The third book in the Aftertime series, 2012

ALL THOSE SHADES of red-candy-apple and cinnamon and carnelian and rust and vermilion and dozens more-people arriving for the party stopped and stared at the paper hearts twirling lazily overhead on their strings. No one had seen anything like it since Before. No one expected to see anything like it again Aftertime.

Except, maybe, for Cass, who dreamed lush banks of scarlet gaillardia, Mister Lincoln roses heavy on glossy-leafed branches, delicate swaying spires of firecracker penstemon. Cass Dollar hoarded hope with characteristic parsimony when she was awake, but since coming to New Eden her dreams were audacious, greedy, lusting for color and scent and life.

Even here, in this stretch of what had once been Central California valley farmland-rarely touched by frost, the sun warming one’s face in March and burning in April-even here it was possible to long for spring in February. In her winter garden, homely rows of black-twig seedlings and lumpy rhizomes protruded from the dirt. There was little that was lovely save the pale green throats of kaysev sprouts dotting the fields beyond, skimming the entire southern end of the island with verdant life beyond the few dormant acres in which Cass toiled. At the end of each day she had dirt under her nails, pebbles in her shoes, the sweet-rot smell of compost clinging to her skin and nothing to show for it yet in the fields.