Starbird Murphy and the World Outside (10 page)

“It's not safe out there,” she said, clasping her hands together. “I just wanted him home.”

I looked at the bag of clothes sitting on my cot and at Fern with her tear-stained cheeks, and I knew I couldn't turn back. I couldn't tell V to go without me or wait until next year or even next week.

“You can't interfere with my Calling, Fern.” I picked up the canvas bag and walked back toward the driveway.

Iron was at the refrigerator truck talking to V when I got there. “I'll help Ursa with the chickens,” he said before I could say anything.

I nodded without making eye contact. Maybe I shouldn't have felt angry at Iron, but I did.

Other Family members were emerging from the house and standing around in the driveway. Clearly, the news about my Calling had spread. V opened the passenger side door, and I stuffed my bag behind the seat. Ursa emerged from the house with a container of eggs, and I helped her pack them safely into the refrigerated rear section. If there was one thing the Free Family had perfected in the past three years, it was saying good-bye.

“Peace, Sister.” “Go with God, Starbird.” “We are Family.” They hugged me one by one.

“You are a child of the Cosmos.” Eve held the back of my head as she hugged me. “Stay on your path as a true Believer.”

“I wouldn't go back out there for anything,” said Lyra, but then Eve nudged her and Lyra added, “Peace, Sister.”

Fern emerged from the direction of the yurt, her eyes red and swollen. She walked slowly across the gravel and didn't look in my eyes as she opened her arms to embrace me. “Be careful,” was all she said.

I kept my composure, not allowing myself to break down until Ursa said, “I'll take care of our chickens.” Then tears sprouted in my eyes like new feathers. I nodded and jumped into the passenger seat of the truck.

Gamma emerged from the house in time to catch us in the driveway. “Starbird, I know you will be a true asset for the café.” She squeezed my hand through the open truck window. Then she looked at V. “Tell Ephraim to respond to my calls. I know he's been sick, but the situation is serious.”

“Copy that,” said V, putting on her purple sunglasses and starting the engine.

The music was turned up and V was singing along before we were halfway down the gravel drive. So when Caelum and Indus emerged from the back lot, and Indus started running toward the truck, she didn't even notice. I didn't tell her to stop. I didn't even wave.

 8 

“H
ere's the plan!” V yelled over the music. “If we get pulled over, I'm going to act like it's no big deal. Then, I'm going to reach over like I'm grabbing my purse, slap my forehead, and say, ‘Oh no, I must have left my purse at the Farm. I'm sorry, officer, I don't have my license on me.' Then, when he asks me my name, I'm going to say ‘Felicia Hale,' who is a girl who works at the restaurant and looks like me. As long as he believes I'm her, it'll only be, like, a ten-dollar charge for forgetting my license.”

“How hard would it be to get a real driver's license?” I asked, wishing V would look at the road more while she was driving.

“Well, first I'd have to get a birth certificate and Social Security number, and for that I'd need a lawyer. There's a lawyer in Seattle who has helped other Family members, but you know what you need to get a lawyer.”

“What?”

V laughed. “I forgot, you really don't know. Money. You need money. And that's one thing the Family has less and less of these days. Iron told me about your birth certificate. So I guess you're not really off the grid anymore.”

I nodded, reaching again for the crumpled paper in my pocket.

“I'm sorry to tell you this, but that means you're going to have to go to school. At the Farm, they can still claim to be homeschooling because they got licensed once, but we don't have the resources at Beacon House. And since you'll show up on the radar as having a job at the café and living in Seattle, you have to show up at school, too. Don't worry, Cham goes to Roosevelt, and he'll show you how to get through it.”

We were flying down the highway at an unimaginable speed. Still, vehicles passed us on both sides. They weren't like the trucks that drove onto the Farm, either. They were tiny cars, shiny red, blue, and tan, zipping by us on the right and left. Most of them had only one person inside. When cars showed up at the Farm, they were always packed with people.

“Where are these people going?” I asked, feeling queasy from the motion of the truck.

“I know, right?” she said. “Where do they all go?”

“This is really fast,” I said, not sure if I meant V's driving or my decision to leave the Farm.

“Do you think I'm a bad driver?” V looked at me.
Please look at the road
. “Because Devin says I'm a bad driver, which I said is ridiculous. I've been driving since I was ten.” She held up all ten fingers at me. That meant no hands on the wheel.

I decided to stop talking to V so she would stop gesturing. I closed my eyes and tried to control the motion sickness.
I'm leaving the Farm
, I thought.
I'm leaving the Farm
. My mind wandered back to the day three years ago when EARTH told us he was leaving.

It was days after Doug Fir had run off in the middle of the night. I was almost thirteen years old and walking around inside a dark cloud. I barely had the heart to come to the Translation at all and only went because Indus came to the yurt to get me. I was upset that my brother was gone, and missed him terribly, but I was also horrified to discover that he wasn't a true Believer, that he would abandon his Family. He was EARTH's apprentice. What kind of person would do something like that?

EARTH had called Fern Moon and me to an audience that morning. Mars Wolf brought us up the stairs of the main house and into EARTH's massive room with its thick, red curtains and heavy blue tapestries. We sat on pillows across from EARTH in front of the altar. EARTH's white hair was an uncombed mess, and his blue eyes wandered around the room as if he was looking for something. His hands seemed to flop thoughtlessly around his knees.

