Page 62 of Jace

“But when the man with the water wheel came, we knew there would be trouble,” Zara said. “And then your land was being cleared.”

“I can’t imagine seeing someone take those trees down,” Susannah said softly. “I don’t like the idea.”

“We know,” Zara replied. “We’ve been keeping an eye on you. At first, it was only because we felt sorry for you, with the baby, and not knowing how to gather food and supplies.”

“You left us berries and game,” Jace chimed in.

Zara nodded.

“Thank you,” Susannah said.

“Today, we heard you while you were in the forest,” Zara said. “We heard you say you owe a debt to nature, and that you want to protect the forest instead of knocking down trees.”

Susannah’s heart pounded as she recalled the emotion.

“You sounded like one of us,” Zara said meaningfully, stopping to meet Susannah’s eyes. “Did you mean it?”

“Of course,” she said. “Now more than ever, because I know the land can’t really belong to me or to Zeke when your community already lives here and cares for it.”

Zara smiled, her eyes crinkling at the corners.

“That’s what I told them you would say,” she said. “It’s the only reason they agreed to let you see us.”

“Thank you for that,” Susannah said.

“But this other man,” Zara said, her smile disappearing. “He won’t be scared off by ghost stories. His big machines do not know fear. He wants to tear the forest on his land apart, and he will not stop until he has destroyed the whole mountain, so says our elder.”

Susannah nodded, thinking about what it had been like watching the house next door be torn down as a child. That had been nothing compared to this. What could the community do if their home was leveled?

“We are a peaceful people, Susannah,” Zara said seriously. “And we have no means to fight the weapons that could raze a mountain. Even if you choose to preserve your part of the forest, this man will hack away at the valley and the hillside in ways we might not survive.”

“Look,” Jace said, pointing.

Susannah looked up to see a waterwheel ahead of them.

“We’ll go quietly from here on in,” Zara said.

They all nodded to each other and began moving again.

Zara’s footsteps were silent, and Jace made hardly a sound at all.

Only Susannah struggled to walk quietly. This was obviously a skill she needed to work on, but she was unlikely to master it today.

No one seemed to be bothered by the sounds she made, and she was relieved. She wanted to be a part of solving this problem, not stuck behind because she wasn’t quiet enough.

After a few more minutes of careful travel through the trees, a red shed came into view between the green leaves.

But it was dwarfed by the gigantic machine beside it.

The terraforming behemoth was the size of a shuttle craft, but reminded Susannah of some kind of giant crab. The massive treads were nearly as tall as the trees. Extending from each side of the beast was a huge metal arm with a gigantic claw, made to feed anything they gripped into the gaping maw of the machine, where it would be torn to shreds.

And on the face plate in the middle were the words spelling out the most sinister thing of all.

The letters had to be painted on in distorted shapes in order to be read clearly from so far below.

* * *

Beck Terraforming Consortium

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