***
Long before they reached the mismatched collection of buildings near the front of the property, Sophie and Adam strolled single-file through the long, straight rows of vegetable fields. Many of the tall summer stalks had taken on the straw-hue of fall, and others fell bent or broken under the weight of their fruits. Some of the fields were already harvested and scrubbed, shortly to be resown with winter crops or destined to lay fallow through the colder months ahead, until the Sun God was reborn again. The air hung heavy with the smell of warm soil one moment, and in the next was made sterile by short blasts of swirling cold. Autumn was present everywhere.
Adam tugged the sleeves of his sweater further down over his wrists to protect himself from the surges of cool air. Sophie walked before him, her willowy frame swaying as she stepped, and Adam bit back the urge to reach out for her hand. Her own thin shirt was sleeveless, but she seemed unaffected by the chill despite the apparent goosebumps that covered her white flesh. Whether she would appreciate his advances was never certain, but he rarely succeeded with her when she was in one of her dazes. And clearly, she was today.
As they approached the inhabited area of the farm, the familiar sounds of neighbors and chickens stole Adam’s attention, at least. Sophie would continue on to the largest of the half-dozen buildings, a brick structure with solar panels stacked side-by-side across the low-pitched roof, while he headed to the main barn to join his older brother Julian in the daily chores.
“Ad?” she called just as they parted ways. “I’m going to talk to…to Wren this morning. Sure you don’t wanna come?”
“I’m sure, Sophie. You have to stop asking me every time.” Only rarely did Adam use this tone with her, but the subject of his sister brought it out in him every time. This was the single point of open contention between the lifelong friends. Wren had made the decision to quit the commune more than a year earlier, but mention of her name was still enough to rile the scorned baby brother she’d left behind. Sophie’s methods of keeping in touch with her old friend didn’t help her case, either; Adam belonged to the sect of the commune that condemned much of modern technology as a misuse of resources and allegiance to the culture that was killing the world. Had she been able to manufacture her own telephone or computer from materials on the farm, they might have accepted her using them—after all, nobody objected to using as much electricity as they could generate themselves. Sophie believed that purchasing such items was no more opposed to commune tenet than buying light bulbs or garden rakes, but her argument had earned her little more than suspicious glares. Adam, like his father and older brother before him, viewed the easy access to outside communication as a threat to their way of life, as well. Still, she didn’t think the aging laptop or ancient looking cell phone she hid in her bedroom would bother him so much if she wasn’t using them to communicate with Wren.
“I’ll never stop asking. She loves you, Adam.”
He grunted in reply.
“I love you, Adam. I wouldn’t risk your anger over this if I didn’t.”
“I know you do. I just…. Never mind. I have things to do, okay.”
Sophie relented. “Okay. Everyone’s meeting at the trailhead at dark…so, I’ll see you then?” His work and hers were not likely to put either of them in the other’s path before it was time to leave for the festival in Wyndback. So many of their own Samhain traditions were similar enough to the townies’ celebration of Halloween that the elders didn’t mind them going, and the festival was one of the most anticipated evenings of the year.
“You got it,” he answered, his voice already sounding less constrained with the topic of Wren dropped and behind them.
“I’ll be the one looking fabulous...at least, I will be if Hollis has his way.”
Adam barked a laugh and watched as Sophie waved and stepped away from him.
Sophie wound her way up to the painted blue back screen door of the house lost in thought. She looked forward to her conversation with Wren and to the festival that evening. This seemed destined to be one of those days that kept her distracted and anxious. Even so, the sight of the black-booted shadow in the woods had unnerved her. It had been months since the last time her mind had played tricks dirty enough to make her see things that weren’t there, and she hoped that she’d finally outgrown the habit. I’ll tell Gram about it tomorrow, she decided as she walked into the house.
Sophie was blasted with the heady aroma of yeast and flour as the door squealed closed behind her. Baking day, she registered silently, and she made a mental note to avoid the kitchen until delivery time. She and Adam had snacked on apples from the orchard row on their way out to the woods, anyway. Instead, she ducked through the back hall and took the pokey stairs up to the second-floor room she shared with her stepbrother. He was there already, sitting on the end of his bed and attacking a worn white garment with a needle and thread.
