Yet even in the joy and absolute freedom of this wonderful task, unwanted thoughts kept sparking up, like shocks from a faulty circuit. Thoughts like, Momma would be so proud of me, or Marisol would be so jealous, or Gerardo would be so impressed.
I hurled my brush across the room in frustration. It hit the wall and left an orphan comma. I didn't even know why I should care about Flock's Rest. I had a new family, I had new friends. I had Aaron, who was better than Gerardo in every possible way, and no room in my life for enemies like Marisol.
It's natural, Aaron had said. It'll pass.
And so I took a deep breath and didn't fight the thoughts. I let them come, waiting for the day they would go away. But they didn't. Instead they grew like weeds in a garden―and as any gardener can tell you, the only way to get out deep weeds is to go to the root.
***
"You can't."
"Who says?"
"You just can't," said Aaron, pacing the width of my cottage. "Those are the rules!"
"I want a reason," I told him. "If I had a reason, maybe I could accept it. Maybe."
Aaron threw up his hands. "Why can't you be happy with what you have here? It's more than you ever had in Flock's Rest, more than you ever could have there!"
"I don't want to leave," I told him. "I just want to visit. I want to go back and say good-bye. I owe my parents that much!"
"No one leaves!" he insisted. "And if Abuelo found out you were talking about doing it, he'd be furious!"
Aaron stormed away, then stormed right back. Frustration bordering on anger flared in his eyes. "I never should have told Abuelo to send you that note! I should have just forgotten about you, just like I forgot about everyone else!"
It stung to hear him say something like that, and I thought maybe there was still some ugliness in De León after all.
"I'm sorry," he said, after a moment. "I didn't mean it." But the damage had already been done.
Then I turned to see Harmony standing in the doorway. I was so used to leaving my door open, I hadn't thought to close it.
"May I come in?" she asked.
I nodded. I thought to pretend like nothing was happening here, but I realized that would be pointless. "So I guess you heard everything. . ."
She sat down in one of the chairs Willem and Claude had made for me and gestured to two of the others. "Come sit down. Both of you."
I pulled up a chair, and Aaron reluctantly did, too.
"Please talk some sense into her," Aaron said.
"It's not sense she needs," Harmony said. "It's perspective."
I didn't like being talked about in third person. "So are both of you going to run to Abuelo and tell him I was talking treason? Does he have a torture chamber beneath that mansion of his? Maybe something from the Spanish Inquisition?"
"Of course not," Harmony said with a calm to her voice that just made me feel even more tense.
"Hasn't anyone ever left this place?"
"No!" said Aaron. "Never!"
But Harmony put up her hand to silence him. She took a long moment to think before giving me her answer, and then she began a tale she probably hadn't told for hundreds of years, if she'd ever told it at all. Her answer to my question was a thread as finely woven as her gossamer garments.
"I was one of the first settlers with Abuelo," she told us. "I've followed him from San Juan, to Tibet, to Lourdes, to this valley―and when the waters shift and the fountain moves elsewhere, I will follow Abuelo to that new place, too.
"The first time, when the fountain started to fail and we prepared to journey from San Juan, I feared that Abuelo was wrong. The fountain had grown shallow, our little hidden rain forest was dying―and I was convinced that the fountain was drying up forever. Abuelo said he could feel the pull―he knew where the fountain would next appear, but I didn't believe him . . . so I ran away. I went back to my family in the American colonies. And do you know what I found?"
"What?" I asked.
"My sister had died of old age. My nephews and nieces were all older than me. The world had moved on, and there was no place for me. I raced back to San Juan, as quickly as travel in those days allowed, certain that Abuelo and the others would be gone . . . and as I traveled, an illness overtook me. A fever that I was sure would kill me."
"A fever?" Aaron said. "That can't be. Once you've been touched by the fountain, you can't get sick―Abuelo told us so!"
"There is one sickness we can get."
"What is it?" I asked.
Harmony thought carefully about her answer. "Consumption," she said―but by the look on her face, I had a feeling it wasn't the same kind of consumption you read about in medical books. "Luck was with me," Harmony said. "When I arrived at our little settlement, they hadn't yet left. My illness passed, Abuelo forgave me, and we sailed across the sea. I made the harsh journey with them across the Himalayas, and I was the first one to see the new valley. Once I saw the valley, I knew that I would never doubt Abuelo again."
"I've only been here a few months," I reminded her. "The world may have moved on for you, but not for me. My family is still there."
"That is true," Harmony said. "But it still doesn't mean there's a place for you in that world."
"I don't want a place," I told her. "I only want to say good-bye."
"Even so, it won't bring you any happiness."
Then Aaron spoke up again, more gently this time. "I don't want you to go. It's a hard journey, and a hundred things can go wrong." He took both my hands. "In a while you won't care anyway," he said. "That place, and those people, will feel like part of someone else's life."
I knew he was right about that. "Maybe that's why I want to do it now."
Harmony considered it, and Aaron didn't seem so much angry now as scared―scared for me, or maybe just scared of losing me. "If I'm ever going to be happy here," I told him, "I have to see my family one last time." But the more I thought about it, the more I realized there was more to it. It wasn't just that I wanted to see them. I wanted them to see me.
