Michael’s Place didn’t look so different, I guess, from where I used to live on Knee Tree Grounds, with its bark shelters arranged round a circle of open space where we lit our fires and sang our songs. I guess that’s how low people live all over Eden. But the ground it stood on was black dirt instead of pale sand, and the trees shining round it were Wide Forest trees – whitelanterns with their pure white shining globes, redlanterns with their long tubes of glowing pink, and spiketrees with their little bright blue flowers – and not the knee trees with their drooping branches and yellow-green flowers that grew out on the Grounds. And another thing that was different was that, right there in middle of the circle of open space the shelters stood round, there was another circle, a little circle of small round stones gathered from poolside, which no one ever stepped inside. Every Davidfolk cluster had one of these, even if it was only tiny. It was a copy of the original Circle of Stones, over there across the Dark, in Circle Valley, which marked the place where people from Earth had first come down to Eden, and to which, so the Davidfolk believed, Earth people would one waking return. About thirty of us lived there round that little ring of stones, including grownups, newhairs, oldies and little kids, and it was my home now. It was the new family I’d found, after I’d lost the one I had before, and after a lonely time with no one to be with at all. I’d become one of them, one of the Davidfolk, who believe that nothing is more important than family, and nothing matters more than keeping family together.

I was gasping for breath as I ran into the cluster, Candy still squirming angrily in my arms: ‘Let me go! Let me go! Let me go!’ Ten eleven grownups were sitting there peacefully working on this and that – Tom, the head of our cluster, was slowly chopping up a buck with his one hand, Lucy was sewing wraps, Kate was grinding up starflowers – and little naked kids were playing round them or helping with small jobs.

‘Dave!’ I screamed, as soon as I had the breath to speak. ‘Dave! Quick! Get the boys and the buck!’

Dave turned his long grey face towards me. He’d been sitting by the fire – he always seemed to feel cold – whittling away at buckbone, while Metty played nearby. Now he climbed uncertainly to his feet and took a couple of hobbling steps towards me, like he still hadn’t quite figured out what it was I wanted from him.

‘Kate! Davidson! Lucy!’ I screamed. ‘Get your kids! Blow the horn! They’re coming now! Now! Ringmen in masks! Johnfolk from across the water!’

What was wrong with them all? How could they be so slow?

‘The Johnfolk?’ asked Tom.