Flora grabbed the next pick and followed Aster’s instructions. After it clicked in place, she passed it to Kava so that she could hold it in place while she worked on the next one. Afterwards, Mendel did the same so that Kava and Flora were each holding two picks. Just as Mendel picked up the last pick, Crick gave a shout of triumph.
Flora looked up to see that Crick was now dangling from the top of the gate, having leapt off from Stalk, who now stood on a mountain of debris. As he pulled himself up to the top, Chase came up behind them. “Hmm, he should have thought this one through.”
And sure enough, Crick’s look of triumph quickly turned to dismay as he looked down to the other side.
“Go ahead and jump, Cos,” Stalk called out. “Then open the gate.”
“Are you crazy?” Crick yelled back. “It’s like 30 feet straight down. Plus, I don’t even see a way of opening the gate from the other side.”
“Let’s keep working,” Garland said, refocusing their efforts. A minute later, Garland grunted in surprise as the cylinder in his hand turned. Mendel had moved the last pin into place. Aster quickly moved to the front of the block and yanked the bent pin from the front of the box. “We did it!” she exclaimed.
“I can let go now, right?” Garland asked.
Aster nodded and everyone relaxed visibly, dropping their tools. Garland quickly walked up to the gate and lifted the bar. It swung up, pivoting on the right hinge. Garland leaned the bar off to the right and walked toward the gate.
“Wait. Stop,” Crick called out, but Garland ignored him, pushing the gate open with Crick still hanging onto the top.
Garland pumped a fist excitedly. “One down, and four to go.” Garland, Mendel, Aster, Kava, and Flora walked victoriously through the gate as Stalk and Bunsen ran over to get Crick down off the gate.
************
“How is this a garden of anything?” Crick asked.
For once, Flora had to agree with him. They stood in the middle of what looked like a completely barren field, a collection of twigs and dirt spread out beneath their feet.
“And what’s the trial?” asked Garland.
Chase, who stood twenty feet behind them, said, “The trial of the Garden of Agriculture requires you to stay close together.” He gestured with his hands. “Close together now. Good.”
“Wait, how is that an answer?” asked Stalk as he walked towards the rest of the group.
“You’ll see.”
Flora saw a tiny smile creep onto Chase’s face. Then suddenly, the ground disappeared from beneath her feet, and the air filled with flying debris. She landed on her back, her fall cushioned by the remains of a giant pile of leaves. The rest of those leaves now drifted in the air like snow flakes, having been launched into the air by the energy of their landing. She looked around to see the others slowly getting up and brushing themselves off. Flora stood up and looked around to take stock of their situation.
They were in a hole, about ten feet wide and thirty feet deep. The top of the hole was a disc of light above them. The walls were almost perfectly vertical and seemed to be made of a mixture of stone and densely packed dirt. Flora felt around a little bit but didn’t find any handholds that would work for climbing. There were some small roots embedded in the soil, but they just broke off when she tried to pull on them.
“Everyone okay?” Garland asked.
One by one, people gave a nod or a thumbs up. “Where’s Crick?” Flora asked.
“He went in there,” Aster said, pointing behind her. That was when Flora noticed a small cave at the corner of the pit. “After pushing Bunsen and Stalk in first,” she added.
“Come on,” Garland said. “No need to let them get too far ahead of us.” He led the way into the darkness, with the rest of their cohort following after.
A tiny bit of light bounced its way down the pit and into the tunnel, just enough for Flora to avoid tripping over her own feet. The tunnel widened into a chamber, dimly lit by tiny pinpricks of light that somehow managed to make it through the rocky ceiling overhead. As her eyes adjusted, Flora slowly became aware of the vast garden that surrounded her.
Everywhere she looked, small, low-lying plants gripped onto the hard rock. Starved of light, red bushes, purple vines, and odd, tendril-shaped roots climbed across the rocks. And though there was little in the way of light here, the plants got plenty of water, for somewhere in this cavern, an underwater stream passed through, its pleasant gurgle echoing through the chamber. Flora could taste the cool moistness in the air.
