MAKEY WAS CUTTING GRASS, dragging the cutter over the undulating ground, slicing the plants just above their roots. They called it grass, but he knew from reading the forbidden school books that it wasn’t like the grass of Earth, and they only called it so because its growing point was just above the root, the same as its namesake, and not near the shoot-tip like most plants. This meant it could be harvested again and again, as long as the soil sustained it.
“Where were you running to, Makey?” asked Neeve, his sister, as she walked behind the cutter, raking the cut stalks together.
Where Makey was harnessed to the cutter, the straps cut into the welts his father had inflicted with a cane, after the soldiers had brought him home.
“Makey?” Neeve repeated. His sister was five years younger
