Seed Savers-Heirloom: Seed Savers, #3

PROLOGUE

The old woman was having trouble sleeping. Guilt pierced Ana as she lay in bed. Three children missing. Three children she had secretly been teaching about seeds and gardening. There was no way around it. It was her fault. She should have known GRIM was still watching.

At least Clare and Dante had made it to Canada. That much she knew. But it didn’t change the fact that every time she saw their mother, the lines on Mrs. James’s face were cut deeper, sadness all but dripping off her. Alone and missing her babies.

Or the fact that it might not have ended as well as it had. If you could call it an ending. Clare and Dante were safe in Canada, but what next? Ana felt she should reveal herself to Mrs. James but at the same time was afraid of making things worse.

And now Lily was out there, too. Alone and who-knows-where, trying to find her father. All the while GRIM and that wicked Trinia Nelson still nosing around. The note Lily left said only that she intended to find her father and thanked Ana for telling her what her mother never had—that her father was still alive. That he had been a famous leader in the dissident Seed Savers Movement.

The aged woman sighed. What good was being old if she had learned nothing about indiscretions?

Dear God, she prayed, tired and beginning to wonder if anyone was really there, save the children.

1

Garden Refugees/January

"T he answer is: add organic matter . He paused for emphasis, It doesn’t matter what the question is."

Clare surveyed the crowded classroom. Like her, everyone here was a refugee intending to return home after completion of the training. The man in front, clad in black boots, black jeans, a long black trench coat, and topped with a black fedora, was Professor Monroe Cassidy. He was one of many in a group known as Garden Guardians. His passion for soil and planting seeds was contagious and energizing. Recalling her life back home, Clare thought about the kids whose lives revolved around the virtual reality of the latest Monitor games and shows—it was all so inconsequential. She smiled, thinking about her new life here.

You, called Monroe, looking straight at Clare. Do you know the answer?

The smile slipped off Clare’s face like rain down a window. In her daydreaming, she had missed the question. She looked down, searching her notes, grasping for anything.

Add organic matter? she tried, spying a scribbled notation.

Professor Cassidy grinned. Add organic matter, he repeated, gaining momentum. Class, everyone, he called as his hands conducted them like a choir director.

Add organic matter, rose the myriad voices.

BACK AT THEIR NEW HOME, Clare and Dante lounged on the sofa studying the day’s material. Getting here had been a long journey, but they had succeeded; they had reached their Garden of Eden. The children had ridden their bikes more than 600 kilometers crossing an international border into a country whose food laws differed dramatically from their own.

It had been mid-August when they first arrived, prime harvest time. Their rescuers, a family called Pierce, had housed them for five days before they were transferred to orientation and later to live with sponsors. Because many people in this part of Canada spoke French, the QFA (Quebec Farmers’ Association) had set them up with an English-speaking couple. The Woods, who could trace their ancestry back to the eighteenth century, were apple farmers, selling from a roadside stand and at local farmers’ markets. They had five grown children with families of their own. Mrs. Wood had never adjusted to the smaller household, still planting a vegetable garden to feed crowds and cooking oversized meals. So whenever underaged refugees needed a home, theirs was open.

Those earliest days of the children’s arrival had passed in a blur for Clare and Dante. Every day had been busily spent harvesting apples from the farm and produce from the garden.

Mrs. Wood, Marissa, taught them about each vegetable—carrots, tomatoes, sweet corn, potatoes, green beans. Together they accomplished the difficult job of canning: snipping and snapping the beans, filling the glass jars, heating up the kitchen with the hot water baths and pressure canning. They learned about dehydration, expectantly watching juicy tomatoes shrivel and shrink becoming like Sweeties as they dried on screens under the summer sun. The fat, round onions were yanked from the soil and left to lie until dry, then braided and hung in kitchen corners or from attic rafters.

Mr. Wood, John, showed Clare how to carefully pick and sort the apples for market. She learned the names of the many varieties and how to help customers choose the best kinds for pies, preserves, and sauce. Dante’s task was to shine the apples until they sparkled and winked at unsuspecting customers.

