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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

After a while, I walked to the cliff and down the path to the ledge below, where traders from other places pulled their boats out of the water. I hadn’t set out on that walk with any clear plan, but now I was there I knew exactly what I was looking for, and it wasn’t hard to find. The boats from New Earth were easy to spot back then, when the rest of Eden still hadn’t yet figured how to copy those smooth bodies made of planks of wood, or those windcatchers hanging from their poles. I found a couple of New Earth guys who were sitting down there drinking badjuice from a jug, and got talking with them. They were just paddle-men, blokes that came across with the New Earth traders to pull their boats back home for them against the wind. They wore simple skin wraps like I used to do back on the Grounds (I wore plain fakeskin now I was Mary’s helper) and the older one of the two was a batface like me. I think he was the dad of the younger one, or maybe his uncle. They both had arms like tree branches and massive shoulders, from all that paddling paddling paddling, waking after waking, across the Pool.

‘A friend of mine went to New Earth,’ I told them. ‘My best friend.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘We grew up on a little grounds far out in the Pool – a waterhill, I think you people would call it – but when we came down here to Veeklehouse once, she met your Headmanson, and crossed over with him.’

The men looked at each other, half-impressed, half-disbelieving.

‘What?’ exclaimed the younger one. ‘You’re saying you knew the Ringwearer ?’

‘Ringwearer? Is that what you call her now? Her name’s Starlight, and the Headmanson was called Greenstone. I was with her when she met him. He had red hair tied up in a hundred little bows.’

Again the men looked at each other. ‘Well, they do say she came from a little waterhill,’ the older one said. He laughed, and the guy laughed with him. ‘Tom’s dick! Who’d have thought we’d meet a friend of the Ringwearer!’

‘Do you know her then? Can you give her a message from me?’

They laughed even louder at that.

‘What? Us? Us know the Ringwearer?’ the younger one said. ‘Some chance. If we’re lucky, we’ll see her in the distance someplace one waking, with people crowding round her to kiss the ring.’

‘What ring?’

‘What ring?’ The younger one glanced uncomfortably at his companion. ‘Well . . . a special ring that the Headman’s housewoman wears.’

‘Not the ring in the story? Not the one that John found and—’