Kailani took her time surveying her room. She bounced on the bed, opened and closed each drawer of the bureau, and gazed up at the branches visible through the clerestory. Then she shuffled to the door and checked for a lock. When she saw there was none on the outside, confirming it was no prison, she rushed into Helena’s arms.
Sebastian waited until they separated. “And now, little lady, are you ready to find more of the farm’s surprises?”
“What kind of surprises?”
He reached out and tapped her nose. “If I told you, they wouldn’t be surprises. The farm’s crisscrossed with paths, some you’d never find without a guide. I’m busy today, but I can spare a half hour to get you going. I’ll show you the easiest to find.” He tried again to take Kailani’s hand.
Again, she held back, grabbing onto Jason instead. Together, they followed Sebastian to the far side of the sentinel tree. There, hidden in the folds of its trunk, hung a cylinder suspended from a teak yoke—a foot wide and taller than Kailani, made of bronze an inch thick. Dragons and other fantastic creatures had been etched into its surface. A wooden striker hung at its side, attached by a leather thong.
“This,” Sebastian announced, “is the most valuable artwork on the farm, a donation from a friend. It’s more than a thousand years old and probably came from your part of the world, a temple bell that may have once been used to call your monks to prayer.”
Kailani reached for the striker. “May I ring it?”
“Oh no. We ring it only to call people to meals or in the unlikely event of an emergency. But if you’re gentle, you may touch it.”
Sebastian hovered nearby as Kailani let her fingertips glide over the engravings, a high priestess trying to unravel its mysteries. He gave her a few seconds and urged her to move on, as if anxious to find more surprises before he ran out of time.
Behind the cabins, a well-maintained path stretched into the distance, far enough that Jason could see himself running there early in the morning. After a hundred yards, a side trail opened onto a clearing, in the center of which stood a life-sized statue of a woman. A flower pot lay at her feet and in it grew a single white dahlia. The woman bore a clay urn, tilted as if watering the flower. A bird sat on her shoulder supervising the task.
“What do you think, Kailani?” Sebastian said.
The girl looked at the woman’s eyes, at the urn, and at the flower. “The urn’s gone dry. There’s no water.”
“It’s a piece of art, Kailani, an image.” He turned to the adults. “It’s a sculpture by Serena, our most famous alumni. She came here after her marriage fell apart, but has since moved on and made quite a name for herself. She exhibits all over the country. This statue is one of two works she donated to the farm.”
Kailani seemed to have no interest in the résumé of the artist, and wandered over to touch the flower petal. “But the flower’s real. How does it grow?”
“Don’t worry. I assign a farm member to water it.”
She smiled. “Then there must be water nearby.”
“Yes, there’s water, as you’ll soon discover.”
“But, Mr. Sebastian, why is that bird on her shoulder?”
“That bird’s a golden eagle, one of many that have adopted this place as their home over the years and given the farm its name. No one has ever found where they nest, but you can often spot them at dusk gliding on the wind. If you’re lucky, you might find one of their feathers. The ancients who lived here believed eagle feathers possessed magic, and would offer them to members of other tribes as a sign of friendship.”
“Have you ever found an eagle feather, Mr. Sebastian?”
“Of course, but I’ve had a long time to look. If I find another one—” He held out his hands as if cradling a feather. “—I’ll offer it to you, welcoming you to our land.”
From then on, Kailani ran ahead, checking the ground for feathers and craning her neck to catch eagles in flight, though it was still midafternoon.
As they rounded a bend, she faltered and shrank back. “I found something, Mr. Sebastian, a strange man.”
“Don’t worry, Kailani. We only have a few ogres in these woods, but just in case, let’s you and I go together.”
He offered his hand and this time she accepted. Sebastian inched ahead as if he really believed there might be an ogre.
“Ah-hah!” he cried. “It’s only our all-purpose handyman, Benjamin, cleaning out the path to Grandmother Storyteller. Hello, Benjamin.”
A man knelt with his head bowed as if praying, his gloved hands lost among the flowers embellishing the entrance. He was slighter than Sebastian but much younger, and gaunt, with a beak of a nose and hair cropped so close it was hard to determine its color.
He stood and nodded to Sebastian, then to Martha, who returned the gesture with something deeper, more like a bow. His button-like eyes studied the newcomers, flitting from one to the other until they lit on Kailani. His lips twitched, revealing small, pointy teeth that reminded Jason of a weasel.
“Recruiting them young these days, Sebastian?” Benjamin said.
Jason felt Kailani press into him, tucking her head beneath his arm. He rested a hand on her shoulder.
“This is Kailani,” Sebastian said. “She’s come to us from the Blessed Lands.”
Benjamin offered a thin smile, but his eyes refused to participate, and he moved on to greet Helena.
Kailani whispered to Jason, “The sea says to beware of people like that. They watch you but see only themselves.”
Jason understood what made her speak that way. Benjamin was an odd-looking man, with a bony face, eyes set too close, and a sliver of cartilage for a nose. Yet despite her upbringing in the Blessed Lands, Kailani couldn’t see into his soul.
“Behave yourself,” he whispered back, “and be polite.”
