Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler

Author:Octavia Butler [Butler, Octavia]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2010-12-21T10:36:43.404000+00:00

In order to rise From its own ashes A phoenix

First Must Burn.

It was an apt Earthseed verse, but not a comforting one. The problem with Earthseed has always been that it isn't a very comforting belief system.

"Let's take one last look through the houses," I said. "We need to look for evidence of what they've done with our children. That's the most important thing we can do next: find the children."

I left Michael and Travis to guard the goods we had col•lected, and the rest of us went in groups to search the ruins of the houses.

But we found nothing that related to the children. There was money hidden here and there around the cabins, missed by the marauding inmates. There were piles of reli•gious tracts, Bibles, lists of "inmates" brought from Garberville,

Eureka, Arcata, Trinidad, and other nearby towns. There was a plan for spring planting, a few books written by President Jarret, or by some ghostwriter. There were personal papers, but nothing about our children, and no addresses. None. Nothing. This could only be deliberate. They feared being found out. Was it us they feared, or someone else?

We searched until almost midday. Then we knew we had to go, too. The roads were mud and water, and it was un•likely that anyone would try to drive up today, but we needed to get a good start. In particular, I wanted to go to our secret caches where we had not only the necessities but copies of records, journals, and in two places, the hand and foot prints of some of our children. Bankole took hand and foot prints of every child he delivered. He labeled them, gave a copy to the parents, and kept a copy. I had distributed these copies among two of our caches—the two that only a few of us knew about. I don't know whether the prints will help us

get our children back. When I let myself think about it, I have to admit that I don't know even whether our children are

alive. I only know that now I have to get to those two caches. They are back in the mountains toward the sea, not toward

the road. We can disappear in that country. There are places there where we can shelter and decide what to do. It's one thing to say that we must find our children, and another to figure out how to do that, how to begin.

Who to trust?

************************************

We burned Acorn. No. No, we burned Camp Christian. We burned Camp Christian so that it couldn't be used as Camp Christian anymore. If Christian America still wants the land it stole from us, it will have some serious rebuilding to do. We spread lamp oil and diesel fuel inside the cabins that we built

from the trees we cut and the stone and concrete we hauled. We spread oil in the school Grayson Mora had designed and we had all worked so hard to build and make beautiful. We spread it on the bodies of our "teachers.

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