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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

As we set off again with our bucks, Clare came to walk with me: Trueheart’s mum and Tom’s first shelterwoman. She was older than me, old enough to be my mum, but she’d been my friend since I came to Michael’s Place. A big solid woman with big long breasts and broad hips, she plodded along beside with three of her smallest kids. She’d had seventeen children, as she liked to tell people often, and fourteen of them had lived. But now she’d reached the end of her childbearing time, and Tom had got himself a second shelterwoman called Flame, who was barely older than his daughter Trueheart, and given her a baby. He’d told Clare that he was cluster head, and so it was only right that he have two shelter­women, just as it was right that guard leaders often had five or six. Strongheart had twenty-three by then.

‘It’s not like you can give me any more babies,’ Tom had said to Clare.

Clare hated that and, though she was usually a kind woman, she couldn’t stop herself from muttering about Flame and her baby Suzie.

‘She doesn’t know how to handle that kid,’ she grumbled, looking back at Flame, who was riding on Tom’s buck and trying to get little Suzie to suck from her. ‘She’s only a kid herself, and all she cares about is herself.’

Poor Flame. I don’t suppose she’d have gone for an old granddad with a missing hand if she’d had a choice in the matter. But she was the daughter of another cluster head further up poolside who’d been in the guards with Tom, and Tom had gone up there to collect her in his guard’s fakeskin wrap, carrying a whole big bag of trading sticks.

‘I mean, what was Tom thinking of ?’ Clare muttered. ‘It’s like he thinks he’s some kind of high man or something, not just a bloody old cluster head who was chucked out of guards when he lost his hand.’

‘Mum, my feet are sore sore,’ said Fox.

‘Oh poor love. Walk a little bit more if you can, sweetheart, and then we’ll let you have a go on the buck with your dad. I can carry Candy for a bit.’

He was a good boy. He didn’t argue, just picked up a stick as he carried on and began to slash out at flutterbyes that came too close to the ground, stamping on them as they flapped about on the dirt with their broken wings still shining, waving their tiny legs and arms. Poor little man, he had dark rings under his eyes from lack of sleep. Presently Clare’s kids joined in with the flutterbye hunt. Little bits of shining wing flew this way and that through the air, as they let out their anger and fear.