After all had been introduced, Sebastian encouraged them to continue along the path, and Benjamin followed. As they advanced deeper into the woods, the sound of running water greeted them. They soon came upon the source, a stream tumbling into a hollow in a rock ledge, forming a pool.
Presiding over the pool like its mistress was a second statue, an earth mother, larger than life. She squatted on a rock that rested in the shallows. Black braids flowed down her breasts from behind a clay shawl draped over her head, and her huge thighs were made of boulders with tiny images of children frolicking on them. Under one arm, she held an urn tipped toward the pool, but unlike the first statue, water poured from it.
Kailani circled the pool, seemingly relishing the music of the water. At last she stopped and stared at the statue, then turned to the others as if she were the tour guide. “The mother’s protecting her children from falling into the water.”
The adults looked at each other bemused. A sign beside the pool told a more straightforward story. The statue was titled Grandmother Storyteller, celebrating the tradition of oral history common among the ancients, but not one of them corrected Kailani.
Jason finally broke the silence. “Serena seems to have an affinity for water jugs. I wonder why.”
Sebastian began to explain, but Kailani interrupted, speaking to Jason as if he were the child. “The sea says water is the source of life.”
Jason gave a nervous laugh.
“It’s true,” she said. “You need to believe, and you too, Helena. You should be more open to the elders’ wisdom.”
“And what other wisdom do they have for us?” Jason said.
“The sky says the stars are the source of dreams. You must have life and dreams to find your way.”
Sebastian let out a chortle, and Martha smiled.
Helena’s gloom lifted long enough to let her beam at Kailani.
A tingling at the nape of his neck caused Jason to turn. Behind them, Benjamin showed a more profound reaction, his mouth dropped open and his eyes glazed. It was, Jason realized, a look of awe.
***
After Grandmother Storyteller, Sebastian begged off but urged them to
keep exploring in the hour before dinner. As he headed back, he insisted Benjamin return to work as well.
Once on their own, they proceeded at a more leisurely pace. Kailani went ahead with Helena’s mother, while Jason stayed behind with Helena.
He turned to her once they were alone. “What’s wrong?”
“Why’d you take her side?”
“Your mother? She was just trying to be nice to Kailani.”
“You don’t know her like I do.”
When he tried to comfort her, she turned away, but when he reached for her hand, she let him grasp it. She squeezed, acknowledging his touch, and he held on.
There was an excited squeal ahead, and they picked up their pace, not wanting to miss the latest surprise as seen through Kailani’s eyes. Another trail led to a circular maze, its paths marked by stones, with a knee-high rock pile at its center. A wooden sign by the entrance bore instructions:
The Labyrinth is an ancient meditation path
Once within, release your concerns and quiet your mind
At the center, be open to what the moment offers
As you leave, review and reflect
Kailani needed no instruction. She cried out, “A labyrinth,” and raced in to play.
Helena pulled away from Jason and scurried to catch up.
The winding course sometimes took them nearer the center, and other times to dead ends. The two of them dashed around, retracing their steps as needed. Once at the center, Kailani celebrated with Helena around the rock pile.
When she was finished, Kailani skipped to the exit, pausing neither to review nor reflect. She rushed into Jason’s arms.
“What made you so happy?” he said as he spun her around.
“In the Blessed Lands, I used to play in a labyrinth with the wind. Now, in this labyrinth, I could feel her Spirit again.”
***
For a long stretch there were no more surprises, but eventually Jason discovered a new path into the woods. Its access was marked by a boulder with a single word chiseled into its surface: Reflection.
They ambled along single file until the path ended at a clearing. In the distance, the land dropped off to a split-rail fence, and beyond that, to a real farm with a few horses grazing. In the middle of the clearing stood a structure that seemed to have been partially built and abandoned.
A dozen saplings had been planted in a circle. These tapered to some eight feet overhead, where their tops were lashed together. Ragged strips of cloth filled the gaps between, creating a curtain-like effect. A wider opening formed the entrance.
Inside lay a pile of sticks, a mock campfire with no sign of charring or ash. Jason had to duck to avoid a ragtag collection of objects suspended overhead by twine: beads and bags, a white water bottle, a foam cup with writing on its surface, and a silk purse that jingled with coins inside.
And there were notes. Jason touched one, so crinkled he could hardly make out the words—a crude attempt at poetry. He grasped another written on dog-eared stationery. The farm’s cheery logo contrasted with sad words.
His cheek brushed against the spinning foam cup. He steadied it between his thumb and forefinger.
“Read it, Jason.” Helena said. “It’s too high for the rest of us.”
He raised a brow, but did as he was asked.
“I miss mornings with you. I miss days and nights together. I miss the sound of your voice, your gentle touch. You were the love of my life and always will be.”
When he looked back, Helena was staring.
She said, “Sebastian told me people come to the farm because of a gap in their heart. That must be why they leave things, to describe their gap.” She spun around, touching a note here and there as if trying to take them all in at once. “I wonder if that was a failed love, or someone who died. Go ahead, Jason, read another.”
Jason glanced at Kailani.
