They trekked for days through the burnt detri­tus that encir­cled their for­mer home. Rain poured down from the dark grey sky soak­ing each child through to the bone. Morale was low and more than once mem­bers of their lit­tle band had given up and turned back.

They fur­ther they went the less inclined they were to idle chat­ter. Yakov could sense a full scale mutiny approach­ing if they didn’t find Eden soon, but the con­stant rain was mak­ing it hard for him to get his bearings.

It was only through sheer luck that, early one evening, he found a path through the black­ened land­scape to the green-hilled utopia beyond. He grabbed Pietra and gave a loud whoop. The chil­dren rolled out onto the sod­den grass laugh­ing and cheer­ing. Pietra watched them for a moment then turned to Yakov.
“Where’s the farm, Yakov?” He scanned the unfa­mil­iar hori­zon, pointed in an arbi­trary direc­tion and replied, “Umm…that way.”

The group marched all night through the wet grass. With­out cover Yakov didn’t want to risk them stay­ing out in the open exposed to any­thing. And any­one. As morn­ing broke they crested a small rise and looked out on to acres of graded land and beyond that: a large farm­stead.
“Wow,” gasped Evan, the brother of Yakov’s pre­vi­ous trav­el­ling com­pan­ion.
“Race you!” shouted another as he took off down the slope. The other kids launched them­selves down the hill towards the farm­house. Yakov stood watch­ing them all until his sis­ter tugged at his arm and said “Come on, Yakov. You don’t want to be the rot­ten egg!”  He laughed and raced her down. Care­ful to let her pull ahead and win at just the right moment.

*****

Yakov and a few of the oth­ers spent the whole morn­ing doing an inven­tory of the farm. The pre­vi­ous own­ers had left the place in rel­a­tively good con­di­tion, but they’d taken almost all the food. In a crawl­space — so small that only the youngest boy could fit — they found a stash of alu­minium cans, the labels long since faded; a Tup­per­ware con­tainer filled with seeds and a dusty leather jour­nal. In the front of the jour­nal Yakov found a folded piece of paper, a check­list for get­ting the farm up and run­ning again. The seeds, the jour­nal told him, were wheat, or would be once they’d weeded the field and sown them. He looked up to see Pietra and two of the younger girls walk past munch­ing on hand­fuls of black­ber­ries.
“We found a bush,” she said, matter-of-factly.

Surely it couldn’t be this easy? He thought to himself.

He organ­ised a few of the older kids into groups to help him work through the check­list. There was a well some­where nearby that they would need and with the rain stopped and the sun out they could begin to clean up the field. Pietra, ever help­ful, put together her own group to help pick the rest of the blackberries.

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