“Let’s stick together,” Garland said. “We’ll walk along the right wall until we find another tunnel and the way out of here.”
They walked along the wall for half an hour with absolutely no change in the scenery. Out of habit, Flora and Mendel stuck to the back of the group.
“Odd,” Mendel whispered, trying to keep his voice from echoing up to the others. “We should have run into the stream by now, but the sound always seems to be coming from our left.”
“Are you sure?” Flora asked. “It echoes so much in here that I can’t even tell where you are.”
“Aha!” Garland shouted. “We found the exit.” And indeed they had found another tunnel leading out of the cavern
Kava yanked on Aster’s sleeve, pointing at the ground. “Right, it looks like Crick might have gotten here first,” Aster said. “You can’t quite make out footprints, but it looks like someone came through here recently.”
Garland hurried after the trail, occasionally yelling back at them to hurry up. As the tunnel lightened, Flora and Mendel began to run, almost bowling over Aster and Kava in the process.
“No,” Garland said, his fingers splayed through his wavy hair. Flora surveyed the familiar surroundings. They were back where they started. They had walked the full perimeter around the cavern and followed their own footsteps back to the pit.
“The exit, must be in the center of the garden,” Mendel said.
“Let’s go then,” Garland said, once again rushing down the tunnel towards the cavern. This time he headed straight towards what he guessed was the center of the cavern. It must have been the right direction, for the sound of the stream was getting louder and louder. “Find the stream, find the exit,” Garland assured them.
At that moment, Crick, Stalk, and Bunsen went hurtling past them, back in the direction they had just come from. Stalk and Crick were holding Bunsen’s dripping backpack while Bunsen ran after them, somehow managing to hold all his possessions in his arms.
“Poor kid,” Garland muttered. Flora couldn’t have agreed more, and yet Bunsen didn’t look like he was being tormented by Crick and Stalk. He had actually looked excited, happy even.
“There goes plan B,” Aster said. They had found the source of the stream, and it didn’t look like they would be able to follow it out. In front of them stood a tiny oasis. A ring of leafless trees grew around a pond of crystal clear water. In the center of the pond, a jet of water sprung out from the rocks, creating a spectacular and noisy fountain.
“There must be an above-ground lake somewhere,” Mendel said. “And that lake must be connected to a body of water sitting below us, giving it enough pressure to sprout this oasis.”
“It is quite an oasis,” Garland said. “It’s amazing what a little water can do.”
“That’s right,” Mendel said. “Back to the entrance.”
“Again? Why?” Aster said
“The entrance is the exit,” Garland said as realization spread across his face.
But they knew it was too late. When they got to the entrance pit, Crick was already at the top, laughing down at them. It was now easy to climb out of the pit, for heavy roots stuck out of the walls, forming a network of handgrips.
“They’re Boscia plants,” Bunsen explained as they climbed out of the pit. “Boscia plants have very large, strong root structures. But they’re not always large. They’re cyclical. They only grow them out when there are a lot
of nutrients and water in the soil. They can react almost instantly to sudden influxes of water, tripling the volume of their roots in minutes.”
Flora now knew that Bunsen hadn’t been picked on. In fact, Crick and Stalk must have filled his backpack up with water under his directions. They had simply watered the Boscia plants and watched as a ladder formed in minutes.
“It’s one to one now,” Crick called out. To Flora it sounded like it was directed at her more than at Garland.
************
Sand. Pieces of rock, smashed into tiny loose grains. Flora had never seen so much of it in one place before. After lunch, they journeyed for an uneventful hour along the trail before they reached the next garden. But this was unlike any garden Flora had ever seen.
There were no plants. In fact, there did not seem to be anything green or living in this garden at all. The entire ground was covered in a coarse white sand. It had been carefully raked, making perfect ripples across the surface. In the center of the stark landscape, Chase lay resting on a square stone floor, about fifteen feet in both directions and just a few inches high. A thin rock path led up to the stone floor. They walked up the path, careful not to step on the pristine sand.
