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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

‘She came to us Davidfolk,’ said Roger, ‘not to you Johnfolk. Doesn’t that tell you something?’ He was full of tears. His brother’s cold corpse was draped over one of the bucks behind them and he didn’t care what he said. The only thing he had to be glad about right then was that Luke was miserable as well.

They carried on riding along the ridge above the Crying Tree.

‘I’m far far away from my father’s house in Edenheart,’ Luke said after a bit. ‘I’ve given up on the fight I’ve been preparing for since I was a kid. My best friend is dead, and I’ve shamed myself forever by doing for a man who was bringing me a message from Gela. And here I am on Snowy Dark, looking down on that tree from the old story, where John saw a giant slinker creeping towards a bat. Back home the teachers say that, in John’s mind, the slinker was David Holeface and all the things that David stood for, and the bat was himself and everything that mattered to him. But I look at it now and I don’t—’

‘David Holeface! That’s how you speak of Great David, is it? The man who worked and struggled all his life to make sure Family was ready for this time we’re living in now.’

Luke waited for Roger to finish, allowed a few heartbeats of silence to pass, and then carried on with what he was saying.

‘But now I look down at it, I don’t see all that. I see Eden down there. That tree on its own, caring nothing for us, living its own life without even knowing we’re here: that’s Eden. And that bat John saw: that was us. All of us, I mean: Johnfolk, Davidfolk, Tinafolk, whatever. That bat was like all the people of Eden, trying to stand up tall and do our best to make our lives mean something in this lonely dark place that doesn’t care about us. All these stupid dreams we have, all these big plans, all these stories we go on and on about all the time . . . It’s like . . . It’s like we have to keep on yammering away because we’re afraid of shutting up, even for a moment, and noticing the silence all round us. Do you know what I mean?’

Roger didn’t answer.