Sophie Littlefield - Horizon

The third book in the Aftertime series, 2012

ALL THOSE SHADES of red-candy-apple and cinnamon and carnelian and rust and vermilion and dozens more-people arriving for the party stopped and stared at the paper hearts twirling lazily overhead on their strings. No one had seen anything like it since Before. No one expected to see anything like it again Aftertime.

Except, maybe, for Cass, who dreamed lush banks of scarlet gaillardia, Mister Lincoln roses heavy on glossy-leafed branches, delicate swaying spires of firecracker penstemon. Cass Dollar hoarded hope with characteristic parsimony when she was awake, but since coming to New Eden her dreams were audacious, greedy, lusting for color and scent and life.

Even here, in this stretch of what had once been Central California valley farmland-rarely touched by frost, the sun warming ones face in March and burning in April-even here it was possible to long for spring in February. In her winter garden, homely rows of black-twig seedlings and lumpy rhizomes protruded from the dirt. There was little that was lovely save the pale green throats of kaysev sprouts dotting the fields beyond, skimming the entire southern end of the island with verdant life beyond the few dormant acres in which Cass toiled. At the end of each day she had dirt under her nails, pebbles in her shoes, the sweet-rot smell of compost clinging to her skin and nothing to show for it yet in the fields.

Cass was not the only one who was tired of winter. In fact, the social committees first idea had been a cabin-fever dance, until someone suggested the more upbeat Valentines Day theme. There was romance to be found in New Eden, for some-different than Before, of course. Some kinds of human attraction thrived in an atmosphere of strife and danger. Others waned. Cass couldnt be bothered to care.

It wasnt the first time shed ignored the social committees call for volunteers, though it wasnt like she was swamped with work. The pruning was done. Shed sprayed the citrus with dormant oil shed hand-pressed from kaysev beans, and she covered the thorny branches whenever nighttime temperatures dipped. A second round of lettuces and cabbages and parsnips were planted. Beyond weeding and the eternal blueleaf patrol, there would be little else to do until warmer weather launched the growing season into full swing. So Cass would have had plenty of time to join the other women in turning the public building into a party room, fashioning decorations from bits gathered from all around the islands. Shed declined to help as they set aside ingredients for special dishes and tested out cocktails made with kaysev alcohol, its gingery taste overpowering anything else they tried to mix it with. The committee had even talked the raiding parties into bringing home scrap wood for the past two weeks, enough for a bonfire to burn until the wee hours.

Cass watched them as she walked home across the narrow bamboo bridge from Garden Island, stretching her tired limbs and working the kinks out of her neck, sore from the backbreaking work of checking the kaysev for blueleaf every afternoon. The sun was still high enough to offer some warmth, so theyd thrown open the skylights and French doors to let it in on their party. Once, the building had been the weekend getaway of some tech baron with lowbrow taste, a man who preferred booze cruises and wakeboarding to wine tasting in Napa. Most of the residents of the banks along the farm channels opted for trailers and prefab buildings and listing shacks, so the house stood out for both its size and the quality of its construction. Well before Cass had arrived in New Eden, all the non-load-bearing walls had been removed, opening it up; there were foosball and pool tables, bar stools, leather furniture, a community center of sorts. A clubhouse surrounded by the little town that had sprung up on three contiguous islands wedged in the center of a waterway that had been nameless and unremarkable Before.

It was supposed to be called Pison River now, after one of the four lost rivers that carried water away from Eden in the Bible. But the Methodist minister who had named the river had died in a cirrhotic coma after coughing up black clotted blood. He had the disease long before coming to New Eden, but everyone had taken to calling it the Poison River instead.

Cass slipped just inside, curious about the party preparations despite herself. There was Collette Portescue, with her signature apron and a colorful scarf in her hair. Collette was inexhaustibly cheery, a born organizer, a Sacramento socialite whod found her true calling only after she lost everything.

Cass! Cass, there you are. The womans cultivated voice called to her now, unmistakable in the high registers over the murmurs of the other volunteers and a handful of early guests. Even though shed agreed to this, Casss gut tightened as Collette put a drink cup down and rushed toward her on-Casss eyes widened with astonishment-teetering red satin high heels. Beneath the wrinkled linen of her embroidered apron, Collette wore a tight red jersey dress. Cass glanced around at the others; some of them had made an effort, with hair washed and tied back, even an occasional slash of lipstick or jingling silver bracelet-but February was still February and most people wore layers to stay warm, none of it new and none of it truly clean. It was a testament to Collettes fierce commitment to New Edens social life that she stood before Cass with her arms bare and her hair in home-job pin curls.

Her smile was as splendid as ever-that kind of dental work probably came with an apocalypse-proof guarantee-and her kindness was genuine, only kindness felt like a blade to Casss heart and forced her to turn away, pretending to cough.

Oh, precious, you havent got that bug thats going around, have you? There was a faint note of the South in Collettes voice, a hint of the Miss Georgia crown shed worn four decades ago. The early eighties would have been the perfect era for her-big hair, big parties, big spending. Austerity never seemed like a greater affront than it did where Collette was concerned.

No, maam, just-dust, maybe.

Collette nodded. Tildy and Karen have been up on ladders all afternoon, probably knocked some loose. I should have had them take rags up there with them! But, honey, come with me now, let me show you what I need

Collette dragged her through the milling little crowd of Edenites who held drinks in plastic cups and chatted over the sounds of Luddy Barkava and his friends warming up in the corner. On long tables at the back wall of the public building, where the wealthy entrepreneur had once installed a pair of four-thousand-dollar dishwashers, were the makings of the centerpieces, such as they were: four mismatched vases and bowls and piles of plants that Cass had cut from the winter-blooming garden near the islands shore. There were coral fronds of grevillea, creamy pink-tinged helleborus already dropping petals, tight clusters of tiny skimmia berries. Cass sighed. These were the only flowering plants shed been able to grow this winter. The helleborus seed had been raided from a garden shed; the others plants were returners, species that had disappeared during the biological attacks and the Siege, and only now were starting to show up again.

These plants were never meant for floral arrangements; they were merely the hardiest, the sturdiest, the first to come back Aftertime, fodder for birds and insects, early drafts in the earths bid for return. They were not especially lovely, and it would take skill to make them appear so.