Heirloom (Seed Savers) Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Story So Far

  Quotation

  Glossary

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Book Four

  Acknowledgments

  About Author

  Heirloom

  SEED SAVERS

  S. Smith

  SEED SAVERS

  BOOK THREE: HEIRLOOM

  Copyright © 2013 S. Smith

  Second Edition

  Published on Smashwords

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Except for the couple who remind family members of my late grandparents.

  Cover design and image by Aileen Smith Photography.

  seedsaversseries.com

  For Garrett

  In loving memory.

  (November 19, 1994-September 1, 2013)

  THE STORY SO FAR

  Book One, Treasure:

  In a future where processed food is king and gardening is illegal, three friends secretly study about seeds and growing food. Afraid of being caught by GRIM, siblings Clare and Dante run away one night, leaving behind their friend Lily, and mentor Ana.

  Book Two, Lily:

  After Clare and Dante leave, Lily sets out to discover why. Along the way, she makes new friends and struggles inwardly when a family secret is revealed. Lily must decide what to do and whom she can trust.

  If you think in terms of a year, plant a seed; if in terms of ten years, plant trees; if in terms of 100 years, teach the people.

  Confucius

  GLOSSARY

  Nipungyo: Private sustainable food supply company (Their words)

  OR

  American multinational chemical and agricultural biotechnology corporation (Independent Monitor description)

  GRIM: American government agency formed in 2044 after the dissolution of the EPA and FDA whose job is to regulate food production and distribution and to keep troublemakers in line

  Seed Savers: Underground group of dissidents who illegally save, grow, and trade pure, open pollinated seeds and organize politically to oppose current laws and powers-that-be

  Garden Guardians: Canadian gardening volunteers who train others in horticulture skills and provide special border programs for U.S. gardening refugees

  JALIL: Mysterious emerging new leader in the Seed Savers movement

  Prologue

  The old woman was having trouble sleeping. Guilt pierced and pricked at 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. It wasn’t safe.

  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 of her. Alone too early, missing her babies. Or the fact that it might not have ended as well as it did. 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 with 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.”

  CHAPTER 1

  Clare and Dante — January

  “The 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 about 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. A smile crept across her face.

  “You,” called Monroe, looking straight at Clare, “do you know the answer?”

  The smile slipped off of her 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 her scribbled notation.

  Professor Cassidy grinned. “Add organic matter,” he repeated, gaining momentum. “Class, everyone,” 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 the better part of four hundred miles, 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 then 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 passed in a blur for Clare and Dante. Every day
had been busily spent harvesting apples from the farm or produce from the garden. Mrs. Wood, Marissa, taught them about each vegetable—carrots, tomatoes, sweet corn, potatoes, green beans, and such. They accomplished the difficult job of canning: snipping and snapping the green beans, filling the glass jars, heating up the kitchen with the hot water baths and pressure canning. They expectantly watched juicy tomatoes shrivel and shrink, becoming like Sweeties as they “sun-dried” on screens. The fat, round onions were yanked from the soil and left to lie until dried, then braided and hung in the kitchen corners or from the attic rafters.

  Mr. Wood, John, showed Clare how to carefully pick apples and later to sort them 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.

  The business of harvesting lasted well into October, then winter moved in almost 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.

  Not long after Clare and Dante had arrived, the Woods told them that Ana’s disappearance had not been due to GRIM, but that subsequently she had been raided and threatened. They also learned—and were comforted in knowing—that their mother had been alerted of their status, and they would soon be able to communicate with her in a restricted way. Unfortunately, the good news was marred with bad news: their friend Lily had left town, and no one knew where she was. Clare had always believed Lily possessed an inner strength but was surprised she had left on her own. She recalled her and Dante’s own quick departure. They had been together; leaving alone was a brave and strong thing to do.

  And now it was January—time for the annual Garden Guardian classes. The Garden Guardian program had begun about a hundred years ago to advise and educate the public on home gardening and horticulture. The program was mostly linked to universities and extension offices and class participants volunteered their time to teach others. A large percentage were retired folks who enjoyed giving back to the community. In the latter half of the 2050s, it became apparent that the Guardians should expand, hosting special classes for “gardening refugees” whose numbers slipping over the border had increased every year. Most, like Clare and Dante, came on their own, having heard rumors of a better way of food yet not knowing even the basics of gardening. Some had never tasted real food. Others had been sponsored by Seed Savers and helped into the country for the purpose of advance training, to be sent back as leaders. Throughout the country Garden Guardian groups educated those who wanted to learn.

  The children 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 that held information on the subjects they would be learning. There were twenty-five chapters, starting with botany and covering topics such as seed saving, preserving, composting, pruning, pest management, and the history of food politics and policies.

  “Don’t you just love professor Cassidy?” Clare asked. “I never thought anybody 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 Mr. 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.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Lily— 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 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 the words of Arturo’s father, “like a cloud covering it.” I experienced no pangs of remorse as I deposited my goodbye letters for Ma, Rose, and Father Williams. 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 the bus, one of only three passengers departing that early September morning. I sat right up front, the mindset of looking forward. I would find James Gardener.

  I mentally 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 tiny 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 up quite a lot—the sum total of which currently bulged deep in my pocket, minus the chunk I’d just used to purchase a ticket to Florida. True, I didn’t know if my dad really was in Cuba, as Ana had 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 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 also 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. Initially, I hadn’t given it much thought, but now 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 was uncertain of—a code? The two letters ending each entry were obviously abbreviations for the fifty-one states. Florida had seven listings. If only I could figure out how to decipher the rest of the info, find someone like Ana who could tell me more, help me find my dad, a place to stay as I traveled.

  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,” she 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.

  She 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. So 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 this 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.