The screens showed us a moving picture of rows and rows of houses with doors and black windholes, under that strange white sky. Pale pale pale: that was the word that kept coming to me. When we’d imagined the brightness of Earth we hadn’t imagined it like this, because our brightness is always next to darkness, and it’s darkness that makes the brightness shine out. Brightness next to other brightness is a different thing, just like a voice speaking in the humming forest is a different thing from a voice in the emptiness of Snowy Dark.

‘Why are those houses in water?’ someone called out.

‘Lots of houses in London are,’ Gaia said. ‘It’s the same in many sitties.’ A sitty, we found out, was a giant cluster where many thousands lived. ‘The water rose up when the ice melted. It was a hard time, and there were lots of fights between the people who’d been driven out of places and the people who still had homes. Whole areas of London had to be given up. These houses here are empty. No one lives in this part of London any more, but . . . oh here you are, look! . . . There are lots of birds there!’

A strange white creature flew out of one of the windholes. It rose up into the pale grey sky on long thin wings that were white as human bones. And, as it climbed up through the air, it suddenly gave out a cry, a strange lonely shrieking, which made us shiver, as if a skeleton had opened its jaws and wailed. We watched it in silence. We’d always been told that the animals of Earth were like people. We’d always understood that they had red blood, and a single heart, and eyes like human eyes, and that you could look into those eyes and see how they were feeling, just like you can with people. But this was nothing like a person, and it seemed to us far far stranger than any Eden creature.

I looked round at the hundreds of people who’d come to the clearing to see the pictures. It was easy to tell the people who’d come down into the Valley in the last couple of wakings because their eyes were full of tears at the sight of the veekle and the pictures from Earth. The people who’d been here long enough to see the pictures before were all watching with dry eyes. But new arrivals or not, no one seemed to know what to make of the white winged creature with its cold and lonely cry.

The Earth people looked out at us worriedly. They could tell there was a different mood in the clearing this time.

‘We thought perhaps you’d like to see some pictures of yourselves,’ said Gaia, and straight away the three screens showed forest of Circle Valley, and three little boys doing a silly dance.