‘You don’t have to . . .’ began John.
‘Oh, just shut up, John, will you, shut up and give us all a rest!’
Mehmet had come right up in front of John. He was the shorter one of the two and he glared up into John’s face, and then shoved him, hard hard, so he staggered and nearly fell.
But John was nimble. He recovered his balance quickly quickly, and, in one single movement, he passed his spear from his right to his left hand, grabbed Mehmet by the neck and flung him down into the snow. And then he was over him. Mehmet’s body wrap had fallen open and John pressed the tip of his blackglass spear into the smooth skin of Mehmet’s chest. Both of them were panting panting for breath. A bead of red blood trickled across Mehmet’s skin and under his wrap.
‘Gela’s heart, John, what are you doing!’ I screamed.
‘John! Stop!’ yelled Tina.
And in the same moment she cried out, a leopard cried out too above us.
‘Go on then John,’ jeered Mehmet. ‘Do for me, like you did for Dixon Blueside. It’s getting to be a bit of a habit, isn’t it? That’ll make five, at my count, dead because of you. Or should that be seven, with the two little ones?’
Tina stepped forward, yanked away the spear. I pulled Mehmet roughly up to his feet. The two of us pushed them apart.
‘It’s a choice,’ Tina hissed at Mehmet. ‘It’s a free choice. People can stay with you or they can leave with John. What’s so hard to understand about that?’
No one spoke. The Fishcreek boys and the three Blueside girls went to stand by Mehmet, the boys clutching their spears tightly. The rest of us walked back to our camp and began to dig out our storage logs from under the snow, to get out dry food and spare wraps.
I could see the six of them wavering as we loaded up. I could see them wondering what it would be like to be by themselves in this cold bleak place. I wondered if, at the last minute, they’d crack and come with us, as Mehmet had always done before. But they stayed.
‘Don’t think you’re the brave ones,’ Mehmet jeered after us as we set off behind John and Jeff and Jeff’s woollybuck, Def, ‘just because you’re the ones that are going. Angela stayed, remember, when the Three Companions left. She stayed in one place and made a go of things, like we’re doing. But you, John, and all of you that follow him, you just run run run.’
38
John Redlantern
There were lights below us! There were lights and lights and lights, on and on, as thick as stars in Starry Swirl.
‘Gela’s heart, Jeff,’ I whispered, ‘this is the best moment in my whole life, the best best moment!’
Bright bright lights, on and on, and not just ahead but to the left too, and to the right: red and green and yellow and blue and white. We’d never seen such a thing. We’d never seen a forest that bright and that big.
I turned to shout to rest of them still toiling up the slope behind us in the darkness. We’d been walking through Dark the length of two long wakings. We’d twice heard leopards and had to scream and yell to scare them away.
‘Quick! Quick!’ I yelled down. ‘We’ve done it! We’ve made it! We’re okay!’
I turned to look down again at forest below us.
‘Just look at it, Jeff. Tom’s dick, just bloody look at it! On and on!’
As each of the others reached the top, they shouted angrily.
‘You two were way too far ahead! You should have bloody waited for us! What would have happened if a leopard had come?’
But, when they saw what was laid below them, they fell silent, just like me and Jeff had done.
Never mind little Tall Tree Valley, this made Circle Valley look tiny and closed-in. Both those places were really just little splat holes in Snowy Dark. But this wasn’t a splat hole. It wasn’t just another valley. It was a whole world. Everyone could see that. Everyone.
‘Weird to think Family stayed in that one little place for a hundred and sixty bloody years,’ Gela Brooklyn said, rubbing her pregnant belly, ‘when all of this was so near.’ ‘Tom’s neck, John!’ Gerry shouted excitedly, coming up next to me, putting his arm round my shoulders and leaning his head against mine. ‘You did it! You bloody did it! You are brilliant brilliant, John. You’re great.’
He was proud of me again, as proud of me as he had been when I did for the leopard.
In fact they were all proud of me.
‘You made this happen,’ Tina said, coming over beside me too, and slipping her arm round my waist. ‘You started this all by yourself and made it happen.’
We still had our headwraps on to keep out the cold, so we were like some kind of weird two-legged bucks standing up there in the snow, and it was dark dark too, but in the light of Def’s headlantern I could see Tina’s shiny eyes looking at me out of the holes in the buckskin.
‘You bloody did it, John!’ said Gerry again.
‘To think I was about to say we should turn back,’ said Janny, looking down at the thousand thousand lights below. ‘To think my Flower could have grown up in bloody old Tall Tree Valley, when all this was waiting for us.’
And then suddenly she pulled off her headwrap and mine too, so she could give me a wet batface kiss.
‘Well, if Janny’s going to kiss you, I will too!’ Tina said, yanking off her own headwrap. Our skins were all pink and sticky from being inside the wraps, and she kissed me slowly with her mouth open, like a kiss before a slip. The others cheered us on.
They’d never been pleased with me like this. Even when they first came over to me at Valley Neck — and that was long long before Suzie died, long before I’d got them lost and Jeff had had to save them — they’d grumbled as if I’d made them come, as if all that they’d given up was my fault and nothing to do with them. But now, when me and Jeff had forced them to keep going and risked their lives by pushing on ahead with their only source of light, they were pleased pleased pleased.
It felt good good, but even better than their praise was the sight of Wide Forest itself stretching away down there, with no Dark to make an edge to it, except for the Dark we were standing on.
Far off in the distance, I noticed, the light of Wide Forest changed. There was a kind of winding edge between the twinkly light of the trees below, which was like the light of Circle Valley, and a softer, smoother, more even light, which was more like the light that comes out of a stream or a pool.
‘That couldn’t all be water over there, surely?’ I said to myself. It didn’t seem possible, and yet I remembered stories of such a thing on Earth, a pool that was bigger than all the dry ground put together. The C, it was called for short, but no one in Eden knew any more what that had stood for.
‘Think of bloody old Mehmet and the other five,’ said Dix with a snort of laughter, ‘stuck back up there on their own in Tall Tree Valley, figuring out how to keep warm next time it snows.’
‘Yeah,’ shouted Harry. ‘Ha ha! Sitting by themselves in the snow.’
He laughed and laughed, as Harry sometimes did, going on until it was almost like it was hurting him or he was having a fit. It often got on people’s nerves so much that they ended up telling him to bloody shut up, and then he’d get upset, which was even noisier and more annoying than his laugh. But this time everyone joined in with him happily, laughing and laughing up there on that ridge in Dark, with the wide bright world below, all glittery and fresh and new. No more snow and dark and snow leopards. All of that was behind us. No hungry wakings. No having to eat bats and slinkers because there wasn’t enough buckmeat. A new start for us, a new world, and all the space we could possibly need for generations and generations and generations.