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“I’ll get you boys so the slimy bit out of Milo’s mouth She turned him into his stall, the back of which opened out to the corral

As she closed the stall door, clicked it shut, she heard so

What?

She left the barn, stepped outside, and looked around

There it was again A deep ru Not thunder There wasn’t a cloud in the sky

The ground tre sound

A crack opened up in the earth, a giant snaking zigzag

Boom

Dust geysered into the air, dirt crashed into the new crevasse, the sides crumbled away A part of the barbed-wire fence fell into the opening New cracks crawled off from the main one, like branches on a tree limb

A fifty-foot zigzagging crevasse opened in the yard Dead roots stuck out fro dirt sides like skeletal hands

Loreda stared at it in horror She had heard stories of this, the land breaking open froht it was a myth …

Now, it wasn’t just the ani up The land itself was dying

LOREDA AND HER DADDY were in their favorite place, sitting side by side on the platforiant blades of the windmill As the sky turned red in the last few moments before darkfall, she could see to the very end of the world she knew and iine what lay beyond

“I want to see the ocean,” Loreda said It was a ga other lives they would soun; she just knew that it felt more important these days because of the new sadness in her father At least it felt new She sometimes wondered if his sadness had always been there and she’d just finally grown up enough to see it

“You will, Lolo”