Harvesting had lasted well into October. Then winter moved in overnight like houseguests for whom you have been preparing but aren’t quite ready for when they finally arrive. The children welcomed winter’s respite from the busy lives they had fallen into.

Much to their relief, Clare and Dante learned soon after arriving that Ana’s disappearance had not been due to GRIM, although later she had been raided and threatened. They also learned and were comforted to know that their mother had been alerted of their status, and they’d soon be able to communicate with her. Unfortunately, the good news was marred with bad news: their friend Lily had left town, and no one knew where she was.

And now it was January—time for the annual Garden Guardian class. The Garden Guardian program, sponsored by universities and supported by volunteers, had begun a hundred years ago to assist in educating the public in home gardening and horticulture. In the latter half of the 2050s, the Guardians expanded their reach to host special classes for gardening refugees whose numbers slipping over the border had increased each year. Most refugees, like Clare and Dante, came on their own having heard rumors of real food but knowing little about gardening. Others had been sponsored and helped into the country by Seed Savers for the purpose of advanced training, to later be sent back as leaders.

Clare and Dante attended half-day gardening classes three days a week and classes for their regular school requirements the rest of the time. They were provided mini-Monitors loaded with information on the subjects they would be studying. There were twenty-five chapters, starting with botany and covering topics like seed saving, preserving, composting, pruning, pest management, and the history of food politics and policies.

DON’T YOU JUST LOVE Professor Cassidy? Clare asked as she pulled the quilted comforter closer to her body. I never thought anyone could be so excited about dirt.

Soil, Dante corrected. "Remember, dirt is when soil is out of place. Like that smudge on your face during class," he teased.

During class each person had gotten a chance to examine—look at, feel, smell, even taste—the three types of soil: silt, sand, and clay, and a variety of combinations. The soil samples were mixed with water—mud, basically—and it was messy. Clare ended up with some on her face, and Professor Cassidy had used her as an example in defining soil versus dirt. She turned a shade of pink as Dante reminded her.

Dan—te.

Yeah, you’re right, he said, ignoring her irritation at him. The way Professor Cassidy talks about soil would convince anyone it’s the greatest thing on the planet. He loves it so much he should marry it!

Clare rolled her eyes. Hanging out with an eight-year-old sometimes got old, but she loved her brother. She shook her head. Oh brother, Dante.

Yep, that’s me—your brother.

2

Running To/September

People have asked what made me do it. Why, at thirteen years old, I left the safety of my home and set out on my own. Was I afraid, some asked; did I run in fear, like my friends before me? No. That wasn’t it. I never saw myself as running away from something. I was running to something. That summer, the one when it all began, was when Lily Gardener finally knew her name.

The morning I left, a drizzling rain blanketed the town forcing me to remember it that way—hazy, obscured—merging in my memory with what Arturo had said. That there was something off, repressive, about our city. Like a cloud covering it were his words. I experienced no pangs of remorse as I deposited my goodbye letters for Ma, Rose, and Ana. And rather than feeling sorry about Arturo, I felt warm leaving the seeds in his care. With one last look at my hometown, I boarded a bus—one of only three passengers departing that early September morning—and sat right up front, the mindset of looking forward. I would find James Gardener.

Mentally, I gathered up everything I knew about my father—so very little. I never knew him, and worse yet, he never knew me. By the time I was born, he was already in custody, soon to be locked up. I wondered if Ma had visited him during the sham trial or if he had ever held me. The pain of my mom’s deception needled me like a sliver in my shoe. An anger I couldn’t quite extinguish, yet barely acknowledged, simmered within me.

Looking back, now, I understand why my mom did what she did. But then, that day on the bus, I felt betrayed by the only parent I’d ever known. So I chose to look away from Ma. I convinced myself that I was my father’s child. My father was a fighter, a leader, a writer. Someone who defied the status quo, risking everything. I would find him; we would fight together.

