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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

‘Of course you feel lonely,’ I whispered to myself when I was alone, ‘if you can’t even share things with your closest friend.’ But I just couldn’t bring myself to tell her. I was afraid that if I did, she’d ask things of me that I didn’t know how to give. And then she’d think less of me, and maybe decide I wasn’t good enough after all to be a shadowspeaker like her, or not even good enough to be her helper.

The worst of it was that she kept praising me for my honesty.

‘I’ve had helpers before,’ she’d tell me, ‘but never one like you. The others just wanted to learn shadowspeaking like it was some kind of trick, a bunch of things you had to remember to do in the right order, like building a shelter, or cooking a sweetbat with candy, or making a string for a bow. But you know it’s nothing like that, don’t you? That’s why you ask questions, isn’t it? That’s why you tell me your doubts and your worries about what I do. Because you know it’s not about doing this thing or that thing, it’s about opening yourself up completely.’

I’d smile and nod, and tell her I did know that, and that I admired her courage for doing it so well, and she’d grab my hand and pull me towards her so she could look straight into my eyes.

‘But you’re like that too, Angie!’ she’d say. ‘That’s what I keep telling you. You open yourself up as well. I spotted that straight away, as soon as I saw you. I saw you’d be more than a helper. I saw you could be my friend, my sister, my equal.’

We went right down to the White Streams this time, right to the edge of the Brown River Ground. There are many many shallow streams there, running side by side, joining each other and then branching away again. They run over beds of round white stones, with whitelantern trees hanging over them and making their whiteness shine up at the black black sky. All round is stony ground with white cliffs, and strange-shaped lumps of white glittery rock that stick up from forest, and here and there are dark dark patches, some of them half a mile wide, where this hard rock completely covers the ground without so much of a crack in it for trees to push through from Underworld, so there’s no light at all, like that place called Night that Mary spoke about.