Starlight smiled. ‘The Earth people have changed everything, you mean? Well, that’s certainly true. But as to what we’ll need in future and what we won’t need, I’m not sure that’s something we can tell yet.’

I could see Trueheart wanted to talk more about that, but I needed news first about my mum and all the other Kneefolk who lived in Half Sky. Fox ran off to fetch the chess set that his dad had carved for him out of wood and bone, realizing that this was turning into typical boring grownup talk about people he’d never heard of or met, but wanting to stay in earshot in case it got more interesting again. He drew a board on the ground, and he and Trueheart began to play, Candy cuddling up against her brother and making suggestions for moves that he pretended to think about but hardly ever followed.

Most of Eden still had no idea what had happened, that was the strange thing. Most of Eden thought the world was the same as it always had been. Never mind further away, there were even parts of Circle Valley that hadn’t heard the story about the veekle from Earth. Hunters over by Exit Falls, for instance, might have seen a strange light in the sky in the distance but there was no way they could find out what had caused it until several wakings later.

The story was gradually spreading peckway, as Leader Harry and his guards rode towards the Dark, shouting out to people as they rode past, but up on the Dark people were still heading our way in that long sad necklace across the snow, not knowing anything about it. Some people up there had decided not to head for Circle Valley but instead go to Tall Tree or one of the other High Valleys, like Steep Shelter or Buck Hole or Snowglass, which meant they wouldn’t hear the news for many wakings. On far side of the Dark, all the news that went back and forth through Wide Forest was about the fight with the Johnfolk. Down alpway in Brown River and way over blueway in Half Sky it would be fifteen twenty wakings before anyone knew about the Earth people, even though Headman Newjohn and Head Woman Starlight had already met them in Circle Valley. As to the people over in New Earth, well, if the news was going to get there, it would first have to cross Wide Forest to the Pool, then travel for three wakings across the bright water, and then across Deep Darkness, and then the bright water on the other side before it even reached the outer edge of their ground, let alone their high people who, so it was said, lived in holes in the ground as far back from their poolside as Davidstand was from ours.

The Earth people slept and slept.