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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

Leader Harry and his guards were up on Snowy Dark, their bucks’ clawed feet carrying them steadily forwards, their bucks’ headlanterns casting just enough grey light for them to see the bottoms of the steep slopes that rose up round them into unseen blackness far above and the tops of the slopes that dropped down into unseen blackness below. The creatures twitched their mouth feelers this way and that as they sucked in the cold cold air and tested it for the scent of leopards and the whiff of trees and warmth. Sometimes one buck or other would give out a cry, and one or two of the others would answer it – Eeeeeek! Eeeeeek! Eeeeeek! – and occasionally the whole herd of them would join in together for a hundred heartbeats or so before they all lapsed back into silence. And then all that could be heard was the sound of their breathing, and the crunching of their feet in the snow.

It wasn’t really people who first found the way across the Dark, it was woollybucks. Woollybucks live by moving back and forth between the valleys up in the Dark, as the snow comes and goes. Jeff Redlantern was the one who first understood that, our Jeff, who was also the first to figure out how to get bucks to let people ride them. When John and the others got themselves lost in the Dark, Jeff thought to himself that his buck must know the way to someplace where there was food and warmth, because even woollybucks can’t live on ice and snow. So he rode off by himself and let his buck go where it wanted, and in that way he found Tall Tree Valley. Him figuring that was what saved John and his people, and it was what made it possible later on for the other High Valleys to be found, and the other ways across the Dark.

Or that was what we were told on Knee Tree Grounds, in any case. But of course the Davidfolk like to give the credit to Wise Mehmet. Who can say which version is really true? It might even be that several different people figured the same thing out. It was just a case of noticing which ways the bucks were willing to go, after all, and which ways they weren’t. And a matter of remembering that bucks had been on Eden long long before people.