Chase sat up as they approached, reached both arms high overhead and yawned. “Tough day I’m having today,” he commented. “Glad you guys finally got here. So welcome to the Garden of Mathematics. In order for me to lead you to the next garden,” Chase pointed to the far side of the garden where at least six different paths led out into the forest, “you’re going to have to solve a little puzzle for me.”
“We could just take our chances and pick a random path,” Stalk whispered to Bunsen.
“I heard that,” Chase snapped. “You’ll never become Institute scholars if you try to weasel yourself out of doing your work.”
“Whatever,” Stalk muttered.
“Well, here’s your challenge. You need to take those stones.” Chase pointed to several stacks of L-shaped stone tiles that lay on the ground just outside of the stone floor. “And lay them all out on this floor so that no tile overlaps another, and no tile sticks out from the floor.” Chase stood up. “Oh, and you need to fit this one too,” he said pointing down at the square tile he had been sitting on top of. “I’ll be over by the trails waiting anxiously for you to complete your task.” He didn’t sound anxious at all.
Garland walked over to one of the stacks of tiles. Each tile was shaped like an L, with each side about two feet long. The stone tiles were each half an inch thick. He hefted one of the large L blocks up in his arms. “Come on guys,” he called out. “Let’s get moving.”
Flora eagerly went over with the others and picked up one of the blocks. It was heavy, but she could manage it. She basked in the others’ looks of wonder as she hoisted the tile up onto her shoulder. She was much stronger than she looked. She placed the tile in the middle of the floor and noticed that the square tile, which was about one foot in each direction fit nicely inside the L.
Flora went to grab another tile, but Crick pushed her away.
“Hey,” she called out. “What’s your problem?”
“Those tiles are in our pile,” Crick insisted. “We’re doing this half of the puzzle, and you losers are doing that side.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” Flora insisted. “You can’t just divide the puzzle in half.”
Flora felt a warm hand on her shoulder. “I’ll agree to that,” Garland said. “Whoever finishes their half of the puzzle first, wins the round.” Flora glared at Garland for contradicting her, but he wasn’t even looking her way. His eyes were locked in a death stare with Crick.
“Deal,” Crick answered.
“Whatever.” Flora pushed Garland’s hand off her shoulder and went back to moving tiles. Boys were stupid.
As if to prove her point, a few minutes later Garland asked, “Where do I put this?” as he walked around the floor with one of the last tiles in his arms. There were no more spots that the tile would fit, and yet he insisted on carrying the tile around as if to show off his strength. Too be fair, his muscled arms did bulge quite nicely.
Finally, he set his tile back down on the sand, balancing it on its edge so that he could pick it up again easily. “Well, there are some bare spots left in the floor,” he said, stating the obvious. “Lets move things around until we get the rest to fit.”
Flora objected. “Hold on, maybe we should think this through.”
“No time,” Garland insisted. He glanced over at Crick’s team, which seemed to be having the same problem. “We may be ahead, but just barely.”
“And yet,” interjected Mendel. “It is unlikely that trial and error is the optimal path for solving this puzzle. I believe there is a pattern here.”
“Well, all right,” Garland said, nodding his approval. But that hardly improved Flora’s mood. Hadn’t she just said the same thing?
“How many of these L-shaped block are there?” Mendel asked.
“I count twenty-one,” Aster offered.
“Me too. Twenty-one,” her sister chimed in a few seconds later.
“That is logical,” Mendel said out loud. “The square is symmetric in both directions, meaning that we should be able to make the same pattern for each quadrant of the square. If you assume that one of these L’s should be paired to form a square in the middle, just where Flora put it, then we still have four identical quadrants. With twenty L-shaped pieces left, that means we just need to make a pattern out of five pieces and repeat it four times, once for each quadrant.”
“I get what you’re saying,” Aster said excitedly.
