by Sandra Smith
THE APPLE TREE
Clare glanced nervously behind her. Although off the street and out of sight of Mr. GRIM, they were completely inside someone’s front yard. How soon would the occupants awaken and notice two children on their lawn? Still, there wasn’t a lot they could do. They definitely couldn’t return to the street while the GRIM man was parked ahead.
“Clare, what are we gonna do?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“This hedge goes all the way around,” Dante said. “I’m gonna explore.”
“Wait,” she said. “What?”
“I’m gonna creep around the hedge. See if there’s a place to hide or get away.”
Clare thought about this a moment. “Okay,” she said. “Be careful. I’ll be here.”
Dante left his bike on the grass and scurried away.
Clare peeked carefully through the bushes. She knew the GRIM agent would be there all day. Seeing him here like this was so different from the days when she, Lily, and Dante enjoyed taunting him. She wondered how they had ever been so naïve. She wondered what had become of Ana and Lily and her mother. The despair turned to anger and the anger to resolve. We are so close, now, she thought. We must succeed.
“Hey,” Dante said, startling her. “Good luck.” He was smiling. “The back yard is terrific. Totally unseen from the street. The hedge is awesomely tall and thick.”
“And . . . ?”
“Well, you can still squeeze through it to a neighbor’s yard, and I think from there we could reach another street and get away from GRIM. But . . . maybe it’s better if we hide out here until dark. You know, in case he’s got the police looking for us, too. Or other guys from GRIM.” His big eyes pleaded his case.
“What about the owners of the house?”
“Maybe they’re not home.”
“Well that’s a big maybe,” Clare snorted.
“There’s an old kids’ tree house. I sneaked up the stairs. I don’t think anyone uses it. There’s enough room for us and our bikes. If people are home, they won’t notice us up there.”
She looked at him doubtfully. “Go ahead,” she said, “show me.”
They walked their bikes along the inside of the hedge and around the house to the back yard. There, a small garden grew, and a clothesline stood empty. The place had a vacant look, as if the owners were on vacation; on the other hand, it was still early in the morning. A sleepy gray and white cat sitting on the roof blinked down at them.
“There it is,” Dante said, nodding toward the elevated playhouse. Red potted geraniums, desperate for water, hung from the edge. Clare looked at it skeptically. She turned to scan the home. From where she stood, she could see into the living room.
“What makes you think the tree house isn’t being used?”
“Well, for one thing, it’s full of spider webs. And there’s not a bunch of toys in the yard,” he added.
Clare considered his plan. Obviously, the best scenario would be if there were lupines, or other purple flowers around—but there weren’t. Second best would be if no one were home. But might Dante be right? If the owners no longer had children at home, would they notice her and Dante if they kept out of sight, passing the day in the playhouse?
What were the other choices—to cross to another street and try to get out of town as fast as they could? In the end, it was their bodies that made the decision.
“Please, Clare?” Dante begged. “I’m tired. And hungry. Let’s rest here through the day. We can’t take any chances. This is a teensy town. If the GRIM guy is here, he’s probably watching all of the border streets. We’re gonna hafta find another place to cross.”
She knew he was right. Up the steps they trudged, carefully pushing and pulling their bikes one at a time. They cleaned the spiders out, and fell asleep with little effort.
The children awoke with the hot sun full upon them. Studying the house and yard for signs of life, they saw nothing. The ground in the garden looked wet, but they supposed an automated system had done the work.
“Look,” Dante whispered excitedly. For the first time, they noticed a tree bending low with fruit.
“I think those are apples.” Clare said.
“I thought apples were red.”
“They can be different colors, I think. And besides, they have some red on them.”
Dante’s stomach growled. “I’m getting one,” he declared.
Clare gripped his arm.
“It’s okay. Have you seen anyone except the cat?”
“But it’s their back yard, Dant.”
“They’re not home,” he argued. He broke loose and scrambled down the steps. Most of the apples were out of reach, but a few lay on the ground. Dante picked one up and dusted it off. His experience with real food had been so minimal, he wasn’t exactly sure what to do. Would it need sliced, like a melon? His knife was in his pack. It did seem rather hard. Dante recalled Ana’s story about the peach and biting into it. He decided to give it a try. After all, hadn’t he heard stories involving apples? Weren’t the people in the old fairy tales always getting into trouble biting into apples? He lifted the apple up to his mouth, a hint of fruity fragrance teasing his nostrils. He bit.
Crunch. It was crispy and loud. Juice sprayed at all angles. Sweet, tart, and flavors he couldn’t describe, hit him all at once. He chewed the bite and swallowed.
“Wow!” he called out. He voraciously bit again and again. He picked up two more from the ground and jumped to pick another from the tree. Clare watched nervously, urging him back to their hiding spot. At last, loaded with apples, Dante returned.
“What’s the matter with you? What if someone saw you?”
He ignored her, instead pushing the reddest apple into her hand. “Eat this. It’s like nothing you’ve ever tasted.”
Her bite sent the sticky spray flying at Dante. He laughed.
“Great, huh? It’s worth it, Clare.”
