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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

Every waking of her stay in Tall Tree Valley, Mary did a new show. That was unusual for her. She normally did one show in a place – two at most – and then moved on, but there were new people coming into the valley all the time, desperate people, cold and hungry people, who needed to hear from Mother Gela. And the people who were already there were starting to get scared and angry about their valley being taken over by strangers, so they needed to hear from Mother Gela too. Everyone needed to be reminded that they were all one Family with one Father and one Mother, whether they were the people coming in or the people who’d always lived there.

‘Life is hard hard for us at the moment,’ she said to a big crowd of people who had squeezed themselves into the space round between Wise Mehmet’s circle of stones and those strange stone shelters he’d had built. Like people do in the High Valleys, everyone was wearing bodywraps against the cold. Even down there on the valley bottom, the trees don’t give enough warmth to be comfortable with bare skin. ‘It’s hard hard to have the Johnfolk trampling over our clusters and our forests, and taking away everything we love. It’s hard having to cross the Dark. It’s hard even to feed ourselves. Your Mother knows that. She knows how hard it is. Gela lost her own home once, remember? She lost her own family. She lost everything. Now she’s back on Earth again of course, far far away, but she still watches you all as closely as any mother watches her children. I hear her right now. “Don’t let them fight each other, Mary,” she begs me. “Tell them not to fight and quarrel. Remind them that’s exactly what caused all this trouble in first place: Family fighting against itself. Please don’t let it happen again!”’

She looked at all the tired suspicious faces. The trees pulsed – those strange tall trees whose lowest branches are far above the ground – and the black shadow of the Dark rose up all behind her.

‘Remember,’ said Mary, ‘that it’ll only be when Family is together and at peace that Earth will come back from the sky and take us home. Only when Family is one. So please—’

And then a man’s voice broke in. ‘Oh yeah?’ it called out. ‘So how come a veekle has just come down from the sky into Circle Valley, eh? How come Gela herself is over there, walking around right now?’