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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

‘Half Sky was started by Tina Spiketree, remember. She was with John Redlantern at the beginning, along with Jeff and Gerry, but then she broke away from him, like Jeff did. You don’t hear many stories about her in the Davidfolk Ground, or in New Earth either, but of course there are lots of stories about her in Half Sky. The thing she particularly wanted people there to remember was that before John and David came along, men and women decided things equally in Old Family. These Davidfolk like to think they’re keeping Old Family as it always was, but really that’s nonsense. Actually, Great David turned Old Family upside down when he started the guards and began the fight against the Johnfolk. That was when the men took over. It was the guards and the fighting that did it. It was when power started to come from the point of a spear.’

I thought about this for a bit, looking out over the softly glowing water of the pool. A couple of guys were out there fishing from log boats and, from time to time, there’d be a gentle splash splash, as one of them paddled his boat onto another spot to try his luck there. Splash splash from the water, and of course the hmmmph hmmmph hmmmph of trees round us that never stopped: if I closed my eyes, me and Starlight could have been back on Knee Tree Grounds, paddling through the water forest and gathering nuts.

‘If it came to a spear fight between men and women,’ I said, ‘I guess men would win. Most men are bigger and stronger than most women.’

‘Of course. So in Half Sky we make sure that men and woman don’t ever think of themselves as two sides of a . . . what’s that word the Earth folk use? . . . two sides of a war. Something I figured out when I was in New Earth is that women might not have so much power as men when it comes to things like spear fights, but they have lots of other kinds of power, and one of them is power over little kids and how they’re raised. It seems Tina figured that out as well.’ Starlight took my hand and smiled. ‘But you should come and see how it all works for yourself, Angie. You can’t go back to Wide Forest now, can you, and here in Circle Valley is not a good place to stay. Food is running out. If it wasn’t for all the flowercakes and dried meat that Strongheart is trading out from those big big stores of his, everyone would already be hungry. And I can tell you for a fact that there’s not much food left in those stores.’

‘Well, we’ll have to go somewhere, it’s true. And somehow I don’t think we’re going to go to Earth.’