‘I’ll tell you something,’ she’d said to me once. ‘If we shadowspeakers didn’t keep up our work, the Davidfolk would forget they had a Mother called Gela, or that they came from Earth, or that Earth and Gela will return again to the Circle of Stones. They’d end up like those Hiding People we met with their Leopardman and their Great Bat Mother.’ And in one way the arrival of Earth people in Circle Valley proved that she’d been right. Earth had returned, it had come back to the Circle, and, or so it seemed, Gela really was alive! And yet, in the moment of being proved right, she’d been proved completely wrong as well.

‘I can’t figure it out,’ she muttered. ‘There’s something missing here. It makes no sense at all.’

Ahead of her a guard fire was a flickering point of red. In the distance behind her, beyond her helpers and guards, a long line of beads of grey bucklight and shadowy people were following after her to Circle Valley.

Meanwhile, Harry was riding in the other direction with his eight men. They had already passed Tall Tree Valley, and were riding as fast as they could go towards Wide Forest. Sometimes Harry felt with his hand to check for that little black square of glass with Gaia’s voice inside it that he carried in a pocket in his wrap. Once twice he even took it out and touched it so he could hear her speak, and remind himself this wasn’t all some kind of dream.

‘Hello Johnfolk,’ it said, each time in just the same way, ‘this is Gaia from Earth. Three of us have come in a starship. Please stop fighting now and come to meet us.’

And still further across the Dark, another high man was riding towards Harry with another bunch of men with spears. They were climbing up the mountains from Wide Forest, and they were angry angry. They were going to do for every guard they met.

Forty-one

The Earth people stopped showing pictures as soon as Strongheart told them to. The screens went black. All three of them looked worriedly at the old man. They had no idea what they’d done to offend him. Most of the people watching had no idea either. Myself, I’d got used to Earth speech, but most folk could only barely make out what the Earth people said, so that if something made no sense to them, they just assumed they must have heard it wrong. Some folk even began shouting angrily at Strongheart, upset that their show of Earth pictures had suddenly come to an end. It was a strange thing to see: before the Earth people came, no low person from the Davidfolk Ground would ever have shouted like that at any high person, no matter how angry they might be.