“A sunchoke,” he said.
“Humph,” Samuel grunted, breathing heavily now that they had stopped.
“Too bad it isn’t grown back yet. Think of that. Roasted sunchoke roots,” Illya said.
“Might be better not to think of that kind of thing.”
Samuel rubbed his elbow with a grimace and closed his eyes. Illya leaned back against the tree and considered the merits of scraping some of the tree bark off with his knife to chew on. It had been many hours since the fish the night before. A lump of bark dug into his back, and he shifted his weight off it, pushing back against the tree. Instead of rough bark, his elbow found a space. It wasn’t a lump at all but a hole.
“Hey, a squirrel nest!” Illya said.
Samuel brightened up, opening his eyes.
“Anything left in it?”
Illya shrugged. He hadn’t seen a squirrel in these woods in months. If he had, he probably would have eaten it. He reached inside then grinned, pulling out a handful of pine nuts and small striped seeds that had probably come from the sunchoke at their feet. The squirrel that had made this stash had not returned to eat its store.
There were enough that they could eat some and still stuff his pockets with handfuls to take back to his mother and Molly.
He divided them with Samuel, but after a few bites, he stopped chewing. His eyes widened, and he clutched the seeds tighter in his hand.
For a moment he barely breathed, remembering something he had read. It was the page after the one about the chicken. Gold light lanced through the trees and shone on his face as the midmorning sun parted the clouds.
“Seed saving,” he whispered.
“What’s that?” Samuel asked.
“Oh, nothing. Just thinking,” he said.
He had taken to carrying the book with him everywhere, not trusting to leave it in his hut. It was in the pack on his back, but he didn’t need to look at it to remember the words.
No matter how your food reaches your table, it all begins the same way… With a seed! Nothing is more rewarding than being able to walk out your back door and pick your dinner right out of a backyard garden full of vegetables. Follow these tips to collect and save your own seeds for a bountiful, home-grown harvest.
Seeds.
They had died out many years ago. The seeds for the plants the Olders had grown didn’t even exist anymore. The way the story went the first settlers had come out of the cities and become Planters to survive. They had seeds in packages, and for a year, there was plenty. The second year, they planted seeds that had come from the first years’ plants, and not a single plant had grown. A man in the group called Bernard Jones, Ph.D., saved them. Before the Calamity had come, he had studied famine foods of the Pacific Northwest.
He had taught the villagers about edible plants that they could find in the woods near the Planter’s house. Jones Ph.D. was the reason they had all survived. Illya was descended from him; it was one of the few things he felt proud of.
When Illya had read the passage about seeds, he had dismissed it as a lovely but impossible dream. The very thought of a garden was blasphemy. His people had survived because they did not plant. Garden plants died; wild plants thrived. Everyone knew that.
But a garden out the back door. The thought of it took his breath away. They could grow hundreds of plants; as many as the seeds they could find. They could grow so many that they wouldn’t even need to look in the forest anymore. More than enough for a whole winter.
He said nothing to Samuel but stowed his half of the seeds in his pocket. They set off again, making good time despite the difficult terrain. Illya kept going over it in his mind. Was it possible that he could put these very seeds in the ground and a sunchoke would come up?
The more he thought about it, he didn’t see why not. Sunchokes grew everywhere, even right outside the walls. Why wouldn’t they grow? Ground was ground, wherever it was.
They made good time, despite the difficult going, and got almost enough willow bark to replace what they had lost. The way back was uphill and slower. When they could see the walls in the distance, the sun was half down from its height. Neither of them spoke as they neared the gates. There was no shouting anymore. In fact, there was no sound of any kind.
A jolt of fear shot through his stomach. What if something terrible had happened? There should have been some activity: children laughing, distant arguments, and people coming and going at the gate.
The day was warmer than it had been in a long time, and with the exertion of the hike, he was sweating and stopped to catch his breath. He watched a line of ants crossing the ground, filing into a mounded hole in the earth. The wind picked up, just a bit, cutting through the stillness of the air and chilling his sweat-soaked skin. He shivered.
“I don’t see anyone.” Samuel was standing at the gates. They went to the central fires but found them entirely deserted.
There was a dull banging sound coming from a little way away. They followed it and found Ban Johnstead working behind his hut on the homemade forge he had inherited from his father.
“Ban.”
“Healer,” he said and nodded to Samuel and Illya.
“Where is everyone?”
Ban leaned his hammer against the forge.
“River. They went through everyone’s places this morning and didn’t find anything. Someone thought that if everyone went and dug, they were bound to find some cattails. Something that had been missed,” he said.
“Everyone? You didn’t go?” Illya asked.
Ban shrugged. “No point in it,” he said. “I already been, I know there’s nothing out there.” He was taller and broader than anyone else. If anyone could have ignored Jimmer and the rest of them, it was him.
“But the river…” Illya trailed off. A jumble of thoughts and images suddenly came together in his mind: the shifting bogs of snow and meltwater, the warmest day yet, the red sky, the moon, and something else that had triggered his memory but he hadn’t stopped to think about it.
Ants. Ants in a row. After the part about red skies, there had been a few more “Old Wives’ Tales.”
Insects can predict the weather too! Spiders will leave their webs, and ants will head to ground, often in a straight line, just before it rains.
Every sign was there. Rain was coming and a lot of it. In the spring, storms blew up unexpectedly and could be massive. His heart sped up. The images of ants in a row were swiftly replaced by the memory of Benja going underwater after they had been fishing yesterday and an older memory of his father, yelling as he grabbed Illya by the waist and threw him to higher ground before he was swept away.
The river was already swollen and would have risen even more, fed by the streams of runoff through the day. Rain would mean flooding, maybe coming swifter than anyone could predict.
Except him.
Illya dropped his pack and ran without a word of explanation to Ban and Samuel. Everyone had gone, pushed by the fear of the crowd and not wanting to speak against it. That meant his mother, and Molly and Benja were out there too.
“Everyone has to get out of here!” Illya shouted between gasps as he reached the mouth of the river gorge, waving his arms in the air. The people were spread out all along the river, bent to their digging. A few close by looked up and stared at him.
His belly clenched as belatedly he realized just what he was doing.