Stories

The following Wednesday Giselle showed up at Lucille’s house for a nice cup of tea and a lengthy demonstration of her new embroidery pattern. The table in Lucille’s drawing room got covered quickly with bits of yarn, several types of canvas, scissors and pads of paper covered with sewing motifs, wristband pincushions, thimbles, cups and saucers, a teapot, a sugar bowl, a plate of cookies, still warm, and two tablets, one of which was Giselle’s, finally restored to proper functioning.
After a few hours the crewel technique was mastered and Giselle left, tablet in basket. She picked up the pace when she was out of sight and headed straight to the Council Hall where she interrupted a meeting in progress in order to whisper a few words in Rosemary’s ear, a feat unheard of in general and quite incredible coming from Giselle.

“So,” Lucille said casually, “I hear that our safely guarded secret school is the talk of the Village!”
Mary looked at her with genuine bewilderment.
“Giselle told me all about it yesterday over a cup of tea. Oh, by the way, could you ask somebody to figure out how to make this work? She left it with me to get looked at,” Lucille pulled the tablet out of the basket and set it on the table. 
“How did she find out about this?” Mary asked, and a fleeting flash of fear shrouded her eyes.
Lucille forgot about her irritation for a second, when she remembered that the girl was hiding there to safeguard her life. Her previous priorities fell to the wayside for a little while, as she thought of the best way to reassure her niece.
“She listened in on the girls while they were talking in shop,” she said in a much softer tone. “It seems,” she hesitated, “that not every Council member is averse to the idea of all of you learning these things.”

After many months with only an impressive collection of desert artifacts to show for, Rosemary and her team were called back by the Council, despite clamorous protests and, on occasion, veiled threats. Every time she had to go to a meeting, Rosemary got into the habit of carrying around an object or other from the collection, which she liked to parade around the room as a symbol of her righteous outrage.
“There is no hope for the Village anymore. You just destroyed our last chance to uproot evil from our midst once and for all!” she raised her voice in Council, an outrageous and completely unheard of behavior that made even Mrs. Eberhart frown with disapproval. “I warn you! This will not end well, and I’m not going to sit here, idle, while the likes of Mary and her evil mirror mongers destroy our traditions and endanger our children! If you don’t do anything about this, I have no choice but to take matters into my own hands!”

The more Mary delved into the recovery of the database the more she became tangled in the old story buried inside it, almost as if her own memories were finally brought back to life. At times she felt as if she had awakened from a long sleep and found herself in a room she recognized without knowing why.
She had learned enough of the old code to understand that the Que’d held technical instructions, not the story of her ancestors, and she was a little disappointed about that. After all the secrecy and the sacrifices that kept the sacred book from being lost through the centuries, she expected it to reveal the meaning of life, or at least provide some moral guidance for her future. On the other hand, the database was a never ending source of wonder, an entire alternate history her generation knew nothing about. It is said that history is written by the victors, and a couple of centuries ago, as the defeated party, the Scholars’ line simply slipped out of existence, its every trace erased, and only its shadow stayed alive in the folk tales, carried by the vague whispers and half remarks passed down from generation to generation by the few dissenters left behind.

In all fairness, Mary was banished indeed. The makeshift team at the rock mound spared no effort in setting up means to detect her presence, if and when she decided to approach the apparently agreed upon meeting place and look for her aunt. Every day a small group of ladies took it upon themselves to check all the tracking markers, only to notice that their condition always changed. The wind, the rain, the little creatures of the desert trampled them over in their comings and goings, oblivious to the interests and goals of the humans and answering only to the larger scale of nature.
The group spent lots of time in meetings, trying to pick out the artifacts from the random patterns of being, an activity blessed with the same odds to succeed as finding a needle in a haystack. Every now and then someone in the group would single out a detail that looked like obvious proof of Mary’s touch and they made it their main goal to prove themselves right. The more someone else contradicted them, the more invested they became in the defense of their theory and when challenged they took it personally. The contradicted parties abode morosely by the group decision that the artifact was not relevant, but stashed the offending item in a coffer, certain that the truth will see justice in the end. That’s how the camp was blessed with an ever growing collection of sticks, rocks, sand pattern molds made of wax, drawings of quasi-random straw patterns, and even, for a reason nobody really understood, an abandoned bird’s nest.

