The Fern Tender (6 page)

      The Fern Tender interrupted, “OK, thanks for the context, we know you have mastered the facts, and every detail of the stories of Mohammed, the family trees of all Roman gods, the psalms of the Old Testament, all of them, on and on, and with amazing precision. But you now have the privilege of adding your insight to the mysterious force that turns the wheel. It is not only an important custom of our Colony, it is a deep mystery. So, despite your proclivity for mischief and your young age we genuinely want to know what your genius believes. Please tell us your thoughts child.”

     Sitting in silence for a minute with the board gazing at her, Lillian recalled her amazement as a very young student upon learning from her elders that the people in the capitol voluntarily adopted the ridiculous religious paradigms of the wheel without any type of coercion. And the wheel was very much about the people in the Capitol. The Colonists didn’t believe in any religion, just one God and the beauty of nature that surrounded them. They knew the power of God and left it alone. They rejected attempting to fix something that they knew wasn’t broken. Unlike the Capitol where men had ruled for many generations, the Colonists never speculated or wrote books about the rules of righteousness. The violence and greed inherent in men had never contaminated the the Colony where women ruled with intellect and love. The holy figures or gods and stifling rules about love, how to love, who to love, the people of the Capitol worshipped, even at such a young age just seemed juvenile to Lillian. Despite her thoughts on religion, she was genuinely intrigued and did all the work of learning the characters on the wheel better than anyone.

     The characters and the stories were not enough for her though, what really pulled at her imagination throughout her childhood instruction was the very question she was being asked by the women, “What drives the wheel?”

     When she thought about it all: the the gods, goddesses, apostles, prophets, and saints she surmised they were just made up answers to “Why are we here?” She knew the religious stuff  were just a veneer the people in the Capitol layered over the ultimate question.  A trick, a paradigm of beliefs they built for themselves to stay on their tracks. Really, religion was just another measuring stick, a way to keep score on each other in for the foolish quest of achieving perfection. A way to feel more in control along the journey of life, making the ultimate question of “What are we here?” less frightening.

     Staring back at the women of the Colony’s board, Lillian took a shallow breath and felt her young heart begin to beat faster. Her thoughts on the wheel had always just been her own, keeping them to herself a defense mechanism she often used among the other girls to  seem more normal. Keeping the true power of her thought to herself helped her blend in and feel accepted.

     Gathering herself, she began opening the doors of her mind. She rifled over the stacks of ideas and her shelves of thoughts. She quickly collected herself and began to mold it all into a coherent answer.

     Beginning her answer with the basis of their Trinity felt like a good place to start. “The Trinity that Fern Tenders must monitor is: the jaguars, the ferns, and the wheel. We really don’t have much control over the wheel though. It turns and turns and as your question suggests, we don’t truly know why it turns and why it has stopped for resets in the distant past. We can only speculate. The Fern Tender is limited to observations of jaguars and ferns as a method of prediction really, hence the word tender. The wheel is just a manifestation of the health of the trinity, a triangle where each corner depends on the other to hold itself up. A strong presence of jaguars kept the monkeys from eating the very last ferns. The ferns and their magic in turn protect the Spring. The pure waters of the Spring, give safe harbor to the wheel so that in can twist in secrecy. Altogether this is our Trinity, our purpose.”

     She went on, “Our service to the Earth as Colonists is to be true stewards of the jaguars, the ferns, and the wheel.”

     “I’ll recite our poem as well. I know you know it, but it helps me think.” Lillian straightened her dress and said the sacred poem:

During the evolution of humans,

God saw the greed and violence of man,

To insure and preserve her creation,

Earth is equipped with an intrinsic relation,

A stitch of hubris woven into the fabric of man,

As men fight and destroy there lurks a genius plan,

For each new god or religion they adore,

Our wheel collects all their whores,

They show up in our spring on our wheel,

Their lost souls yearning to to heal,

The more in the name men maim and rape,

Our wheel begins to spin with hate,

When the wheel stops, and it will again

There’s only 10,000 left to help it mend,

So we see now why our colony must be here,

It’s us who preserve the good magic when there are tears

     She took a breath, “Basically our poem says there are cycles to our wheel because the outsiders never truly learn the lesson of violence and greed. It can go for long intervals but eventually it stops. And when it stops it stops on two new figures they worship. Long ago as the outsiders, those on the Capitol and rest of the planet, picked up the pieces of the last collapse they invaded our Colony. The outsiders tried to use the wheel for their own power. Through God and magic the Colony was then separated and Colonists were given full and complete control over the wheel. The Colony and it’s purpose are imperative to the survival of Earth so long as the people of the Capital and rest of the planet continue to build societies and religions that favor power and greed over love and environment.”

     One of the board members cut Lillian off, “A beautiful explanation of our trinity, its interdependencies between the Colony and the outsiders, as well as our beliefs and legends. But what do you think drives the wheel? How does the wheel turn? It doesn’t get radio reports from the Capitol about what country invaded who or how many women were raped yesterday.” 

     With some exasperation in her voice, the Fern Tender then remarked, “You’re holding back, you’re protecting yourself. Put yourself out there Lillian, you won the right to show us your imagination, your theory, your ideas behind the mystery of how the wheel turns. Have you considered that you might just know the truth?”

     Sensing she could no longer stall, she had to give her thesis. Feeling more than just a tinge of regret that her thoughts now no longer belonged to her only, she reflected on just how important the mystery of wheel had been to her. Now the weird puzzle that she pondered for fun and distraction throughout her childhood would have to be risked and shared. Pulling her shoulders back, and then lunging toward the board as if her ideas were a sword to wield at them, she found her confidence.

