They Are Coming
The early morning sun was just beginning to rise when I woke up to the familiar crow of the old rooster. He had a knack for waking me up, so I quickly got out of bed and dressed for my morning chores on the farm.
"Good morning, Dawn! I was just about to come wake you," my father, Albert, said as we met in the hallway.
"Good morning, Father! I think Old Cuckoo was a bit quicker this morning," I replied with a smile. He chuckled, shaking his head.
"Yes, Old Cuckoo always seems to be on the job, even with those old rusty pipes," I laughed, and together, we stepped outside to check on the animals in the barn.
As soon as the gate swung open, the cows mooed eagerly. My father and I milked them individually before letting them roam the fields. Then we fed the chickens, gathered the eggs from the henhouse, and tossed hay to the horses.
"It's a blessing to finally enjoy the spring harvest," my father remarked, motioning to the full milk pails and the basket of eggs. I nodded in agreement. This past winter had been harsh on the village, and we narrowly avoided starvation. With the troopers from the capital arriving each fall to collect most of our crops, we were always left scraping by.
Luckily, after weeks of pleading our case, the headmaster finally acknowledged our struggles and sent supplies from the capital to keep us going until spring arrived.
Once we returned inside, my younger sister, Summer, greeted us in the kitchen and asked me to help her with breakfast. We were a large family, but we had lost our mother ten years ago during the yearly auction.
She had been deemed past breeding age and was sold into servitude in the capital.
None of us in the village truly knew what the occupation entailed; it was a forbidden topic. We were only aware that women of breeding age were expected to bear many children. Chosen women from the capital monitored births closely, watching over households to ensure they maintained healthy breeding and avoided incestuous unions.
"Do we have any plans for the day?" Summer asked as she placed the eggs into boiling water.
"Yes, Father, and I will be preparing the soil in the field to plant the first seeds of the season," I answered.
"That sounds good, but I think that's more of a man's job, Dawn," she noted, and I frowned in response. "But we have no other man in the family. It's just Father and us six girls. We can't let him handle all the tough work himself," I explained, and Summer sighed in agreement.
"In that case, you've got a point," she admitted. I smiled, and we set the table with fresh bread, eggs, and a jug of milk.
"I'm so hungry," my little sister, Snow, said in a dull tone as she walked into the kitchen. Snow was the youngest, and she was barely a year old when our mother was taken from us. Soon after, my other sisters joined us: Daisy, who was twelve; Oakley, fourteen; Rain, who was sixteen; and Summer, who was seventeen.
Our mother had named each of us after symbols of our birth year. I was the oldest, born eighteen years ago at the break of dawn in spring, while Summer had arrived on one of the hottest days of summer. Oakley's birth occurred under an oak tree in spring as our mother rushed to deliver her. Rain was born on the rainiest day of fall, Daisy was the blossoming beauty of spring, and little Snow came into the world on a frigid winter's day while snow blanketed the ground.
I loved my family dearly but felt a gnawing fear, knowing that this year marked my first breeding season. Soon, the women from the capital would come for me, taking me away to start a family of my own in a different village, as girls were not allowed to remain with their birth families after turning eighteen.
"Dawn!" my father called out as he rushed into the kitchen.
"What's wrong, Father?" I asked, my stomach twisting in apprehension at his troubled expression. "They are coming!" he said, his voice heavy with despair, and my heart sank at the thought of an uncertain future ahead.