Mack concentrated instead on staying to the walkway. As he rounded the trees, he saw for the first time a magnificent garden and orchard somehow contained within a plot of land hardly larger than an acre. For whatever reason, Mack had expected a perfectly manicured and ordered English garden. This was not that!
It was chaos in color. His eyes tried unsuccessfully to find some order in this blatant disregard for certainty. Dazzling sprays of flowers were blasted through patches of randomly planted vegetables and herbs, vegetation the likes of which Mack had never seen. It was confusing, stunning, and incredibly beautiful.
“From above it’s a fractal,” Sarayu said over her shoulder with an air of pleasure.
“A what?” asked Mack absentmindedly, his mind still trying to grapple with and control the pandemonium of sight and the movements of hues and shades. Every step he took changed whatever patterns he for an instant thought he had seen, and nothing was like it had been.
“A fractal… something considered simple and orderly that is actually composed of repeated patterns no matter how magnified. A fractal is almost infinitely complex. I love fractals, so I put them everywhere.”
“Looks like a mess to me,” muttered Mack under his breath.
Sarayu stopped and turned to Mack, her face glorious. “Mack! Thank you! What a wonderful compliment!” She looked around at the garden. “That is exactly what this is-a mess. But,” she looked back at Mack and beamed, “it’s still a fractal, too.”
Sarayu walked straight to a certain herb plant, plucked some heads off it, and turned to Mack.
“Here,” she said, her voice sounding more like music than anything else. “Papa wasn’t kidding at breakfast. You’d better chew on these greens for a few minutes. It will counteract the natural ‘movement’ of the ones you overindulged in earlier, if you know what I mean.”
Mack chuckled as he accepted and carefully began to chew. “Yeah, but those greens tasted so good!” His stomach had begun to roll a little, and being kept off balance by the verdant wildness he had stepped into was not helping. The flavor of the herb was not distastefuclass="underline" a hint of mint and some other spices he had probably smelled before but couldn’t identify. As they walked, the growling in his stomach slowly began to subside, and he relaxed what he hadn’t realized he had been clenching.
Without speaking a word, he tried to follow Sarayu from place to place within the garden, but found himself easily distracted by the blends of colors; currant and vermillion reds, tangerine and chartreuse divided by platinum and fuchsia, as well as innumerable shades of greens and browns. It was all wonderfully bewildering and intoxicating.
Sarayu seemed to be intently focused on a particular task. But like her name, she wafted about like a playful eddying wind and he never quite knew which way she was blowing. He found it rather difficult to keep up with her. It reminded him of trying to follow Nan in a mall.
She moved through the garden snipping off various flowers and herbs and handing them to Mack to carry. The makeshift bouquet grew quite large, a pungent mass of perfume. The mixtures of aromatic spices were unlike anything he had ever smelled, and they were so strong he could almost taste them.
They deposited the final bouquet inside the door of a small garden shop that Mack had not noticed before, buried as it was in a thicket of wild growth including vines and what Mack thought were weeds.
“One task done,” Sarayu announced, “and one to go.” She handed Mack a shovel, rake, scythe, and pair of gloves and floated out and down a particularly overgrown path that seemed to go in the general direction of the far end of the garden. Along the way, she would occasionally slow to touch this plant or that flower, all the while humming the haunting tune that Mack had been captivated by the evening before. He followed obediently, carrying the tools he had been given and trying to keep her in sight while wondering at his surroundings.
When she stopped, Mack almost ran into her, distracted as he was looking around. Somehow she had changed, now dressed in work clothes: jeans with wild designs, a work shirt, and gloves. They were in an area that could have been an orchard, but not really. Regardless, the place they stood was an open spot surrounded on three sides by peach and cherry trees, and in the middle was a cascade of purple and yellow flowered bushes that almost took his breath away.
“Mackenzie,” she pointed directly at the incredible purple and yellow patch. “I would like your help clearing this entire plot of ground. There is something very special that I want to plant here tomorrow, and we need to get it ready.” She looked at Mack and reached for the scythe.
“You can’t be serious? This is so gorgeous and in such a secluded spot.” But Sarayu didn’t seem to notice. Without further explanation, she turned and began destroying the artistic display of flowers. She cut cleanly, seemingly without any effort. Mack shrugged, donned his gloves, and began raking into piles the havoc she was wreaking. He struggled to keep up. It might not be a strain for her, but for him it was labor. Twenty minutes later the plants were all cut off at the roots, and the plot looked like a wound in the garden. Mack’s forearms were etched with cut marks from the branches he had piled in one spot. He was out of breath and sweating, glad to be finished. Sarayu stood over the plot, examining their handiwork.
“Isn’t this exhilarating?” she asked.
“I’ve been exhilarated in better ways,” Mack retorted sarcastically.
“Oh, Mackenzie, if you only knew. It’s not the work, but the purpose that makes it special. And,” she smiled at him, “it’s the only kind I do.”
Mack leaned on his rake and looked around the garden and then at the red welts on his arms. “Sarayu, I know you are the Creator, but did you make the poisonous plants, stinging nettles, and mosquitoes, too?”
“Mackenzie,” responded Sarayu, seeming to move in tandem with the breezes, “A created being can only take what already exists and from it fashion something different.”
“So, you are saying that you…”
“… created everything that actually exists, including what you consider the bad stuff,” Sarayu completed his sentence. “But when I created it, it was only Good, because that is just the way I am.” She seemed to almost billow into a curtsy before resuming her task.
“But,” Mack continued, not satisfied, “then why has so much of the ‘Good’ gone ‘bad’?”
Now Sarayu paused before answering. “You humans, so little in your own eyes. You are truly blind to your own place in the Creation. Having chosen the ravaged path of independence, you don’t even comprehend that you are dragging the entire Creation along with you.” She shook her head and the wind sighed through the trees nearby. “So very sad, but it won’t be this way forever.”
They enjoyed a few moments of silence as Mack looked back toward the various plants that he could see from where they were standing. “So, are there plants in this garden that are poisonous?” he asked.
“Oh, yes,” exclaimed Sarayu. “They are some of my favorites. Some are even dangerous to the touch, like this one.” She reached for a nearby bush and snapped off something that looked like a dead stick with only a few tiny leaves budding from the stem. She handed it to Mack, who raised both hands to avoid touching it.
Sarayu laughed. “I am here, Mack. There are times when it is safe to touch, and times when precautions must be taken. That is the wonder and adventure of exploration, a piece of what you call science-to discern and discover what we have hidden for you to find.”
“So why did you hide it?” Mack inquired.
“Why do children love to hide and seek? Ask any person who has a passion to explore and discover and create. The choice to hide so many wonders from you is an act of love that is a gift inside the process of life.”