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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

Trueheart’s eyes were dry, I noticed, peering out of the holes in her headwrap, but most people’s eyes were shining in the light from our buck’s headlantern. One guy called Big Dixon – he was wide as two of me – pulled off his headwrap so as not to soak it with his tears. All their lives, these people had lived beside circles on the ground that were copies of that Circle down there in forest. Every guard they met had a circle of dots painted on his forehead in memory of it. Each time they went into Veeklehouse they’d seen the traders offering those little bags of dirt, which were supposed to have been scraped up from the ground of Circle Clearing. (‘Only ten sticks,’ the traders would call out, ‘for a whole lifetime of health and good luck!’) In the minds of Davidfolk just to be near that special Circle that they weren’t allowed to step inside was like being a bit nearer to Earth. They might never have been there but the Circle of Stones was still a kind of home.

That thought brought tears to my eyes too. I’d thought I had a home in Michael’s Place, where we’d looked after ourselves and bothered no one, but now the Johnfolk had driven us from it. I’d thought I’d had a home at Knee Tree Grounds far out in Worldpool, but no one lived there now but fatbucks. I’d even thought I had a kind of home with Mary, but me and her had fallen out. Deep down I longed, like everyone, for a real home that couldn’t be taken away.

So I cried. But Trueheart still held out against tears. She frowned down at the little lights of all those thousands of trees at the bottom of the great bowl of darkness, and refused to be impressed while her dad Tom pointed out to her the Blue Mountains opposite, the Alps to the right, the Rockies to the left. ‘And of course the bit of the Dark we’ve been crossing is called the Peckham Hills,’ he said, proud of his knowledge and of having been here before. ‘Which is why we say peckway, blueway, rockway and alpway when we’re telling people which direction something is in. It all started here.’

‘Well, let’s keep moving blueway, then,’ Trueheart said with a shrug, ‘before our feet turn to ice.’