Ma had given me an allowance for as long as I could remember. I was never as grateful for this as I was now. Rarely having much to spend it on, I had saved quite a lot—the sum total currently bulging deep in my pocket, minus the chunk I’d used for a ticket to Florida. True, I didn’t know if my dad really was in Cuba as Ana said he might be, but in case he was, I’d be that much closer. Besides, I’d always dreamed of going to Florida—who doesn’t?

It would be a long trip, giving me time to think about what to do next. I knew shuttles from Florida to Cuba left every hour but I wasn’t sure how I would board. I considered stowing away but eventually decided my best option would be a fake letter of permission from my parents. I hoped by then to have made contact with friends. I had a few stops planned farther north in Florida, intending to meet Seed Savers. Maybe they could confirm or pinpoint my father’s whereabouts.

I reached into my pocket—not the one with the wad of cash, but another one—and pulled out the paper from Ana, the elderly mentor who had first taught my friends and me about seeds and gardening. I’d been surprised at the crowded list of names and numbers hand-printed neatly in tiny writing. I studied the paper, looking at the long list, trying to make sense of it. The names, for the most part, were listed alphabetically by last name. The numbers differed; some were obvious street addresses or telecom numbers, but others . . . I wasn’t sure—a code? The two letters ending each entry were obviously abbreviations for the fifty-one states.

Florida had seven listings. If only I could decipher the rest of the info and find someone like Ana who could tell me more, help me find my dad, provide a place to stay . . .

I pondered my last conversation with Ana. I had started blubbering about my dad. Revealed to her that I saw myself as being like him, shared how I too, loved to write. I’d complained about Ma and the way she disliked my writing. Lily, your mom is trying to protect you. She knows it was your dad’s powerful words that destroyed your family. I’m sure she is proud of you and your writing. Please try to understand, Ana had said. And then she stunned me by telling me to do something contrary to my mom’s wishes. However, please don’t stop writing. Writing is an act of reflecting. And the function of reflectors, after all, is to catch the light and shine it out. The Movement needs you, just like it needed your parents.

I liked that idea, that I was a reflector. That I could catch a ray of truth, like light, and shine it farther and wider.

Clare, my best friend, had tried unsuccessfully to journal—she had two abandoned diaries and a spiral notebook—and once, in exasperation, she had asked how I did it, this filling of notebooks, this incessant writing. I told her that if she had as many voices in her head as I did she wouldn’t have to ask. Clare had laughed hysterically. But the thing is, I was being perfectly honest. There’s no easy way to describe how my brain often felt, feels. Cluttered. Like being in a room full of people, a room with bad acoustics, the cumulative noise of countless conversations roaring and crashing into a deafening din. Then slowly, as the room empties, the voices stop one by one, and at last there is a peaceful silence when everyone has gone.

That’s how I write. It’s why I write. To take the voices out of my head and confine them to bars on the paper. To have peace.

Grateful for a window seat, I stared out at the changing landscape. Thirteen, and I’d never travelled more than a hundred kilometers from home. The urban sprawl through which the bus crawled was ugly and dilapidated. But the open land in between had its moments: gently rolling hills, golden plains with snakes of green along creeks and rivers, vast swaths of agribusiness crops.

There were no signs posted to identify the crops, reminding me how little I knew about the food I ate. Protein, Carbos, Vitees, Sweeties, and Snacks had always been enough. It was no longer enough. I wanted to know what was growing out there. I wanted to know what was in my food. I wanted to see what it looked like before it became the plastic-wrapped square or circle I called lunch.

Were those beans? I pressed my hands up against the bus window trying hard to make out the plants on the other side of the glass. I’d grown beans back in the vacant lot. I wanted to stop the bus and jump out. We were moving too fast for my inexperienced eyes to decipher what I was seeing.

Here and there abandoned homes presented more to ponder. The once quaint houses and old red barns were now forgotten and fading ghosts of history, falling in on themselves and grown