‘The starship will never come back for us,’ I’d moan, ‘unless you listen to our Mother and look after her family!’

We laughed and laughed. How could those stupid Davidfolk be so easily fooled, we wondered? Wasn’t it obvious that the speakers told people whatever they thought would either please them enough or frighten them enough to get good presents out of them?

But of course this was only obvious to us because our grownups had told us what to look for, and how to explain what we saw. It was only obvious to us because they’d told us, as Jeff had taught, that a single life was like a wave moving over the surface of the Pool – the wave disappears completely, but the Pool remains the same, shifting this way and that in its enormous bowl – and that Mother Gela was long dead, and that even when she was alive, she’d just been a person like anyone else, nothing more and nothing less.

Yes, and even though we told ourselves it was obvious that what the shadowspeakers said wasn’t true, I think one of the reasons we laughed so loudly was to shut out the little secret doubts that came to each of us. What if the Davidfolk were right? What if it really was true that when our bodies died, our shadows lived on, to wander through the emptiness between the stars, and maybe get lost there forever, all alone, with no hope of company or warmth?

After all, the Davidfolk were many and powerful. They’d built Veeklehouse and Davidstand. Their ground stretched from Worldpool to Circle Valley, and from Rockway Edge down to the White Streams. They had the Veekle, the Circle of Stones and all the other things from Earth except the ring. Their Head Guard was such a high man that he had seventeen shelterwomen and more than a hundred kids. Who were we to say that they were wrong and we were right?

So we’d seen shadowspeakers before, but when that shadowspeaker came over to Knee Tree Grounds, it was a different thing. This was our ground, not the Davidfolk Ground, and yet here she was. And there were guards with her too, guards who had suspicions that we Kneefolk were really Johnfolk in disguise, and who were watching us carefully to see how we’d behave. We gathered unhappily. Most of the grownups felt we had to go along so as not to upset the Davidfolk, but it felt all wrong that she was there.

‘Remember, no laughing and no smiling,’ mums and dads warned their children, just as our mums and dads had done when we went over to Nob Head. ‘Not unless the speaker smiles herself.’