She laughed. “You look so serious. It’s just a silly costume, Hollis. You know you don’t have to slave over it on my account, right?”
Hollis looked up and contrived his best hurt expression. “It is not just a silly costume! I’ve been working on this one for days…now come here.”
Sophie pursed her lips at the sight of her mother’s old white dress, now drastically altered with bits of silver ribbon and black lace by her stepbrother’s talented hand. She should have known better than to agree to let him try his hand at modernizing the garment. To her, it was no more than a costume to wear to the annual Wyndback Halloween festival—a small-town street party fit for little more than sneaking cups of alcoholic cider and dancing stupidly with strangers—but to Hollis, it was a personal challenge. This was one of the rare nights that the veil between the townies and the commune was lifted, a night that they could step out of their world and into another. On Halloween—or Samhain, as they called it on the farm, the cast-off and rejected commune kids were admired as strange and novel, right along with the other spooks.
There were few opportunities like this for one’s artwork to be appreciated in a community focused wholly on conservation and sustainability. Art was not a priority on the farm.
Sophie stripped down to her camisole and pulled the dress over her head. Much of the hem was still pinned together, so Hollis helped guide her into it without being pricked. When it was on, she reached under the dress to pull down her jeans, kicked them into the corner of the room, then waited patiently as Hollis shifted the fabric into place and went to work with a small box of pins. She watched him as he worked, awed as ever by his agile fingers.
Hollis, her elder by five years, could not have meant more to her if they were blood related. He was one of those rare people born with a natural ability to create beauty from nothing; his talents may have been lost on most of the commune, but never to her. From the moment she and her mother had moved to the farm to join Hollis’s father when she was three years old, Sophie had begged him to make things for her to play with—stacking boxes made from scraps of cardboard and pretty dolls with painted cloth faces—anything to keep her amused. Even in a world largely devoid of frivolity, she played with toys more beautiful than most children could imagine. Fifteen years later, Hollis was still the most amazing brother any girl could ever ask for.
In recent years, more than one resident farmer had raised an eyebrow over the siblings sharing the same room they had in childhood, but the neighbors closest to them seemed to take it in stride. Even now, at the age of twenty-three, Hollis retained the same quiet, childlike nature he always had. Nobody had questioned his decision to stay home instead of leave for college like some of the other commune children did, nor had they raised any concern when he seemed content to leave management of the farm to his stepmother when he turned eighteen and became the legal owner of the entire property. Hollis knew that he lacked the charismatic spark that had made his late father a successful leader of the community, and he benefited from his position of technical authority—he could never devote his life to his art if he w
ere consumed with managerial tasks, but nobody could argue about his contribution to the community so long as he held ownership. Sophie alone knew how well aware he was that he was taking advantage of his fortuitous circumstances.
Besides, anyone who questioned the value of Hollis’s contributions to the commune was blind. Just as he had amused Sophie with her pretty playthings, so had he enriched the lives of the farmers by creating true beauty on the farm. Everything he helped design, from the workings of their water tower to the signs they displayed at the weekly farmers’ market in Wyndback was a testament his genius and whimsy. Not so much as a scarecrow he made could escape compliment; in fact, his work had generated so much interest among the townies that he had begun to sell some of his crafts and paintings along with the vegetables. All for the profit of the farm.
“What are you thinking about?” Hollis mumbled through lips holding three straight pins between them.
“You.”
He glanced up from where he worked at her hem, a pink hue coloring his fair cheeks. Maybe it was just as well that he didn’t receive as much attention for his work as he truly deserved—the embarrassment might have killed him.
“I was just thinking,” she continued, “that you should come with us tonight.”
Hollis put the last pin in place. “You and Adam don’t need me spoiling your fun.”
“It’s not just Adam and me going…it’s everybody. Sam and Kaslyn are coming, and Jenn, and all four of the Arlen kids…and Adam even told me that Julian is coming along this year.”
