Author : TJMoore

We are the children of Earth; or so my great grand daddy tells me. He wasn’t on the ship but he says his great grand daddy was. I don’t know where Earth is or why it’s important, but that’s what they tell me.

The seed ship memorial is all we have left of our past. The ship itself has been scavenged down to the last piece of wire. My bedroom window came from the ship, or so they tell me. Now we make our own glass and metal. My uncle Joseth is a metalsmith. He gets metal bars from a shire far to the east and uses them to make all kinds of things. I have to go see him today to order a new axle for our wagon. He says I’d make a good apprentice if I keep my schooling up. It’s hard to study with all the chores to be done.

Uncle Joseth would have apprenticed his own son Michael but he was taken two summers ago along with Mrs. Abernathy and the the Johnson girls. Poppa says it isn’t natural the way people get taken but it happens all the time. Last year near thirty people were taken between harvest and Landing Day. One of them was my friend Smitty.

I sure hope we get that axle soon. Poppa says if we get the crops in on time we can travel over to Myersville which is near the edge. I’ve never seen the edge but they say it takes your breath away. I can’t imagine a cliff so high you can’t see the bottom but that’s what they say it is. Momma says the edge goes clear around the world and if you start walking along it you’ll end up right back where you started from in a few years. I sometimes wonder what’s beyond the edge. Poppa says there’s prob’ly an ocean that covers the whole rest of the world. Nobody’s ever come back from the bottom so we don’t know for sure.

I wonder what it’s like to be taken. I hope Smitty’s all right where ever he is.