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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

That was what Leader Hunter was like, that’s what all the high men were like that I’ve ever heard of, and I’m sure Harry was no different. He wasn’t an especially nice man. He wasn’t especially good. He didn’t think much about the feelings of his low people. He took whatever he wanted from them, even sometimes their daughters, if he had a fancy to it. (Could a low girl say no to a high man who was a son of David Strongheart? Of course not. Whatever he asked of her, she’d have to say yes, and pretend to be pleased about it as well.) And if any low person challenged him, whether they were right or wrong, he would have them beaten, or tied to a spiketree to burn their skin, the same as all the high men did with those they saw as troublemakers.

He was selfish, in other words. He acted like the story was all about him. He used other people like they were just starflowers or bucks or lumps of blackglass, not human beings like himself. And yet right now, standing there shivering in the pale light from the buck behind him, and his shadow stretched out in front of him over the snow, Leader Harry was brave brave. For he had stripped away everything that made him high, everything that made him more comfortable than other people, everything that made him safer, and he still walked towards our enemies.

I’ve thought about this a lot since I heard about it. I reckon we all live by stories, high people and low people. We all tell ourselves that what we do, we do for a good reason. ‘I take things from the low people,’ high men said, ‘so I can feed and wrap the guards who protect them.’ It wasn’t just a story they told us, it was a story they told themselves. And each of us, high and low, half-believed it, and half-knew at the same time that it wasn’t true. We all knew that the things they took didn’t just go to the guards, and that anyway the guards were just our own men and our own sons, and the high men knew that too. We knew that the guards didn’t really protect us, but protected the high people, and the high men knew that as well. Yet we all needed stories, them and us, we all needed something to tie things together, and so we all went along with those stories, half-believing them, believing them just enough to give ourselves a sense that the world we were in meant something, staying with each story no longer than we had to, and then moving on before it all toppled over or fell apart. It was as if all of us, high and low, were crossing a stream on wobbly stones, moving quickly from one to the next before we fell.