‘I suppose the high people must hate that story especially,’ I said, ‘because it says that women are as good as men, and—’

I couldn’t see her clearly in the darkness the nightmakers had made, but I could see enough to tell she’d grown suddenly tense, and had turned to peer in my direction.

‘How do you know what it says, Angie?’

Tom’s dick and Harry’s, I was glad of that darkness right then! ‘Oh you know, people talk about it sometimes, don’t they? It’s never been completely a secret.’

She relaxed and turned away again. ‘Well, you shouldn’t listen to them, dearest. It’s just stuff some silly woman or other made up long ago, wanting to make herself feel important. No doubt some of it makes sense: well, of course it does, or no one would believe it, would they? Any story that lasts at all has some truth in it somewhere. But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a big big lie, or that it’s wicked for people to pretend to speak for our Mother when they really don’t.’

I didn’t argue any more, but it stuck in my mind what she said about stories and how no one would believe them unless they made some sense. I’d never thought about it that way before, but it seemed to me that what she said was true. The stories that lasted had to fit in in some way with what we knew the world was like, or at least with what we longed for, otherwise why would anyone listen to them, or bother to pass them on? But I couldn’t help myself from thinking that the stories that could be spoken out loud had to fit in with something else as well: they had to fit in with what the high people wanted.

Presently we caught up with the nightmakers. There were four of them, huge huge creatures tall as trees, with four thick legs the height of men, and skin that was black as a forest leopard’s, black like the sky between the stars. Three of them were reaching high up into the treetops with their long long necks and noisily gulping down the lanternflowers, pulling the branches towards their mouth feelers with those thick muscly arms. The fourth one was lying comfortably on the ground, its neck half-hidden in a big drift of twinkly starflowers that it was pulling up in great big armfuls and cramming into its mouth. It lifted its head above the flowers to watch us as we passed, and rubbed its face with its hands, but it still kept munching all the while. So did the other three, peering down at us from above with their big flat flickering Eden eyes as they crunched and chewed.

And then we were past them, and back under trees that gave out light.