I don't remember whose idea this was, mine or Elu's. We talked about leaving for years, so much that we had to either do it or stop talking about it at all. Then Elu's mother died. We saw her burned, her ashes put in the tomb with our ancestors, a spiral carved in the rock to mark her passage from this world, and found that nothing else was holding us there. So here we are.

If I take my shoes off and curl my toes deep into the dirt when I walk around the field, I can raise the corn a quarter inch a day, so long as I make sure to touch all stalks I pass. You'd think that's an amazing talent, especially in a place where the other fields around our farm lie dead. But ain't nobody noticing a lick of what I do—not when my sister can travel into the ahead and tell us how to keep the stretch away.