Clare knew he meant more than the juicy sweetness of the apple. She knew he meant their association with Ana, their loss of home, the hardship they had endured. She knew as she tasted the forbidden fruit, that he meant it would all be worth it if they could bring back real food to the people.
35
SUMMER SUNSHINE
The children devoured apples until their stomachs could hold no more. They found a water spigot and filled their bottles. They reviewed the notes they’d taken and consulted their maps.
“When it is very dark,” Clare said, “we’ll head out of the village. We’ll go cross-country from here on out. No streets. There’s a lot of farmland and wooded areas. That way’s north,” she said pointing. “We’ll try to keep situated in the right direction. Eventually we will cross over. They can’t possibly be watching everywhere.” Although she didn’t know if this were true, she knew it was better to convey a strong plan. Her brother nodded in agreement.
Unable to sleep, the children retrieved the well-worn deck of cards and played to pass the time. After that, they napped away a few more hours. When the darkness began to hint its arrival, the children repacked their things, held hands, and prayed together. Clare took out the Bible and selected some favorite passages to read: Psalm 23 and Proverbs 3: 5-6.
“ . . . and He will make your paths straight,” she ended, finishing with a short prayer.
“And bless Mama, and Lily, and Ana,” Dante added.
Accomplished now, at seeing in the dark, the children crept down the stairs without their lights. As flexible as mice, they squeezed through the shrubs into a neighbor’s yard, and then down an alley. It didn’t take long to reach a field of sharp, stubbly straw left from the harvest. They hopped on their bikes and pedaled west.
Once away from the village, they returned to their northern trek. The farmland was a bumpy ride, but they kept going, sometimes jumping off and walking. The houses and barns they passed were relatively quiet, but whenever they saw machines doing night work, they steered clear.
Always they hope
d to see signs of friends. And always Clare wondered if they had arrived at the border, and how or if they would know.
Up ahead, a growing darkness loomed in the sometimes moonlit night. A forest stretched from east to west seemingly without beginning or end. The children stopped and stood, staring. They had never seen so many trees.
“The border has to be in there,” Clare said. She looked at her brother. “We’re going in.”
“I’m not afraid,” he replied. “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.”
Inside the shadowland of trees, the children flicked on their headlamps. They were walking their bikes now, though the woods were not as thick as they had seemed from the outside. Every twig that snapped under their feet was too loud in the penetrating stillness of the night. Their noisiness in the quiet forest amplified their sense of distress.
They had walked for close to an hour when Clare stopped. “Look,” she said. “Do you see it?”
Up ahead stretched a twenty-foot wide strip clear of all trees and brush. “That must be it. The border.”
Both children stood and stared, not moving a muscle. They would be out in the open, exposed for anyone who might be watching. All of the movie scenes of booby traps, alarms, and men with guns flooded their minds.
“It’s not really that big,” Clare said, seeking to give herself and her brother courage.
“It’s not lit up,” added Dante.
They turned off their headlamps. Dante whispered, “But what if there is something in the ground, like a motion detector or a weight sensor? And how far do we need to get on the other side to escape if we do set something off?”
They stood for awhile, silently pondering these questions, and praying without realizing or giving voice to it.
“Should we take our bikes?” Clare asked. “Or would we be better off on foot?”
“The bikes are faster.”
Nodding, Clare took a deep breath and let it out again. They did the sign of the cross, hopped on their bikes, and pedaled for all they were worth. Just at the midpoint of the shorn wilderness, sirens sounded.
“Ride!” shouted Dante, adrenaline coursing through his young body.
The blaring of the alarm became a resounding heartbeat in Clare’s head. They kept pedaling, trying to get as far away as possible, imagining the blue flashing lights of the border patrol piercing the darkness around them at any moment.
But the lights never came, and the sirens faded in the distance as the children kept riding. Neither child spoke. Both had turned on their flashlights to light the way in front lest the turf change abruptly, causing them to crash.
The trees grew less tall as they continued on, and a nearly full moon shone down, sometimes obscured by clouds, but other times threatening to expose them. Overly focused on the way in front of them, and panicked, the children had not noticed the gradual change in their surroundings. What had been a forest had melded into more manicured trees. It was only now, as the moon cast its glow and the alarm was faint, that the children’s hearts calmed and they noticed how smooth the ground was, how the trees were evenly spaced. They held their lights up and out, less afraid, and curious of their surroundings.
Both children hit the brakes. Straddling their bikes in the moonlight, they slowly panned all the way around with their flashlights. They couldn’t believe their eyes. From every tree hung beautiful apples. A few trees of one color and then some of another. Red, yellow, green.
“An apple forest,” breathed Dante.
Clare laughed. “I don’t think that’s what you call it,” she said. “But, yeah, when did this happen?”
Dante approached a tree hanging full of crimson-colored fruit. He tugged on an apple, but it held tightly to the branch.
A fluty voice cut through the night. “You need to lift up on it.”
Dante pulled back, as if bitten by a snake. Clare turned off her light, and looked toward the voice. A girl not much older than they, stepped out from behind a tree. She wore denim bib overalls. Her brown hair, knitted in two long braids, danced as she loped toward them. A red baseball cap was pulled snugly over her bangs.