In the agitation created by the events that surrounded the search for Mary the Circle almost forgot about the cursed poppy experiment, and was only reminded of it when the second generation of plants emerged and bloomed even bluer than the first. Mrs. Eberhart shrugged at the sight of the field donning the color of the sky, irritated that the Council had wasted her time again with superstitious nonsense. 
“When are we going to be rid of this curse already?” Rosemary clamored, displeased that the plan she was contemplating in her mind, the one where even the memory of the Que’d was stripped from the Village record and life went on, with industry and righteousness, like it did for her generation, and her mother’s generation, and her grandmother’s, and her great-grandmother’s. 

Later that day Lucille prepared a basket of food, like she did every evening, not forgetting Mary’s favorite cookies, fresh out of the oven, waited for the night to fall and stepped out into the desert quietly, careful not to attract attention.
She walked without noise through the soft, powdery sand, under the stars that shone so bright they cast shadows around the dunes and brightened the desert night enough to light her path. She stopped at times, to put the basket down, sighed in response to her thoughts and then continued on her way. She walked for a couple of hours, too deep in thought to pay attention to her surroundings, the way a person who walks the same familiar path is suddenly surprised to find herself much farther along it than she thought she was. At the end of the journey she slowed down and looked around swiftly, and then, reassured, turned at a sharp bend around a dune and stopped in front of a mound of rocks which looked like it had been placed there intentionally, as if to mark the spot. 

The cleansing ceremony in the desert came and went with no consequences, which was a little disappointing for Rosemary, who was hoping for some sort of vindication of her beliefs. Weeks passed, then months. The girls were as tired as always, but finally figured out ways to keep out of sight and thus managed to rest at least long enough to prevent themselves from falling asleep in company.
Life in the village continued virtually the same, and if one wasn’t intimately familiar with its daily intricacies, one wouldn’t have felt the subtle shifts in attitude or in the ways of doing things, but the elders were, and so they did. 

“May I have your attention, please?” Lucille cast her voice over the audience, and the murmurs and shuffles subsided. “Is everybody here?” she scanned the cave to make sure all the girls had made it inside, safe and unnoticed. When she was reassured that they were all there, she continued.
“Before class starts, I don’t think I need to reiterate the importance of keeping this knowledge to ourselves, at least for the time being. I’m sure the reasons why don’t require explaining.” A soft wave of discomfort weaved through the gathering and quickly subsided, as they recalled the unfolding of events in the Council Hall. “Back to more interesting subjects, if memory serves, Blanche was going to present her study on gene splicing and the effects of introducing snapdragon DNA into tomato breeds. So, without further ado,” she waved her hand, inviting Blanche to the podium, to present her slides to the class.

It’s been said that nothing happens on this earth without leaving traces of its passing. Sometimes those come in material form, through the testimony of even the most mundane objects, other times through the subtle changes in behavior, and taking upon a different way to see the world.
The lessons in the cave didn’t get lost on the girls’ hearts and minds, how can one discover an entirely new world and stay the same? They were more confident in their strange compliance, and completely unafraid. If there was one thing in the world that incensed Rosemary was people not knowing their place. She had held to her position in society and obeyed its every restraint, and she wanted to make sure every member of the generation after her did exactly the same. The fact that her place in society had been quite cozy and comfortable, due for the most part to fortunate birth circumstances and helpful people to guide her way was beside the point, she firmly believed that her life in and of itself validated her right to be were she was, and those who didn’t fare as well did so by the faults of their own conscience.