CHAPTER 5
Morning came quickly with the sun peering brightly through the windows. Presley awoke to the sound of a crow, and for a brief moment, she forgot where she was. She instantly recalled her dream from the night before. As she tried to piece together the different parts of the dream, she heard a rumbling coming from the loft. She watched as Paulette’s bare feet climbed down the ladder.
“How did you sleep?” Paulette asked with a yawn.
“I don’t think I moved all night,” replied Presley.
“We’d better get dressed. Jesse will be here any minute. I’m sure he will want to show you around the town today.”
“Show me around? Why?”
“Don’t you see it? The way he looks at you?” Paulette went over to an old trunk and pulled out two dresses. One was a plain black dress and the other was a light tan color with tiny white flowers.
“Which one do you want?” asked Paulette. Presley looked at both dresses and shrugged her shoulders.
“Are those my only choices?” she giggled. “Where are my clothes?”
“Your clothes are being washed,” Paulette held the dresses up again. “Here, you take the brown dress.” Presley reluctantly took it and slipped it on.
“How do I look?” Presley frowned.
“Actually, you look pretty good,” Paulette encouraged as she threw Presley her boots.
“Yeah, I guess. It’s not that bad,” she said as she pulled up her boots. It was a simple dress made out of cotton material with thin fragile straps. “I must say, the boots make the dress!”
The girls walked outside to find Jesse waiting on them. He grabbed Presley’s hand. She felt butterflies in her stomach.
“There’s so much that I want you to see. What do you say? Do you want to see our little town?” he asked her excitedly.
“I thought we were going to find Manna today! You know, you said that you were gonna help us get home,” she reminded him.
His smile disappeared. “I know, and I will, but I need you to spend the day with me. And you need to have a better understanding, I think, of where you are and who we are. We’ve worked so hard trying to make this place as comfortable as possible to live.” He stopped abruptly and turned around to Presley.
“Please,” he begged, “I just want to show you around, just for awhile. What do you have to get back home to in such a hurry anyway?” he smiled.
Presley thought for a moment. Tyler instantly came to her mind.
She thought, Maybe if I’m gone longer he’ll worry more. And the more he worries, the more he will want to be with me.
“Okay,” said Presley. “I would love to see your town,” she smiled back.
Unbeknownst to Presley, Sarah was watching their whole conversation from afar.
Sarah and Jesse had dated many years before and he had broken off their relationship. Sarah had never gotten over Jesse. She always had thought they would get back together and she tried everything she could to make sure that it would happen. Sarah was tall, with long blond hair and a fair complexion. She was beautiful . . . on the outside, anyway. Seeing him with Presley made Sarah green with envy and quite jealous of the new girl in town.
Sarah walked over to Presley and Jesse, smiled as big as she could and batted her baby blue eyes as she sweetly asked, “Well, well, Jesse, who is this?”
“Sarah, this is Presley . . . Presley, this is Sarah,” he said, quickly looking down as he spoke.
“Oh . . . yeah, Paulette mentioned something about you earlier. You and Jesse came here around the same time, right? Did you know each other before you came here?” Presley felt heavy tension between them.
“Yeah, you could say that,” Sarah answered, glaring at Presley.
After a silent pause, Presley held out her hand, “Well, it’s nice to meet you.”
Sarah glanced down at Presley’s hand and snarled, “Nice to meet you too,” she spoke with a hint of resentment.
Jesse became noticeably uncomfortable and began to squirm. He blurted, “We’d better go.” Pulling Presley close to him, they walked way. Sarah stared angrily after them as they left. She was very manipulative and immediately started to plot against Presley. Paulette was sitting on her front porch, and Sarah went over to find out more about Presley.
“So, what’s the new girl’s story?” pressed Sarah. Sarah tried to be pleasant, but Paulette heard the agitation in her tone.
“Who? Presley?” asked Paulette, as she watched Jesse and Presley walking down the road.
“Yes, Presley! Who else would I be talking about?” snapped Sarah.
“Jealous?” Paulette smirked.
“Jealous! Over her? Never. Why would I be jealous over her?” Sarah sneered.
“Oh, I don’t know. Looks like Jesse has taken a liking to her pretty well,” Paulette teased.
“Jesse is just showing her around. He’s a gentleman. That’s what he does. It doesn’t mean anything,” said Sarah in a desperate tone.
“I can tell you this much,” Paulette looked around to make sure nobody else was listening. Leaning toward Sarah, she quietly said, “I have never seen him look at a girl the way he looks at Presley. I, for one, have never believed in love at first sight. But after watching those two for the last two days, I do believe that I’ve changed my mind!”