“Why would Doug leave us?” he asked Fern.

My mother broke into the same heaving sobs I had been hearing every night since Doug disappeared. She collapsed into EARTH's lap, and he stroked her hair as she moaned. EARTH motioned for me with his other arm and wrapped me into his chest where I soaked his robe with tears. Mars Wolf finally asked us to leave, saying that it was time for EARTH to prepare for the Translation.

After everyone was seated in our orbits in the Sanctuary, EARTH entered through the north door and perched on the platform. One of the Planet Elders recited the Family history and then EARTH began to speak.

“Each member of the Free Family receives a Calling.” EARTH's voice crowded the air in the barn. He wasn't the same person I had cried to just moments before. He was taller, younger, more focused. “I, however, receive many. The Cosmos spoke to me last night when I was alone in my rooms, deep in meditation. It told me to go on a Mission to California. There are Family members there who haven't been able to find us, wandering alone in the wilderness. I have been instructed to take two with me.” EARTH paused. “Mars Wolf and Bathsheba Honey will accompany me.”

The congregation was silent. EARTH had gone on Missions before, usually for a few weeks to a month, either south to California or east to Idaho, so it wasn't unheard of, but it still caused a certain amount of stress among Family members whenever he left. Mars Wolf always went with him, as did one of the women in the Family. I felt as if someone had punched me right on top of a bruise. How could I be losing EARTH the same week as losing Doug Fir?

“The Cosmos instructs that the party should leave on Sunday,” EARTH said, raising his hands toward the sun coming through the window of the hayloft, a halo of light forming around each of his hands.

When Sunday came, they packed up one of the Family's VW buses and left in the late afternoon. Family members lined up in front of the house, old and young, over a hundred and fifty all together. EARTH said good-bye to each of us, one by one, hugging the women, touching the heads of the children, pressing his hands together and nodding at the men. Even though I was still twelve, he treated me as an adult and hugged me rather than patting my head. Then he looked into my eyes and smiled, one hand on each of my arms. His blue eyes were so piercing and his look so comforting, I nearly forgot to feel sad.

“I'll find him,” he said, as if reading my mind.

I didn't ask EARTH about the upcoming apprenticeships, which included mine. We all assumed he would be back soon enough to assign them. When EARTH turned away, I broke into a moaning cry and had to prevent myself from running after him. That's when Indus Stone, sixteen and strong, put his arm around me and squeezed. It was a sweet gesture, something an older brother would do.

EARTH appointed Gamma to manage the office and paperwork in his absence, which we thought would last a few weeks, four or five at the most. After the first month, we received a letter, which Eve read aloud after Sunday afternoon brunch in the long room. It was written on parchment paper and related EARTH's latest Translation. “Children of the Cosmos,” Eve read, “continue as if I am there. The Cosmic Intelligence will provide for you. The Family is Free.”

So we continued as if EARTH were there. Iron organized labor for the harvest, and we started making plans for the Winter Solstice. Children made drawings in school that they planned to show EARTH when he got back. Disputes were set aside until EARTH could settle them at the next ceremony, and a new letter came every month. “Children of the Cosmos, we are spreading news of the Family and finding many of our brothers and sisters. I am needed here, so you must have the Winter Solstice without me. Continue as if I am there. The Family is Free.”

And so we continued, through the Winter Solstice and the long rains that followed, through the spring planting season, and into plans for the Summer Solstice. It wasn't until a year after EARTH left that things began to fall apart. Small disagreements over housing, the division of farmwork, and preparations for the Solstice Festivals started boiling over. Members began gossiping about one another—who was lazy, who was using too many resources, and who wasn't getting enough attention from the buyers. When Spring Meteor and Firmament Rise got into a fistfight in the middle of the yurt village that ended in Spring ripping the door off Firmament's house and tossing it into a fire pit, things everywhere seemed to explode.

Several groups left the next day, and many more over the next two years, taking everything they thought should be theirs with them. EARTH's letters became fewer and fewer, but I listened to each one expectantly, for news that EARTH had found Doug, or that EARTH had a job for me or that EARTH was coming home. We didn't have any way to write back or call him, so those of us who stayed had to exhibit great faith, to set an example as true Believers.

I was still tied up in memories when I saw the first sign for Seattle. The air in the truck suddenly felt stifling. I rolled down the window, and wind screamed into the truck like a tiny tornado, whipping hair across my face. It got even harder to breathe. There were still tall evergreens on both sides of the highway, but they were interrupted by colossal concrete structures and electronic signs. We passed an entire lot full of vehicles, each one four times the size of one of our vans. The only truly familiar thing in the landscape was the Cascade Range, still snowcapped and watching me from a distance. Cars continued to flood past us.
So many Outsiders. So much space. What if the Outside just swallows me up like it did Doug? What if I disappear, too?

V took an exit off the highway, and our speed slowed to a reasonably mad thirty miles per hour. We crossed a bridge and wound through a few steep streets before passing a block with three brick buildings and a vacant lot full of weeds and grass. At the end of the block, we turned left and then pulled into an alley buttressed by chain-link fences. A dog started barking as we passed.

V parked the truck in a tiny two-car lot. We were a million miles from the Farm. We were in a city made of asphalt, brick, and rain clouds. V turned off the engine, looked at me, and said, “Well, here it is, Starbird. Your new home away from home.”