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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

Dave had thrown dried meat and bags of flowercakes over the back of our old smoothbuck, Ugly, and now he lifted up Candy and Metty onto its back before hauling himself up there behind them. He wasn’t being lazy. He knew that his clawfeet would hold us all back if he tried to walk.

Waves of grey were rippling across Ugly’s flat black eyes and its four mouth feelers were sniffing and snuffling at the air, like it was trying to figure out what all the humans were so agitated about. Then it tipped back its head and gave one of those little shrieking sounds that bucks make when they know they’re in danger.

A few of the other dads or mums had gone off to look for missing people, but the rest of them had loaded up bucks like we’d done, with dried meat, trading sticks, wraps, sleeping skins, spears and bundles of arrows. I scooped up some embers in a pot, so we could cook along the way.

As we set off towards Davidstand, we heard a huge roar rising up from somewhere in the distance, down alpway and towards the Pool. Tom nodded wisely, like he was the only one who could tell what that sound could possibly be.

‘That’s the guards on the cliff,’ he said, ‘shouting and yelling to ready themselves for a fight.’

It was strange to think about. At that moment every single one of those guards at Veeklehouse was still healthy and whole and strong, and so was each one of the ringmen on the boats from New Earth. But soon the arrows would be flying back and forth across the water: metal-tipped arrows one way, glass-tipped arrows the other, and then people would start to die, and bodies that now were fit and whole would be torn and broken. There would be fire arrows too. Our men would shoot them to set their windcatchers alight, and their fire arrows would come flying back in answer to burn the shelters in Veeklehouse.

Fox was terrified, but he was trying hard not to show it.

‘I wish I could watch the fighting, Mum,’ he shouted out in an odd, loud, excited voice, though I was standing right by him and would have heard him quite clearly if he’d simply spoken. ‘It would be exciting exciting, and I know our blokes are going to win.’

On Ugly’s back, little Metty cried in Dave’s arms, sensing the fear round him, while Candy frowned out from Ugly’s back and said nothing at all. Dave tried to catch my eye so he could give me one of his worried looks, one of those looks that grownups give each other over the heads of their children, but I avoided it. Gela’s heart, I thought, it’s not as if all of us don’t already know how bad things are.