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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

‘If you couldn’t hear her, you couldn’t hear her. There was no reason for me to get angry with you. The only thing that might achieve was to make you pretend you could hear her so as to please me, and what would be the point of that? Not that you’d have done that anyway, Angie. You’re way too honest.’

I smiled. ‘Well, I did think about it.’

Mary stopped and turned to face me. We were passing under some yellowlantern trees. She held my shoulders and studied my face in their light. When you’re a batface it isn’t often that someone looks into your face for so long and seems so pleased to do it. It felt pretty good.

I smiled. ‘Why were you so angry, Mary? You accused me of thinking I was better than you, but you really couldn’t have been more wrong! All the time I was with you – more than two years – I always thought you were way way better than me.’

She released my shoulders and turned away from me. She was ashamed, I realized. Mary, who was always so strong and so certain, was too ashamed to hold my gaze.

‘I guess there’s always doubt,’ she said. ‘Always doubt about everything: Is it really true? Am I just imagining it? Am I just making it up? Am I just saying what people want me to hear? When I first stood in the Circle myself, I was with a speaker called Firespark. To tell the truth, I wasn’t sure if I’d really heard Gela, but partly because I was afraid of Firespark and partly because I wanted so much to be a speaker in my own right, I told her that I’d definitely heard our Mother. It wasn’t for a long time, not until after I’d left Firespark and set out on my own, that I really felt confident that Gela was speaking to me. But even then, there were still sometimes moments when I . . . well . . . doubted. But I pushed the doubts away. I told myself they were weak. Well, you can doubt anything, can’t you? You can doubt you love someone. You can doubt that anything matters at all. If you wait to be completely completely certain, you’ll never believe anything, that’s what I always told myself. A strong person makes up her mind and then sticks to it.’

She began to walk again, and I followed her. We moved from under the yellowlantern trees into the blue light of a couple of spiketrees. Hmmmph hmmmph hmmmph they went as they pumped up their boiling sap from down in the fires of Underworld. Even six seven yards away from them I could feel the heat of their trunks against my skin.