Becoming Calder(11)

I peeked inside a little nervously, and then stepped in when I couldn't see anything much from where I stood. On the other side, it suddenly opened up and I stood upright and walked through the space, mostly consisting of dirt, rock, and a few sparse patches of desert grass. But as I walked farther, I heard running water and noticed more vegetation. Moving through another doorway-sized opening I found another spring! I laughed out loud, looking around in wonder at the hidden pool of water. How was it I didn't know about this? I spent more time than anyone down at the healing spring. This one was even larger than the other one—just as clear and just as blue—with plants growing everywhere. There was even a very small waterfall, mostly a trickle really, that ran between two of the larger rocks.

Something caught my attention to my right, in between two rocks. When I moved closer, I saw that someone had written in the dirt and there were several toys sitting neatly on a small blanket where both rocks met, creating a small alcove.

I tilted my head, taking it in. Two baby dolls, a plastic tea set, and a small, pink horse. Strange.

My eyes moved down to the dirt in front of the toys and I saw "Eden" had been spelled out in small pieces of broken sticks.

I scrunched up my face in confusion. Was this where she played? The items looked older. Had she been playing here since she arrived? I stared down at the toys for a minute, curious and wanting to touch them, but I didn't. The council member kids were given toys and the worker kids were not. Still, I kept my hands to myself. Something about those toys sitting there struck me as very, very sad and weakened my desire to pick them up and study them one by one. I thought about the many friends I had and how we played together every afternoon after our work was done—variations on sports our parents taught us, like hide and seek, tag . . . From my experience, there was never a lack of someone to spend time with inside Acadia. As a matter of fact, you had to put some effort into finding some quiet time if you got fed up with people chattering at you from sunup 'til sundown.

But Eden . . . didn't she play with the other kids who lived at the lodge with her? The council members' kids? Or was she forbidden for some reason? I had seen the way my friends looked at her as she walked to the front of the Temple month after month—still with some interest—but clearly she was different than the rest of us. Separate . . . and looked upon with a certain suspicion, probably even jealousy.

I guessed it might be the same with the council members' kids, too. She was separate from them as well—not just another ordinary kid, not yet a wife—sort of a strange mixture of both and not one of an “us.”

I stood up slowly and chewed on my lip for several minutes considering Eden, picturing her playing here in this place she'd found. All alone.

I was jolted out of my thoughts by the loud call of a hawk and made my way back to our spring to fill my water containers. My mom would be looking for me if I wasn't home soon.

I walked back through the brush between the two rocks and arranged it so it wasn't noticeable this time. Hopefully Eden would remember to do the same. For some reason, I didn't want anyone else finding out about that secret spring through the hidden passage.



**********



I watched for Eden more closely after that day, more curious about her now, what she did, how she lived. She was so close and yet seemed so far away from the rest of us.

I looked up at the main lodge, brilliant with its electricity in the midst of the darkness of our small cabins, where we only had candlelight in the evenings.

I saw her now and again, too, peeking through her window if we were playing in the large dirt area a little way from the main lodge, just beyond the first of the small worker homes.

One hot day at the end of that May, we were playing Kick the Can. Only in this case, our "can" was a small piece of driftwood I had retrieved from the river that ran behind our land—our source of clean, drinking water. I tried to keep referring to the game in my head as "kick the driftwood" because thinking about a can made me think about Coca-Cola, and man, that would have tasted good right then and there, sweaty and thirsty under a noontime sun.

All of a sudden, I noticed a blonde head peeking out from behind a tree just a little way away. I pretended not to see her and just kept on playing, every now and again glancing over where I could now see Eden standing among the small grove of Acacia trees, pretty much right out in the open.

Over the next fifteen minutes, she inched closer and closer to our game field, until she was standing right on the edge with some of the other players who had already gotten out.

As she got near, a small brunette girl named Hannah looked at her with wide eyes and blurted out nervously, "Should you be here?"