Mary Farmer.
***
“The dream starts today.”
I heard Mary as a hardly distinguishable bright flash signaled our arrival at our second home, but I also didn’t. My eyes were high in the clouds and my mind was entirely absent. “The moon is beautiful tonight.” I gasped.
“As always.”
I couldn’t help but smile as a gentle tug on my sleeve came after the words. And I couldn’t help but keep watching as we walked and talked. But it wasn’t rude. Mary was speaking of things I already knew. Of the project. The dream. Specifically about the progress made in my absence. Marie, my Doppelganger, and I were dissimilar in just as many ways as we were similar. She loved talking about the details. I loved looking at them.
It didn’t take long, her talk or the walk. Though the talk was shorter. Allowing for a precarious sight to behold my eyes upon my arrival.
The site was recommended either by Amun or Marie. Or both, but most likely the former when the ridiculous vastness of the plot was considered. It was a circular space, five hundred meters to a side on a depressingly empty slope that hugged the fence between steppes and badlands. It was hot, dry, and worst of all, lifeless. Except for a rather small brook sitting a few hundred meters away, feeding the sparse grasses and weeds as best it could.
It was a small creek with a steady trickle that made the only water feature for almost fifty kilometers. But it would become much more once we were finished.
We decided on a design after not so much deliberation. A grove, 348 meters in diameter, cordoned off from the dreary surroundings by seven cascading ponds and an eighth moat placed before the gate, 180 meters across each. Straddled by 18-meter bridges of twined roots, the water bodies mimicked the phases of the moon, as Amun called it. The new moon, the time when the rock was found in the southern sky and thus rendered nearly invisible, was represented by none other than the moat.
Crescent-shaped ponds straddled it on either side, those two with a patch of reeds or sand beaches around the ‘shadowed’ parts of the moon to distinguish the pond’s outline. They would undoubtedly become hot spots for crabs, birds, and waterfowl. As would the ponds that followed, I was sure.
The first and third quarters, half-spheres of water and weed, sat before the waxing and waning gibbous before the final pond, perfectly round and shockingly deep. However, that in itself posed a problem.
“Aeration and oxygenation.” Mary clone said as if that would explain everything. “Both the surface and the water’s deep must be disturbed. Agitated. So that dead zones don’t pool in the bottom. On the surface, that will be done by the waterfalls. But the bottom often requires enchantments or machinery.”
“Why not use blowers?” I shrugged. Then threw my chin towards the clay my undead companion was steadily conjuring and compacting into the pond basins. “Or water manipulation?”
“That’s exactly what we’ll do.” She grinned. “But we also need to ensure oxygen-producing plants find their way into the ponds as well. Non-invasive plants.”
“Non-invasive?” I recoiled immediately.
“Plants originally from this region. Invasive plants have no creatures to eat or out-compete them. They will reproduce and quickly spread throughout the grove.” She nodded. “Preventing any other plants from taking root.”
“I see.” I nodded, a little ashamed of my sudden offense. “Yeah. That would be bad.”
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“We’ll look for such plants while the ponds fill.” She beckoned me to follow her with a smile. And I did. Both smile and follow her across the vast and dead grove to hop across the deep chasm of the northern lake, where my undead companion was finalizing his concealment of a stone overflow pipe into the wall of the pond. “For now…” She trailed off as she turned to look back on the cascading ponds, empty though they were.
The pipe and canal were indeed his last digging jobs for the project. In a mere three weeks, he and Mary not only dug out the ponds and drainage systems but leveled out the grounds the ponds encircled to create a terraced grove of five tiers. Such progress in such a short time astounded me. It reminded me time and time again of the capabilities of the undead. And, truthfully, it made me a bit ashamed that I couldn’t keep up. Which, in a way, drove me to do more.
“We build.”
I snapped my eyes back to Mary and suddenly realized she’d never finished her sentence. Until now at least. My eyes dropped from hers to first scan the marked area of sticks and rope behind us before they went back to the barren lands before us. Looking at it, seeing it for what it would become, forced an excited grin across my face. A grin that I turned onto Mary without delay. “Let’s get started!”
The first, and perhaps only structure we would be constructing was my hut, but it was not the only project. It was a shelter more than anything. A two-room abode filled only with the essentials. It, naturally, was rather easy as a result.
Bales of hay from the farms around the tower were given to Marie and kept in storage until now. They were pulled and stacked like bricks, then held in place with fire-treated wooden posts that were hammered through to the ground. By far the hardest part of the build, especially with only four hands. But by lunch, a steady trickle of water added to the ambiance and my undead companion was gingerly stomping sand, clay, and water into a heaping pile of cod alongside us.
Layer by layer, we packed the bale walls until they were covered by half a meter of cod. Save a palm-sized square hole that was framed by wood before we set the beams in place and began roofing.
Despite me being in the tower just a few days before and despite the panoramic windows remaining unsealed or the door not yet existing, it was nice to sleep under a roof again; open though it was. It had windows mirroring the walls below. In full view of the stars and crescent moon, I must have laid for hours. Lost in the wonder and aggravated to the core by the squelching sounds of plaster being smothered onto cod walls.
Eventually, it became too much and I couldn’t help but stir from my mat to join in on the work. At least until I grew too tired to continue.
I awoke to a door set in the frame and shutters being applied to windows before a reaching hand pulled me to my feet. “Look!” Marie whispered excitedly as she pointed across the way toward something that I considered to be spectacular.
After nearly a day of filling up, the new moon ring was nearly full. Still, there were several centimeters left for the water to climb, but it was high enough for those near the edge to reach down for a sip.
They were birds, of course. The first and often most able creatures to spot a body of water from afar.
“Let’s not disturb them,” Marie said, tossing out a few sacks that I recognized at once. “What do you want to do first? The perimeter?”
“Let’s save that for last. We want our friends to know this place is here before that.”
“So be it.” She shrugged and picked up a sack tied with a pink ribbon. “The forest then?”
I replied by snatching the bag from her hand and taking off around the inner circumference of the ponds. In turn, she trailed after me, leaving wooden rods and beams pulled from the darkness as she went; and our undead trailed behind her, setting them into the ground to create posts and suspended railings for the grapes and tomatoes and other reaching plants I was sowing ahead of them.
Around and around the center of the would-be-grove, we planted crops of an ever-increasing variety until we approached the middle, where we switched to saplings and young fruit trees that formed toroidal copse around a central grassy plain. The obvious place for my shelter, it would seem. But the clearing would one day serve as the home for the essence of my grove. A divine tree. My divine tree. Surrounded by my food forest and eight beautiful water features that reflected the beauty of the Moon. The way it was all interconnected, in both present and future, was just… magical.
A magical dream.
But one day, it would become a magical reality. And, it would be private. Closed off to the vast majority by spells, animals, and thickets alike.
Speaking of which… “I wonder if any of Amun’s shadow creatures would like it here?”
“Well,” Mary casually shrugged, though her excitement was evident. “A few of the future Rangers treat some of them like Familiars already. So…” She shrugged again. “Which one’s your favorite?”
“Skoll and Hati, obviously.” I sighed out a raspberry. “But they’re always with Amun. Pora Bora too. So…” I tapped at my lips. “Invite whoever wants to come, I guess?”
“Okay!”