     Feeling vulnerable and brave, she began, “Ladies, what I believe drives the wheel is death. Death of the people, plants, and animals. The wheel knows the exact state of our world by monitoring death. People are buried, put in the ground along with their souls when they die. And without a consciousness or a body, the souls leave the casket, then begin to sink. They sink deep into the Earth, until finally the soul hits a vein of ground water. That tiny underground stream pushes the soul into a larger pool and ultimately the souls of all the worlds’ dead collect in our aquifer where they remain until they are cleansed. The stench of man’s evil is polished away from each one and they begin to rise from below. Each soul is resurrected and flung back into the world from the bottom of Beverly Springs cycling through the wheel. Each one then exits the ferns and rides the gentle current of the springs over the surface our river stones. Spewing into our marsh and filtering through the brackish water our mangroves, where they become whole and pure again. Finally, they are returned back into our salty waters of The Gulf. There in the Ocean, sacred again, one by one they wait for another turn.”

     She paused for a minute and straightened her shoulders back into place, “Souls drive the wheel. Souls of dead jaguars, ferns, and most importantly humans. Souls are God’s way of keeping score. The more souls that rise into the Springs and flutter through the wheel, the faster the wheel spins. The slower the wheel, the more the souls needed cleansing. Murder, war, rape, and especially greed create tainted souls. The more time needed for cleansing the more time spent in the aquifer. Even innocent souls arriving with the taint of genocide or war crimes must be purified too. This results in the ability of God to keep perfect score on the health of the human race. As we’ve been discussing in class, the wheel is slowing again now not because of a hydrological drought, but a drought of healthy souls. It could stop again if there is not enough torque from clean souls to turn the wheel.”

     The board peered back at Lillian in an exalted respectful silence. No one said a word.

     Her shock now at the speed of the wheel brought Lillian crashing back to the present. Feeling cheated that as she first had notices as a child and then on her watch as Fern Tender she had only ever seen the wheel slow down. She had never had the joy of seeing it spin in good health. Today, she read words. Apollo, Venus, Judas, and on. This was now a crisis. She knew she must skip this week’s class in the village and going straight to the Capitol. She must speak with the President.

     Although it felt reckless, as she reached the Capital Lillian drove straight past the Capitol building and across the interstate that sliced the city into the haves and have-nots. The state of the wheel was paramount, but she had to do something for herself first.

     Just then her phone rang, and a long suffering voice spoke, "Lillian you're confirmed to meet with the president at 3PM today, but may I ask why the urgency? And just note that I've spent all day rearranging his schedule. What is the reason for not going with the regular monthly meeting schedule?"

     "I'll have to cite the Colony/Capital secrecy agreement Edward. I'm sorry I know that's annoying, but my business is with the president only today, thank you."

     Hanging up the phone she knew Ed, the president’s top advisor, probably just kicked his chair over. Ed hated that he was only privy to very little if any of the information shared between Lillian and a president. Ed had no idea there was such a thing as the Trinity or a wheel that governed the planet, and he probably wouldn't believe it if told anyway. The president only believed it after seeing it and knowing that every one of his living predecessors personally visited his chambers immediately after his inauguration speech to explain its importance.

     She had an hour and a half before her meeting with the president. Lillian jammed the ancient CD into the car player. It was one of two CDs she owned, both stolen from the president’s office. She recalled the day he was late to their meeting. Feeling slighted by someone she considered her equal and left alone waiting and not knowing anything really about popular music, she took the ones that had the weirdest covers.  She liked the look of Elton John’s Goodbye to Yellow Brick Road and Frank Zappa's Bongo Fury.

     Putting the stolen CD on the only song she really liked from it, Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding she consciously braced herself for the drama and cheesiness. For whatever reason hearing “Love Lies Bleeding” shouted over and over helped focus her mind on her short term task, find her Andrew.

     As Lillian lived her double life in the Capitol,  a life of no consequence when it came to sex, no threat of judgement, pregnancy, or disease, she gained tremendous power and pleasure. However, over the years, much of what most people in the Capitol would consider amazing anonymous sex turned routine. Only Andrew and Ellen's house provided real thrills for Lillian.  Letting her magic take control she lost herself in the song and subconscious probabilities. Tapping her index finger on the steering wheel whispering "Andrew" over and over she turned off the noise in her head and let her magic and his signal guide her.

      He was a beautiful man. Her mystery man. They had never spoke, just hooked up together using his magic and her deep beauty as their attraction. Their liaisons were getting more frequent and her thoughts about him more intense and confusing. Still she pushed on, looking for him was like looking for a drug. He was that powerful to her.

     Finally, today she found him sitting on the picnic bench under a massive oak tree at Ferguson’s BBQ. “Voted Best BBQ in the South!” proclaimed the sign. Apparently that’s true she noted silently looking at the line of people stretching out the door. The line snaked through a series of mostly empty picnic tables. A canopy of Spanish moss hung from the oak tree shading her, Andrew, and the several dozen strangers from the afternoon sun.

     She sat down at the empty table opposite him, giving her a full view of his beautiful face, his almond colored skin, the one brown-eye, the other grey, and his short overly groomed dreads. His body reminded her of the mixed-race European professional soccer players she’d seen before in the sports highlights on the lobby TV at her hotel near the Capitol. Although much slimmer and shorter than the men in the Colony, he was still physical perfection to her. Just looking at him was intense and exotic. All the other faces, the ones in line behind Andrew stood paled in comparison. 

     The backdrop of the ‘Puffy faced pasty men of the Capitol’  as she so often described them to herself, began to fade. Her vision now tunneled across the tables and bored into him. The last sound she heard was one of the puffy faces in the line chatting wildly about about techniques for cooking brisket. “Cooking cow meat all night is just weird,” she mumbled to herself. A final check-in with her surroundings. Then one glimpse her watch, 12:36PM.