Starbird Murphy and the World Outside (5 page)

Finally, after ten painfully long minutes, EARTH's voice broke the silence like a glass.

“The Cosmic Intelligence is not speaking to me this Sunday afternoon.” He took his eyes off his knees and looked up at the congregation. Then he looked directly at me. “It is screaming.”

I inhaled sharply. Doug Fir put his hand on my arm.

“The Cosmic Imagination, the Infinite Creator, the Intelligence that lives in everything, has a message for the Family collected here. Are you all well fed?” EARTH raised his hands out to the room, palms facing up.

“Yes,” several people sitting in the semicircles responded, including Fern Moon.

“Do you have warm clothes and comfortable places to sleep?”

“Yes,” more voices added to the chorus. Doug Fir joined in.

“Are you surrounded by a benevolent circle of people who love you and your planet?”

“Yes,” I tentatively said.

“And can this be said for the World Outside? Does the World Outside allow people to starve, homeless in the street?”

“Yes.”

“Does the World Outside pollute the air, put poison on the fruits and vegetables, pollute the ocean until the whales can't breathe?”

“Yes.”

“Does the World Outside have corrupt politicians, greedy corporations, and people bathing in riches while others die in squalor?”

“Yes.”

“Do the Outsiders selfishly divide up the world into tiny pieces and claim, ‘I own this piece,' and ‘you own that one,' and, ‘you can't own any at all'?”

“Yes.”

“Let me speak for a moment to the first generation, because our lucky children who were born into the Family will not know what I mean. Do you remember the hardships you faced before hearing your Call to the Family?”

“Yes,” Fern Moon said next to me, allowing her head to drop two inches toward her chest. I could guess what she was remembering. She was seventeen years old and pregnant with my brother when her Outside family disowned her. She had told me many times that when the Free Family found her, EARTH had saved her life.

“Do you recall the brutal survival required to exist in a world without your brothers and sisters?”

“Yes,” the adults said again. Fern's head still hung down.

“So, then, why would we let our precious young ones, our fertile girls of the second generation, the future of our Family, visit the town for its movie theaters?” He paused and looked again around the room. “For its bakeries and dress shops? Does this not require our children to handle money? We may live beside the Outsiders, feed them in our café, exchange goods and services when necessary. And love them, as the Cosmos commands us to love the Outsiders. We will feed them with good food and make quality goods for exchanging, but be wary. I call to you mother tigresses, and you father tigers, protect your cubs ferociously in the World Outside.” He pointed to a handful of men and women in the congregation. “If you agree to this, say yes.”

“Yes,” said the adults. “Yes,” said Fern Moon.

“The Cosmic Intelligence has spoken and I have Translated for you,” EARTH finished, taking a deep breath and then retraining his eyes again on his knees.

After a few minutes of silence, Mars Wolf stood. He was a short man, barely taller than I was, and dark in all the ways EARTH was light. Mars's black hair hung to his shoulders and his eyes were brown as the smoke of burning leaves. The sound of his voice was sour to my ears, while EARTH's was always sweet. “New apprentices, please come forward.”

My brother took a quick breath and stood up. He stepped between two Planet Elders to the inner circle, and turned to face the congregation, along with the two other kids who had turned thirteen recently, Halley Aspen and Indus Stone. Even when I was ten, I was drawn to the strong, quiet Indus and knew I would miss seeing him in school every morning once his apprenticeship started. All three of them were dressed in clean, if somewhat threadbare, clothes, and Halley was wearing a flower wreath similar to mine. They looked jittery and pale, but Doug Fir still managed the air of confidence he always had, even when he was terrified.

“On instruction from EARTH, I will now assign you each a mentor,” Mars Wolf's voice issued sharply through the room. “Halley Aspen, you will apprentice Neptune Fox in the apple orchard.” Halley smiled widely and looked at her birth mother, Golden, who smiled back at her.

“Indus Stone, you will work with Iron John on planting and the harvest.” Indus's brother, Caelum, jumped up and pumped his fist in the air, hooting and breaking the quiet of the Sanctuary. A few people laughed, and there was light applause. But I noticed Doug's face fall. It was rare that two apprentices got the same mentor, so Doug's hopes of working with Iron seemed lost.

“Douglas Fir,” Mars Wolf barked, making Doug visibly tense, so much that he closed his eyes as if bracing against an anticipated smack. “You will apprentice EARTH.”

An electric current shot through the Sanctuary. Although several adults tended to EARTH's rooms and office, EARTH had never taken an apprentice before. It was assumed that he was too busy to be a mentor. Fern Moon clapped a hand over her mouth. Doug opened his eyes and let his lips fall open. EARTH didn't react at all, his eyes still trained intently on his knees, giving no indication that he had even heard the announcement. There was a murmuring in the congregation, and everyone seemed to shift in their seats at once.

“Tonight we will have a feast to celebrate increased prosperity from our new business, the Woodworker's Collective,” Mars Wolf went on. “We will prepare dishes from our bounty and everyone will eat on the patio at six o'clock. Until then, workers are needed in the back lot to harvest corn and tomatoes. Please see Iron John.”

When Mars Wolf finished, EARTH stood and led the Planet Elders back out through the door at the north end of the hall. Then my row stood and exited through the south door and out into the sunny Sunday afternoon. A circle formed around Doug Fir. People waited their turn to pat him on the shoulder, clasp their hands, and bow. Everywhere Family members stood in groups talking about the apprenticeships, and about Doug being chosen. “Maybe he will replace EARTH one day,” I heard someone say. “Maybe EARTH will teach him to Translate,” said another. A flower petal fell from the wreath on my head. No one asked me about my first Translation.

