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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

Trudging wearily down the wet zigzag path with Candy heavy heavy in my arms, clambering over cold stones, I thought about what Trueheart had said. Stories were important, that was the part she didn’t understand. They were so important that we told them to ourselves inside our heads, every time we went to sleep. They were how we joined together all the things that happened to us into a shape that made some kind of sense. They were how we made the best of things in this sad, lonely place, where babies can burn up with fever, and enemies can come from across the water, and people can be born with clawfeet and batfaces, and be teased and left out, and can’t do anything about it.

And the Davidfolk’s story was a good one. It was a story about keeping family together, watching over the Circle, patiently waiting for Earth to come again. It was satisfying and comforting but felt real at the same time, and it had a good ending too, like all proper stories do. The ending was Earth, and the story was about staying together, no matter what, and keeping our way home clear in our minds until we finally got there. The Circle of Stones made us closer to Earth. It was something from the old stories that was still solid and real so we could see it right in front of our eyes. And all those other circles that we made in our clusters, or scratched on the forest floor, or drew in the snow on our way over, they made us closer to the Circle of Stones. So the Davidfolk didn’t just tell their story, they lived in it. They came back every waking to a circle that marked the end of their whole story. And that meant that, however far away from home they might seem to be, they were reminded all the time that it was still there waiting for them, and that it wasn’t so far as it might seem.

Trueheart wanted to scratch away at the Davidfolk story. She wanted to know if it was really true in the way that it might be true to say: ‘That’s a stone over there,’ or ‘That’s my mum,’ or ‘Last waking there was a fug.’ She wanted to know if it was real like a bat or a tree. She wanted to know what reason there was to think that the Davidfolk’s version of what happened at Breakup was really any truer than the Johnfolk’s.

But no one else looked at it that way. How can you ask if the story is true or not, if you’re in the story yourself ?