Sarah frowned at Paulette and let out a huff as she stormed away. Paulette laughed.
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For someone who struggled with trust and affection, Presley was growing increasingly fond of Jesse. Jesse held Presley’s hand tightly as he led her through the streets of the town. The chemistry between them was undeniable. Presley noticed that her heart was racing and she found it hard to concentrate on what he was saying. The town reminded her of movies she had seen that took place back in the 1800s. She watched as horses and carriages went by. Jesse greeted the people as they passed.
“Everyone has a job here depending on their trade.” He pointed to a store on the right. “That’s Victor’s shop over there. He makes shoes and he also sharpens knives. And over here next to Victor’s is Marian’s shop. She washes everyone’s clothes. She has many girls who help her.” He pointed a few stores down. “Oh, and over there is the General Store. That’s where we get our salt and flour. It’s run by Darlene and-”
Presley interrupted, “How many people actually live here?”
“Two hundred and thirteen . . . well two-hundred and fourteen, if we were to count you,” he grinned.
“How did they all get here?” asked Presley.
“The same way we did,” he replied.
Jesse walked over to a big open fire. There were two men tending it.
“This is the town’s fire. We have to keep this fire burning at all times so that if any of the fires in the houses go out they can come here and retrieve hot coals, and restart their fires. We had a problem with fires going out in the middle of the night. We’d have to wake up a neighbor to get some hot coals until we decided on a town fire. Volney and Russell keep it going day and night. It’s their job,” Jesse said as he patted Volney on his bald head.
The two men greeted Presley. Jesse took out a small wooden box from his pants pocket, and opened the lid.
“See the honeycomb inside?” he asked.
“Yeah,” answered Presley. Jesse held the box near the fire until the honeycomb was melted.
“Hey, Volney I need a torch, a big spoon and bowl,” he hollered.
“Sure, I’ll be back,” Volney said, as he ran toward the General Store.
“What are you doing?” asked Presley.
“Showing off!” chuckled Russell.
“We’re going to get some honey.” Jesse locked eyes with Presley. “Okay, the honeycomb in the box has melted. Now
listen carefully. I’m going to put the box down and this honeycomb will attract some bees. When you see the bees inside the box I want you to slowly and gently shut the box. Okay?”
“Okay,” she smiled.
Volney came back with the torch, big spoon and large bowl.
“Here you go, Jess,” Volney said.
Jesse took the spoon, placed it in the bowl, and put the bowl on the ground. He took the torch and held it in the fire until it was lit. Presley watched as five honeybees landed in the box and then she slowly closed it.
“The bees are shut in the box,” she said.
“Great. Now, when I say to open it, get ready to run. We have to follow the bees back to their honey tree. Are you ready?” he asked.
Presley nodded. Jesse leaned down and picked up the bowl and spoon in one hand and had the torch in the other.
“Okay! Now!” Jesse yelled. The bees took off and Presley and Jesse ran after them. They ran through the town and out through the woods. There were trees as far as she could see.
As they ran past a field of orange wild flowers, they gradually faded into light purple. Presley tried to stay focused on the bees, but couldn’t help notice the rainbow of changes taking place around her.
“Don’t lose them! They’re fast!” They ran for a few minutes until the bees finally stopped.
“Look, this is it!” Presley said. She pointed to a tall rotted tree which held the large hive. Thousands of swarming bees surrounded the tree.
“Don’t get too close,” said Jesse. He waved the torch toward the hive, hoping to tire the bees with the smoke so they would not sting.
“Here,” Jesse said, “take the torch, please.”
Presley held the torch as Jesse took the spoon from the bowl. He reached up and carefully scooped out the honeycomb. A few bees landed on his sleeve, but he never flinched. After the bowl was full, he turned towards Presley.
“This should last us for a while.”
“What are you going to use it for?” she asked.
“We mainly use it for a sweetener, but we also make candles from the wax.” He sat down on a fallen log, and Presley sat beside him. Honey was all over Jesse’s hand and he began to lick it off.
“Do you want a lick? You have to try this.” She licked some of the honey on his finger.
“That is so good,” she said. “How do they make this honey?”
“Bees are fascinating to me. They all work together as a team. The hive has thousands and thousands of bees and each has a job. Some are worker bees; they find the flowers and collect the pollen and nectar. Then, the bee rolls the pollen into a ball and carries it back to the hive. It mixes the nectar with its saliva, and that makes honey.”
“So, I’m eating bee spit?” Presley scrunched her nose in disgust.
“Yeah, I guess we are both eating bee spit,” he laughed.
