‘Who’d have thought it, eh? We thought maybe the rest of them hadn’t made it through Dark, after they left us here. But it’s John, look. Old John Redlantern himself, and Gerry and Jeff with him. Nice to see them, eh? Nice to have a chance to put old troubles behind us.’
‘Er . . . yeah . . .’ said Paul Fishcreek and Gerald Fishcreek, uncertainly, still fingering their spears.
‘So how is Family these wakings?’ I asked them. ‘Caroline still Head, is she?’
‘Caroline? Um. Yes,’ said Gerald, looking at Paul.
‘How about our mum?’ Gerry asked. ‘Sue Redlantern. She okay, do you know?’
‘Yeah. She’s good,’ said Paul.
‘You guys still hate us down there, then?’ I asked.
Gerald and Paul Fishcreek looked at each other like they were in agony.
‘Oh no, no . . .’ they both began.
Tom’s dick and Harry’s, there was weird stuff going on, weird weird, but I couldn’t tell exactly what it was. When we’d eaten Tall Tree’s buckmeat and the Tall Tree people had got to their usual sleeping time, I refused Mehmet’s offer of a space in one of their shelters and found somewhere else a little way from them, where me and Jeff and Gerry and our bucks could get some rest with solid rocks against our backs, and could get a good view of anyone that came near.
‘It’s not so cold that we need a shelter,’ I explained to the Tall Tree people, ‘and of course we’ve been keeping different wakings to you. We’ll be more comfortable out there where we can talk and get up and move around without disturbing you.’
I told Gerry and Jeff I’d keep the first lookout, but none of the three of us had actually gone off to sleep when, after an hour or so, we heard someone creeping up. We grabbed our spears ready. But it wasn’t Mehmet or Dave or Johnny or the Fishcreek blokes, which I’d truly thought it might be, sneaking up on us with leopard tooth knives. It was Julie.
‘Hey, Jeff, do you want to slip with me?’
I suppose life wasn’t much fun for them up there. It was cold, and nothing happened, and, when they didn’t have visitors, each of them only had four other people to talk to, apart from the little kids.
‘That would be good, Julie,’ Jeff said.
And he did it with her, right there in the space beside the rock, slowly slowly and gently — and quietly quietly like you do when other people are near — and afterwards he held Julie in his arms on the sleeping skins and they talked, softly softly so as to let me and Gerry sleep if we wanted to. But I didn’t sleep. I lay there listening to the sound of their talking, while the strange tall trees hummed all around us.
Most of the time, it was too quiet for me to hear the words, but once Jeff raised his voice slightly, not in anger (he was hardly ever angry) but firmly to make a point.
‘They were protecting me and Tina, Julie!’ he said. ‘They didn’t just do it for no reason! You know that!’
I didn’t pick up any more of what they said after that but after a while I heard Julie begin to sob and Jeff comfort her. That’s why girls loved him, not only because of his beautiful eyes and his face and his golden hair and his long fine fingers and the way he could slip on and on until they’d had enough, but because he was kind.
Maybe an hour later a kid began to cry over in one of the stone shelters, and Julie recognized it as her own.
‘Michael’s names, Jeff,’ muttered Gerry enviously, after she’d gone. ‘How do you bloody do it?’
But Jeff had more worrying things to talk about.
‘John, Gerry, listen to this,’ he whispered. ‘Mehmet has been down to Family. It wasn’t so long after we left Tall Tree last time. Apparently David Redlantern is the only one who really decides what happens in Family now. He’s got a whole bunch of young guys called Guards, who make people do what he wants, and Caroline doesn’t matter any more. Julie says Mehmet’s done a deal with David to get the friendship of Family back. She doesn’t know what the deal is exactly, and she’s sure that Mehmet hasn’t told them whole story, but she reckons he’s promised he’ll help them to get to you. One thing Mehmet has told her and the other Tall Tree people is that David still wants to kill both of you two, and Harry as well. He still says he wants to spike you up to burn like Jesus, for killing Met and Dixon and John Blueside. And Julie says Mehmet’s told David about Gela’s ring. Apparently David hates you for that too, he hates you for keeping it for yourself.’
‘Bloody Mehmet Batwing,’ I said, taking my spear and jumping up. ‘That treacherous little slinker.’
In my mind I saw that giant bat on the top of the tree, with the slinker creeping up towards it through the steam.
‘I’ll go and do for him now,’ I said. ‘I’ll kill him before he can do any more harm.’
‘That won’t work,’ Jeff said. ‘Just killing another person won’t work.’
Well, no, I had to admit it wouldn’t. Not unless I killed everyone here: the two Fishcreek guys and Johnny and Dave and Angie and Julie and all their kids. Otherwise there’d still be someone left to tell Family that we’d been here and that our camp wasn’t so far away, somewhere just over the ridge.
‘Not all of Family is your enemy,’ Jeff reminded me. ‘And not all of these people here are either, not any more. But if you killed again you’d make more enemies, wouldn’t you? You’d make it easier and easier for everyone to see you as nothing but a killer, like a leopard that needs to be hunted down. You were the first one in Eden to kill a human being, after all.’
Gerry just sat on his sleeping skin looking up at us. This was outside of his reach. This was difficult grownup stuff between me and his little brother.
‘Gela’s eyes,’ I muttered, after I’d thought about it for a bit. ‘I’ve got it all wrong, haven’t I? Things weren’t perfect before I chucked those stones into the stream, but look at it now! I’ve taken Eden and broken it up into pieces.’
There are lots of different stories branching away all the time from every single thing that happens. As soon as a moment has gone, different versions of it start to be remembered and told about. And some of them carry on, and some die out, and you can’t know in advance which version will last and which won’t. It had never occurred to me before that the story of John Redlantern might end up as the story of a famous killer, the first one in Eden ever to do for another human being. But now that story suddenly took shape in my mind.
I could see it being acted out in the future. John the Leopard-Man; John who killed a leopard and ate its heart and somehow the heart crept into him and became his own; John who sang sweetly and treacherously like a leopard does, and promised wonderful things, and made people leave everything and walk towards him, but really all he did was to lead them to their deaths. Death followed after him. It spread out from him across the world like ripples across a pool, like evil ripples. But then at last brave David Redlantern hunted him down, just like you’d hunt down a leopard that had taken to prowling around outside the fence and watching the kids playing inside. Brave ugly David hunted him down with his Guards, and then the world was safe again and Family was whole once more.
‘No, John, you didn’t break it, you opened it up,’ Jeff said. ‘That was why we followed you. It needed to be opened up. It needed to happen.’
He looked at me with his big deep eyes, putting his hands on my shoulders. I’ll tell you, I was pretty near to crying.
‘Still,’ he said, ‘that’s not to say that you don’t sometimes make mistakes.’