Until the Xalthurians showed up, dressed in three distinct ways, as they came bounding out of the ship.įrom experience, I knew those dressed in leather loin cloths were here to grab the twenty-one year-old females and drag them back to the ship for the Breeding Ceremony. To nap or not to nap, that had been the question. But I wasn’t on full rations like her, and I worried we’d both get punished with an even smaller share tonight if any of the leaders saw us cutting out early. I was bone tired, too, not to mention hot-that afternoon, the sun seemed really eager to remind us that scorching season was right around the corner. She’d wanted us to go home to curl up for a nap with the baby tucked between us.

Elle was tired after working the fields all morning with the red and ebony swirled hybrid infant she hadn’t been allowed to name perched on her back in a sling. But this year it was late in the afternoon.īefore the ship appeared, Elle and I had been debating about whether to keep pushing in the community fields until sunset or take a break. Last year, when Elle was twenty-one they came in the very early morning. But the Xalthurians almost never come on the same day or even the same time of day for that matter. The Xalthurians always came in the same way, and at the same time of year, during the month of what the New Terrhans called May, even though a year in this solar system was made up of fourteen months, not twelve like on the old planet.

Their way of ringing our planet’s doorbell, before landing their bright silver ship in one of our settlement’s many barren red clay fields. We’d been working in the community potato field when the Xalthurians appeared in the sky with one short electronic blast of sound. But I can clearly hear her, begging the reaping force for mercy. With my poor eyesight and a wall of Xalthurian soldiers between us, I can’t see her. This time the voice belongs to my sister, Elle. I can’t remember a time before the screams, though I’m told it exists…existed. It’s not the first time I’ve heard a girl screaming and begging during the Xalthurians’ annual Breed and Reap. The anguish in the young mother’s voice tears at my soul. “No! Noooooo! Don’t take my baby! Please…I’ll do anything!”

His to claim taylor vaughn