Due South

Day 6811

The Southedge shifted South 3.4 meters. The Northedge shifted South 3.4 meters.

I wake up at the Southedge and hack at the frozen ground until it lets loose. My daughter packs the bedrolls. Rollers bring buckets down from the Northedge with hot earth and growth and I pray as they mix under my fingers. I plant my ten seeds, ten sprouts, ten saplings, and ten fruitlings neatly in the thawing ground. I look around to see my sisters doing the same.

My fingertips bleed, just a bit. Not as bad as yesterday. With some luck, these will grow until they’re staving off the Northedge.

It’s nice out today. I lift my eyes.

The view across the Southedge is clear as clean ice now, while everything off the Northedge swims in the heat shimmer, like always. The Rollers forgot a tent, I can see. The wood rods are just catching fire as the canvas curdles under itself. Just out of reach. Shame to whoever called that home, I’m not positive we have a spare.

My daughter runs to help the morning Rollers move town. I don’t mind. She doesn’t have the thumb for growing anyway. I test the ground levels. She smiles, helping the old folk with their daily steps. Her heart-shaped locket hangs from her neck, catching the light. I think she needs the work that’ll keep her in the center. Being too close to the Southedge makes her nervous, being at the Northedge makes her sweat. I can’t blame her, I used to be the same way.

About 5 kilometers South, the elevation kicks up at the base of a mountain range. It’s been talk of the town since it came into view after the snowstorm. All day, I hear the Routers fighting on whether we stay the course South, or spend our active hours moving East to see if we can out-walk the range. There may even be another town out further East. Sometimes we see thin smokes over that way. Could be cooking, could just as easily be brushfire.

The last Reporters we sent laterally never came back. Just saying.

Then again, if we don’t have enough time to gather all our bedding before the edges shift, adding climbing and scaling to the equation doesn’t seem too prudent either.

West of us is just as bad as North or South, we’ve learned. Last year, under similar duress, we hustled West along the skewed tropic until we pressed our luck a little too far. We managed to skirt around the mountain, but we weren’t expecting the salt marsh. Recently frozen, soon-to-be-boiling. We lost a sister, wading through that hell.

I tamper the soil around the saplings, thankful for dirt. I walk the rows and rub the fruitling’s waxy leaves. It’s stark, the green against the gray. When I’m weak, I wonder when this daily crop rotation will run its course, when we’ll start walking on salt. But for now, the right mix of border soils has been holding the pH steady and the rain comes like clockwork.

My daughter says that something has been bothering her. When she tells me about how one of the Reporter’s sons has been acting strange, she tugs on her necklace, holding the heart tight in her tiny fist. I don’t completely understand her concern, but I comfort her nonetheless.

A new, young Router comes to me in the evening. He asks, very sternly, mind you, how much crop we’d lose if we stayed the course South. I ask if he means over the mountain. He says yes, sternly still. I tell him we’d have to start saving grain last week if we were more than a few days off the ground. He looks bleak before he steels himself and whips around, sending up dust under his boot. I admit, I’m curious to double back East. To see if those thin smokes end in a planned woodfire, if a town has made it as far South as we have.

I walk through the garden rows and save the dead stems. I put the pan out for rain. I watch my daughter jump in circles with my sister’s son.

Day 6812

The Southedge shifted South 3.4 meters. The Northedge shifted South 3.5 meters.

I wake up at the Southedge. My sisters wake with me.