Finally Harmony sighed. "If you insist on going, we can't stop you. All we can do is warn you. Going back will not be what you expect. Things won't go any better for you than they did for me."
I thought about her story. She had traveled a much greater distance, and at a time when travel was much more difficult. She had left with no plan to return, but I would have a plan.
"Two days to get there, one day to say my good-byes, and two days to get back," I told them. "I'll be gone for five days, that's all."
"A lot can happen in five days," said Aaron, but there was a sad resignation in his voice, because he knew I had made up my mind.
I planned to go on foot, but Aaron, as opposed as he was to it, had a better idea.
"If you go on foot, you could freeze to death. We don't have any clothes here warm enough to see you over the mountains. It's best if the monks take you."
"But don't they serve Abuelo? They'll never do it!"
He gave me a halfhearted grin. "The monks won't ever know they're taking you."
He explained how, once a week, a group of monks arrived on a hillside to the east to deliver supplies and take away the garbage that could not be composted.
On this particular week, I would be part of the garbage.
Harmony went to visit Abuelo that morning, to make sure he was distracted and his eyes weren't on the hillside as Aaron and I climbed out of the southern tip of the valley. I took off my gossamer gown and dressed in something more "earthly" for my journey, and Aaron brought along a burlap sack. Anyone who saw us making our way up the hillside would think we were just taking out the garbage.
This spot to the east and high up the hillside was the only place where mountains didn't rise too high to climb. Grass still grew there, but it wasn't as lush and green as it was lower in the valley. This grass had turned yellow, and spots were turning brown. As I looked back into the valley, I could see a thin rim of yellow grass that circled the
entire valley of De León. I had never noticed it before. Aaron knelt down and rubbed his hands across the yellow grass, a look of worry on his face.
"This is a bad idea," he told me, in a last-ditch effort to change my mind. "No one in Flock's Rest deserves your good-byes."
"Wouldn't you have wanted to say good-bye to your parents?" I asked him.
"No," he said―but I could tell he wasn't sure if he meant it.
At the crest of the hill were a dozen sacks, like the one Aaron carried, all filled with the trash of De León.
"Five days," Aaron reminded me. "That's all you get." He opened his sack to show me that sewn to the inside were furry animal skins that, unfortunately, still had some of the animal attached. "I know it's not pretty," he said, "but it's the best I could do on such short notice. It'll keep you warm for the journey." It didn't look all that different from the bag of roadkill I had once carried out from my room.
"Thank you," I told him. It was all I could do not to lose my breakfast.
"You should wear a heavy winter coat when you come back," he told me. Then, looking around to make sure no one had followed us up, he gave me instructions for my return. "Be careful that no one from the outside world sees you. Come the way you did the first time―follow the path behind the old billboard."
"How far?" I asked. The night of my arrival had been such a blur, and I had passed out by the time the monks had found me. I had no idea how far De León was from civilization.
"Twenty miles," he said. "But it feels like a lot more because it's almost all mountains. As you get closer, you'll see the monastery on top of a hill, but whatever you do, don't go near it, because the monks won't know you're one of us if they see you. It's their duty to make sure no one from the outside ever finds us, and they take their job very seriously, if you know what I mean."
I nodded. These so-called monks sounded more like ninjas, but I kept my opinion to myself.
"Turn west at your first glimpse of the monastery," Aaron continued. "There's no path after that, but if you follow the setting sun, you'll come to De León. Good luck."
He hugged me tightly, like he had changed his mind and wasn't going to let me get into the sack.
"I'll be back before you know it. I promise."
"I don't think I'll sleep until you are."
I gave him a kiss that wasn't long enough for either of us, then I stepped into the fur-lined bag. Aaron covered me with trash, just in case the monks looked inside, then he tied the sack closed.
Only after I was tied into the bag and I couldn't see him did I hear him say: "I love you, Cara."
And then he was gone.
After he left, I sat there for hours, waiting for the monks to arrive, afraid to move the slightest bit in case they might be close enough to see. As I waited, I kept playing in my mind the last thing Harmony had said to me before she had hugged me goodbye and hurried off to Abuelo's that morning.
"Do not linger in the outside world," she had warned me. "Say your final good-byes quickly, and come home to us."
"What will happen if I stay too long?" I had asked. "Will I turn ugly again?"
"I don't know," Harmony had answered. "But I do know there are worse things than being ugly."
Part three
Cygnus Fatalis
18
Return to the flock
Traveling as garbage was not a highlight of my life, but sometimes you do what you have to do. The monks never knew I was there. I suppose I wasn't much heavier than what they were used to hauling. The fur around me kept me warm, but not warm enough. I shivered most of the way, and wondered if I would die of hypothermia and end up as part of the garbage after all. Trashes-to-ashes, I thought. It almost made me giggle, which, under the circumstances, would have been disastrous. The journey took a day and a half, and although they rested, I barely slept. I was hungry and, even more, thirsty. It was unbearable. Finally, toward the end of the second day, my bag was hurled into a hard, rough place, where I landed with a bruising crunch.
