The Birth of a new moon

she, too, ducked through the conveniently open door.

'The swings are calling,' she said in brief explanation, and followed the children in the direction of the playground.

There was breakfast left, though only of the cold cereal, canned fruit-or-bananas, and sour yogurt variety. There was no coffee, though she could have had a cup of black tea if the big urns hadn't been cleared away. She satisfied herself with a small glass of goat's milk and orange juice made from an inexpensive concentrate.

Ana gathered her bowl in one hand and the two glasses in the other, and surveyed the room for a minute before choosing her seat. There were only nine people sitting down, in three groups. She decided against the young couple, who appeared too wrapped up in each other to welcome an intruder, and the four men who had obviously already put in two or three sweaty hours of dirty physical labor. Instead, she gravitated around to the three women nursing their cups of tea. One of them was Laurel from the night before, who recognized Ana as and moved over a fraction to welcome her to the bench.

Introductions were made—Teresa Montoya, pretty and silent, and Dominique Picard, who had an accent and an appearance as French as her name. Ana greeted them, sat down, and made a comment about the beautiful morning; with that simple prime, the well of conversation began easily to flow, even when Laurel excused herself to begin her kitchen duties.

Teresa and Dominique, it seemed, were teachers. All of the older students currently being off to basketball and Biosphere, the two women were free to bring their record books up-to-date and have a leisurely consultation over an extended breakfast. They were interested to hear that Ana was herself a teacher, and asked her about her experience.

'Well,' she said, 'I used to teach the little guys—I started with kindergarten, then third grade for several years. Then I wanted a change so I upgraded my certificate and taught high school in a private alternative school —history, English lit, and even beginning Spanish for a year,' The two women did not go so far as to exchange significant glances, but Ana could feel that they were definitely paying attention. 'Tell me about your school here. How many kids are there?'

'We have about a hundred kids in the community, eighty-seven of them in the school,' Dominique told her.

'Really? That's quite a good-sized school. How many people in the community in all?'

'Two hundred seventy, two hundred eighty, something like that. A high percentage of children, you are thinking, no? Do you know anything about us, Ana?'

'Not a thing, really. Carla took pity on me last night in Sedona when she saw me working on my bus's heater, but we didn't have a chance to talk. I did gather that this is a religious community.'

'Please, whatever you do, do not think of us as a cult. We are a community of people brought together by a common interest in spirituality and responsible living—personal transformation leading to a change in society as a whole. Steven is first among us here, but he is no cult leader.' Ana smiled to show her sympathy, and Dominique, mollified, went on.

'We have a high percentage of children here because one of the ways we take responsibility for our existence on this earth is to nurture young people who have been abandoned by their families. We take in so-called problem children—children who have been rejected by a series of foster homes, who are being released from juvenile detention centers, children too old or too ill-behaved for the adoption agencies—and we give them structure in their lives, the firm hand and good example of mature adults, healthy food for their bodies, fresh air and open space for their spirits, education for their minds, and, when they are ready for it, the skills to personally transform their souls,'

'And basketball games,' said Ana.

Dominique looked puzzled for a moment, then grinned. 'Basketball, yes—and we have a killer baseball team as well. Kids need focused relaxation, and a little friendly competition teaches them how to use aggression, not be used by it—a lot of the boys who come to us have real problems with aggression, learned from their fathers, continued by their peers. Besides which, an all-American team sport is a way we can demonstrate to the community and the state that we're not a bunch of weirdos about to start shooting at the FBI and BATF.' The colloquial familiarity with governmental agencies was disconcerting, particularly as Dominique had hit on the very purpose of Ana's presence here, but it was also amusing to hear the phrase 'bunch of weirdos' rendered in a French accent. Ana laughed. 'I met a child named Dulcie yesterday, who I assume is being fostered here,'

'Dulcie is a sweetheart. But why do you not think she was born here?'

Without pausing to consider, Ana said, 'Because she acts like an abused child,' Oh God, she then thought, what if Dulcie is actually one of their own? But both Teresa and Dominique were already nodding.

'She has only been with us about six weeks. She speaks only to her brother, who is also here, but she has begun to respond to outsiders by gestures, nodding, or pointing, and occasionally she uses a few words. That is progress,'

'Dulcie?' said Ana. 'Do you have more than one Dulcie here? The girl I met last night was talking just fine,'

'Dulcie was?' It was the first time Teresa had contributed; both women were leaning across the table as if to seize Ana by the collar.

'Yeah. When she and Carla saw me working on the engine, she asked me what I was doing. And what was the other thing? Oh yes, when I pulled a length of duct tape from the roll using my front teeth, she was a good little mother and told me I shouldn't use my teeth like that, they'd come loose and fall out. And then she got the giggles when I actually pulled my teeth out. I have a dental plate,' she explained.

Teresa and Dominique looked at each other thoughtfully.

'Well,' said Dominique. 'Interesting. Would you like to see the schoolrooms?'

'Sure,' said Ana. 'Let me just take the dishes back.' She piled up her things and took the empty cups of the two women, turned to carry them over to the kitchen, and then nearly dropped her burden in astonishment.

'Good… heavens,' she said. It was the first time she had faced the high half-wall that dropped down to divide the high-ceilinged dining hall from the kitchen. Last night she had merely glanced in as she went past, and this morning she had come in at the far door, taken her food from the buffet, and walked over to the tables to sit with her back to the kitchen. Now, however, she stared at the high wall and at the ten-foot-high mural that stretched the full sixty-foot width of the room.

The theme of the painting was proclaimed in foot-high gold letters smack in the middle: TRANSFORMATION. At the left side of the mural a highly realistic portrayal of the untouched desert that Ana had contemplated from her high perch that morning gradually gave way to the gentle civilization of fields and crops from which tumbled baskets of fruit, tomatoes, eggplants, and grain that spilled into the central image, the kitchen. Five figures stood with their backs to the painter and their arms raised, giving praise to a fiercely glowing homo, the womb-shaped bread oven found behind native dwellings throughout the Southwest, its top slightly elongated by the artist's perception into something closer to a pear in shape. To the right stretched an abundance of cooked dishes, breads, casseroles, and pots of soup that nourished a long row of identical people, again shown from behind, and then a row of people marching renewed to the fields while in the background children played on a slide and a set of swings. The people were followed by a jagged, half-raised circular stone building, and finally, seated in a lotus position, a meditating man surrounded by a shimmering golden aura.

Ana laughed in pleasure at the sight of it, and felt that really, she might as well climb into Rocinante and ride away: Any group with sufficient sense of humor and sheer exuberant joy to paint that mural above the entrance to their communal kitchen was not about to twist itself in self-loathing or paranoia.

She walked with Teresa and Dominique to the schoolrooms in the central building. On the way she looked curiously at her surroundings. The buildings were impressive and original, massive circular objects slapped together of rock and cement that somehow managed to look crudely primitive and wildly modernistic at the same time.

The garden, however, was the real delight. Xeriscape landscaping at its most austere, the carefully scattered cactuses, boulders, and desert plants had the look of modern sculpture in the courtyard of an art museum, softened only by the rises and falls of the ground and the sprinkled clumps of delicate grasses. There was even, Ana was charmed to see, a boojum tree at least twelve feet high, its glorious blue-gray trunk straight and tall in its cloud of tangly, tiny-leafed branches.

'For the Snark was a boojum, you see!' she exclaimed. Teresa looked at her as if she were mad, and Dominique blinked. 'A poem,' she explained. 'By Lewis Carroll.'