Harvest Moons Read Free

surprised the territory has
rekeying tool.” She said a they went down the stairs.
    “The Shimmer clans don’t own Synths, but a
few non-Shimmer families in the area have Synths. They treat them like family
or at least servants. The Celstar constitution bars selling, breeding or
warehousing, but not ownership.”
    “That’s good. Hoggart bought them so I
wouldn’t be lonely.” Though now she suspected he’d bought them for a sideline
business in the sex trade. But Fallon didn’t need to know that. She walked him
to the door.
     “The boys working out for you?”
    “Oh yes! They are wonderful workers. We
got a third of the crop cut and loaded today!”
    “So your grain will be cut in three to
four days. What else do you have to harvest?”
    “Nothing so time sensitive as the grain.
I have a vegetable garden, which I can harvest over the next month or so and
fruit vines that will ripen until hard frost. Grain was my only cash crop.”
    Polly walked him to the door, aware of
his tall lean body, the way the muscles in his thighs showed under his
dungarees, the breadth of his shoulders, nearly brushing hers. Should she
invite him to tea? No, that was too forward.  Widow. Grieving widow. Not a
sex starved ex-Cancan dancer.
     “Would like to see my garden? I have a
wonderful fruit enclosure.”
    “Love too.” He followed her around to the
back of her house. The garden was a quarter section, and she’d planned and planted
it all herself, Hoggart’s only concern being the grain crop that covered twenty
of their twenty five sections.
    “I keep my fruit in this cage. Last year they
didn’t produce very much but this year I have tons of fruit. Some have already
ripened, so I have been picking a few at a time.
    “I’ve never seen this before. What are
they called?”
    “Persicherries. They are a vine, not like
the Terran cherry trees. Here, let me pick you some to take home.” They went
inside the cage. The aisles between the vines were narrow and the two of them squeezed
down the row until she found a grouping of ripe, red fruit. She pulled a small
basket from the shelf that ran along the row and began filling it.
    “That basket is Skalzi.”
    “Yes. We border the corridor. Sometimes
the Skalzi come to the garden. They are fascinated by the fruit. I set out a
bowl of fruit, and they returned it with the basket. I usually leave a full
basket outside the cage, it is gone by morning with an empty in its place, but
not always. So now I have quite a collection.”
    “You can sell them in town for good
coin.”
    “Oh.” She watched as he took a persicheri
and ate it slowly, savoring the sweet juicy flesh. His lips were full, not too
full. Just right.
    “Are you saving the pits?” He asked. She
showed him the bucket she used to collect the pits. “I bought the vines as
cuttings before we moved here. They were dry roots, so I soaked them and
planted. Turns out my bundle was about twenty plants. I didn’t have much fruit
last year but I started the pits in the fall and kept them in the house. Those
have a bit of fruit, but my older plants are heavy with cherries.”
     “I have new seedlings.” She beckoned him
to the back wall of the enclosure. “You should take some and try a fall
planting. I gave some seedlings to the Skazi, well I left them in a basket. I’m
not sure if they garden since they migrate. But maybe some would do all right
in the wild, especially if they fenced it.”
    “Where did you get them? I’ve never heard
of them before.”
    “I bought them at the trading market in
Kurvash, the big city on Jiang. There are lots of small booths full of unusual
garden varieties.”
    Fallon grinned. “I’ve heard you can find
interesting things there, but I have never been. We moved here five years ago from
Sageterri.  We’ve been ordering all our seed through the Celstar Collective,
but they don’t carry much variety.”
    They left the enclosure and walked back
to the house.
    “The clan has a