The Children of the Garden had been tricked.

For seventeen hundred years, scores of them came to the Second Landing, hoping for a chance at money and glamour. Each pure Garden heart yearned for people to call their names, to see tears in their fan’s eyes as they sang their Garden ballads. To sweat into the blindingly bright lights, spasming in technicolored brilliance. They dreamed of signing autographs, of being ever in the limelight, of searching through the crowds for that lucky fan they could seduce for the evening. They all knew there were no singers out of the Second Landing. The Feign, the humans, and all the other assorted creatures of the Second Landing didn’t sing. They couldn’t compare to Voices of the Garden.

The Garden watched as its children left, wearing their finest, waving in sparkling hope with bright smiles and brilliant voices. The Children of the Gardens knew what fame was like for those lucky enough to make it: the cars, the cruisers, the interplanetary concerts, the women (and men), the lights, the music, the waves of fans. Television brought into Garden homes all the very best of the lives of the famous.

But all of them had been deceived.

The Children of the Garden didn’t think to ask what happened to those who left and didn’t make it. Perhaps it never crossed their minds. Perhaps they thought they became managers or took small jobs on the boulevards, watching their famed cousins with admiration.

The Children never thought to question why of all the hundreds that had left to find the Second Landing, not one of them ever returned.

The recording came to a halt, the play button clicking out of the ancient stereo as Raven watched. He rewound the tape, played it again. The stereo squealed in protest, playing the tape with obvious reluctance. Raven listened as his own voice spilled out of the speakers, only reinforcing the words he had memorized.

Why hadn’t he thought of it before?

Those sweet, quiet Children, who loved their Mother Garden more than anything in the world. If they had not made it big on Second Landing, why wouldn’t they return?

Raven had been a fool, one of the many, trusting in his voice and his being born a Child to protect him against the harsh world of the Second. Ironicly, those were the very things that damned him in the eyes of the Feign. His sweet voice, his perfect, Garden body...

‘Damn this place. I will return to the Garden, and no more Children with ever make the cross to Second Landing.’ Raven pulled the cassette tape out, sliding it into one of the many pockets on his tunic. He slipped on a pair of worn, blue running sneakers and tied back his tangled, black hair.

As the twin suns rose over the metal horizon of the Second Landing, Raven waited at the door of his room. He looked out into the open courtyard, watching as another lavender-grey morning settled across the sky, cloudless, and only interrupted by the towers of the high walls and the iron bars that closed off his room from the outside world.

‘I’ll return to the Gardens. No matter what it takes.’

Mina