The Seeds Trilogy Complete Collection: The Sowing, The Reaping, The Harvest (including The Prelude)

by K. Makansi

  Now, I can barely feel my feet, my fingers are numb, and I can’t stop shivering. But I’m warming up as we move, running in a half crouch, trying to make ourselves less visible in the light of day. We stopped long enough to slip on our clothes, and then took off again. Our black clothes were helpful last night, but now we stick out against the dense vegetation and patches of sand. We don’t know if they’re following us or not, but there’s enough commotion in the distance that we know we can’t stop moving. We keep running, tracking along the water’s edge, hoping the waves will wash away our footprints. The beach is littered with driftwood and the detritus of abandoned boats that have washed ashore over the years. Keeping the beaches clean isn’t a priority on this side of the lake. Besides the few harbors near the factory towns and Farms, it’s been a no-man’s land for a hundred years.

  We hear yelling carrying over the water, and a dog barks in the distance. A boom echoes out, and we drop to the ground, panicked. Quiet. Breathing hard. The dog barks again, and we look at each other.

  “Chan-Yu?” I whisper.

  He stares into the distance. “If it is, we can’t help him.”

  I grab his arm. “Maybe he’s helping us.”

  He scrambles to his knees and then crouches in the sand. “If he’s buying us time, then we better not disappoint. You ready to run?”

  “Yeah. But where do we go?” I whisper. The whining sirens are still audible in the distance—we’re not far enough away. Who knows when they will come upon us and drag us back to the capital, to Corine’s waiting arms and Philip’s instruments of torture? Or will they just execute us on the spot?

  “The coordinates,” Soren responds. “Whatever they are, they sound important. Get out the v-scroll.”

  I pull out the small, thin filament paper and unroll it. It’s blank. I stare at it for a few seconds as Soren and I lie in the mud and wait to see if something will happen. When nothing changes and the paper remains stubbornly empty, I swear.

  “Why couldn’t he have just told us the damn coordinates?” I mutter, but as the words slip out my mouth, the scroll animates and the nanoparticles begin rearranging themselves, dispersing throughout the paper in a seemingly random pattern. It must have been voice activated, I realize, and I wonder how Chan-Yu got a sample of my vocal pattern to code to the v-scroll. After a few seconds, the picture comes into focus. Chan-Yu’s “coordinates” don’t look anything like coordinates at all. It’s a map. There’s the port behind us, along with the lakeshore, a sketch of the forest terrain at our side, what appears to be a river, and a spot along the river marked by the word OSPREY, whatever that means. The name sounds ominous. But it’s the only definitive marking on the map, aside from the port, and it looks like our destination.

  “Is that where we need to go?” Soren asks.

  “I guess. Looks like it’s our only choice. We need to get moving before they send drones up and down the coastline.” Soren nods his assent. I scan the v-scroll quickly to make sure I know where we’re going, and then roll it up and stuff it back into my pack. I seal it up and together we head down along the coast in the direction of the Osprey.

  ****

  Several kilometers later, we arrive at the mouth of a river. We’d long since given up running, as the fatigue from the night before came back with a fury and the adrenaline of the chase dissipated. The noises of pursuit have faded completely. If Chan-Yu helped to provide a diversion, he’d done his job well. There’s no way to tell if we’re being followed by drones, but I suppose if we were, we’d already be dead.

  According to the map, the Osprey site is downriver a ways, and if the map is at all to scale, it’s probably at least fifteen kilometers further. My heart sinks. I’m starving, and Soren looks equally downtrodden. We haven’t eaten anything but Chan-Yu’s nut bars in close to three days now.

  “We have to eat something,” he says quietly.

  “Know how to fish?” I mutter. An idea suddenly occurs to me. I shrug my pack off my back and break the watertight seal, checking to see if Chan-Yu put any food in there for us. There’s two more nut bars, several full water bottles, and a small pocketknife, but much to my dismay, that’s all there is. Soren’s pack is similarly equipped. With a sinking heart, I unwrap the bars and devour them both in seconds. I crack open one of the water bottles and drain half of it as Soren does the same. It feels amazing to have something in my stomach, but when I’m done, I realize how ravenous I really am.

