Parable of the Talents - Octavia E Butler Page 0,110

ways.

But we’re not slaves anymore.

I’ve done this: I sent my people away. We survived slavery together, but I didn’t believe that we could survive freedom together. I broke up the Earthseed community and sent its parts in all directions. I believe it was the right thing to do, but I can hardly bear to think about it. Once I’ve written this, perhaps I can begin to heal. I don’t know. All I know now is that I’ve torn a huge hole in myself. I’ve sent away those who mean most to me. They were all I had left, and I know I may not see them ever again.

On Tuesday we escaped from Camp Christian, burning the camp and our keepers as we went. We left behind the bones of our dead and the dream of Acorn as the first Earthseed community. The Sullivans and the Gamas went their own ways. We would not have asked them to leave us, but I was glad they did. We had between us only the money in our caches and the money we had taken from our “teachers.” Since we are all now homeless, jobless, and on foot, that money won’t go far.

I did ask both families who were going to stay with relatives or friends to get whatever information they could about the children, about the legality of the camp, about the existence of other camps. We all must find out what we can. I’ve asked them to leave word with the Holly family. The Hollys were neighbors, more distant than the Sullivans and the Gamas, but neighbors. They were good friends of the Sullivans, and there was no rumor of their having been enslaved. We must be careful not to get them into trouble, but if we are careful, and if we check with them now and then, we can all exchange information.

Problem is, we didn’t dare take any of the phones from Camp Christian. The outsiders took some of them, but we were afraid we could somehow be traced if we used them. We can’t take the chance of being collared again. We might be enslaved for life or executed because we’ve killed good Christian American citizens. The fact that those citizens had stolen our homes, our land, our freedom, and our children just might be overlooked if the citizens were influential enough. We believe it could happen. Look what had already happened! We’re all afraid.

Among ourselves—Earthseed only—we’ve agreed on a place that we can use as a message drop. It’s down near what’s left of Humboldt Redwoods State Park. There any of us can leave information to be read, copied, and acted on by the rest of us. It’s a good place because we all know where it is and because it’s isolated. Getting to it isn’t easy. We don’t dare leave information or meet in groups in some more convenient place near the highway or near local roads, and we need a way of reaching one another without depending on the Hollys. We’ll check with them, but who knows how they’ll feel about us now. We’ll communicate among ourselves by leaving messages at our secret place, and perhaps by meeting there.

But I’m going too fast. We had some time together after leaving Camp Christian.

We walked deeper into the mountains, away from paved roads, south and west to the largest of our caches where we knew there was the cold shelter of a small cave. At the cave, we rested and shared the food that we had brought from Camp Christian. Then we dug out the supplies that we had stored in heavy, heat-sealed plastic sacks and stored there. That gave us all packets of dried foods—fruit, nuts, beans, eggs, and milk—plus blankets and ammunition. Most important, I passed out the infant foot and hand prints that had been stored at this particular cache to the parents present. I gave the Mora girls their younger brothers’ prints and they sat staring at them, each holding one. Both their parents were dead. They have only each other and their little brothers, if they can find them.

“They should be with us!” Doe muttered. “No one has the right to take them from us.”

Adela Ortiz folded her son’s prints and put them inside her shirt. Then she folded her arms in front of her as though cradling a baby. Larkin’s prints and those of Travis and Natividad’s kids were at a different location, but I found the prints of Harry’s kids, Tabia and