Tom’s neck, how did he get all that power? Why did we let him take it? He was only a Redlantern boy after all. I remembered him when he was a little kid and I was a newhair. I didn’t like him much even then. He was sort of loveless from the start, but when I was little I used to keep an eye on him. We batfaces took a lot of stick and we had to stand up for each other. I didn’t expect him to grow up into anyone nice or special, and I was right: he didn’t. He grew up into a sour sarcastic lump of misery. But sour and sarcastic is one thing, this was another. Who could have imagined this?
But anyway, it was time for the count. The leaders came out from their groups to report how many in their group were here now, and how many were out hunting or scavenging and all of that, and Secret Ree scratched the numbers down with a shaky hand, though she was nearly blind. Then we waited while they added up the group counts and worked out the count for whole Family. It went on and on, like it did every time. Harry’s dick, how hard can it be to add up the numbers from eight groups? Babies cried. Newhairs gave each other looks.
Then at last Caroline stood up.
‘There are five hundred and eighty-one people in Family,’ she announced, ‘more than ever ever before!’
My clever Jeff wasn’t in that count, was he? Nor my Gerry, nor Janny Redlantern, nor John. They weren’t part of it any more. And yet, even without them, the number had gone up. It was like they didn’t matter somehow, like they made no odds at all.
Caroline yelled the number into old Mitch’s ear, and they levered him up to his feet, and he began to quaver on about rememfer this and rememfer that, and how a big round boat came down from sky, and how there were only thirty people when he was a kid, thirty in whole world.
We were supposed to be impressed or feel sorry for them, for managing to keep going when they were so few. But there were only twenty with John that went up on Dark.
How does David know they died? I thought. How could he really know? John believed it was possible to cross right over or he wouldn’t have led them there, and who’s to say he was wrong? He was no fool. He figured out how to make warm wraps. And my own Jeff figured out how to turn a buck into a horse for them to ride. (David would never have thought of that, never, not if he lived for a thousand wombs, though he was happy enough to steal the idea from Jeff.) So who was to say that they didn’t make it over to the other side?
There was a new part in Any Virsry now. There was a special bit where bloody old Lucy Lu got up and started telling us the messages she’d had from Angela and Tommy and dead Stoop and all the other Shadow People.
‘John is with them now,’ she told us, ‘John Redlantern, and all his little gang. They froze up on Dark and now they’re Shadow People with the rest of them. But none of the other Shadow People . . .’
She broke off here, rolling her eyes and screwing up her face as if she was in terrible pain. That woman has always been a liar and a faker, ever since she was a little kid.
‘Gela’s heart,’ she cried, ‘Gela’s dear good heart, but they are lonely lonely. None of the other Shadow People talk to them because they broke up our Family. And they know now they did wrong. They know it, because all is revealed in the Shadow World, all is revealed. And they feel ashamed ashamed, and they hate themselves and they hate each other, and that’s how it’ll always be for them, poor things, poor poor things, for ever and ever and ever.’
David stood up, one hand on the back of his buckhorse. Michael’s names, I hated all this. It was my boys they were talking about, my boys and their friends. How dare they talk about them like that? But I knew from the past what would happen if I tried to speak out. Everyone would yell at me and shout at me. People would warn me I’d end up being an enemy of Family too if I wasn’t careful. People would ask whose side was I on. People would hiss that they could see where my boys got it from. So I kept quiet, with only silent tears to show how I felt inside.
‘Yeah,’ David said. ‘Dying in the cold and hating themselves forever. That’s what you get for trying to break our Family, and that’s why we have Guards now to make sure it never happens again.’
‘Oh I know, I know,’ wailed Lucy Lu, ‘I know it has to be. But when you see them as I see them, you can’t help feeling sorry for them: always lonely, always miserable, always with the cold of Snowy Dark creeping through them and always . . . always . . .’
She stopped because we could hear shouting voices coming from forest behind us on the Peckham side of the clearing. In came three more of David’s Guards, dragging along another young man, with a buck on a rope following behind them.
The Guards didn’t take any notice of the fact that an Any Virsry was going on, and they paid no attention to the person in middle of Circle who was supposed to be Family Head.
‘David! David! Look who we found skulking around outside Family. Look who it is!’
Who was it? He looked familiar — that narrow, clever face with the wispy blond beard — but we hadn’t seen him for a long time, and he’d grown, and we’d never seen him looking so scared before. But Gela’s sweet heart, it was one of them! It was one of our lost kids!
‘Let go of me,’ snapped Mehmet Batwing, ‘I wasn’t skulking. I came down here to talk to you. I’ve got things you might want to know about.’
‘Talk then!’ growled David. ‘Talk!’
‘Never mind David, Mehmet,’ I yelled. ‘Talk to us! Where’s our kids? Where’s Gerry? Where’s Jeff? Where’s John?’
Other people started calling out and coming forward too, mums, sisters, brothers. The Guards quickly stepped in to keep us back and away from Mehmet and David, but they couldn’t stop us calling out.
‘Where’s Tina and Harry? Where’s Jane?’
‘What about Dix? Dixon Brooklyn, I mean? And Gela and Clare, are they alright?’
‘No, talk about Lucy first. Lucy Batwing. Tell us about her!’
David raised his hands for quiet before Mehmet could answer.
‘One at a time, one at a time!’
He turned to me.
‘And you can forget John,’ he said. ‘He’s not part of Family any more. He’s none of our business.’
‘That’s right,’ chipped in Lucy Lu, staring at us all with her weepy eyes. ‘Tommy and Angela told me themselves, remember? They told me we should forget that John Redlantern ever existed, and never speak of him again.’
‘Oh shut up, Lu, you silly woman, you just told us they were all dead!’ said a big Batwing woman called Angie. She was Mehmet’s auntie. It had been her who’d raised the boy up after a leopard did for his mum. ‘You come here, Mehmet my pet. Come to Auntie Angie.’
‘Yes, and I want to hear about John,’ called my sister Jade, ‘I want to hear about him!’
And she looked at me guiltily, as if she doubted her own right to get involved.
‘Gela and Clare Brooklyn,’ someone else was calling. ‘Are they alright? Tell us that they didn’t die in the snow!’
‘What about Julie Blueside? And Angie and Candy?’
Everyone was pushing forward, crowding round Mehmet and David and the Guards.
‘What about Dave and Johnny and Suzie Fishcreek. How are they? Suzie’s alright, isn’t she?’
It was weird. Even before I heard Mehmet’s answer I knew what it would be. Everyone was yelling yelling at the same time, but when Suzie’s mum called out, a kind of hollowness suddenly opened up in middle of all that noise.