  “Didn’t he know how hungry we’d be?” I grumble.

  “Maybe he only had so much Outsider food, and he knew we wouldn’t eat anything from the Sector. He probably gave us all he had.”

  That thought doesn’t make me any happier—or less hungry.

  “Maybe there’ll be food waiting at the Osprey?” Soren says hopefully.

  Maybe someone’s waiting to kill us at the Osprey, I think, but I recognize that thought as irrational and push it away. “I wish you had your knife.” The hunger is overpowering.

  “Even if I did, we can’t make a fire here; we’re still too close to the port. So we couldn’t eat anything I killed. We need to keep going. Let’s find out what’s at the Osprey.”

  The bars give us enough energy to keep moving, and we trudge along in silence, chilly but grateful for the sun’s warmth. I keep my eyes on the ground, looking for anything that might be edible but finding nothing worthwhile.

  I find myself stumbling, hazy-eyed, aimlessly following Soren’s lead. The minutes slide by in a fog, slowly turning into hours. Every step is like lifting a fifty-kilo weight attached to my feet, and by the time the sun is high in the sky, I might as well be delirious. I hope I don’t start hallucinating again. That last time didn’t turn out so well for us. But then again, maybe it did—after all, if Corine didn’t want us dead, Chan-Yu might never have rescued us and we might still be stuck in that cell, starving and at the mercy of Philip and that ugly, old general. If we were still there, though, maybe they would have fed us by now.

  “Remy.” Soren’s voice jolts me back to the present. “I think this is it.” He’s staring at the v-scroll—I don’t remember giving it to him—and looking up and around every few seconds. I survey the little patch of river we’re in. “This looks like the notch in the river the map indicates. There are three sharp bends before the Osprey site, and we’ve passed three bends.” He’s been counting? I come over to his side, and he holds the v-scroll down a little lower so I can see it. Standing at his side, it surprises me how tall he is. “I think this is where we are.” He taps the map where the Osprey site is.

  “Okay. So what’s here?” He shrugs.

  “I don’t know. Let’s have a look around; see if we can find anything.”

  He starts walking away from the river a bit, squinting at things on the ground and looking up into the trees. I have no idea what he’s looking for, but I follow suit, peering around and exploring the spot. I examine various pieces of driftwood, the lapping water against the riverbank, and the stones that litter the water’s edge. I pace downstream a bit, squinting at the trees, when something out of place catches my eye. It’s grey and stony and blends in perfectly with the rock that it’s perched on, but it looks more like paper. I edge closer and look at it hesitantly, afraid to touch it in case it triggers a bomb or something. It’s nothing like the color of a normal v-scroll, but the fibers look the same, and it’s certainly too thin and too regular to be anything found in nature. Tiny flecks of red dot the filament—blood?

  “Hey, Soren,” I shout. “Check this out.” He’s at my side in seconds, and together we examine the strange paper. “Should we touch it?” I ask nervously.

  “Why not?” he says, and lifts the rock that’s tamping it down, preventing it from blowing away. As he does, just like with Chan-Yu’s v-scroll, the fibers and filaments come to life. This time words, not images, materialize on the map.

  To the Resistance fugitives,

  I’m sorry I couldn’t meet you in person. Chan-Yu instruct
ed me to prepare the next stage for your journey, and though I hoped to be able to do that personally, that is not to be. The boat I had planned to bring for you is more than a day’s journey by foot downriver, but now you have no choice. Follow the river and you’ll find the boat. Once you’re there, the river will lead you safely down in the direction of the nearest Resistance base. There’s a more-detailed map on the boat that will help you navigate there. The best I’ve been able to do for you is leave a tent and a bow in the hopes that one will provide shelter and the other food.

  I’m sorry I wasn’t able to do more.

  Best of luck. I hope we may meet sometime in the future.

  Osprey

  “What kind of a name is Osprey?”

