‘What about a horse?’ he said.
He must have been awake for a little while.
John snorted.
‘Horse? What are you talking about?’
‘Back on Earth they had animals called horses, remember? They were animals that could carry them anywhere they wanted to go.’
‘Yes, Jeff,’ I said, like a grownup talking to an annoying little child, ‘we know that, dear, but this isn’t Earth, is it? There aren’t horses in Eden.’
Jeff sat up.
‘I don’t think horses were a special kind of animal,’ he said. ‘I think they took baby animals and then raised them up so as to make them into horses. We could use woollybucks.’
‘Yes, Jeff,’ John said, ‘but the Earth animals weren’t like Eden ones, were they? They had eyes like our eyes, eyes that you could look into and see what they were feeling. They had feelings. They had one heart like us, and red blood, and four limbs. They were almost like people. You could understand them. You could teach them things.’
We none of us said anything for a bit after that. It was funny. I’d just assumed at first that it was Jeff being crazy as normal, but when I thought about it, it struck me that maybe this idea of his wasn’t as mad mad as it first seemed.
‘I suppose we could try and catch a baby woollybuck,’ I said. ‘Yeah. Why not? It’s worth a go.’
‘We could ride on their backs and then we’d have their headlanterns to light our way,’ Jeff said.
‘And they know the way, don’t they?’ I said. ‘Remember those ones we saw when we were here before, John? With Old Roger? High up on Dark? They were going somewhere, weren’t they? They weren’t just hanging around. And their lanterns were lighting up the snow.’
I looked at John.
‘Come to think of it, John, how else exactly did you think we were going to see our way? You couldn’t keep torches burning long up there, could you? And if you break a branch of lanterns from a tree, they only last half an hour tops before the light fades.’
John didn’t say anything to this.
‘What was your plan, then?’ I demanded. ‘Were you thinking we’d just feel our way across Dark?’
‘I haven’t bloody worked it all out yet, alright?’ he said.
I smiled because, for a moment there, after all his grownup plans, he was just a kid again, all bristly and red because someone had criticized him.
Gerry came up to us. He had his spike-headed spear in his hand.
‘What’s going on? What are you talking about?’
‘Jeff was saying we could catch a baby woollybuck, a little buckling, and make it into a horse to lead us through Dark,’ I said.
Gerry nodded. He knelt by the stream and scooped up some water to drink with cupped hands, then squatted down beside us.
‘A horse. You’ve often thought about that, haven’t you, Jeff? An animal that would be a helper.’
He looked proudly at me.
‘He’s got all kinds of ideas, my brother. He’s smart smart.’
I laughed and felt a bit fonder of these two weird boys than I had done before.
‘Good,’ I said. ‘We’ll bloody need them. Tom’s dick, we’ll need all the ideas we can get.’
I looked round at John, but he’d forgotten all about us and was sunk deep down inside himself.
‘Our Eden animals do have feelings,’ Jeff said. ‘A leopard has feelings, a woollybuck does, a bat does, a slinker does. They all do.’
‘He’s always said that,’ Gerry said, as if his little brother’s word was enough to make things true.
John stirred beside us.
‘Okay,’ he said, ‘we’ve got lots to sort out. We need to get all the skins we can as well as meat to eat. We need to try and catch a baby woollybuck alive . . .’
‘We could make a fence that would stop it running away,’ Jeff said.
‘Okay, you start making your fence then, Jeff, or thinking about how you’re going to do it. You couldn’t do a long hunting trip, anyway, even if your feet weren’t all done in like they are now. Gerry can stay and help you. Me and Tina will go towards Cold Path and see if there are any woollybucks still down there. We won’t be away more than a waking this time. In another waking or two we’ll go the other way, towards Family, and see who we can find.’
There was no choice about it, no asking us what we wanted. And though I really wasn’t scared of him, and I really could stand my ground against him when I felt I had to, and even get the better of him, it was just too much hard work to argue every time.
‘And some time soon,’ John said, ‘we’ll decide about new family rules.’
New family! Look at us! Three newhairs and one little clawfoot kid, sitting by a small pool below a few caves. But in John’s mind we were a new family already.
Come to think of it, that’s what gave him the power he had. He thought he could bring things into being just by believing in them, and he was so sure of it that it sometimes turned out to be true.
‘So that was our first family meeting, was it?’ I said. ‘Our first strornry?’
Gerry giggled and pointed up at two silvertip bats sitting on a branch watching us, gently fanning their wings, with their skinny little arms folded across their chests and their little wrinkly batfaces looking like they were frowning with concentration.
22
John Redlantern
There was some stuff that Bella had done that wasn’t good, but she’d been the best grownup in Family all the same. And she’d looked after me, she’d made me, and I loved her. But it was me that caused her death.
I couldn’t get round it. If I hadn’t done what I did, she wouldn’t have lost her place in Family and she wouldn’t have done a Tommy. Her place in Family and in Redlantern group was everything to her, which is how it should be for a leader in a family. She gave up her whole self to being a group leader and member of Council and she couldn’t go on without her job, because all it left of her was a shadow.
The first few wakings after they told me, I felt like doing a Tommy a lot of the time. I’d never really have done it of course. That really would have been following my own feelings and not thinking about the future, and I’d made up my mind I’d never make decisions like that. But still, whenever I wasn’t busy dealing with something else, whenever there was a gap to be filled, it came back into my mind. Wham! Bella was dead, Bella did for herself, and it was all down to me.
I made sure not to let the others see this, of course, and I made sure it didn’t stop me from getting on with what I needed to do. In fact what I decided was that Bella’s death made it even more important to carry on with my plan and see it through. The fact that my idea had done for her meant that I had to make it work or her death would have been for no purpose at all.
I felt Gela’s ring in its little pocket on the edge of my wrap. It helped to remind me that bad things were bound to happen. People died, people lost things and couldn’t get them back, however much they wanted to. It happened to Gela, it happened to Tommy, it happened to everyone, not just to me. I mean, Angela didn’t just lose Earth, and her mum and dad and her friends. She didn’t just lose the ring. A couple of wombs after the ring, she lost her daughter Candice. A slinker bit the little girl on the lip when she was reaching for stumpcandy, and the bite turned bad and she died.
And then Tommy lost Gela, and then . . . Well, it goes on. That’s just how it is.
Me and Tina went up Cold Path Valley and towards the place where Cold Path itself comes down from Dark. I had my blackglass spear and my spiketip one, Tina had two spiketips, and we had a skin bag with us that I’d brought from Redlantern, plus a roll of thick wavyweed rope. I liked her being there. She was strong and quick and she wouldn’t let anything defeat her, not even me.