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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

However many times her dad beat her for questioning the things she wasn’t supposed to question, however much her mum scolded her for making trouble, however much the other newhairs mocked her – ‘Batfaced and mouthy. Who’s going to want a girl like her for a shelterwoman?’ – Trueheart would not stop trying to understand things, figure things out, make sense of them.

‘Oh I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I was talking nonsense probably. But I sometimes feel like the high people think we’re here just to help them act out their stories, even if that means us doing for each other and burning down each other’s clusters, and it never seems to occur to them that we might have stories of our own. I mean, Johnfolk wouldn’t be coming across the water at all, if it wasn’t for the old fight between John and David. Yet they were just two guys who somehow managed to draw everyone in Eden into their quarrel.’ I sighed. ‘But then again, who knows? David and John wouldn’t have become high men in first place unless other folk let them, so maybe people needed their stories.’

An idea came to me then, seemingly from nowhere, that made my heart beat more quickly all of a sudden. I looked round us to see if anyone was near, and found there wasn’t. We were all walking in a long straggly weary line behind Tom and his shining woollybuck up front. Fox was some way back now, having a little ride on a buck with his friend Brightspear and Brightspear’s old granny. There were twenty feet, in front and behind, between the two of us and the next nearest person.

‘Trueheart,’ I began, my heart now absolutely pounding, ‘there’s something you might like to—’

But that was far as I got, because right then a bunch of new buck-riders appeared over the ridge in front of us, heading towards us fast. There were twenty of them at least, with spears, and each one was riding a proper woollybuck, so that the ground all round them was white white, and the snow their bucks were throwing up glittered and sparkled like little stars.

Some of our group began to blunder sideways into the deep soft snow to the side of the path, remembering the Johnfolk who’d come crashing across our path and shot that arrow at poor baby Suzie. Pretty soon they were in up to their thighs. (Tom’s dick, did they want the black burn? That was exactly the way to wreck your footwraps or even lose them!) But of course these men riding towards us were going the wrong way to be ringmen. These were guards, Davidfolk like us, returning from Circle Valley to join the fight down below in Wide Forest and round Davidstand.