  Is that really Soren’s first thought? “Who cares?” I hiss. “Let’s find the bow.” Food is all I can think about.

  We start to canvass the area, but this time the search is easy. A little ways up, hidden behind an enormous tree, is a small pack containing the tent and a few pears. Leaning against the tree next to it is a beautiful wood-carved bow, a magnificent thing that I hope desperately Soren can use. I’ve only ever used the composite ones we practiced with back at base, and those look completely different. There are only three arrows, so we’ll have to be careful not to lose them.

  Soren suggests we keep tracking downriver so we don’t waste time finding this boat. My thoughts are on food, and I insist we try to at least kill something before we continue.

  “No. We don’t have time. Let’s eat these and keep going; we don’t have time to hang out and hunt.”

  I am silent. He’s right. But I’m hungry.

  Soren hands me a pear. I bite into it hungrily; it is perfectly ripe and juice spurts out and trickles down my wrist. After one particularly noisy slurp, I briefly avert my attention from my own fruit and turn to look at him. He has juice all over his chin and mouth and it’s dripping down onto his jaw. I can’t help but break out into laughter.

  “What?” he demands.

  “You look ridiculous. You’re covered in pear juice. There’s even a seed stuck to your chin,” I laugh, and reach to flick it off. He recoils at first from the unexpected gesture, but I get my fingertips to the seed and gently wipe it off. He looks at me with an expression so peculiar that I worry I’ve offended him.

  “Sorry,” I say quickly.

  “No, it’s fine.” He looks like he wants to say something else, but instead he bites into the second pear, more cautiously this time, staring at me. I keep eating, but his eyes are relentless. When he finishes, he wipes his face off on his shirtsleeve.

  “Remy, I—” He stops and stares morosely at the ground.

  “What?” Suddenly my heart is pounding. Why?

  “I don’t know, I just—fuck.” He stands up and glances around, looking everywhere but at me. “We need to move. It’s already almost high noon. We need to get as far away from here as possible by nightfall. I don’t want to be exposed to any drones while we’re sleeping.” I stare at him as he paces.

  He grabs the bow and the few arrows and stalks off, and I am left wondering what on earth he was about to say. I decide it’s best not to worry about it now. I jump up and stuff the tent into my pack—it’s practically featherweight so there’s plenty of room—and follow his footsteps into the forest.

  We track through the woods slowly and quietly, keeping the sounds of the river close to our left as we head south. Soren leads, bow at the ready, looking for something to shoot at, but it’s clear neither of us are any good at this. Our footsteps crackle through the underbrush every few seconds, and anything big enough to shoot probably has the good sense to stay far away from us. I’m not convinced we’ll be able to do anything with the bow at all. I’ve never been hunting before, and even though I know Soren’s been out on a few excursions back at base, I have no idea whether he’s ever killed anything or not. I probably would have heard about it if he had.

  With dark thoughts of starvation echoing through my mind, Soren and I shuffle along through the day without much in the way of words. He stops at one point and holds his fingers to his lips, staring at something I can’t quite see. He points wordlessly through the trees, and I see it—a small deer, frozen in place. Behind me I can hear the river rushing, but otherwise everything is perfectly quiet. I don’t dare to breathe. Soren silently pulls back the bow and takes aim, and I watch him, tensing every muscle in my body, hoping he will make the shot. He stretches the bow a little father and then releases the arrow. I hear the zing as the arrow whistles off the bowstring and my eyes jump to the animal—which is bounding away into the woods, unharmed.

  I swear silently and heave a deep breath. Soren heads off dejectedly to find his arrow, and then we track back to the water.

  The rest of the day passes uneventfully, and we see no more animals worth shooting at. My stomach starts to grumble more and more as we walk along. Daylight is short this time of year, and dusk settles in quickly. As the sun sinks below the treetops to our right, we know we have to stop. We’re exhausted, anyway, from the lack of sleep over the last few days and the emptiness in our bellies. We don’t want to risk being exposed to drones from the air or being eaten by wild animals in the forest, so we opt for a site just away from the riverbank, shaded by trees and tucked behind some big rocks. Soren immediately starts gathering firewood.

