I’d never liked Mehmet much, but I had to admit he was learning. He used just to moan at everything John did without offering another plan of his own, but now for the first time he was proposing something that could actually work. We could stay in Tall Tree. We could build stronger shelters. His hands were shaking and his voice was wobbly, but finally Mehmet was offering an alternative to John.
He didn’t have long to wait either for someone else to take his side.
‘No way am I going back up there where my sister died,’ said Dave Fishcreek. ‘And no way am I going to let you lead me anywhere again, John, not after what happened last time.’
His voice was shaking too. I’d tried a few times to point out to Dave and his brother Johnny that nobody made us go over to John from Family, and nobody forced us to follow John up onto Dark. I’d tried to point out that none of us could have have known that there was such a thing as snow leopards, and that John’s quick thinking had at least saved the rest of us from what happened to Suzie. I’d even tried reminding them Suzie was my friend, and that I loved her and grieved for her too, but she wasn’t the sort of person that would want them bitter bitter like this. But they’d never been willing to hear what I said.
Johnny backed up his brother straight away. He wasn’t going to leave Tall Tree Valley and that was that. And as soon as he’d spoken, the three Blueside girls, one by one, said the same. And then the six of them — Mehmet and his five followers — looked around at the rest of us, hoping for more support. But everyone else stayed silent. Hunched under our buckskins, we peered up at the falling snow and wished wished we were somewhere else. And John was telling us we could be.
‘I’m getting tired of living in this little patch of trees up in Snowy Dark,’ John said. ‘I’m going to try and get down the other side to a proper forest, and if anyone wants to join me they can. It’ll mean going through more snow, I admit, but look around you. We’re in the snow already!’
Mehmet jumped to his feet.
‘Harry’s dick, John. Don’t pretend this is the same as it is up on Dark. We can still see here! We can still find things to eat! We can still make fires! There’s firewood everywhere! And if we just built bigger and stronger shelters we wouldn’t even need to get wet.’
I looked across the fire at Tina. I knew she’d be annoyed with John for once again springing a whole new plan on everyone, but when I mouthed the question to her ‘Will you go?’, she nodded, and I nodded back to say ‘Me too’. Then I looked at my sister Clare and asked her the same thing, and she nodded as well. So did Lucy Batwing. So did Janny and Jane and Mike.
Aaaaaaaah! cried the leopard again, not so far up above us. Lucy and Martha London started crying again and said they couldn’t bear to live any more in this cold snowy place. I looked at John and saw the old slinker was having a job not to smile.
Something came into my mind then that my mum made me learn when I was fourteen fifteen wombs old. It was a secret thing that I wasn’t to talk about. It was words that had passed from mother to daughter all the way down from First Angela, who I was named for. And Mum said I should remember the words exactly and pass them on in turn when I was older to any of my own daughters who would be able to remember them carefully, and keep them to themselves.
‘It’s not that these things are such a big big secret,’ my mum said. ‘But if everyone were to tell these words to each other all the time, they wouldn’t stay the same. They’d change in the telling in the way that the True Story does, and we wouldn’t remember any more what Angela actually said.’
There were a lot of words from Angela that Mum taught me, but the ones I remembered now, as John and Mehmet were fighting over whether we should stay in Tall Tree Valley or whether we should go, were these:
‘Some men want the story to be all about them.’
It was so true of John, I thought. As soon as things got quiet, and everyone was just getting on with things, he got uneasy because life stopped being a story about anyone in particular, and certainly not about him.
But it was true of Mehmet too.
‘John doesn’t know the way to another forest,’ Mehmet hissed now, his face all blotchy with anger. ‘He doesn’t know it any more this time than he did before. Michael’s names, what’s the matter with all of you? This snow here won’t kill us, but that snow will.’
It would have been nice nice, I thought, if this didn’t have to be about John or Mehmet, and could just be about deciding the right thing to do, but there weren’t any other choices apart from what the two of them were offering. It was the same when I first came over to John at Cold Path Neck: only that time the choice was him or ugly old David Redlantern.
‘We can stay up here in middle of Dark until we die,’ said John, ‘or we can finish off the job we started and find a place on the other side. Do we want to live the rest of our lives in the warm wide forests that we know are over there, or do we want to huddle up forever in this small cold place?’
Aaaaaaaah! came the cry again from the slopes up to Dark.
For a few seconds everyone was silent. Then Mehmet spoke.
‘And what about leopards, John? Want to explain to us why it makes sense to go up there among those white leopards all over again?’
John laughed.
‘What makes you think they’re up there, Mehmet? They can throw their voices, remember? Tom’s dick, it was you that first figured that out! They could be down here in forest now. They could be just a few yards away. We’re in Snowy Dark, remember. We’re still in it, and we will be until we get down the other side.’
‘Oh that’s just a load of . . .’ Mehmet began angrily, but John cut him off.
‘Snow leopards cry out before they attack, the same as forest leopards sing. We know that now, don’t we? They cry out to confuse their prey about where they are. And we know now that if we hear that sound up on Dark, we just have to yell and scream loud enough, and we’ll scare them off.’
He looked around at the faces in the firelight, half-hidden under buckskins.
‘In fact those leopards up there are a good sign. I’ll bet you anything they’re there because the bucks are climbing out of Tall Tree Valley to find their way down to lower ground, like we know bucks do in cold dips.’
He made all of us to walk to the edge of forest so we could look up and see for ourselves. He was right. The snow was barely falling now, and, on the huge dark slopes all round us, we could see the headlanterns of bucks moving in long lines up out of Tall Tree Valley.
‘You see?’ he said. ‘Look at them! Heading off for the big low valleys! Those ones over there are going back towards Circle Valley, aren’t they, but look at these ones here! Where are they going, Mehmet? What does that tell you?’
‘It tells me you’re crazy, John. It tells me that, if we let you, you’ll go on until you’ve done for all of us.’
Mehmet turned to the rest of us.
‘Harry’s dick, can’t you see it? He’s doing it again! He’s trying to control our minds. He’s trying to make us think that the way he sees things is the only way to see things!’