“Okay, let’s clear just this quadrant of the floor over here,” Mendel said, walking up to the closest quadrant. People pitched in to remove all the tiles from that area. Mendel had them leave the square tile nested in one L tile to form a square in the center of the floor.
“Now we should make this symmetric radially. Place them up opposite each other along the line from the center of the floor to the corner. That would make the most elegant solution,” Mendel said.
“Wait, why should it be elegant?” asked Aster.
“Mathematics is about elegance and symmetry,” Mendel explained. “This solution is obvious. We must put the L-pieces in the corner like this.” Mendel placed a tile in the corner of the large square so that the large outside corner of the L fit nicely into the corner. “We can nest two more along the same line, and now that fits perfectly with the center square.”
“And look, there are two nice L-shaped spots on the sides,” Aster added. “One on each side.” She placed one tile so that the L pointed out from Mendel’s three tiles. Kava grabbed a tile and placed it in the same spot on the other side.
“Observe,” Mendel said. “Five tiles complete this quadrant. We just need to duplicate this in the other quadrants now.”
After their team finished their two quadrants, Garland wasted no time in calling Crick over to see their accomplishments. “Two to one now,” Garland said triumphantly. But Flora didn’t share in his excitement, for the last trial had taken quite some time. It was getting late, and they still had two trials to go.
************
“Are you okay?”
Flora opened her eyes, the embarrassment still flush in her cheeks and Crick’s words still ringing through her head.
“Can you hear me?” Mendel asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said. But in fact, she wasn’t fine at all. She had undoubtedly just launched Crick into the leadership of the group and let down her new friends, if they were still her friends.
“Where’s everyone else?” she asked as she sat up. As she had learned when she was just five, friends or not, most people didn’t tend to stick around for long when she blacked out.
“They went on ahead,” Mendel explained. “I told them we’d reconvene at the next trial.”
Yes. There was one more trial left, and hopefully it went be
tter than the last one. The Garden of Governance had consisted of an obstacle course of footbridges, zip lines, and vine swings within a canyon shaded from the afternoon sun. It would have been fun except that Chase had decided to make things interesting.
“The Garden of Governance requires cooperation and strategy,” Chase had said when they entered. “But since you guys are competing, we’re going to have to force the cooperation bit a little. “Each of you is required to wear one of these sleeves on your leg,” he said, passing out sleeves made from some kind of dense grass weave.
Flora casually slipped hers onto her right leg. Aster looked confused but finally settled on her right leg as well. Non-symmetrical decisions were hard for some to make.
“Faster, faster,” Chase said. “The sun is going down.” He walked around and pushed them into pairs: Crick with Stalk, Bunsen with Kava, Mendel with Aster, and Garland with Flora. Once her leg brushed against Garland’s, Flora felt her sleeve tighten. The grass weave somehow meshed with Garland’s sleeve, effectively locking their legs together.
“Hey,” she objected, pulling on the sleeve. But the sleeve had also tightened against her leg, digging its edges into her skin when she pulled. It wasn’t coming off.
“You’ll have to navigate the obstacles ahead in pairs. The sleeves will come off when exposed to direct sunlight at the other end of the canyon,” Chase explained. “Of course, if you don’t make it by sundown, well, you’ll be stuck together for a little longer. And,” he added, looking at Garland and Crick, “this is kind of a race.”
Garland took off immediately. He put his strong arm around Flora’s waist and pulled Flora along. But with Garland a good head taller than she was, they didn’t sync up and soon fell to the back of the pack. “I’m sorry, are you okay?” he asked when they almost fell over from their uncoordinated stumbling.
“I’m fine, but your legs are too long,” Flora said. “If you let me set the pace and follow along, we’ll go much faster. Here, follow my count: One. Two. One. Two.”
And indeed they went faster, soon overtaking Mendel and Aster, and Bunsen and Kava. Only Crick and Stalk were in front of them, but they stalled as soon as they reached the zip line.