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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

And of course, after the Earth people had showed their pictures of Eden, the news came that changed everything all over again. This black woman was not Gela. She hadn’t brought anything special with her. She couldn’t take us back with her. She was just a woman from Earth who’d come to see what Eden was like. Mary was new to the Earth speech and must have found it hard hard to follow, but Gaia spoke slowly slowly for this part and Mary’s mind was quick. She heard Gaia insist that she was not Gela. She heard Gaia say that the people of Eden were much closer to Gela than she was herself.

We’re closer to Gela than they are, Mary repeated to herself in her mind, testing out the idea to see what came from it. Few people could think as quickly as she could. Few people were better at finding a new way of telling a story. And, when the Earth people made that crackly voice come out of that old screen, a question came into her mind. How could the Earth people possibly be sure that this was the voice of Gela? That screen had been in Circle Valley for four hundred years. We’d always known that it had once shown pictures that moved, and now we’d learned that it could also listen to people’s voices and remember them. These three Earth people knew all about screens, so they’d managed to find this old voice and make it speak out again through the veekle. But how could they know whose voice this had been, when so many different people had held the screen and spoken in its presence?

Suddenly Mary felt her old power coming back. She’d believed Mother Gela would make things clear when she reached Circle Valley, and that’s exactly what had happened! Our Mother hadn’t let her down. Gela was speaking to her again and Mary’s old certainty was beginning to return. The certainty that had filled her up so many times with grief and joy and rage! The certainty that made other people afraid of her! The certainty that gave her the strength to speak out, to name what she saw in front of her, to ride those powerful feelings like the kids back on Knee Tree Grounds rode the waves coming in from Deep Darkness!

‘How could these Earth people know who this is?’ she called out. ‘All they can know is who she says she is. But we Eden folk know better than that, don’t we? Many of you will recognize those words that voice spoke. And if you do, you’ll know they were part of that silly lie that some foolish women whisper to their daughters, calling it the Secret Story, and claiming it comes from Mother Gela.’

Muttering and murmuring surged in the crowd, like a great wave rising.