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 col­lected, 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 reli­gious 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 un­likely 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.' All that we could not take with us, all that the other inmates had not taken or destroyed, we burned. The buildings might not burn to the ground because the rain had soaked every­thing, but they would be gutted and unsafe. The furniture that we had built or salvaged would burn. The hated flesh would burn.

So, once more, we watched our homes burn. We went into the hills, separating from the last of the other inmates, who went their own ways back to the highway or wherever else they might want to go. From the hills, for a time, we watched. Most of us had seen our homes burn before, but we had not been the ones to set the fires. This time, though, it's too late for fire to be the destroyer that we remembered. The things that we had created and loved had already been destroyed. This time, the fires only cleansed.

 

Chapter 15

? ? ?

From EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING

We have lived before.

We will live again.

We will be silk,

Stone,

Mind,

Star.

We will be scattered,

Gathered,

Molded,

Probed.

We will live

And we will serve life.

We will shape God

And God will shape us

Again,

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