12
We have been in the outlands of Gehenna for nearly three years, and I am sixteen. I never lose count of the years because my birthday falls on Christmas, and it seems that you could be on the moon and still know it’s Christmas, even if no one celebrates it. We are far from Atlanta and just as far, I suspect, from the place Lenya had called Acadia. Here, everything has turned to red dust, and on those days when it rains, the dust turns to mud. There are few trees, and those are stooped like the old women picking potatoes in the fields that provide our only real food. I’ve watched people born and people die—hundreds of them—sometimes born and dying in the same minute. I’ve very nearly died myself, but I am alive.
There were now just three of the wild children. The oldest boy, eight yea
