Starbird Murphy and the World Outside (4 page)

“I just woke up,” said Lyra, in a voice a little girl would use.

“Right after lunch, please.” Gamma looked over the top of her glasses. “Venus,” she said, spotting V in the lunch line. “Did Ephraim remember to give you the check for the pickup today?”

“Gamma!” Eve spun around with both hands on her pregnant belly. “Money should not enter the kitchen.”

“Forgive me, Eve.” Gamma turned to us so that Eve couldn't see her frown. “V, could you stop by the office before you leave today?”

Venus nodded. Then Gamma cut to the front of the line, grabbed a plate of polenta, and started back toward her office. Tiny as she was, she still had to squeeze through the hall to avoid bumping into Caelum and Indus, whose broad shoulders practically stretched wall to wall. The skin on my face and arms got hot, and I found myself staring hard at my plate.

An awkward and mystifying week had passed since the night Indus kissed me against the spruce tree. When we saw each other at a distance, he would wave, but during meals, he never sat next to me. He had started going to bed early rather than staying up with the young people, and the only conversation we had had in six days was about how much corn they expected to harvest this year.
It's the harvest
, I told myself,
he's just busy
. But I didn't really believe me.

“Hi, guys,” I heard Lyra purr from the end of the line. I stared harder at my plate.

More Family members showed up, and the line snaked through the kitchen until all fourteen of us had gotten food. We sat down together at the wooden table in the long room, our largest indoor gathering space besides the Sanctuary.

Adam, our blond-haired, fortysomething master builder, stood and held up his ceramic water cup. “Cosmic Intelligence, I humbly invite your blessings to fall upon us, the Free Family, and upon all the families of the Earth.”

“The Family is Free,” we responded in chorus, also raising our cups. All of us except for Iron John, sitting next to me, who half raised his glass and did not chant along.

 3 

I
ron John has never been what I would call a full-fledged member of the Family. Iron's mother, Callisto Air, invited EARTH and the Family to move to her farm in 1973, when Iron (who was just called John then) was nine years old. It was a year after John's father had died in a farm accident. Callisto (then called Doris) was in Seattle to see her in-laws when she met EARTH. She told us the story during school one day, the year she served as our history teacher.

Callisto-Doris had just come from an emotional argument with her brother-in-law about how to manage the harvest. He wanted her to sell the farm, telling her she wasn't capable of managing the farmhands and he couldn't keep helping her forever. She couldn't imagine giving up the property, which had been in her husband's family for a hundred years. John's grandparents were babysitting him, so Doris was alone for the afternoon in the city. Deciding to stop at a coffee shop to calm her nerves, she found herself sitting in a booth by a window and crying uncontrollably. That's when she felt a hand on her shoulder, and what she described as a warm, soothing presence. She looked up and saw an exceptionally tall man with generous blue eyes who said to her, “Child of God, why are you crying?”

EARTH sat with Doris for hours in the coffee shop, listening to her fears about managing the farm on her own, her anxiety over what would happen to John with no father figure, and her heartbreak about how alone she felt in the world. One week later, seven of the nine Planet Elders, including EARTH, left the house they had been sharing on Beacon Hill and moved to the farm to help their new member, Callisto, with her harvest. Three years later, Callisto officially signed over the deed for the property to the Free Family.

Although she gave the Family the main house, barn, and property, Callisto and John had still lived in a one-room log cabin, older than the farmhouse and situated among the fir trees. When she died ten years ago, John kept living there alone.

According to Callisto, John didn't embrace the Family the way she did. He refused to go to any of the Translations when he was growing up. The only one I had known him to attend was the one in memory of his mother, when EARTH gave him the name Iron.

Being six years old then, I wasn't allowed to attend that ceremony. Like most kids, I didn't go to a Translation until I was ten. Until the right age, children play together in the house while the rest of the Family members enter the Sanctuary, located in the barn. When EARTH was with us, Translations happened every Sunday afternoon, right after breakfast, and I will never forget my first one.

My mother and I spent the Saturday before making a wreath for my hair out of sweet peas and pansies. It was late summer and everything on the Farm was ripe. In addition to my first Translation, it would be a special day for us because new apprenticeships would be handed out and my brother, Doug Fir, had recently turned thirteen. He spent the afternoon mending a hole in his shirt and chatting nervously about which apprenticeship he wanted.

“I'm the best at math, so I'll probably get Trader. But I want to work with Iron on the harvest. I hope I don't get animals or the kitchen. As long as I get something important.” He was sitting on his cot in our yurt, and he had been trying to thread a needle for several minutes. Fern and I sat on her cot with a pile of flowers.

“Well, we do need some new composting toilets. Maybe the Cosmos needs you there,” Fern said, moving to Doug's cot and taking the needle and thread from his hands.

“Gross.” Doug crossed his arms as Fern laughed. “That's worse than goats.”