“Come on, girl, let’s get back to town,” he said.
≈≈≈≈≈
“These flowers are so amazing,” she said as she bent down to touch one of them. The flowers were changing from purple to yellow to blue then orange.
“They can feel our energy,” he said.
“What? Our energy? What do you mean?” she asked
“Our energy field. You know, our aura,” he replied.
“What’s an aura?” she asked.
“Well, you can’t see it, but it’s the energy field that surrounds all living creatures,” Jesse hesitated, trying to explain. “Okay, for example, say you were to take two metal rods, and hold the ends of them loosely. As you slowly walked toward me, the rods would automatically cross when you enter my energy field,” he explained.
“Metal rods?” she asked.
“Yeah, metal rods,” he repeated. “Anyway, all flowers and trees feel and respond to our energy much like the metal rod. They have a very strong connection with us. It’s like they can read our energy and then manifest it into a color.
≈≈≈≈≈
They walked back to the town’s fire and Jesse handed Volney the torch.
“Thanks for your help, Volney.”
“Is all of this honey for me?” Volney said jokingly.
“No. Now that’s going to have to last us a while. I’ll be back this afternoon to pick it back up, and I know how much is in there,” Jesse joked back.
They walked up a steep hill and when they reached the top she saw horses pulling men as they worked the open crop fields.
“We are getting ready to plant,” he said.
“What do you plant?” she asked.
“Over there we’ll plant corn and in between the rows we will plant beans to help choke out weeds. Over yonder are the hay fields and . . . here come with me,” Jesse guided her over the hill and around the bend. “This is the pig farm.” Jesse opened the wooden split-rail gate and started to walk in, but Presley hesitated.
“What’s wrong?” asked Jesse. “You ain’t never seen pigs before?” he joked.
“I’ve seen plenty of pigs before,” she snapped. “It’s just really muddy and it stinks.”
“You want to ride one?” Jesse asked bright eyed.
“Ride one! No. I don’t want to ride one!” she quickly answered.
“Get on, girl!” Jesse said. He grabbed her around her waist, picked her up, and put her on a pig. “Suuuey!” Jesse yelled, “Ride that sow!" The pig took off running, bouncing Presley back and forth until she flew off into the mud. She laid there in shock for a moment and then burst into laughter.
“That was great! Now I’ll go!” Jesse jumped on the back of the pig and again yelled, “Suuuey!" The pig jerked and jumped until Jesse flew off beside Presley.
As she was laughing, she couldn’t recall a time when she had so much fun. Jesse gently helped Presley to her feet. He touched the birth mark on her arm, and she jerked away from him. He gently brushed her hair out of her face and then ran his hand down her cheek.
“I need to show you something else,” he said as he softly took her hand.
They walked up and over a large hill. In the distance was an enormous tree. The tree looked as if it went on for miles. It radiated a soft white light.
“This is Gracie.” The tree was surrounded by a solid gold fence which signified the importance of the tree. Jesse opened the golden gate and then closed it behind Presley.
“It’s beautiful. It looks just like the tree that protected me when I first came here, except much bigger.”
“Gracie is all over this world, but this is the tree that started all of the others,” he explained.
“So, she is like the mother tree?” she asked.
“No,” he said, “the other trees are just an extension of her. She has an underground root system that covers this planet and the other trees are shoots from this tree. So, we call them all Gracie because they are all one living tree. Do you understand?” He went on to explain. “Gracie has been here longer than any of us. She feels, she’s wise, and she responds to human touch. See?” Jesse touched the tree and the limbs started to sway gently.
“In The Book of Codes we are told that without Gracie we would not be able to exist here. Just as on Earth we couldn’t survive without the trees, here we could not survive without her.
Presley never had pondered such deep thoughts. She found Jesse enlightning and bright, much different from the guys back home. The deepest thoughts they had were who was going to win the next football game, or where the next party was going to be.
“We have to respect the laws of nature and try not to take them for granted. We need to appreciate how fortunate we are just to be alive. We need to make the most of our lives and know that there is a purpose for all of us. Our lives are what we make of them. Some people go through
their lives with blinders on and go every which way the wind blows. Some people feel sorry for themselves because hard of circumstances that have come their way, and feel negative and defeated throughout their life. Not me. Not anymore.”
They sat in a deep stare for a few moments. Jesse pulled Presley closer towards him, and for a split second it seemed as if he was going to kiss her. Her heart began to race with anticipation and she felt as if time stood still. He nudged her instead, “Come on girl. Let’s get you some clean clothes,” he said as he shyly turned away from her.