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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

We had nine bucks, all told, but only one of them was a woollybuck with a headlantern to give us light. It belonged to Tom, and he led it out in front with two of his boys beside him. Dave followed behind his brother on his buck with Candy and Metty. (Our Ugly was a smoothbuck, of course. It didn’t like the cold. It kept snuffling and spluttering with its mouth feelers and trying to turn round and go back down.) I walked further back with Trueheart and Clare, while Flame rode another buck next to Clare, holding little Suzie tightly in her arms. Clare seemed to have decided to be nice to her, at least for the moment. We were all worried worried about the nasty cut that arrow had made on Suzie’s shoulder, although we tried to tell Flame that it would be alright. It wasn’t just a graze, whatever Clare had said. That metal arrow had made a deep cut as it passed, and there was a redness round it that we didn’t like, though there was nothing we could do about it except wait and hope. Flame whispered to a little wooden doll of Mother Gela that her mum had given her when she first came to our cluster. It was the kind you could get for three four sticks in Veeklehouse, carved, so the traders always said, from wood that came from Circle Clearing.

Time came when the trees were barely taller than a man, and stood forty fifty feet apart from each other. There were no bats and flutterbyes any more, and the ground was mostly stones. It was almost dark but not quite. Here and there we could just make out a monkey or two squatted on the ground, turning over the stones in search of bugs. The place was quiet quiet, without a proper forest pulsing away round us, but from every side came the tinkling trickly sound of the little cold streams that brought water down from the big snowslugs above us, joining together into bigger and bigger streams as they tumbled towards Wide Forest below. We saw pale blotches round us in the dimness here and there, and realized that they were patches of snow.

We came to a big square rock that had been set up beside the path. It had writing on it, letters that had been scratched deeply into its surface with a leopardtooth knife or piece of blackglass, and then stained with red dye. I couldn’t read – all letters were just marks to me except for the ones in my name – but I’d been this way before and I already knew what these ones said, even before Trueheart had read them aloud. They said: ‘DAVID’S PATH’.