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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

Starlight wanted me to go back with her to Half Sky, but Dave flatly refused to go to the Women’s Ground, or to let me take our kids there, and all the Michael’s Place people backed him up. I’ll go there one waking. I’d like to see my family again, and all the people from Knee Tree Grounds. It’s a long way off, though, and to be honest I’m a bit scared. Not of the travelling or of crossing the Dark – I’m used to that – but of what I’ll find there and how I’ll feel. Because one thing the visit from Earth has shown me is that when you long and long for a thing, and then it finally happens, it’s going to be different from what you expect.

The Earth people coming wasn’t what we expected because it wasn’t the end of the story. Our old story just stopped working. But straight away a whole lot of new stories started up and spread out across Mainground. You can meet people these wakings who believe Mother Gela came and was driven away. You can meet others who say that bad people came from Earth and tried to trick us by pretending to be Mother Gela. There are even some who say that Gaia and Deep and Marius didn’t come from Earth at all, but from some other place, and that the real Earth will still come one waking if we’re good. After all, if Earth could find our dark Eden among all the stars of the glacksy, why shouldn’t they have found another world as well, somewhere else in the sky, like the Johnfolk found their New Earth across the water?

Speaking of New Earth, I don’t know what stories they tell over there these wakings, so far away from Circle Valley, but I think it’s quite possible that people there don’t know that anyone came or that anything happened at all. And I’m fairly sure that, if they have heard any stories, they’ll have been told it was all a trick played by the Davidfolk.

A long waking after the veekle had disappeared into the sky, Headmanson Luke reached Old Family cluster, bringing the bodies of Leader Harry and those two guards, David and Mehmet. As he’d rode through forest of Circle Valley, he’d passed groups of excited people from the High Valleys who’d come to see Mother Gela. The three guards in front shouted out to them not to be afraid, the ringmen hadn’t come to fight, but to talk to Gela. Standing warily back from the path, the people watched the ringmen ride by on their strange blue bucks, the high young man in front in his fancy wraps, with his blank face staring straight ahead, and the three dead men that followed behind, cold and stiff, draped over the backs of woollybucks.