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Daughter of Eden

Chris Beckett
Chapters (68)
  1. Title page
  2. Dedication
  3. Part I
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Sixteen
  20. Seventeen
  21. Eighteen
  22. Nineteen
  23. Twenty
  24. Twenty-one
  25. Twenty-two
  26. Twenty-three
  27. Twenty-four
  28. Twenty-five
  29. GAIA YOUNG. SUBJECTIVE IMPRESSIONS.MISSION DAY 20. 20:25 MT.
  30. Part II
  31. Twenty-six
  32. Twenty-seven
  33. Twenty-eight
  34. Twenty-nine
  35. Thirty
  36. Thirty-one
  37. Thirty-two
  38. Thirty-three
  39. Thirty-four
  40. Thirty-five
  41. Thirty-six
  42. Thirty-seven
  43. GAIA YOUNG. SUBJECTIVE IMPRESSIONS.MISSION DAY 22. 20:05 MT.
  44. Thirty-eight
  45. Thirty-nine
  46. Forty
  47. Forty-one
  48. GAIA YOUNG. SUBJECTIVE IMPRESSIONS.MISSION DAY 25. 15:30 MT.
  49. Forty-two
  50. Forty-three
  51. Forty-four
  52. Forty-five
  53. Forty-six
  54. Forty-seven
  55. Forty-eight
  56. Forty-nine
  57. Fifty
  58. Fifty-one
  59. Fifty-two
  60. Fifty-three
  61. Fifty-four
  62. Part III
  63. Fifty-five
  64. Fifty-six
  65. Fifty-seven
  66. Fifty-eight
  67. Also by Chris Beckett
  68. Copyright page

Title page

Dedication

To my two daughters,
with much love and great pride

Part I

One

I look back through all the things that have happened since, and it’s like looking out through the trees and lanterns of a forest. So many things in between, but there, far off in the distance, is me as I once was, Angie Redlantern, walking along the cliff path to Veeklehouse with my little Candy hopping and skipping and ­dancing along beside me. On our right is the glowing water, pink and green, stretching away to World’s Edge. On our left is the humming forest: dark trunks, shining lanterns, glittering starflowers, on and on blueway as far as the slopes of Snowy Dark. Above us, the huge spiral of Starry Swirl fills up the whole of the black black sky. I am carrying a bag of bone tools to trade. ‘Twinkle twinkle little star,’ Candy sings, and gives a little twirl. She is four years old: five wombtimes we’d have said when I was a kid, but that Angie back there on the cliff has been living so long among Davidfolk that she’s become used to thinking in years.

Ahead of us is Veeklehouse, the Davidfolk’s biggest trading place, sitting there on the clifftop in the spot where John ­Red­lantern once stood long long ago, wondering whether or not to throw Gela’s metal ring out into the water. Veeklehouse is bright with firelight – though it’s a rough dirty dangerous brightness, completely different from the soft light of forest – and it sits under a flat cloud of smoke that’s pretty much always there, glowing a faint dirty orange against the starry sky.

That’s me and Candy, long ago: little dots on the clifftop, between the shining water, and the shining forest, and the high cold light of the stars.

‘Look, Mum,’ says Candy. ‘Lots of boats!’

I’d first seen Veeklehouse some ten years previously. A bunch of us came down in a boat from the little sandy grounds I grew up in, way up rockway from Veeklehouse and ten miles out into the water. Me and my friend Starlight were so excited we ran up the cliff like little kids, leaving the older grownups behind us to follow the best they could. Gela’s heart! The colours, the people, the things they traded! It all seemed wonderful to us. And that was before we’d even seen the Veekle itself behind its high fence, that huge mysterious metal thing, steeped in the strangeness of Earth.