“EARTH will put you in the right spot for your talents, my brilliant son.” She touched his face. “And all jobs here are important. But Iron did tell me that he would be getting an apprentice this year.”

“He did?” Doug uncrossed his arms and sat up. “For real?”

Fern smiled and handed Doug the threaded needle. “I don't mean to get your hopes up, but Iron would love to have you.”

Doug took the needle and started sewing too quickly, making several sloppy stitches while Fern came back to her cot and added another flower to my wreath.

I believed Fern about EARTH. He always placed people in the right apprenticeships, probably because he was always listening to the voice of the Cosmos.

It's impossible to describe the feeling of being in the presence of EARTH. If his blue eyes actually looked at you, you felt as if he was looking right into your heart, through your skin and bones and into your talents and your needs. Fern says that when I was a baby, I would always stop crying if EARTH held me. When I was six and fell off the back of the truck onto the gravel drive and skinned both my knees, EARTH put his hands on my legs and all the pain went away. It was my duty to think of all the men in the Family as my father, but I was pretty confident I knew who my birth father was. I knew it was EARTH.

 
 

That Sunday after breakfast, we walked to the gathering place where two hundred other Family members were waiting. When the Family first moved to the Farm, EARTH held Translations in the living room of the main house. But when the Family grew too big, he moved them into the old gable barn. The Sanctuary was built under a hayloft window and shared space with our tractor, tools, and apple press.

There was lots of talking and laughter. Family members often came on Sundays from Seattle and Bellingham, even British Columbia, to hear the Translations and put in a few hours of work on the Farm. People welcomed me and congratulated me on my first Translation. It felt like everyone wanted to talk to me or put their hands together in front of their hearts and bow. The ring of flowers in my hair dropped pink petals around my feet.

When the door to the Sanctuary finally opened, the Herald began allowing Family members to enter, row by designated row. Since it was my first time at the Translation, and since Doug Fir was scheduled to get his apprenticeship, we were invited, along with Fern Moon, to sit in the Venus orbit, right behind the Planet Elders, one row removed from EARTH.

It was hot and dry inside the Sanctuary that morning, and the sun was streaming through the window in the hayloft and through all the little gaps in the roof. The ceiling seemed to extend miles over my head, and above me particles of dust and hay danced in the sunlight. The plank floor was covered with at least twenty rugs in different patterns, but I could still hear the floor creaking as we walked across it to our seats.

We entered with the rest of our orbit and sat on a rug, each with our own pillow. Family members filed in behind us, forming the other seven consecutive rings, emanating out from a plywood platform just under the window at the north end of the room. After everyone was seated, the chatter dropped to a comfortable silence. Then another door opened at the front corner of the Sanctuary, and EARTH walked in.

Naturally, I had known the tall, blue-eyed EARTH since I was a baby, and had always seen him as our most venerated Elder, our Translator. Day to day, EARTH was soft-spoken and kind, often hidden away in his rooms on the second floor of the main house. At the Summer and Winter Solstices, his voice boomed and his presence filled the Farm as he heard complaints, judged differences among Family members, and gave out names. But when EARTH entered the door to the Sanctuary for my first Translation, I felt like I had never seen him before. In his long robe, tied around the waist with a gold cord, and followed by an adoring Mars Wolf, he looked like a storybook king.

Mars Wolf, EARTH's closest adviser, was the first to approach the platform, the plywood creaking as he walked across it and kneeled to the left of a stack of pillows. Then came EARTH, stepping onto the stage and walking contemplatively to the place where the cushions and a short table were waiting. He sat down and crossed his legs at the ankles. Light from the window above him fell on his white hair, making it glow like wheat during the harvest.

Then Uranus Peak, dressed in a faded blue robe and purple cord, a scarf holding back her graying blonde hair, stood from the front row and addressed the congregation.

“Our Family was summoned together in 1970 by the Cosmic Imagination that Called the eight principal elders to witness the first Translation by our interpreter, EARTH. In the first Translation, the Cosmos gave EARTH his Calling, and instructed him to name his Planet Elders. In the second Translation, EARTH was told to build his Family and repopulate the Cosmos. And in the third Translation, EARTH was given Three Principles: The Free Family is chosen by the Cosmos; the Cosmos provides for us and we share what is provided equally; and every Family member receives a Calling. We live by these Principles because we are the Family and we are Free.”

“The Family is Free,” two hundred voices chanted back.

Uranus Peak took her seat.

All eyes in the Sanctuary turned to EARTH, who was seated with his hands touching at the palms in front of his chest, his eyes resting on his knees. There was a long silence, during which he did not seem to flinch or blink. Someone coughed, a few people crossed or uncrossed their legs. EARTH sat still as a statue. After a few minutes of this, I glanced up at Fern Moon, who refused to meet my gaze, staring intently at EARTH. Then I turned to look at Doug Fir, who gave me a comforting nod.