Then a voice called out to me, a real human voice, as I was halfway between the remains of Circle and the stream, and I felt like my heart had stopped in my body.
‘Hey, John! You’re breaking Circle!’
It wasn’t David or Caroline, not a grownup at all, just little Jeff hobbling into the clearing.
‘Go away, Jeff. Don’t get involved in this.’
‘What will this do to Oldest, John? Think what it will do to them!’
I’d been shutting all my feelings out of my mind, like I did when I was facing that leopard, but now, just for one moment, they all came pouring in. I imagined old Mitch’s feelings about this special place, made by his grandmother and grandfather, which had been here for all his long long life, and I knew that I’d ruined all that. I’d ruined the peaceful centre of Family. Even if I stopped now, I’d already ruined it. It was all broken to pieces forever.
I looked at Jeff. He could see the horror in my eyes and his own eyes reflected it.
‘Don’t you believe that Angela told us to wait here for Earth?’ he asked me. ‘Or do you just think that she was wrong?’
Not many people in Family could have asked those questions without letting you know what they thought you ought to reply, but Jeff really wanted to know. He watched my face and waited for me to answer.
‘I think Angela knew a whole lot of things,’ I said at last, ‘but I don’t think she knew just how long long this wait for Earth would be.’
He didn’t say anything. He just stood looking up at me, studying my face.
‘It needs to be done, Jeff,’ I said. ‘I don’t like it, but it needs to be done. We need to break away.’
Even now he didn’t speak, but after a few more seconds he slowly reached out and touched one of the stones in my hands, like he was making himself part of what I was doing. He nodded.
‘I’ll go back to Redlantern, then,’ he said.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘That’s best.’
I waited until he’d gone before I went to the stream and dropped in the stones I was holding. Then I went back for two more, and two more after that. I finished off with the five stones in middle. It didn’t take me long. There was no more Circle in Circle Clearing. It was empty and blank. It was sort of . . . dead.
And I felt dead too. Empty. I couldn’t find any feelings inside me about anything. I knew I must have destroyed Circle for a reason, but I could barely remember what that reason was. I knew that big big things would happen now as a result, but I couldn’t make myself care what they would be. It was like I’d turned to stone myself.
But I walked up Dixon Stream by myself — even old Jeffo was asleep in his shelter — and I climbed the rocks round Deep Pool to where Tina was waiting for me.
She’d been squatting on the bank, eating nuts. She stood up as I came scrambling towards her.
‘You took your time, John. What have you been . . . ?’
When she looked into my face her expression changed completely.
‘Gela’s heart, John! What’s up with you? What have you done?’
I didn’t say anything at all. I pushed her back down on the ground again, I pulled off her wrap, I pressed my mouth against hers . . .
‘Hey John, careful. I don’t want a baby . . .’
I pushed into her and into her and into her until I was ready to come, which was pretty soon. And then, when I’d spurted out my juice over her belly, I didn’t even speak to her, just dived into the pool and swam a long way under the warm bright water before I surfaced, as if I could wash away everything just by letting the water rinse the sweat from my skin, as if this would make Circle whole again, or make it alright with everyone that it had gone.
Tina didn’t swim. She waited for me on the bank and when I tried to climb out, she kicked me back in again. And she didn’t do it in play. She really kicked me.
‘Just tell me what you did, John.’
I didn’t want to hear my voice say it, but I knew I had to.
‘I destroyed it, Tina. I destroyed Circle of Stones.’
‘You . . . You what? You’re bloody joking, aren’t you, John? Tell me you’re joking.’
But of course she could see by my face, and by everything that had happened so far, that I wasn’t.
‘Tom’s neck, John! You idiot. You bloody idiot. Who do you think you are?’
She grabbed her wrap and started climbing up the rocks away from me.
‘Hey Tina, wait . . .’
‘Keep away from me, John. You did it on your own. You can take what’s coming to you on your own. I’m not part of it, alright? I’m going back to Spiketree. Don’t come after me. I mean that, John, I really mean it.’
Well, I could see she meant it and I really hadn’t expected this. I’d thought that she’d be of the same sort of mind as me. In fact I’d thought she’d be impressed by what I’d done, like she was impressed with the way I spoke out at Any Virsry. I’d thought it would make me seem brave and strong in her eyes.
I listened to her climbing up the rocks, heading back to sleeping Family where some time soon, maybe in an hour, maybe in two or three or four, someone or other would wake up and pass through Circle Clearing and see what I’d done.
And I knew I was alone in whole world. I was lonelier even than Angela was, all those wombs ago, when she came up here by herself and cried.
I took Angela’s ring out of the pocket in my wrap. Of course I didn’t really believe Angela would come to me or anything. I wasn’t like Lucy Lu. But I sort of hoped I would be able to see her in my mind as I’d seen her before.
It didn’t happen, though. Why should it? And why would Angela want to help me out anyway, when she and Tommy made Circle and started Any Virsries? They didn’t want those things ended, did they? Whole point of those things was to last and last. And Angela had specifically told all of us to stay by the stones and wait for Earth.
I put the ring away again. For a bit I just sat there rocking back and forth on my haunches, like I’ve seen mothers do when they’ve lost a child and they don’t know how to get through it, just rocking and rocking and rocking themselves to make a rhythm and make the time go past.
After a bit I made up my mind to get back in control of myself.
‘It’s not like I’ve made some kind of blunder,’ I told myself. ‘This wasn’t a mistake. I thought about it. I knew what I was doing. I knew it would be horrible, for everyone else and for me. But I was trying to make something happen that needed to happen.’
I couldn’t see Angela or feel her presence, but I could sort of feel the voices of people in the future watching this scene that I was in. John All Alone, they’d call it. The scene that came after John Destroys Circle and Tina Dumps John.
I imagined them standing round me, those future people, looking in, calling things out. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Maybe they were thanking me for what I’d done. Maybe they were shouting out to me that I’d done wrong. But in a way it didn’t matter, the same as it didn’t really matter whether Tommy and Mehmet and Dixon, the Disobedient Three, did wrong that time they refused to listen to President and carried on instead towards Hole-in-Sky.