The Hidden Seed

Ice crept up into her boots as she walked, transforming her sweat into needles cutting at her ankles. The world had frozen in a few seasons’ time. Crops failed, and skies dimmed, and the earth hardened into something cold and unrecognizable. She started as a youthful poppy in springtime, but the earth’s violent shift into everlasting winter wilted her to her core. She was fortunate; she made it out alive. Even if the biting cold had stolen all feeling from her skin. She kept walking.

“Not much further, keep digging, girls.”

Hester perked up and strained her head as a swift gust tried to stall her efforts to find the Watch captain’s gaze. Out before her was a small group of what she termed “the leftovers”, young women left to cultivate the land and crops in this sudden and new environment they found themselves in. The rest of the survivors; the few elderly left, the very young, and the men, all stayed underground at all times, kept safe and warm in the earth’s bosom. The sturdier women of the group left daily to salvage something, anything, from this desolate wasteland of ice and snow. They were told it was because of their feminine life-giving gifts and nimble fingers and feet, fit for ice and searching. Hester knew the truth. They were expendable.

June locked eyes with Hester as the cracks of boots and shovels ceased, and the faint hint of green encased in the cryptic ice peeked through ever-so-slightly. With a rough, shivering grasp, Hester scrambled into the earth below the tundra to shake the ice from the green. This was such an improvement in their findings from the past two years.

“Okay, Hester, let’s take this back to the group. Let’s pray Jonny doesn’t throw a fit; it’s only one.”

June was right; Jonny, their group “leader”, would always find something to blame on the girls. The blame especially fell on Hester, and his patience with her was wearing thin, almost as thin as this shoddy plant that surely wouldn’t be able to grow or salvage their makeshift community. Still, this shriveled green mass was more than we had found before; progress.

The walk back to the bunker clawed at Hester’s patience. Anxiety bit at her as she imagined what Jonny was expecting.

She instinctively fell back behind the crowd; June trailed her knowingly.

“Hester, stay behind with me for a moment while the girls go downstairs.”

The heavy iron door creaked, jagged ice scattered as it did every opening, and the girls almost fell down the dark stairs, closing the door with another reel, leaving Hester and June in their wasteland.

“Jonny seems pissed, doesn’t he, June? He is always on my case, why me? Why does he seem to think I am not trying?”

“You know it’s because he kept you in the bunker because of your gardening experience. He didn’t do with you what he did with the others. Just lie low this time; don’t let him see you sweat. We’ve never been this close before. I just wanted to let you know I see you and hear you. We will get through this. Now, let’s get this over with.” June, crunching towards the door, gave a pained smile. Her face seemed frozen in fear, and she forced her cheeks to resemble anything that wasn’t a frown.

“Hester, June, show me what you got!” They heard Jonny before they even got down the steps and into the bunker, before they could even feel themselves beginning to thaw, before they could even knock the veritable abominable out of their boots.

Jonny’s face contorted in front of Hester’s eyes as she held out the shrivelling green thing, the once glorious verdant visage with many siblings and cousins, no doubt. “Our cans, rations, everything we’ve saved and pillaged is next to nothing, and this is what you bring me?!”, snatching the thing from her grip.

“Look around you, Hester, look at these children, look at your teammates. What are we supposed to do?”

Hester started, “I-I know. I thought… this was a nominal improvement? This means something is bubbling under that surface; this means there is a possibility for food! There must be more sprouting.”

“Did you think of finding out for sure?”

Hester stared, unable to speak; he wasn’t really asking for her to answer.

“Then you know what, Hester, how about you go back out there and don’t come back until you can be sure? One less ration to be gobbled up by the ungrateful gardener, huh?” His face twisted with honest rage. She could feel it boiling under his skin; she could almost see his sweat turn crimson.

Jonny’s unfeeling hands gripped her as she heard the fruitless pleas of her bunker mates. Jonny hoisted her up the steps and out the door in less time than she could gather her wits. The lock. He actually bolted the lock.

Stumbling forward in the snow, she knew it was the end, the end of them all, really. Wait, what if she went back to that green and budding space? Could she salvage more, anything to convince Jonny?

Approaching the small patch she could tell there was something wrong in the air, her vision blurred in the storm kicking up, and Hester knew she needed to get to the ground quickly, if anything, for its warmth and the embankment the girls had made from their tireless digging.

The storm howled like air through the neck of a bottle. The wind cut into her and it felt as if it cut through her completely, and she knew. This was it; she was no longer a leftover. Soon she would no longer be anything but another victim of the dying Earth.

A violent storm of ice and wind buffeted her, making her think back to her happiest times, ones that had sealed her identity as a gardener, the summers with her grandparents, and especially the summer before college—the summer before the end of the world.

‘The sun shone in her grandfather’s hair, teased it with its fresh linen-scented warmth, peeked out in golden beams between the silver strands, a priceless combination worth more to her than the real thing. Wrinkled hands and soft dirt covered Hester’s own with their life-giving wisdom. How could she forget the locket? A beautiful golden heart from the very man who stole hers as a child, his gift to her as she embarked on what seemed like the start of a grand adventure as opposed to a grand nightmare.’

Straining, Hester clutched the locket, her last connection to her old life before Earth fell into darkness and turned white. She had never even thought to look in the locket during these two years it had been in her care, not amid the surrounding madness. Fumbling, with fingers that could scarcely be called such, as frozen as they were, she knew this was the last thing she wanted to see. It opened with a slight pop. Engraved was “To my little Poppy”, and, much to her surprise, something rolled out of the locket right into the budding earth next to Hester. She squinted. A single seed. They had spent two years searching for life while Hester unknowingly carried it next to her heart this entire time.

With a moment filled with finality and struggle, Hester pushed the seed into the earth with her palm, lay down, and gave the earth the last of her warmth for its new beginning, still clinging to the locket.