  “What are you doing?” I demand.

  “Fire, Remy. For heat.”

  “You want to alert anyone in the area to our presence?”

  “There’s no one around. It’ll be fine. We need to stay warm.”

  I shake my head vigorously.

  “No. That tent will be well-insulated and there are heating packs and blankets in our packs.” I am firm and defiant. “If we had something that needed cooking, that would be a different matter, but we’re not going to risk bringing unfriendly eyes down on us just for a little comfort.”

  Soren narrows his eyes at me, frowning. After a few seconds he turns back into the forest, maybe for a last shot at finding something worth shooting at.

  I finish setting up the tent—which is so simply and elegantly designed it almost pops up out of the air without any assistance—and it turns out my warnings against fire were well-justified. The tent isn’t just insulated; it also has heating fibers woven throughout. Little fibers that use thermotunneling technology, the same way Chan-Yu’s heat gel did. Not long after the tent is up, Soren and I are snuggling together again, warm and toasty, and the sky outside is plastered with stars.

  Soren does a strange thing then—before he closes his eyes and rolls over, he gives me a little kiss on the forehead and says, “Goodnight, Remy,” leaving me feeling as baffled as I did this morning when I woke him up. My wonderment doesn’t last long, though. I’m asleep in seconds.

  ****

  I wake up the next morning to a dim yellow light trickling through my eyelids. The air in my nose is humid but clean and crisp, and as I realize that Soren’s body is pressed against mine, one arm slung across my chest, an odd feeling washes over me, a brightness and an energy that takes me a few minutes to place because it’s been so long since I felt it: happiness. The rejuvenation that’s come from getting a good night’s worth of warm, undisturbed sleep is overwhelming, and I can’t resist the urge to start moving. I crawl out from under Soren’s enormous body and stretch. I open the tent flap and feel a burst of chilly air across my face, refreshing me. The light is pale in the distance but yellow, and my mood brightens even further at the prospect of another sunny day.

  “Soren,” I call. He stirs inside the tent. “Soren, it’s beautiful out here. Let’s go. We need to find that boat.”

  My stomach is growling, but Soren is equally energetic when he gets moving, and we pop the tent back down into its place and pack it up. We head down along the riverbank, energized from sleep and not bothering to hunt today—we’re hoping we’ll find the boat sooner rather than later. But as high noon approaches and we still haven’t found it,
we’re starting to get nervous. My belly feels like a sinkhole. I’m surprised it hasn’t started to devour the rest of my body yet. I imagine eating the leaves on the trees or trying to grab a fish out of the river with my bare hands when the dark thought occurs to me that we might have somehow missed the boat.

  “What if someone else took it?” I mutter anxiously to Soren as I brush against his side, briefly outpacing him. “What if we never find it?”

  “It’ll be there, Remy,” he says in his calm way, as though he’s looked into the future and seen that the boat will be waiting for us.

  “What if it isn’t?”

  “It will be.” His tone says hush. I continue in silence, dark thoughts seeping into my brain again like ink spilling across paper.

  But then I trip abruptly and am pitched forward into a pillow of muck. Soren bursts out into laughter when I come up, covered in mud and no doubt looking like a bog monster, until he sees what it was I tripped on: some sort of rope lying on the ground, half-buried in the mud. He stares at it for a minute and then looks out at the water, and I follow his eyes. Something about the reflection of the water doesn’t quite look right, as though there’s a piece of the river missing. Instead of offering a hand to help me up, Soren stoops over next to me and grabs the rope, and as he picks it up, the missing piece of the river shifts and changes, and a boat materializes as if out of thin air.

  “Cloaking,” Soren whispers, awed. “Deactivated by touching the fibers of the rope. Otherwise, perfectly hidden.” It’s a little thing, not much bigger than six meters end-to-end, but there’s a roof over the top and a pretty little deck, and it looks to be in pristine condition. There’s even a name painted on the side: The Zephyr.