Sentience, page 36
part #1 of Farm Land Series
Hear me! my voice shouted to the flesh-eaters, thundering about the earth as though it were the voice of the gods. Your town is taken, your rule is done. If you wish to live, get on a boat and leave. Any who wish to stay under our rule, surrender to my soldiers. Any who fight us, will die.
A riotous din of cheering and screaming rose up through the dark, burning town. As flesh-eaters ran, toppling each other, running over one another as they tripped in the streets, my army marched on relentlessly.
As dawn broke over the skies, I stood within the mind of the Farmers as we watched flesh-eaters scramble onto boats. In the light wind of the early morning, townspeople crowded onto the packed ships and set their sails into the oceans.
I looked back at the burning town. Captives were flowing from within it, walking out into the grey light, blinking, their hands gripping weapons as they shouted, jeering at fleeing flesh-eaters. To one side, flesh-eaters, unable to gain a place on a boat, stood looking wan and terrified. We would have to find a place to store those people until we could send them off to join their friends.
I would not kill captives. We would not be to them as they had been to us.
My army started to herd the people into the shade of the forest as I slid back into my body, my mind almost blank with exhaustion. As I slumped into my own form, I felt strong arms pull me from the saddle which had held me safe through the battle. Here and there, I could feel bruises and cuts, but otherwise I was unscathed.
Yet I was weak, feeble. Being joined to the minds of the Farmers had been an experience like no other, but my mind was not as strong as Mother’s. Humans were not made for that kind of power.
As I fell gratefully into the arms which held me, I looked up and smiled. “I have missed seeing you with my own eyes,” I said to the blackened face before me. His blond hair was stained with blood, his face cut and bruised, but I had never looked on a more welcome, nor so wonderful sight.
“I have missed you,” said Skye. “Never will I let go of you again.”
He lowered his lips to mine and kissed me. His hands slid from my side to my stomach. Suddenly he stopped, broke from our kiss and stared, first at my belly, then at my eyes.
“You are going to be a father,” I said.
Chapter Sixty-Four
Aftermath
The fires were extinguished.
Although I could think of no more fitting an end to the town of the flesh-eaters than to burn it to the ground, we needed buildings to house the people we had freed, and hold those we had taken prisoner.
Groups of those who had surrendered and those we had taken captive were gathered in those buildings, guarded by freed humans and allied Farmers. There was much to be decided of their fate, but I would not let my people take their lives. We had won the battle. There was no need to become the monsters we had feared.
The only exception was Luke, but no one knew what had become of him. Whether he had found a ship to take him from the wrath of my army, or whether he lay, one of the many dead in the streets, I didn’t know. He had not been found. I could not take my revenge.
But I was going to.
However much it went against all Bracken had taught me, and no matter that she would have disapproved, I would take revenge on him. Luke did not deserve life. He was cold, cruel, and heartless. The world would be a better place without him.
In time, when I was strong again, I would find him. For now, there was much to be done.
I stood in one of the tall towers at the wall, perhaps the one part of it not crushed and burned. I was still weak. Days had passed since the battle, but my strength was slow to return. From the open window, I could see ships bobbing across the oceans, carrying the displaced and fleeing people of the town. I could not imagine it would be a peaceful or pleasant journey, but I couldn’t find it in myself to feel bad for them.
Freed captives walked these streets now. But even in the first few days after the battle, we had seen a vast difference between each of them.
I think it depended on the length of their imprisonment, or the harshness of their captivity. Some walked out boldly, shouting, greeting people in the streets. Families reunited, embraced and wept with laughter.
But some ex-captives huddled together in darkness, slowly rocking backwards and forwards, unable to talk, flinching from the touch of others.
Some of our people, too, were broken. Frond, Thorn’s daughter, had lost her mother, father and brother. All she had left was her aunt, Leaf, who kept her close. But Leaf was worried about her. Frond had retreated into herself, and much like Bay, refused to speak. Burdock had been told Eryngo was dead, and he had taken himself away, unable to face anyone with sorrow raging in his heart. Tansy, another of my village, had seen her mate, Sage, murdered before her eyes. He had been brought, dead, to the town. Tansy roamed the streets, trying to find his body so she could take him to the earth and bury him. She had not found him, but every day she went out, looking for him, her hand pressed to the swelling of their child in her belly, the only thing she had left of him.
It would take time, Skye said, time for those who were deeply troubled to emerge from the blackness of their thoughts. I wondered whether time was all it would take. We had wanted to save them all, but perhaps not all could be saved.
Skye was quieter even than before. I could feel his loss as keenly as mine; a void in his soul. Thorn was in his thoughts a great deal, in images of the two men laughing, talking, or merely sitting together on long, dusky afternoons, knapping flint or brewing lea. Bracken, he tried not to think of, but she was there in him as she was in me. Her presence in death was as powerful as it had been in life. Dead she might be, but she remained, her gentle touch and guiding spirit upon our hands and in our minds.
