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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

We don’t pass on messages from dead people in our shows any more, and we don’t pretend we know where our Mother is exactly, or what the place is like that she’s calling us to: we just call it the true home, and say the Circle is the sign of it. After all, like Gaia said, even for the Earth people everything they know is only a little patch of light with mystery all round it. Mary admits that she was wrong to say that Earth was our true home. She says that out loud in our shows. Earth is just a place, she says, a faraway place, where our many-greats grandparents used to live. Which is pretty much what Jeff Redlantern used to say, if our old Knee Tree stories are true, but I tend not to point that out to her.

Mary doesn’t go on about the Johnfolk being bad any more either. She knows that sometimes other people hear our Mother saying different things, and sometimes they may be right and her wrong. We don’t let the high people tell us what to say either, and I guess one waking that’s going to get us in trouble: that and the fact that we regularly say things that come from the Secret Story, not because Gela said them, but because, like she said, they’re obviously true. But the high people are grateful to us for helping people feel okay about the fact that Earth has come and gone again, and so, for the moment, they let us alone.

After we’ve done a show and settled down the kids, me and Mary like to sit up and talk. I’ve often said how smart Mary is, and how smart Starlight and Trueheart are, but lately I’ve come to see that I’m pretty smart myself. I notice things that most people don’t bother with, and I have a need inside me to think about the world round me and try and figure it out, much as bats have a need to fly, or little kids have a need inside them to shout and run round. Me and Mary talk a lot about true home and whether it’s a place you can touch or see, or whether it’s more like a feeling or an idea. Mary wants it to be a place. She wants that so much that, if anyone can do such a thing, she’ll make it true just by believing it. I’m not so sure, but I figure that even the idea of home is a kind of home, and that when you really feel at home, like at the end of ‘Come Tree Row’, then home is where you really are, whether you’re on dark dark Eden or pale pale Earth.