“I’m Firefly,” she said. “Welcome to Canada.”
“But—how—who are you?” Clare stammered.
“I just told you, I’m Firefly. We’ve been expecting you.” She saw the look of fear Clare and Dante exchanged. “Don’t worry, I’m a friend. I know where Amber Jenson lives, if that helps,” she said, tossing her head. “Follow me.”
The children obeyed. Firefly jumped into a small green vehicle. “Hop in. We can get the bikes later.” In a moment, they were speeding through the trees in the darkness, Firefly at the wheel. Their astonishment rendered them silent beyond even a whisper. The vehicle stopped in front of a large, white farmhouse.
“Come on,” Firefly called, already striding across a grassy lawn toward the house.
The children followed Firefly inside, a screen door slamming shut behind them.
“Got ‘em!” She announced loudly to no one in particular.
A pleasant-looking woman in a night gown appeared. “You found them?” she asked, smiling.
“Wasn’t so hard,” Firefly said. “But they were pretty quiet and kept their lights down at first.”
The children were told to sit and served real food without being asked. They weren’t sure what everything was, but they ate it gladly.
It was explained to them that Firefly’s family, like many families on the border, were friends of the Seed Savers Movement and had been alerted of two children on the run. When border sensors near their farm tripped, family members had gone out to look for them. It was a familiar drill.
Dante was about to ask more about the sensor when he noticed Firefly lift something from a bowl on the counter. He was sure it wasn’t an apple. It was very round. She rubbed the red and yellow ball on her shirt.
She saw him staring. “Helps with the fuzz.”
Firefly raised the fruit to her mouth and bit. Bright yellow flesh confirmed that it was not an apple. Juice dribbled down her chin.
“Firefly,” her mother chastised, “eat that over the sink.”
“Excuse me,” Clare finally put into words what they both were thinking, “is that a—a peach?”
“Yeah, good one, too,” Firefly said with her mouth full. “Want one?” She set the bowl in front of them.
Gently, Clare and Dante reached out their hands to grasp the tender and fuzzy fruit.
“So soft!” exclaimed Clare.
“You might want to peel it,” Firefly’s mother said. “Not everyone eats them like Firefly.”
“No, it’s okay, I’ll try it with the skin on. A friend once told me about peaches.”
Clare closed her eyes and thought of Ana.
“We made it, Ana,” she whispered, taking her first bite of summer sunshine.
End of Book One
Coming Next in the
SEED SAVERS SERIES
Lily Gardener, the friend left behind in Seed Savers: Treasure, has her own book! Find out what happens to Lily and Ana in Book 2 of the Seed Savers series, Seed Savers: Lily.
Read the first chapter now and then order your book today!
1
MISSING!
My name is Lily. When I first heard Clare and Dante were missing and presumed runaway, I couldn’t believe it. Clare is my best friend, after all, and her brother Dante like the brother I never had. Hadn’t I just seen them? Didn’t I see them practically every day of my life? They weren’t the kind of kids who run away.
When I learned the rest of the story, the pieces started falling into place. Clare’s mom had been arrested on charges of illegal plant possession. It was only one plant—a tomato—but it was highly illegal. And I knew something the local cops didn’t know. I knew the tomato plant belonged to Clare, Dante, and me. I knew we were the ones involved in the unlawful activities of seed saving and growing food. I knew our
friend Ana, the senior citizen who was our mentor, had recently disappeared.
A simple runaway case? Definitely not. Clare and Dante ran to save their mother. They ran to save the seeds. They ran to save the future and the present, and something of the past.
It was my mom who first told me about Clare and Dante’s disappearance. Actually, it was more like an interrogation, only gentler, because it was Ma. She asked me all sorts of questions starting with when did you last see either of them and ending with no one had seen the siblings in twenty-four hours. Apparently the cops had visited our place because Clare and I were friends. The homes of all friends and classmates had been checked.
That’s the story the police gave Ma, anyway. As I would find out later, those same cops had jailed Mrs. James earlier in the day. All Ma knew was that my best friends in the whole world were missing and she wanted to make sure I wasn’t harboring important information. The police assured Ma it looked like a runaway case rather than an abduction—their bikes and backpacks were gone—so at least Ma wasn’t freaking out that I might get kidnapped.
The fact was, I hadn’t seen Clare and Dante since Sunday. It was summer break so there wasn’t the daily interaction of school. Besides that, Clare and Dante were attending tech day camp. I was not.
After Ma questioned me, I tried to remember our last conversation. Were Clare and Dante having family troubles that would cause them to leave? I couldn’t believe they would act so drastically. I would know if something was up, wouldn’t I? My only conclusion was that Clare and Dante were forced to leave, or left in a hurry unable to tell me.
As soon as I got the chance, I rode my bike to Clare and Dante’s apartment. Yellow police tape surrounded the cement stoop where we had often sat talking and conspiring. The door to the flat hung open. Empty. I wondered where their mother was.
Something’s not right. I rode out of sight and watched from across the street behind a parked truck. That’s when I saw him with the local police, a man from GRIM, the Green Resource Investigation Machine. A federal enforcer of all things plant and food related.