We were all broken, but we held fast to one another. That was the only way we might become whole; by stitching the fractured and torn remains of our hearts and souls together, to make one person.
Farmers patrolled the town, putting out fires, helping to build shelters. They brought food from the forest to feed the people. Some of those freed were nervous around them, but we could hardly blame them. This was a new world. There was a lot to get used to.
As I walked amongst the freed people, introduced as the leader of the rebellion, I saw them look at me with fear or devotion, sometimes both. I told them my story, told them of where I was born and how we had lived. I told them what had come to pass since I was freed, and they told me their own stories… Stories of places beyond the one we knew; stories of ravaged, barren lands where nothing grew but dust; stories of people fighting to survive, and being taken by flesh-eaters.
There were worlds outside of this one, lands I had never imagined. There were other places where people lived, where hands made food grow from the earth.
Where it was we had sent the flesh-eaters, and what would happen to them, I did not know. I didn’t care as long as long they never came back. We would make a new world from the ravaged remains of this one. We would see the dream of my people govern the world we had made.
All life is sacred, Bracken had told me, and that included our lives, our right to live. Unlike the flesh-eaters, we would not live by consuming death.
There was much to work out, much to do, but two truths I knew.
Life is sacred.
And it is worth fighting for.
Epilogue
Reacher
“Another fight?” I asked as two men were dumped without ceremony at my feet in the tower.
Skye nodded. “Each wanted the same house,” he said grimly.
I sighed. Since we had taken the town, it seemed my days were becoming filled with sorting out disputes and silly, petty fights. Perhaps I hadn’t realized how much Bracken had dealt with in her time as leader. She had kept order so easily, so gracefully. I wondered if I would ever measure up to her.
I put a hand to my belly. My child was growing heavier. At night, when we lay together, Skye rubbed my back, easing the pain that the extra weight brought. I longed for that time to be now; to be taken from the turmoil of the world by the peace of his arms.
What would you have done, Bracken? I asked the ghost of my friend. I seemed to feel her keenly, even after death, as though she was still here. Bracken had always taken her responsibility seriously. Perhaps she, much like the past leaders of the village, had decided to guide me, and if she could not do so as a living being, floated instead at my side as a ghost.
I understood why Hathor had kept her people alive in her head. I was not willing to let go of Bracken.
Sometimes I did not know if my decisions were mine, or Bracken’s. Either way, I didn’t mind. I wanted to keep her. This new role was strange to me. It was odd to find people looking at me each time something needed to be decided. They all thought me wise, strong and courageous, but often I felt none of those things.
I wasn’t ready for this. Bracken had known that. She had intended to stay with me, train me, help me. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be, but each time that thought reared in my head, I heard Bracken’s voice, echoing from the past to my present. “We are never really ready for the coming of great change,” she had said on the day I had discovered I was a Reacher. “We can only work hard, and hope for the best.”
That was what I intended to do, work hard, prepare, hope for a better future. But the position of a leader came with aspects I had hardly considered. Finally, I understood the loneliness Bracken had lived with. I was fortunate in my friends, but now I would always stand alone, in many ways; separated from those I loved by my position as leader.
“The house will be given to another,” I said. “Not to either of you. When you work out that peaceful means will get you more rewards than resorting to squabbling, you will be given a house.” I shook my head and waved a hand as my guard ushered them out.
“They grow more fractious every day,” I said to Hathor. She sat, lolling a leg against the window seat as she chewed on a piece of tatoe, looking down at Seraphina who seemed to have been adopted by children from my village. The spider left the confines of the town only to hunt in the forests. She had lost the impulse to see humans as a food source. She had become one of the people.
Not all of the freed people looked on her with the same eyes as the children. But like their reservations about the Farmers, all things would take time to settle and become normal. The people of my village had taken time to explain our union with the Farmers, and although some of the freed people listened with wonder, others scowled in confusion.
There was a lot for everyone to learn. We were now one people, but made of many tribes. Some of those transported here had come from far off lands; they had never seen insects or arachnids, as they called our spider friend, as large as Seraphina and the Farmers. Some came from races that killed and ate creatures like our friends. We had freed their bodies, but we now had to free their minds. If they were to live with us, we told them, they would live by the rules of my people. The plants of the earth, her beans, leaves, flowers and fruits were our foods now. We could teach them how to live without having to murder another sentient being.
It is a simple thing in the end, to liberate a person’s body from a cage. It is a harder thing to free their minds.
We had much to do, so many stories to tell, so much building to finish. But before all of that, there was yet still more destruction to undertake before this dream of a new free world would become true.