She’d raised her hands to her head and was pressing her temples with her thumbs as if trying to read her own secret thoughts. The joy of the labyrinth had vanished.
“I don’t think—”
“Please, Jason, one more.”
He searched through them, hoping to find an innocuous one, but Helena had made her choice.
“This one,” she said.
The note hung directly overhead, written not on a cup or farm stationery but on flowery notepaper. The writer had formed the letters in bold, as if to make sure they could be read.
Jason swung it toward him. “‘Last March was Stephanie’s birthday. She would have been four years old. I was surprised the day was so difficult. We never celebrated her birthday before because she was too young to understand the marking of time. It meant nothing to her. But this year it meant everything to me. I fell apart and have yet to pull myself together.
“‘Grief is not a broken arm; it doesn’t heal in weeks. There’s no cast to bind it, and if there were, the heart would not be made whole again in such a short time. After she died, I cried for—’”
Jason stopped at a rush of air and turned to see Kailani disappear through the shelter opening.
Outside, a horse neighed in the distance as the girl from the Blessed Lands stood at the edge of the clearing with her back to them, her shoulders heaving as she sobbed. Helena and her mother left his side and went to comfort her.
Jason found himself frozen in place, drawing in quick breaths as though he’d been running for miles. As he watched the drama play out before him, he was struck by a thought: they knew so little about the Blessed Lands, and even less about Kailani. After watching her fret about a tin fish’s eyes and beg for a unicorn, commune with the statues and romp through the labyrinth, and now grieve for the loss of a child she never knew, he was certain of one thing: she needed something different from assimilation and the pursuit of reason. She didn’t belong here, at the farm or in this land. She belonged in a place far away, where the wind and the sea and the sky could speak to her.
A new sound arrived on the breeze, the clanging of the dinner bell. With it a new purpose came to Jason, a more worthwhile goal: to discover why Kailani had left the Blessed Lands, and to find a way to send her home.
Chapter 15 – A Boat Gone Missing
“Are you sure it was stolen?” the Minister of Commerce said.
The harbormaster browsed a report on a clipboard. “Yes, Excellency, the details are right here. In the middle of the night three weeks ago—not the finest boat in the harbor, a modest sloop, part of a fleet of four used for fishing and recreation.”
“Was anything else missing?”
The harbormaster turned to a second page and studied it before answering. “A few petty thefts the night before—charts, food, water jugs—but oddly, no locks were broken. Police on the scene believed the thief slipped between buildings, through cracks in the walls and holes at the foundation where the dirt had been worn away.”
The minister’s thoughts flashed to the lost one, to waves washing over her still, small body. His mind recoiled. “Was the boat seaworthy?”
“Oh yes, sir, old but well maintained. I know the owner, and he has a consistent safety record. He was most upset by its loss.”
“Do you have any idea....” He paused to pick his words. “Why would someone would take such things?”
The man flipped through more pages until nothing was left but the brown backing of the clipboard. “I’m sorry, sir. It would be speculation.” Then wilting under the minister’s stare, he cleared his throat. “It’s as if someone was trying to escape across the sea, a risky way to transmigrate. As if they were trying to avoid the authorities.”
Speculation, but the minister knew the missing girl’s heart and the brooding that had possessed her. He shifted his gaze to the epaulets on the harbormaster’s shoulders, and then past them to the charts on the wall. His eye caught a tiny speck, the offshore island that had been his childhood home, and where he had returned with the poetess to raise their family.
How happy they’d been, but someti
mes life took on the truth of myth. Each year, on the winter solstice, the islanders would hold the festival of the turtle demon. The story went that on that one day, the demon would emerge from the sea and slog across the island in search of a human sacrifice. He moved too slowly, however, and the islanders would retreat to a hilltop far inland, far enough that he could never reach them before sunset. There they would roast a pig and hold a feast until dark, when it was safe to return.
When she was young, the curious child wondered if the turtle demon ever caught his prey, or if he was destined to always wander aimlessly before returning to the depths. The answer, according to legend, was that the demon could find a victim only if their faith was weak, if they’d given up hope. Only such a person would go willingly into the sea.
Not this child; this golden child would never lose hope. She’d gone to sea for a different purpose.
He looked back at the harbormaster, pressed his palms together in front of his chest, and made a slight bow, befitting their respective ranks. “Thank you. You’ve been helpful. I have one last request. I want to speak to the owner of the stolen boat.”
He’d found his next clue. Now he’d follow it wherever it might lead, to the edge of the forbidden sea and, if necessary, beyond.
Chapter 16 – Benjamin
The next day was the last of September, and Sebastian could no longer deny their predicament. He thumbed through a stack of overdue bills that by themselves would exceed the budget. The pile beneath them—purchase requisitions awaiting his approval—would only make matters worse. For the past year, he’d been draining what was left of his savings to make up the difference, but now that source had disappeared, and his natural optimism waned.
On the walk from his cabin that morning, a raw wind had forced him to hunch his shoulders and draw his collar up around his neck. Though the leaves had not yet turned, winter came early in the Northern Kingdom and would not be far behind.
He worried most about the old generator.
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