‘No,’ Mehmet said, ‘Dave and Johnny are still alive, but Suzie is dead.’
And whole Family was silent then, completely silent. You could hear the hmmmmmmmm of the misty forest all around us, the hmmph, hmmph, hmmph of the trees nearby.
‘Dead?’ said Suzie Fishcreek’s mum, smiling broadly like he’d just told a joke. ‘Dead? No, that can’t be . . . You just told us . . . Well, you didn’t tell us but the fact that you’re here proves that . . . Well . . .’
She giggled.
‘No, not dead,’ she said firmly.
Poor woman. Mehmet had brought her sons and her daughter back to life for her when he came into the clearing, just like he’d brought Jeff and Gerry back to life for me. Suzie had leapt out of Snowy Dark for her, alive and well. And now, a few minutes later, she was dead again.
‘Yes, dead,’ said Mehmet. ‘That fool John led us up onto the snow. He had no proper plan. He didn’t know what to expect. It’s only luck that we didn’t all die. But Suzie did die. There’s a terrible kind of leopard up there, a white leopard that can throw its voice from one place to another. It did for her up there, her and one of our bucks, and it drove off the other one with Jeff on it, so we were all left in Dark.’
My heart went cold. The world closed in round me. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Was Mehmet going to kill off my child as well?
‘Jeff?’ I cried. ‘It drove Jeff off? What happened to him? Did he come back? Is Jeff alright?’
‘He was alright last time I saw him.’
‘Well, so’s Suzie then,’ said Suzie’s mum, smiling round at the people around her. ‘She’s not dead. Mehmet’s here, isn’t he? Mehmet is here to prove that they’re all okay!’
‘Suzie died,’ Mehmet said. ‘Last I heard all the others were alive. Dave Fishcreek was with me earlier this waking. He came down with me from Tall Tree Valley, but he ran off when you guys started yelling at us and waving spears. Johnny Fishcreek, and Julie and Angie and Candy Blueside, they’re all back up there in Tall Tree Valley. We’ve got our own little Tall Tree group up there. Three babies too.’
‘And Jeff? And Gerry?’
‘All the others stayed with John. He had to keep going, didn’t he? Tall Tree Valley is a good place — all the bucks you could wish for — but he had to go back up onto Dark again, trying to find the way across to the other side.’
So of course me and all the other mums and sisters and brothers and friends were calling out to know more again.
‘It gets cold up where we are sometimes,’ Mehmet said, ‘and snow comes down. But it doesn’t kill us, does it? It’s not cold like up on Snowy Dark. And it’s not dark either. But, first time the snow came down, off they all went, the bloody fools, Tina, Dix, Janny, Gerry, Jeff, dumb old Harry, all that lot, following that crazy John, that crazy killer John, back up onto Dark where Suzie died, and where we all nearly died, and would have done too if Jeff hadn’t come back for us. Good luck to them, they’ll need it.
‘But me and Dave and Johnny and the Blueside girls, we figured we could work out how to deal with a bit of snow. We have figured it out too. We wear thick wraps. We make strong shelters and big fires. We turn bucks into horses. It’s a good life up there. We get all the buckmeat we could ever want, and all the . . .’
‘My Jeff came back for you, you said,’ I called out. ‘What did he do? Where had he gone? Where did he come back from?’
But David stepped in before I got an answer.
‘Never mind that now. Tell us what you mean by killer John?’
Mehmet gave a weird little smirk. His head was cradled against his big fierce auntie’s enormous breasts — she’d pushed her way through the Guards like they were little kids — and he had other Batwing people standing round him, stroking him and touching him like they couldn’t believe he was real. He could tell he wasn’t in danger now and he was enjoying the attention and the power he had over us all.
‘Oh, didn’t you know, David?’ he asked. ‘Didn’t you know that John did for your friend Dixon Blueside? Speared him from behind when he was trying to get back here. And Gerry and Harry — you know, Gerry Redlantern and big old, dumb old Harry Spiketree — they did for the other two that Dixon had with him. Harry did for John Blueside. And Gerry, well, I’m afraid Gerry did for his own groupmate Met.’
Oh Gela’s crying eyes! What a thing Mehmet had let loose! We’d guessed that something bad had happened, something bad enough to make whole bunch of them suddenly head off up to Dark, but we’d never known what that something was. Now John Blueside’s mum, and all the rest of Blueside group too, began to yell and bellow across the clearing at Redlantern and Spiketree, pushing forward against Guards, who held them back with the sticks of their spears.
And Met’s mum, my own cousin Candice, turned on me.
‘No, no, no, no, no, no!’ she screamed. ‘I hate Gerry, I hate him, I hate him, I hate him.’
She snatched at my eyes with her nails like a tree fox, scratching my face so I bled. People pulled her off me then, but she carried on screaming. Other people were joining in too, screaming and screaming: Blueside people screaming at Spiketree and Redlantern people, Redlantern people screaming at one another, all in the little fuggy space of the clearing with the thick fug all around and the fake Circle in middle of it all.
And then Suzie Fishcreek’s mum finally heard in her mind what her ears had heard a little while ago. Suzie was dead. Her daughter had been torn apart by a white leopard that lived in Dark and the snow. Over all the other screaming and shouting, she let out one single horrible high-pitched shriek.
‘Silence!’ bellowed David.
Everyone was quiet.
‘Silence,’ he said again, glaring round at us.
Gela’s eyes, I’m a batface too and I’m no beauty myself, but he looked ugly ugly.
‘Screaming and yelling won’t solve anything,’ David said. ‘What’s needed now is to get that killer John and spike him up, just like I always said we should. Him and his creepy friend Gerry and that baby-man Harry. You all thought I was being hard, but if we’d spiked Juicy John up when I first suggested it, there’d be four people alive now who are all dead. This time we’re going to do it my way.’
‘Yes, but they’re right across the other side of Snowy Dark,’ I whispered to myself. ‘Thank Gela, they’re far away from here. David is only play-acting. There’s nothing he can really do.’
‘Yes, John is a killer,’ Mehmet said. ‘He could have killed any of us. That’s the only reason I went with him over the top in the first place. I didn’t want to go. I spoke out against it. I told him I didn’t agree with the killings. But . . .’
David took no notice of any of this.
‘You bring us down some of those buckhorses of yours, Mehmet, if you really want to be our friends. And bring us some of those warm wraps. And show us the way the others went over the mountains.’
‘Oh yes, I will,’ Mehmet said. ‘I surely will. I don’t want to break with Family. We Tall Tree people don’t want to break with Family. One of us was a cousin of John Blueside, don’t forget, and three of us grew up with him and Dixon Blueside in their group. We want to get back at their killers as much as you do.’
‘Then maybe we can sort something,’ David said, ‘us and you. Maybe you can be part of Family again.’
‘I don’t think that’s down to you, David,’ came Caroline’s voice from behind him. ‘It’s for Council to decide things like that, Council and me as Fam . . .’