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Back Daughter of Eden
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

There was a fug coming on. The air was warm and wet, and the cloud had come down from the sky and was seeping through the trees. I walked into the Circle. How strange! How scary! To walk by myself into the Circle of Stones, where so few were allowed to go. I walked to the five stones in middle that are supposed to remind us of Tommy and Gela and the Three Companions who died in the Veekle: Michael, Dixon and Mehmet. I stood there and looked out. The fug made the edge of the clearing look blurry. Mary was waiting out there, near to one of the guards who are always there watching the Circle, but they were both like blobs of darkness in the mist. All the lanterns on the trees were blurry too, with rings of light round each of them, white or pink or blue. It was only close to me that things were clear. Each one of the white stones in the circle that surrounded me was separate and solid, and inside the Circle I could see every grain of dirt on the ground.

I squatted down. It was quiet and still. The fug seemed to muffle sound as well as light, and there were no flutterbyes round the lanterns as there would be normally, and no bats to hunt them. The trees were still going, of course, they never stop – hmmmph hmmmph hmmmph – and I could hear voices and other sounds from the cluster round us beyond the trees, but they seemed far far away from me, like they were in another world. Only inside the Circle seemed completely real, and even that was a weird kind of real that felt more like a dream than ordinary waking life.

I squatted down there by the stones in middle and tried to settle my mind as Mary had told me to do, and not to fill up my head with worry. It wasn’t easy to do. Mary had said she knew I was good enough, but there were things that Mary didn’t know. I hadn’t told her I knew the Secret Story or who I heard it from. I hadn’t told her that my own best friend had gone over to the Johnfolk and put on the stolen ring. I hadn’t told her that, no matter how I tried, I couldn’t help feeling proud of that, even though poor Starlight had ended up dead, which sort of proved that what she’d done was bad. Mary didn’t know these things and she loved me and wanted to think the best of me, so of course she believed I was good and pure. But Gela would know better. She could see into the hearts of all her children and would know all of my secrets, and all of my doubts.

I remembered that Mary had told me to ask her questions.