I let the pain peak, then fade, clenching my teeth so that I didn't make a sound. Then, when I was sure they were gone, I pulled myself out of the bag.
I was in a Dumpster. I stood up to get my bearings. I was out behind a gas station, and it was after dark. It was chilly, but nowhere near as cold as it had been in the higher altitudes as we crossed the mountains.
I climbed out and walked around to the front of the station, trying to stretch my cramped arms and legs. The second the gas-station attendant saw me, he swaggered over to me.
"Hey, little lady," he said. He was just a couple of years older than me, nineteen at the most. "What can I do you for?"
He was all goggly-eyed, and it took me a moment to realize he didn't see the Flock's Rest Monster when he looked at me. He saw someone beautiful. It amazed me that he didn't seem to notice I was covered in garbage.
"Which way to Flock's Rest?" I asked.
"No easy way to get there from here," he said. "That's clear over the mountains. The nearest road that crosses over is twenty-five miles away."
So the monks had taken me in the other direction. Well, that was just a minor inconvenience. I could still get there, and make it back, in time.
He smiled at me, showing me a cracked tooth, and tried to act all charming. "I get off in a couple of hours. I could give you a ride if you like. I know where it is; I was just there 'bout a month ago."
Something told me it wouldn't be a good idea. "No thanks," I told him, and he seemed a little hurt.
"Hey, I understand," he said. "A pretty girl like you―why would you take a ride from a guy like me? Right? 'Cept, of course, I got a really good car. Tiger-skin seats." He winked at me, and I rolled my eyes. Is this what pretty girls had to put up with all the time? "Runs like a dream," he said. "Just got it last month down at DeFido's. That's how come I know Flock's Rest."
I laughed at that. "If you got your car at DeFido's, then you got ripped off," I told him. "Trust me, I know. He's my father."
Suddenly he started snapping his fingers like something was wrong with him. "You―you―you're that missing DeFido girl. Holy Mother of―no friggin' way! I gots to call the cops, that's what I gots to do."
"No," I said. "No, don't!"
But he wasn't listening. "Oh yeah, they got a reward out for you."
"My parents offered a reward?"
I was actually impressed, until he said, "Five hundred dollars. Get myself some spinners for my car."
Five hundred bucks, I thought. Is that what I was worth to them? I knew people who offered higher rewards for their lost cats.
He ran into the gas-station office, and I ran after him. "No, stop," I said. He was already picking up the phone, but then he stopped when he looked at the "Missing" poster taped right there on his window. It didn't have a picture of me, because there were no pictures. Instead there was a police sketch. It was ugly, it was awful. It was me. Or at least the old me.
"Hey, hold on. This ain't you."
He looked to the poster, then to me, then to the poster again.
"No, you're right," I said, thinking quickly. "That's my sister. My sister's the one who's missing. Not me."
He looked at me, the expression on his face souring. "I guess there's no reward for you, is there?"
I shook my head. "No. Sorry." And I hurried out before he could offer me a ride again.
Five days, I thought as I walked down the road, and two already gone. Not much I could accomplish in what little time I had. But I didn't need to accomplish anything, did I? All I had to do was have a nice long sit-down with Mom and Dad. Maybe pack a bag of what few things I cared about, and leave forever. If I had time, maybe I'd go out to Vista View, find Miss Leticia's grave, and pay my respects.
The gas station was on a lonely road, with only a few homes nearby. I changed out of my garbage-covered clothes in someone's toolshed, took a long drink from the yard hose, then hosed myself off with its freezing water, and took some cl
othes that were hanging out to dry in the backyard. Then I started walking.
About five miles down the road, my feet were hurting something awful, and although a number of folks stopped to offer me a ride, I didn't take them up on it―mainly because they were all guys of varying ages, with their tongues practically hanging out like wolves when they looked at me. That wasn't the kind of attention I wanted from strangers, and I wasn't foolish enough to get into a car with any of them. It was a different world for me now. I had to get used to that.
Finally, a family in a minivan pulled up next to me.
"Honey, are you all right?" the woman asked, leaning out of the passenger-side window. "You know, it's dangerous to be on the road like this after dark. You might get hit by a car. Would you like a ride somewhere?"
This was a ride I felt safe taking, so I smiled, thanked them, and hopped in.
I sat in the back with the kids. A little boy no older than six, sucking on some sticky candy that made his lips blue, smiled at me. "You're pretty," he said.
And I laughed, because it was true!
Flock's Rest wasn't exactly on their way, but they didn't have the heart to leave me by the side of the road somewhere. That's another thing about being beautiful: People go out of their way to help you. It was almost midnight when they reached Flock's Rest. I had them drop me at the entrance to my trailer park.
Dad would be sitting with a beer, watching RetroToob and dreaming of his lost youth. Momma would probably still be up reading. Vance would be asleep, if he hadn't had too much pop at dinner.
As excited as I was, I was scared, too. My father always said, "You can't make a Ford a Ferrari," and yet here I was, all shiny and new. Cara: the sports model. I could give them no explanation for the change I had gone through. I couldn't tell them where I'd been, or about the water of the fountain, no matter how much they asked.
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