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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

‘I’m sure we’ll be fine,’ I said with a little sigh. ‘Try and keep cheerful for the kids, eh?’

Because he was riding on the buck, he wasn’t really aware of the biggest danger we faced, which was that our footwraps would fall apart or get soaked through. That’s how people got the black burn. Your toes and feet got so cold that they died and turned black, rotting away while they were still on you. You had to cut them off if you were going to have any chance of living, or the black rot would spread right through you. My footwraps were already worryingly wet, and so were Fox’s. And we had only a little bit of buckskin left to make new ones.

But I didn’t say anything about that to Dave, just moved away again, and walked on ahead through the muddy snow of David’s Path. Dave was hard to be with when things were difficult. Even back in Michael’s Place, he worried worried worried. Even down there in forest, with the warmth and light of the trees all round him, Dave behaved like he was up here in the Dark, with danger all round him. That’s why he always looked half-starved. It wasn’t that he ate any less than anyone else. It was just that worry sat inside him like a slinker and stole away the food that should have made him strong.

I supposed in one way he was right, as well. We were always in danger, even down in forest. Warmth and light and life were such little fragile things, like the necklace of little lights laid out through the blackness in front of us; and darkness and coldness and death were so big and strong. But still, I didn’t like to be with Dave when there was stuff to worry about. He made it worse, and he made me feel angry angry. Darkness was real of course, you couldn’t deny that, but surely we could choose what story we told ourselves about it? Surely there was no need to always tell the story in which the darkness won? After all, it hadn’t won yet, not in all the time people had lived on Eden. Here we were, look, as proof of that, with our wraps and our embers and our bucks, our blood still warm and our hearts still beating, making our way across the Dark.

Presently Trueheart came up to walk beside me.

‘Auntie Angie,’ she said, when we’d been trudging along together for a while in silence. ‘You know how you said that high people think they’re in a story that’s all about them, but low people know they’re not? What did you mean by that?’