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Right now, the only thing on his mind was the harvest and making certain everyone was safe and that the grain got gathered before the weather turned. Kozen had told him that a bad rainstorm could ruin the grain and the sky was looking ominously cloudy today.
“We’ll have to work fast,” the H’raken leader said, frowning up at the gathering clouds. “May the Mother Stone grant that we shall get all our wheat in before the weather breaks.”
“May the Mother Stone grant it,” Brav murmured, without hesitation. “Let’s go.”
Kozen nodded and called for the villagers, who had gathered in a crowd at the village gates, to listen. Everyone fell quiet as he spoke, his voice rising to carry to far reaches of the crowd.
“We need to work fast and stay together,” he shouted. “We all know how quickly tragedy can occur. Stay alert and keep out of the trees and the Mother Stone willing, we will have a successful Harvest Day!”
“The Mother Stone wills it!” the villagers shouted back and then they all trooped though the village gates, heading out to the fields where the grain grew.
By the time they got to the tall, waving sea of purple wheat, the sky had darkened even further. There was nervous whispering among the women as they watched the children closely and looked at the thick trees surrounding the cleared farmland.
Brav looked too, keeping a sharp eye out for any pale white shapes in the shadows that might signal danger. But he saw nothing in the trees to cause alarm. He did catch Danielle’s eye, however, as she stood among the women. He blew her a kiss and she caught it and blew one back.
Brav had to fight the deep longing he felt to throw down his scythe and go gather her into his arms. More and more he found it difficult to leave her every morning—she was becoming all he could think about, to be honest.
Deep inside, he realized this kind of obsession wasn’t right. Even a bonded Kindred and his bride were able to be separated during the day without too much pain and longing—probably because they had a mental link to each other that helped them communicate.
But his thoughts went fuzzy when he tried to think of the Mother Ship lately. His mind just kept slipping back to Danielle and how much he wanted her. He was even starting to forget the reason he kept refusing to bond her to him. When he tried to access the memories of his past attempts at bonding, they seemed blurry and far away—as though they had happened to another male, not him. The pain of the past seemed distant and unimportant. The only thing that mattered was being with Danielle forever…
He forced himself to look away from her and considered the vast field of wheat. It seemed strange that they were going to harvest it all by hand. Why didn’t the H’rakens use the advanced technology they must surely have to do such mundane chores?
Maybe because they’re all too obsessed with their mates as well, whispered a little voice in his head. Maybe they can’t think of anything but being with their wives again and they’ve somehow forgotten how to use what they once had.
Or maybe they had never had it in the first place and all the technological achievements he’d seen—such as the fence that surrounded the town and the pipes that channeled the Mother Stone’s power to the houses and communal work areas—were actually the work of the “Ancient Ones” that he’d heard about, Brav thought.
It occurred to him that if he ought to ask more about the Ancient Ones—that he ought to try to find out more about the Riivers, too. But then his eyes slid over to Danielle again and none of that seemed to matter. What mattered was getting the harvest in before the rain so that the villagers could have bread during the cold season. And what mattered even more than that was getting finished so that he could hold her in his arms again.
“Men in a row and women follow after to collect!” Kozen shouted, breaking Brav’s train of thought. “Come on—we’ll have to work fast to get it all in before the rains come!”
Brav and the male H’rakens lined up at the top of the field, ready to do their duty. Behind them, holding huge straw baskets and poised to gather the fallen wheat sheaves, the women waited. The children were being kept a little distance away, watched by the younger females who had not yet been Joined.
At a sign from Kozen, the males began to cut, slicing through the tough stalks of wheat and then moving quickly onward to cut again and again and again. The women followed in their tracks, loading the purple sheaves into the large woven straw baskets.
