Chapter 7Alarka
May 27–June 5, 2259, Friday morning to Sunday evening
The village of Alarka, John-Caleb realized, as he walked with Coral, and her wife, Zaria, was a secret garden. Less secret, once the Alarkans heard the news of the Grand Suicide, but still hidden. Far too many still placed witches outside the definition of human. The trees were tended, pruned, blights and other fungal infections were treated, but broken branches were left in the leaf litter on the ground. Wild flowers grew everywhere. The paths they took him on in the cool of the morning were, as they put it, new—in the last fifty years, since the Alianza had come north.
As they walked, Coral and Zaria shared some of the village’s history. “The original settlers came here during the last years of the Disease, a few ye