I sighed and Hathor smiled at me. “There’s going to have to be some building,” she said. “This town won’t hold everyone that’s in here without something being done. That’s why they’re fighting. They all want to secure a piece of the earth as their own. It’s only natural.” She shook her head. “My people’s offer stands,” she said. “They said they will give their home to some of those here.”
I shook my head. “Not yet,” I said. “I can’t send people off into the wilderness until we know who will lead them, protect them and guide them. And not until I know how many other flesh-eaters there are on this island.”
I stopped talking as I thought of Frances. I had asked that she be brought to me. I owed that child my life, and it was fitting that if she still lived, I should protect her. But, like Luke, there was no sign of her. The houses at the edge of the town had not been attacked by my army, but her house was empty. The Farmers thought that she and her family had fled into the forest. I wanted to find her. I was responsible for her. I had killed her father.
“There’s one obvious group left,” said Skye as he walked back into the room, “the Factory. There are many of our people within it, and it is guarded by many flesh-eaters.”
I nodded, stretching my back as I rose. “I know,” I said, looking out of the window. “This island is not ours yet. We must deal with the Factory, free the people there. Then we will be able to begin to build our world.”
Hathor handed a raw slice of tatoe to Leaf who took it and munched on it eagerly as she looked up at me. “Ash and Bracken,” she said softly, her voice throbbing with sorrow, “Thorn… all who have died, they would not want us to risk more than we have to. We have the town now, why not just live here?”
I shook my head. “The town is not enough, Leaf,” I said. “We must take the Factory. Can you live knowing flesh-eaters are breeding our kind and shipping them out to be eaten? Could you live with yourself if you knew that you could do something to stop that?” I shuddered. “I could not,” I said.
“Your mother might still be there,” said Hathor softly.
“That is not the reason I want to take it,” I said grimly. “It is a place of evil. It feeds evil. We cannot stop here and think we will be safe. If we do not take the whole island, we will never be free. We need borders, not just walls. When we have the island, we can think about where and how we will live.”
I stared out of the window. “The fight is not over,” I said. “Nor will it be until this island is freed of the evil of the flesh-eaters.”
As I stood looking out at the sea, my hand on my belly, I suddenly felt a strange motion. I gasped as my baby moved beneath my heart.
Skye touched my stomach, feeling our child kicking against his palm. He smiled at me. “She’s a fighter,” he said proudly. “Like her mother.”
“Like her father,” I replied.
I smiled at him and as I did, a strange, small voice that I had never heard before entered my mind without resistance.
Mother, it said.
It was the voice of my child.
She was a Reacher.
Here ends Farm Land: Sentience.
In the next book in this series, Farm Land: Intelligence, Holt and her people will fight to free the island of the remnants of the flesh-eaters.
Thank You
…to so many people for helping me make this book possible… to my proof reader, Julia Gibbs, who gave me her time, her wonderful guidance and also her encouragement. To my partner Matthew. To my family for their ongoing love and support. To Matthew’s family, for their support, and for the extended family I have found myself welcomed to within them. To all my wonderful readers, who took a chance on an unknown author, and have followed my career and books since. To those who have left reviews or contacted me by email or Twitter, I give great thanks, as you have shown support for my career as an author, and enabled me to continue writing. Thank you for allowing me to live my dream.
And lastly, to the people of Wattpad who read this book and supported it in first draft form many years ago, and to my friend Rachel, my sister Shani and her husband Dan, who all told me to polish up this book and publish it, because they enjoyed it so much.
Thank you to all of you; you’ll never know how much you’ve helped me, but I know what I owe to you.
Gemma Lawrence
2018
About The Author
I find people talking about themselves in the third person to be entirely unsettling, so, since this section is written by me, I will use my own voice rather than try to make you believe that another person is writing about me to make me sound terribly important.
I am an independent author, publishing my books by myself, with the help of my lovely proof reader. I left my day job in 2016 and am now a fully-fledged, full time author, and very proud to be so.
The majority of my books are historical fiction, and this is my first published jaunt into fantasy. I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope you will read more of my books. I want to divert you as readers, to please you with my writing and to have you join me on these adventures.
A book is nothing without a reader.
As to the rest of me; I am in my thirties and live in Cornwall with a rescued dog, a rescued cat and my partner (who wasn’t rescued). I studied Literature at University after I fell in love with books as a small child. When I was little I could often be found nestled halfway up the stairs with a pile of books in my lap and my head lost in another world. There is nothing more satisfying to me than finding a new book I adore, to place next to the multitudes I own and love… and nothing more disappointing to me to find a book I am willing to never open again. I do hope that this book was not a disappointment to you; I loved writing it and I hope that showed through the pages.
