopped there in that spot next to the stream, at the edge of Tall Tree forest. We got lookouts sorted, spread our wet wraps out to dry and gathered up some wood for fire. After that, most people crept off to sleep in whatever places they could find.
But John stayed awake with Harry and Dix and me to take turns with the fire sticks. Tom’s neck, it took hours of rubbing them together to get a spark that would light anything. Our hands were all blisters with trying before we did. But even when we’d finally got some fires lit, John still wasn’t ready to sleep. He stood up and called to the lookouts to keep the fires stoked up, then he said he’d go for a walk.
‘I’m tired tired,’ he said, avoiding looking at any one of us, ‘but I’m going to find a pool to swim in before I lie down.’
Dix glanced at me, but I stood up with John, and gave Dix a little sign that I’d be back to see him later. It would be good to feel Dix’s friendly arms around me before I let myself sleep, but I could see that John was carrying a heavy heavy load and it seemed unfair to leave him to do it all on his own.
This forest was different different from the one we had grown up in. That great lonely empty space under the lowest branches was three four times the height of a man, so the bats and flutterbyes weren’t swooping and diving all around us like they did back in Circle Valley but were far far above our heads. Only sometimes a bird came blundering along at low level, squawking and screeching.
‘Makes me think of those Earth stories,’ I said. ‘Remember those ones about huge shelters that went up to sky, straight straight, as big as mountains? Skyscrapers? Walking underneath those things must be a bit like walking under these trees.’
John didn’t say anything for several minutes. He didn’t even show that he’d heard me. In that way that he had, he was completely sunk down inside his own thoughts. But later, when I’d pretty much forgotten what I’d said, he spoke.
‘Yeah. They were made of metal and rock, plus a kind of glass you could see through like water.’
‘What?’
‘Those giant shelters.’
He looked tired tired. He was so worn down I could see quite clearly how he’d look when he was a trembly blind old man. I suppose I didn’t look much better.
‘You did do well, John,’ I said.
I reached for his hand, but he didn’t respond to this in any way, so I dropped it again.
‘I did well, you reckon?’ he said. ‘I lost Suzie, didn’t I? And her baby. If it wasn’t for Jeff I’d have lost all of us. Gela’s eyes, Tina, when we were up there in the blackness . . .’
His voice was getting shaky and he broke off.
‘When we were up there,’ he began again, ‘I thought about how I’d taken all these people away from Family, from their mums and their uncles and their brothers and sisters and all that and for what . . .?’
He glanced round at me, but I looked away. I didn’t want to see him like that. It was just like the time he began to cry up there in Dark when that giant slinker nearly got the bat. I don’t know why, but I just couldn’t bear that side of him.
Off under the great trees to our left, where the ground began to slope up towards Dark, a herd of six seven woollybucks were grazing on starflowers. That was one good thing: we were not going to go short of meat.
‘Do you really believe that Angela stuff, John?’ I asked him after a bit. ‘Really and truly? Only it doesn’t sound like the sort of thing that you’d . . .’
‘I saw Angela,’ he said in a stubborn voice, not looking at me. ‘Over by Deep Pool. I saw her sitting there by herself, crying. She didn’t want to be in Eden. She never wanted to leave Earth. But she knew there was no point in going on about it. Eden was where she was now, and she’d have to make the best of it. And that’s what she did: hope that Earth would come and get her back, of course, but meanwhile make the best of it. And she was right, wasn’t she? If she’d just sat and pined for Earth, she’d have wasted her life, wouldn’t she? Because she died before Earth came.’
‘But you actually saw her?’
‘Yeah.’
He glanced sideways at me and looked quickly away again, like a kid expecting to be challenged.
Well, there were lots of questions I could have asked him. Was he saying that he’d really seen her, like a real person, or was he just saying he’d imagined her in his mind? Was he saying that Gela really talked to him? Was he saying that she was really with us now? But I knew how it was when people start to talk about the Shadow People and all of that. You just can’t pin them down. They talk like a thing can be true and not true at the same time, or both there and not there. I couldn’t be bothered with it, and I’d always thought John couldn’t either.
‘Well, you never told me about it at the time,’ was all I said.
‘Gela’s eyes!’ he burst out. ‘Make up your mind what it is you want from me. To share things with you or to bloody hide them?’
Well, I could sort of see that he might have a point there, but I was too tired to think about it, so I didn’t say anything.
Haaaark! Haaaark! A bird was looking down at us from a branch high above us. We’d never seen a bird like it. It was a bird with no name, a bird that Michael Name-Giver had never seen. It was right beside a whitelantern flower so we could see the long shiny green wings it was smoothing down with pale long-fingered hands. Its hands and feet had long long red claws. Haaaark! Haaaark! It flew off through the trees.