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Show VOTHING FARM/7 Jason had the eyes. Clear blue just like hers and Elijah's. Elijah pictured him as huge and strong, with white hair and brown skin and hands that could break a tree and rip it down the middle to make boards. And in childhood nightmares that still sometimes came back to him in the shadows he pictured Jason's hands gripping his shoulders, gripping deep, piercing him, and shaking him as a great voice said-, "This dirt is your heart. If you leave it you will die." But the hands weren't Jason's hands, and the voice was Grannam's husky whisper the day that Elijah tried to run away. He had quarreled with his brother, Big Peter, and at the age of ten he felt he was old enough not to have to bow to his brother's tyranny. So he did what he never had done. When he had run to the edge of the field, he boldly stepped out into the brush, and soon was lost among the trees. There were paths in the wood. Some were made by the deer, some by the travelers going afoot between the far cities of Hux and Linkeree. Some were not paths at all, just openings in the brush that led to tangles and briars and fast-running brooks. Finally, when at dusk the sun cast no shadows within the wood, he fell exhausted and slept. He was wakened by fierce hands gripping his shoulders. Startled, he whirled, and looked into Grannam's face. Her skin was scratched from fighting through the brambles, and her blue eyes burnt fiercely. He felt fear rise within him and he got up and went with her. She hurried, far too fast for the darkness and the difficulty of the |