Hollis paused for a moment but ultimately shook his head and returned to the hem, this time with the needle and thread. “Nope. You and the dress are going to have to represent for me.” He grabbed her ankle to lead her an eighth of a turn to the right.
“You’re infuriating.” Sophie allowed herself to be repositioned, and her eyes landed on the floor-length mirror near the foot of his bed. “Wow, Hollis. You’ve really outdone yourself on this one. It’s too amazing to just be a costume…which reminds me. What exactly am I supposed to be?”
“Oh, you’ll see,” he replied with a chuckle, then shifted her clockwise again.
Sophie glimpsed the time on his wristwatch. “You mind if I call Wren while you do this? She’s expecting me.”
He made a go ahead gesture with a bob of his head and moved his hands away from the dress as she leaned toward her dresser and opened the top drawer. From under a stack of clean underwear, Sophie retrieved a black rectangular phone that was at least a decade past its prime and began scrolling for Wren’s number. When she got to it, she hit a button to put the call on speaker and placed the phone back onto the top of the dresser.
It only rang twice. “Hey, girlie! Cut it a little close, didn’t you? I have to leave for class in ten minutes,” the voice on the other answered just as Hollis resumed hemming Sophie’s costume.
“Sorry, Wren. I’m being attacked by a mad fashionista. You know how it goes.”
The voice launched into musical laugher. “Hiya, Hollis! How’s the dress coming?”
He grinned up toward the phone. “It’s coming together. Don’t say anything else, though—I’m saving a few surprises for later.”
“Ugh. I wish I could make it down for tonight. This is like the one night of the year I really wish I was back home with you guys.”
“You said the same thing about Fourth of July,” Sophie pointed out as she rolled her eyes to Hollis.
“So I get homesick sometimes. So what? I wouldn’t have to be if you two would man up and come see me sometime.”
The conversation always came around to that. Sophie and Hollis had made a plan to run away for a weekend to see Wren at the university a hundred times, and every time there was an excuse to put it off. Hollis blamed their reluctance on the daily rounds of chores—how could they leave their responsibilities in their friends’ laps while they were away?—but Sophie knew the truth. Being away from the commune with Wren would only deepen the rift that already divided the group of childhood friends who once met every morning beneath the goblin tree. Adam and Julian became more resolved in their commitment to the farm with every passing season, but Wren had abandoned it altogether. Somehow, Sophie and Hollis had been able to balance their love for home with their curiosity for the outside world…but how long will that last?
The conversation was eventually cut short by Wren, who was running late for a statistics class. She seemed to have found her place in college. In a way, Sophie thought that the Thatchers’ story was tragic. After living on the commune for a decade and giving birth to five children, the whole brood born with matching red hair and freckles, Kari Thatcher had left the commune one morning with almost no warning at all. Sure, she’d always had a wistful expression that suggested she wanted more for her life, but everyone was surprised when she left her family behind. And now it seemed destined that her daughters, at least, would follow suit. Robin, the oldest, left home on her eighteenth birthday, and Wren had dreamed of going off to college from the time they were all kids together. She, at least, had waited until the fall semester after she turned eighteen to venture forth. Whether the youngest daughter Sparrow would follow her mother’s and sisters’ example remained to be seen, but Julian and Adam were fiercely protective of their twelve year old baby sister. If Sparrow ever did express an interest in leaving, Sophie felt sure that her brothers would give her hell for it.
“Sophie? Seriously, what are you thinking about? You look like you’re a million miles away right now.”
Adam had said the something similar that morning. I must really be out of it. “I dunno. Just lost in thought today, I guess,” she answered.
“Nothing new there, space cadet,” he teased, earning himself a kick in the shin. “Everything okay with you and Adam? You kind of dodged around the subject with Wren just now.”
“Jeez, Hollis. There is no ‘me and Adam.’ Not in the way everyone seems to think.”
“Whatever you say, sis.”
“Are you about finished? The girls are waiting for me.”
He nodded and helped her lift the gown over her head.