In the Five Colonies, children learn the Fall drill the way kids here learn a fire drill — as a rhyme, so nobody forgets it when it matters.
It’s called the Gabriel Chimes Three. When the first chime sounds over the town speakers, every child in the Colonies can recite verse one. This is the proper version, the way Magistrate Syd puts it over the speakers in Autumn’s Anthology:
At the Chime of One,
The Blessed caused the pollen to come,
Gabriel heart goes cold,
Everyone needs goes Home,
And because kids are kids everywhere, they mock it. Their version drags the words out, and some boy always gets picked to play Gabriel, puffing himself up for the last line: “My hearts are cold. You should all go home.”
Underneath the playground version, the rhyme is doing a job. The Falls come every 57 days. The pollen comes with them. Chime one is the warning — when you hear it, wherever you are, you go home and you lock in. A world that lives with a danger on a schedule doesn’t hand its children a manual. It hands them a song, and the song stays in their heads for the rest of their lives.
That’s how the world of the Five Colonies works, all the way down: everything practical wears a story’s clothes. The rhymes, the sayings, the things “everybody knows” — most of them started as instructions, and some of them, as Autumn finds out, aren’t telling the whole truth.
The rhyme gets its name from the Chimes themselves. There are three verses. Verse one is the one in the book — and the one I’ve recorded as a chant, which is going out on the socials this week.
— J.B. Ramsey
Read the book the rhyme comes from: Autumn’s Anthology — a young adult, a fallen sky, 41,000 words readers finish in one sitting. Get it on Amazon
Graphic novel Vol. 1: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HLP8J5M8
More of the world: autumnsantholog.netlify.app
Every journey changes you.