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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

I felt a kind of shiver go right down my back. There must have been women all round the clearing who felt the same. This was the Secret Story! This was the story that my aunt Sue had told me on Knee Tree Grounds and asked me not to tell anyone else until I had daughters or nieces of my own. Sue had been told it came from Gela herself. Mary had said that it was a lie, as all the shadow­speakers did. But the shadowspeakers were wrong, as it turned out, and Auntie Sue was right, because here it was now, the Secret Story, coming not from someone’s mum or auntie, but right from Gela’s own mouth.

I guess some of the guards and high people there must have known those words as well. And I guess a lot of other people, men and women, had heard enough about the Secret Story to kind of guess what it was they were hearing, for there was a new tension in the crowd. Bit by bit, the True Story of the Davidfolk was crumbling in front of us. As we strained to hear every one of Gela’s words, some people glanced at one another, while others tried to avoid meeting anyone’s eyes at all. I wanted to look round and see how Starlight was taking it, because of course she knew the Story too, but I decided I shouldn’t.

‘I’ll make a list of all those things,’ Gela’s voice said through all that waterfall hissing and crackling, ‘all those simple important things that ought just to be obvious but keep getting lost and buried, and then, if we have daughters, I’ll pass it on to them and ask them to—’

‘That isn’t Mother Gela!’

It was the firm loud voice of a woman shouting from the back of the crowd, drowning out the rest of what Gela had to say, and dragging us all back to Circle Clearing, and the pulsing trees, and the people from Earth who would soon be gone again.

‘That isn’t Mother Gela! Why are we all listening to it as if it was? Tom’s dick, people, doesn’t anyone recognize these words she’s saying?’

It was like we’d all been woken from a dream. We were ourselves again, we were back in our own lives, and right there in front of me was someone from my own life that I’d been avoiding for eight years. For the woman who’d called out was Mary the shadowspeaker.

Fifty-two

Mary had been thinking hard hard as she made her way across the Dark. While her guards and helpers rode sullenly behind her, wishing they could be with the cheerful crowd from Tall Tree they knew was following after, Mary had struggled and struggled in her mind.