“Almost there now,” Clair says.
The sun is breaking through the trees now. More color, more shapes, all of it suffused with warmth and color. Unseen birds chirp in the high trees above us. Rounding a bend, Clair cups her mouth and belts out a yodel. It’s unlike anything we’ve heard before; Ben can’t stop staring at her.
“I’m giving the Mission a heads-up,” Clair says. “Letting them know I’ve found you.”
“‘The Mission’?” I say.
She doesn’t answer. We walk for another ten, fifteen minutes.
And then. The forest suddenly collapses away. We stop in our tracks.
A fortress wall rises above us, several stories high. It is constructed out of huge boulders held together by a fibrous slapdash of concrete, metal, and tree trunks. The dawn sun creeps over the eaves of the mountaintops, and the fortress’s state of disrepair becomes obvious. Only a tower at the corner of the fortress appears to be well-maintained, armored with smooth, dark steel plates. Circling the circumference of this corner tower is a large window, the glass lit up. “That’s Krugman’s office,” Clair says, pointing.
Clair leads us through the opened gates—two hulking metallic slabs six inches thick and the height of three people. Judging from the level of rust on the ground tracks, the gates haven’t been closed in quite some time. For years, possibly. Clair brings her hands to her face again, and the same yodel ululates out.
We step through, and now we’re inside the walls.
“Whoa,” Ben says softly, as if afraid of bursting a mirage.
There is a whole village community inside. Dawn light spreads across the commune, the burnished red light bathing thatch-roofed cottages. The cottages glow with a soft hue, plush as cushions, internally lit by roaring fireplaces. Smoke lifts serenely out of tall ornamental chimneys. A window opens from a nearby cottage; I see the appearance of a head, quickly joined by another.
A brook bubbles in front of us, the water crystal clear. Arching over the brook is a cobblestone bridge, embedded with hand-hewn stones that glimmer in the dawn light, like warm eyes twinkling at us.
More windows open. Heads large and small appear in the window frames. Doors open wide, filling with bodies that spill out.
Ben grabs Sissy’s hand. “Sissy?” he whispers with excitement.
She smiles, squeezes his hand. “I think everything is going to be okay now.”
The people pour out of their homes like colorful goldfish, their clothing bright and cheerful. Neither ambling nor hasty, they make their way toward us, hobbling curiously side to side, their eyes glistening.
“How many people?” Epap asks.
“A couple hundred of us,” Clair answers.
We stop at the foot of the cobblestone bridge; across the other side, the gaggle of villagers do the same. For a minute, we stare at one another. Their faces are rotund and healthy. Many are still in their pajamas, their hair bed-headed. A pink warmth emanates off their cheeks.
A large man steps forward from out of the crowd, his ample stomach lolling about his waist. My heart freezes—but only for a second. Clearly, this bulky, towering man is not my father. The man surveys us for a second, then bends backward, arms crooked at his side, and bellows out a laugh. It’s a hearty roar, full-throated and joyous. He approaches us, his form rising higher as he walks along the arc of the bridge. Halfway across, at the bridge’s apex, he spreads his arms wide, his face beaming.
“Welcome to the Mission,” he says, his voice deep and sonorous. “We’ve been expecting you.” He stops a few steps from us, his presence overpowering, his charisma dripping down on us like raindrops off an umbrella. His large silhouette blocks out the rising sun; in his shadow, the temperature drops a notch. But only for a moment. He quickly shifts position as if realizing. Beaming down at us, his smiling face wavers. He’s trying to figure out who’s the leader of this group. His eyes bypass Epap, slide past Sissy, linger on me, shift back to Epap, then, finally, settle on me. He reasserts his smile. “The name’s Krugman. My extreme pleasure in meeting you. My delectable, indescribable delight!” His hand reaches down and swallows mine, beefy and muscular. But the skin is soft, smooth, effeminate.
“Shall we?” he says, moving to the side, his arm swinging slowly to indicate the way. The bridge arches like a rainbow before us, splashing down in a sea of smiles.
Cautiously at first, then with building excitement, we start to cross the bridge. Sissy and the boys, having lived in a dome their whole lives, have never entered a crowd before, and wariness causes them to pause at the apex of the bridge. From here, we catch a whiff of succulent food odors the likes of which I’ve never smelled before. Our stomachs grumble.
“This has to be it!” Ben cries. “It just has to be. The Land of Milk and Honey, Fruit and Sunshine.” He tugs at Sissy’s sleeve. “This is the place, isn’t it? Where the Scientist promised to bring us?”
She doesn’t say anything but her eyes glimmer wetly.
“It is, isn’t it?” David urges her.
