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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

And just for two heartbeats, even with all these other things that were going on, I went right back in my mind to a time when me and Starlight were maybe six years old – eight wombtimes we’d have said back then – and the two of us were alone by that big rock that stuck up out of the beach at Knee Tree Grounds. We’d found a piece of string that someone had dropped there, and we’d hunted round for small things to tie onto it: a stone, a piece of wood, a fish claw, a black bone from a fatbuck. Now the necklace was finished. Starlight held it round her neck while I stood behind her to tie it on, then we ran off together to show it to her uncle Dixon.

‘Look at my necklace, Uncle! Me and Angie made it by ourselves!’

Dixon was rubbing buckfat into a new boat. He looked round and laughed. ‘That pair!’ he said to Starlight’s brother Johnny. ‘Starlight and Angie! You just can’t separate those two, can you?’

I suppose there’s always a story about any friendship between two people. It doesn’t have to be mentioned out loud, but it’s still there every time they meet, tied up tight in a little bundle: a certain particular shape that neither one has to unwrap to know what’s inside it. The story about me and Starlight was well known on Knee Tree Grounds. Every one of the Kneefolk knew that the two of us had been best friends since we were babies, everyone knew we were always together. And though we loved each other, and I’m sure we would have been friends anyway, that story bound us even more tightly together. We’d started the story but now we were in it too.

‘Here come the two of them again!’ people would say. ‘Jeff’s ride, did you ever see two kids who were so close?’

Of course there were lots of other kids on Knee Tree Grounds who had a special friend, but we were the pair that people noticed the most. Would they have gone on about us so much if we’d been two pretty girls like Starlight? I don’t think so. Would they have gone on about us if we’d been two little batfaces like me? Certainly not. Stories catch on for a reason – we Kneefolk loved the story of Jeff’s Shining Ride, for instance, because it made our Jeff look good, and he was the many-greats granddad of pretty much all of us – and the reason people liked the story of me and Starlight was the huge difference between the two of us, which made our friendship seem sweet.