groups. Adela Ortiz, who first thought that she would join Travis, Natividad, and the Moras, decided in the end to stay with Lucio Figueroa and his sister. I’m not sure how she and Lucio wound up in each other’s arms the night before, but I think now that Adela may be looking for a permanent relationship with Lucio. He’s much older than she is, and I think she hopes he’ll want her and want to take care of her. But Adela is pregnant too. She’s not showing yet, but according to what she’s told me, she believes she’s at least two months pregnant.
Also, Lucio is still carrying Teresa Lin around with him. Her death and the way she died has made him very, very quiet—kind, but distant. He wasn’t like that back in Acorn. His own wife and children were killed before he met us. He had invested all his time and energy in helping his sister with her children. He had only begun to reach out again when Teresa joined us. Now…now perhaps he’s decided that it hurts too much to begin to care for someone, then lose her.
It does hurt. It’s terrible. I know that. But I know Adela, too. She needs to be needed. I remember she hated being pregnant the first time, hated the men who had gang-raped her. But she loved taking care of her baby. She was an attentive, loving mother, and she was happy. What’s in store for her now, I don’t know.
And yet in spite of my fears for my friends, my people, in spite of my longing to hold together a community that must divide, all this was easier than I had thought it would be—easier than I thought it could be. We’d all worked so well together for six years, and we’d endured so much as slaves. Now we were dividing ourselves, deciding how to go our separate ways. I don’t mean that it was easy—just that it wasn’t as hard as I expected. God is Change. I’ve taught that for six years. It’s true, and I suppose it’s paved the way for us now. Earthseed prepares you to live in the world that is and try to shape the world that you want. But none of it is really easy.
We spent the rest of the day going around to the other caches and parceling out the supplies we’d left in them and gathering the other sets of children’s hand and foot prints. Then we had one more night together. Once we had gone to all the caches—one had been raided, but the rest were intact—we spent the night in another shallow cave. It was raining again, and cold. That was good because it would make tracking us pretty much impossible. On that last night, when we’d eaten, we dropped off quickly to sleep. We’d been tramping through the mountains all day, carrying packs that got heavier with each stop, and we were tired. But the next morning before we parted, we held a final Gathering. We sang Earthseed verses, to the tunes that Gray Mora and Travis had written. We Remembered our dead, including our dead Acorn. Each of us spoke of it, Remembering.
“You are Earthseed,” I said to them, at last. “You always will be. I love you. I love you all.” I stopped for a moment, struggling to hold on to what was left of my self-control.
Somehow, I went on. “Not everyone in this country stands with Andrew Jarret,” I said. “We know that. Jarret will pass, and we will still be here. We know more about survival than most people. The proof is that we have survived. We have tools that other people don’t have, and that they need. The time will come again when we can share what we know.” I paused, swallowed. “Stay well,” I told them. “Take care of one another.”
We agreed to visit the newly designated Humboldt Redwoods information drop every month or two for a year—at least that long. We agreed that it was best that each group not know yet where the other groups were going—so that if one group was caught, it couldn’t be forced to betray the others. We agreed it was best not to live in the Eureka and Arcata area because that’s where most of our jailers lived, both the dead ones and the off-shift ones who were still alive. Each city was home to a big Christian American church and several affiliated organizations. We might