At last, she gives a nod, barely detectable. “Maybe. We still need to be—”
But that’s all David and Jacob need to hear. Immediately, they’re grabbing our hands, pulling us across the bridge.
The crowd parts to allow us through, but only slightly. As we push through, the villagers reach out to touch us, their eager hands patting us on our backs and shoulders, their heads nodding and even bouncing with excitement, their teeth shining with a whitened cleanliness. Every which way we look, there are welcoming eyes and affirming nods. At one point, Ben tugs my arm. He’s all smiles now, tears tracking down his cheeks; he’s saying something but I can’t hear for all the clamor about us. I bend down and catch a phrase—“Land of Milk and Honey, Fruit and Sunshine, we must”—before his words are swallowed up.
And I think he’s right. As the sun rises above us, gaining in warmth, spreading its light over the mountain, over the village, over the crowds of smiling people, as I hear the sound of affirming laughter so loud as to vibrate my bones, as I catch Sissy smiling at me with the purity of the bluest sky, I feel a sensation unlike anything I’ve ever felt before.
It feels like a homecoming.
15
KRUGMAN LEADS US through the village on the main path paved with bricks and flagstones. He’s an enthusiastic guide, occasionally taking the time to teach us the names of new sights and sounds. Closer up, it’s clear that the cottages are well constructed, built on stone foundations with half-timbering in the upper stories. Wildflowers placed in small ceramic vases adorn windowsills, a colorful array of lilies, lupines, geraniums, marigolds, and mignonettes. Everything is neat, clean, bright, orderly. Faces—virtually all of them young girls—peer at us through the tall mullioned windows. More girls follow us, a few of the older ones staring at me, whispering to one another.
Epap has been a bobblehead since we arrived. He’s never seen another girl besides Sissy, and the onslaught of females is a sensory overload for him. He gawks at them, his eyes wide and dazed, a nervous smirk pulling at his mouth.
Krugman introduces the buildings: the storehouses, the clinic, the carpentry cottage, the maternity ward, the garment chalet. Each is slightly larger than the residential cottages. As we leave the northern end of the village, the cottages suddenly drop off, the flagstone-and-brick path ceding to the natural dirt and soil of farmland. A smell rises in the air: blood and meat and animal dung. Several small cottages sit in the middle of the farmland: the butchery shacks, Krugman says without looking. We pass more farmlands, aligned with neat rows of what Krugman tells us are corn and potatoes and cabbage heads, and an array of apple, pear, and plum trees. A few figures move between these rows, small as ants.
As Krugman circles back through rows of blackberry bushes and a field of rye, a glacial lake suddenly merges into view unannounced. The lake water is crystal clear; multihued stones by the shore shimmer through the shallow water. A mountain breeze gusts, rippling the mirrorlike surface, distorting the upside-down reflection of mountains, clouds, and sky. A few boats are tied to a small dock that’s made out of driftwood logs. By this time, our stomachs are rumbling with hunger, louder than ever. Krugman smiles at the sound and leads us back to the village square, cutting across a swath of grassy meadows.
We’re taken to a large dining hall inside of which are lined rows of empty tables and benches. Young girls bring out plates of food from the kitchen, stealing curious glances at us as they whisper the name of each dish. We scarf the food down. Even though I’m coughing up a storm, I can’t hold back. My eyes are watering, my nose is running and dripping into the dishes, and my head is spinning around like drunken mosquito. But I can’t stop stuffing my face. Porridge and scrambled eggs and bacon and rolls of bread. These are the names of the dishes uttered as they’re placed before us. The villagers remain outside, their faces squeezed in the window frames observing us. All so pretty and young.
And that’s when it first hits me. An oddity. Almost everyone here is female and young.
I study the youthful faces squeezed into window frames. Toddlers, prepubescent youth, teenagers, predominantly female. There’s only a scattering of young boys, none older than seven or eight years.
The interior of the dining hall is a study in contrast. Instead of young girls, about a dozen older men stand around the perimeter of the room, balding, paunch-bellied, in their forties and fifties. None of them come close to resembling my father. These men are doughy and bearded whereas my father was muscularly cut and clean-shaven. In the far corner, two particularly paunchy men stand on each side of Krugman. All cheeriness seems to have left him. His eyes and mouth are level and somber, his thick arms folded across his chest. He says something—just a word or two—and one of the men leaves his side and heads outside.
That is when I notice the painted portraits. About a dozen, spread along the length of the wall and interspersed by tall windows. Magnificent oil paintings of men, dignified and posed, hung high and framed with hand-carved wooden frames. I casually gaze at a few of them before turning my attention back to my plate of food.