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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

It’s a long journey for the people down there to get to the rest of the Davidfolk Ground, but it’s easy easy for them to go back and forth across those shallow streams to the Brown River Ground on the other side. So the Davidfolk cross the streams to trade with the people of the Brown River Ground – the people down there always just call them the Riverfolk – and the Riverfolk come back over and trade with them. In fact some of the Riverfolk have come to live among the Davidfolk, and some of the Davidfolk have moved the other way, and they all wear the same kind of wraps, and talk with the same kind of speech, so that I couldn’t tell one from another.

But of course the Riverfolk people were Johnfolk. It was true they were different from the Johnfolk across the Pool. It was true that they’d been separated from those other Johnfolk for such a long time that their speech sounded more like Davidfolk speech than like the speech of New Earth, and it was true that they had their own Headman and their own stories, which were sometimes more like the Davidfolk stories than they were like the New Earthers’. But still they were Johnfolk. Their stories still said that John was the good guy in the Breakup, and Great David the bad guy, and that Gela was on the side of John, and led him to the ring.

‘These people down here get muddled up sometimes,’ Mary told me. ‘They truly think of themselves as good Davidfolk, and they are at heart, I know. They’re good good people. But living alongside Riverfolk all the time, they get muddled up and sometimes they tell stories that really come from John, without even knowing it. Part of our job here is to set them straight.’

To confuse things even more, there were a lot of Hiding People down there as well, people who’d slipped away into forest long ago, to keep out of the way of guards and ringmen, always on the move, hunting and scavenging among the shining trees without any clusters of their own. Mary said Hiding People was a good name for them. They were hiding away from the world, ‘a bit like those Kneefolk of yours on their little grounds.’ But, whether or not they were hiding from the world, when there were no guards round, the Hiding People came into the White Streams clusters to trade, just as the Riverfolk did, and brought in their own stories about giant bats and leopardmen to mingle with the others.