Looking back, I think EARTH saw leadership in Doug and wanted to groom him for important Family work. Doug would probably be in Gamma's shoes by now, in charge of managing the whole Farm. But that didn't happen, because my brother ran away in the middle of the night three years after his apprenticeship was announced, right after he turned sixteen.

 4 

A
fter finishing our lunch of polenta and vegetables, we took our plates outside to the washtub on the back patio behind the main house to clean them. By using biodegradable soap, the Family could save our gray water and use it in the herb and vegetable garden by the kitchen. Iron and V went to work on the truck, so I offered to wash their plates. Then Fern Moon came out to help me load up the cucumbers into crates for V to take back to our restaurant in Seattle.

I had never been to the restaurant; in fact, I had never been to Seattle. I had been to Bellingham on trips to the co-op when Adam or one of the other Traders needed a hand, but that hadn't happened in a year. Still, I knew that our restaurant was called the Free Family Café and had been around since the Family was started. I also knew that it served vegetarian organic food, most of which was grown at the Farm. Twice a week during the growing season, Ephraim or Cham drove up in the refrigerator truck to pick up eggs, fruit, vegetables, and herbs, along with cakes, pies, and cookies we baked in the farmhouse kitchen.

“Did you have a chance to ask Gamma about moving into the main house yet?” Fern asked as she picked two cucumbers out of the wheelbarrow and put them into a wooden crate. When she leaned over, her gray braids were long enough to brush the ground.

“No,” I said. “I'll go talk to her after we finish packing these up, and once I put the eggs in the truck.”

“I'm sorry that I've been a little hard to live with lately,” said Fern, stealing a glance at me as she grabbed two more cucumbers. “It was so easy when you and Doug were growing up, sharing the yurt, but when your children become teenagers, well . . .” Fern's voice broke and then disintegrated.

Even after three years, Fern could barely say Doug's name without crying. She didn't need to finish her sentence anyway. Fern and I had been growing more frustrated with each other daily since my fourteenth solstice. Living in a one-room yurt is fine when you're a child and you don't mind your mother knowing what you're doing every minute of the day. But lately, I had been spending more and more time around the main house after dinner, playing music with the Family or hanging out with Caelum, Indus, Badger, and now Lyra, the only people close to my age on the Farm. I had only been going to the yurt to sleep. When I got up the nerve to tell Fern that I wanted to move into the main house, she suggested I talk to Gamma, our leader of finances and the informal den mother, since EARTH wasn't around to grant permission.

“It's not that you're hard to live with,” I lied. “I just like the rooms in the main house better than the yurt. I'm going to ask her about my placement again, too.” I tried to sound casual. “Ursa's old enough to take over the chicken coop now. I'm sixteen and my apprenticeship is supposed be over.”

Fern gave me a sad smile as I picked up the last cucumber and added it to the crate. “I think Gamma just wants you to wait until EARTH comes back so you can get your placement properly.”

“I didn't get my apprenticeship properly,” I said, picking up the arms of the wheelbarrow.

Fern sighed. “I'm not trying to argue.”

 
 

Eve and Bithiah had already loaded the baked goods, and Caelum was putting in the last of the tomatoes and greens when I got to the refrigerated truck. By the time I finished loading three crates of cucumbers and forty dozen eggs, Iron had fixed the smoking problem. Turned out the truck was low on oil. Iron gave V a lecture about checking the oil and air pressure in her tires before any more trips, and then he walked off in the direction of his cabin.

V gunned the truck's engine and backed down the gravel drive. I was walking toward the main house when she stopped and poked her head out through the driver's side window. “Hey, Starbird!” she yelled, motioning me toward her. “I forgot to give this check to Gamma. Will you do it for me?” She held out a rectangular piece of paper.

Like most of the kids born on the Farm, I had never handled money. Most of us had never even seen it. EARTH translated that money was literally and metaphorically the dirtiest thing on our planet. Only selected Traders, who were identified by EARTH, could handle money, and I wasn't one of them.
It's not actually money, it's just a check
, I reasoned.
Plus, Doug Fir used to handle money, and I'm more responsible than he was. He ran away
.

I reached out and took the piece of paper from V. My hand did not catch on fire.

“Thanks,” she yelled, turning up the music in the cab until it was loud enough to make the goats grazing near the cornfield look up. “Peace.” She laughed and held up two fingers in imitation of Lyra Hay before driving off toward the road.

 
 

I turned from the driveway and headed into the main house to see Gamma. As I neared her office, I could hear her talking on the phone. There aren't any landlines at the Farm, or any other connectivity with the Outside. The Traders brought the mail twice a week from a post office box in Bellingham, and Gamma used a cell phone to connect with our other businesses, like the café, the Woodworker's Collective, and buyers for our farm products, but that was the extent of our communication.

I was just raising my hand to knock on her office door when I heard her say, “How is that possible? I'm telling you that we haven't borrowed against the value of the property in three years.”

I stood still in the hall, my hand held in a knocking- shaped fist.

“That's impossible because the property has multiple owners. That is not my understanding of the deed and I demand to see a copy of that paperwork.” There was a pause. “Yes, I will come down there tomorrow.”

As Gamma stopped talking, I became shamefully aware that I had been eavesdropping. I let my knuckles fall against the door.

“Come in,” Gamma said.

In the office, I found tiny Gamma sitting behind EARTH's giant wooden desk, like a child trying on one of her mother's dresses. She was wearing her reading glasses, and papers were spread out before her in five neat stacks. There was another smaller desk to her left facing the wall. That's where Doug Fir used to sit.

“Starbird, hello. How are our chickens doing?” She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes.