The next few days were quiet and withdrawn in the Castle at the top of Paddock hill. The order of events over that time was confused to any that tried to remember it. The main thing of note from that time was that nothing much happened. There was no discussion of prosecuting a war, planning grand strategies or revolutionising the group. The friends talked and smoked in the little dens they seemed to frequent as they healed and recovered their strength. They played their music freely and let the Herb take them away through time as they danced, played and chattered away about everything and nothing for hours at a time, days even,
They hid themselves from the world by blanking out the windows with sheets of cardboard or blotted it out with the ever-multiplying rainbow fronds of paint that grew and flourished throughout the houses. They were unconcerned about the possibility of being discovered. These days the streets were silent, and empty.
The friends smoked in the patchwork maze of gardens, as they sat on the roofs, or maybe while they split off to explore some of the other, less familiar, houses in the Castle's depths. They rarely ventured outside. These were lazy days of resting and indolence that flared up into wild nights of partying as they nursed their hurt and regained their strength.
Jack couldn't relax. There was no comfort to be found any more in the things they enjoyed doing to relax when relaxing was all they ever seemed to do. It had become joyless bingeing. There was too much time for thinking, and the endless questions never ceased in his mind. The whys and the what ifs of the world proliferated in his mind. The more Jack thought about what they should do, what it all meant, and who they were in in the middle of all this, the less he thought he knew.
Jack went to where Andy made his home in the garden sheds of the Castle's enclosure. Cleared of their old contents, they were kept warm and humid despite the arid coldness outside which made perfect conditions for growing the Herb. These dank little hydroponic greenhouses were filled with the pungent, intoxicating aroma of the weird Herb, and here Andy immersed himself in his botanical arts each day. They were his world and creative passion as much as any artisan in his studio. Rumour had it that the sheds' insatiable hunger for the batteries that powered them took precedence over the friends' need for water.
Jack knocked, and there was a thick waft of herbal ripeness as he opened the door. He found Andy sitting cross-legged on a hammock, suspended in mid-air as though he was levitating. He was nestled in the folds of his signature hemp-weave hoodie, which hung baggy and voluminous like a robe. Andy's face-paint design was a sun-like yellow with a multicoloured third eye set vertically on his brow. Leaf shapes grew from it and there were stripes of blue lightning bolts across his face.
A spliff smouldered away in one hand in its gardening glove as Andy thumbed a leafy sprig with the other. Jack had barely finished saying hello when Andy happily greeted him and told him to come in and shut the door behind him.
The shed was lit by a series of lightbulbs suspended from one wall to the other by a length of clothes line. The beams shone down onto the herbs growing in their trays of compost, and at the back and all around the walls, sprigs of the Herb dried and filled the air with their odour. Andy was probing the thick, sprawling masses, inspecting a plant with his finger. He was wearing gardening gloves again, as he seemed to do a lot these days, even when he wasn't tending the plants.
Jack enquired after his well-being, eager that their previous disagreements at Ryan's funeral and back in The Depot be forgotten. He couldn't help but then launch into a recounting of the game of Empire he had just played against Joe. He was bursting to tell someone.
Jack beat Joe with an "Economic Victory", he said. 'This was the first time it's happened since it was introduced in our last revision of the game's rules. I occupied Joe's last town so he couldn't make any more units, but after a meat-grinder of a war both of us lost nearly all our fighting pieces. Any attempt to assault Joe's castle would surely end in disaster and Joe didn't have the units to drive me out from his territory.
'After so much investment into the game, we were both were too stubborn to call it quits, but after some thinking I realised that I would always farm more gold than Joe per turn. So, all I had to do was sit tight and eventually the threshold would be reached where, according to the rules, he would have enough money to trigger the victory condition. In the games' lore you would trade in all the gold at the bank to devalue the enemy's currency to the point of it being worthless and bankrupt them.
'Joe got so frustrated. It was hilarious. There was no way he was going to accept surrender or truce after all this time and wouldn't try leaving his castle to fight me with his king, because if he lost that it would all be over. Instead, he waited turn after turn for deliverance by a godsend that never came, desperately trying to use his bishops to summon tarot card power-ups to save him,' Jack gabbled, practically shaking with enthusiasm.
'Oh, you should have heard him as he taunted me and whined that I was being a coward as he was locked in this stalemate and got ever more exasperated about my strategy. I wouldn't let him goad me into attempting a suicide attack on his last defence no matter how bitterly he made jokes about how we should add tractors to the game, just for me, as I farmed resources, and he sang a song in a West Country accent about buying a new combine harvester.'
Andy smiled and said he loved the idea of this game that they'd made up. He would come and play a round of 'Yokel Empire' with them some time. It had been too long.
Andy's attention went back to the Bhuna again. 'It's fascinating to watch them grow,' he said. 'They grow so fast, and it changes all the time. It's like watching evolution before your eyes.' Jack came to look closer at the Herb growing there.
'It's a shame that I only recently had the idea to make a book of dried Herb pressings to document its growth, in the absence of photographic evidence. What we have here is a botanical phenomenon. We can present it to the rest of the world when they find us, and they will be amazed at what we've made.
'Before that, I want to perfect it. I want to find the best, truest way to perfect its form. What are the optimum conditions for it to grow and what sustains it? What is the way of being which is its ultimate state, that paradigm of being when it reaches its full potential?' Andy narrowed his eyes with the intensity of how passionately he felt.
'I see. You've got yourself a hobby growing plants.'
'Yes. No! These aren't "plants". They're not just "plants" – it's the Herb!' Andy snapped. 'Does it not make you wonder about the forces of the world, what guiding hand pushes the tides of existence throughout these days of such spectacular transition and cosmic change? We see a corrupt mankind sicken and die, and the rot within rises to the surface as mankind crumbles under the weight of its own sins. People brought their evil from within out to the world. They made their inward sickness manifest, and the ruin bears silent witness to our failure.
'We here – we brave few – are buoyed on this… this island… on our hill above the teeming, chaotic ocean as it sucks everything back into itself to re-form something new. The slate is wiped clean. The cauldron boils and we can only have hope… faith that something brilliant will be produced from the turmoil.
'We are here… in this place. Throughout all the time in history, from all that could have been, We are Here. It had to be us – there was no other way. We shall be the ones to bring in the new age.'
Jack nodded sagely, baffled by Andy's musing, but listened anyway.
'Humans destroyed themselves with their own folly. Salvation lies through nature, but with human's guiding hand. Nature made humans, but it was nature with human guidance that created the Bhuna. It's a mysterious thing, and we've only scratched the surface of our understanding, but it's through this Herb that the natural and the human world shall live on.'
Andy passed his dog-end to Jack. Buddha-like, he floated in the air and meditated.
'Tell me more about the Herb – what actually is it?' Jack asked.
'The Herb is precious. The Herb is our salvation,' Andy replied.
'I mean, literally, what is it?'
Andy sighed and furrowed his brows. 'That question misses the point. It's the most banal way of looking at things. Instead you should be asking what it means.
What it means to us is that it's something that has become part of us, and it's sacred in that way. In the times before, both humans and nature suffered by being at the mercy of each other. From the over-proliferation of farmland to feed us came the destruction of the forests and a loss of habitat. From over-industrialisation came the toxicity of our air, from pesticides came poisoning. The deserts grew and the rainforests shrunk.
'From every extinction came a pestilence from the unbalanced ecosystem. From sterile environments came superbugs, from the abuse of antibiotics came resistant strains. From greed came famine and the toll of overpopulation on the Earth-Mother fomented plague in the mass of people. They made a fertile breeding crowd that took too heavily, unsustainably from the planet. The result is what we see today. She is alive, the Earth-Mother. She is alive and she knows, and the equilibrium always seeks to be restored. She took away what she created and makes anew.
'Now we have a way to work together, people and nature. The Herb may grow, but the human has to understand and guide it. There is a symbiosis here, a peculiar intimacy between plant and person. A new time must come when we must learn to grow together to save each other from ourselves. The only way we can survive is by coexistence.
'You want to ask about the mundane details of how the Herb came to exist, but that's missing the point. This plant is so adaptable. It has such a unique, almost unearthly, vitality that soon it will not need the greenhouse. We can grow it in the open air without our nursing and release it to the world. The majority of life out there may wither and die, but the Bhuna survives. It loves the smoke, the ash and the ruin. That makes it thrive.
'In here I give it my breath, the carbon dioxide from my own lungs, and I breathe in its own breath in return. I sleep here on the floor and smoke my pruning of its leaves, and in return I give back to it. I sacrifice to it as it does to me. People must give back as they take. It's a holy bond, a sacrament, a real symbiosis. Oh, the dreams it gives me as I lie here and sleep by it. It shows me… wonderful things. It helps me understand. The Herb opened my third eye and awoke my psychic powers, which in the past I know now were so feeble and dormant. It's the death of the ego.
'When you take of the Herb you're awake, but in here I dreamt when I could finally sleep after days of its vitalising essence filled me to overflowing. I saw a world thickly covered by this Herb. Whole forests of it – huge, gigantic, not just the little shrubs you see here now. It lived, it breathed, it gave life where bombs and sickness had stripped life away, and it knew all.
'It's alive, you know? It's sentient. It knows. The plant depended on man, man depended on the plant, and they were together. Perfect symbiosis, do you see? Finally, both together in true harmony.
'The Herb looks bizarre, alien perhaps, or sickly if you don't understand. But there is beauty in these branch-like tentacles, the seedpod-like nodules and warts and its scaly, spiky leaves. If you look closely and share its breath then you can see some greater sense to this plant.
'While it looks at first glance like it's chaotic and it sprawls and clumps, when you look deeper within you see the repeating patterns. It has order, like a system. It follows patterns of five.' Andy said this as though it was particularly meaningful but Jack was long since bewildered. Andy squeezed some leaves between his fingers and breathed in deeply.
'Five is the number of man. Arms, legs, head. Da Vinci. There are pentacle fractals deep within kaleidoscopic spirals that go from stem, branch, leaf and seed, and they all follow this pattern of order.
'Share breath with it. As it grows as you do, as it develops as you shall, when its leaves are harvested and the smoke rises free and light, its soul rises to the heavens – as shall yours. We form a symbiosis. We become together. Not just man and natural life, but all men and all natural life.
'This shall be the heart of the world and nature itself, which has branched off into its diverse aspects and expressions, plants that do nothing, or just poison, or contribute so little, a contribution so unimportant, with only one small thing to add to the paradigm – all shall be unified. The natural diversity and linked food chains that created the old world's equilibrium shall be condensed – amalgamated into one. This plant has it all. It is the ultimate manifestation of nature and shall regrow the world when the old one has collapsed because it has everything in it. It is all nature's essence concentrated and distilled – botany and humanity. It can do anything, be anything and survive anywhere. It is… perfect.'
Jack felt the effects of breathing the thick, humid air, and Andy's abstract concepts seemed to make pure, perfect sense. Each abstraction chimed with the clarity of a meditation cymbal.
Andy sat back in his hammock and closed his eyes, seeming satisfied with the demonstration of the breadth of his knowledge and insight. Jack could all but hold the very potent joint between his numb fingers as he sat and stared bug-eyed at the weird, alien plants that grew around him.
'Imbibe enough of the Bhuna, travel far on its path and it can open your third eye. I know it did for me. It grants you knowledge and wisdom. It opened my mind and let me leave my ego and old self behind. This is the way people can achieve their true psychic potential and can help man become a truly enlightened being, to share the wisdom and inherit the world. This is why I was put here on this earth. I know this now after years of wandering. But it's not enough to be an enlightened being by oneself, though. You have to share the cosmic knowledge with others. It's a gift and a burden.
'The one who I feel the strongest link to is Jane. I feel a sense of oneness with her, like I know what she's thinking and feeling. Even now, when I'm not with her, I can just reach out and sense what she's doing. I sense her spirit.' He gestured somewhere out in the direction of the allotments.
'I remember you said that ever since you started uni you always had the hots for her,' Jack said.
'It's not just having the hots! It's about sharing a deep connection! You know someone by their vibes and what they think and feel, even before they say anything!' Andy looked annoyed. 'There have been so many times when I stayed up late into the night and talked with her. We discussed all the things in her life, and I was the one who was there to listen and counsel her through all the things she was going through.' Andy looked proud that he was privy to this honour. 'She had a difficult upbringing and has been through a lot of things. She told me.'
'How do you mean?' Jack enquired.
'I'm not at liberty to say. All was said with confidence.' Andy looked very proud of himself at the secrets that were divulged to him and him alone.
Jack fought the urge to correct Andy. He should have said in confidence, not with confidence. He let it go this time. He didn't really care about Jane's stupid problems. He'd only asked out of politeness. He had enough of his own to think about, and they were much more real than whatever dumb boy trouble Jane got herself into.
'I like counselling and having deep discussions where someone opens up to you. You should try it some time. It might be good for you.'
There was more than a touch of snarkiness at the last remark, and it came with a stab of loneliness for Jack as it touched on that point with a needle. It was true that Jack struggled to socialise with anyone. Intimate contact, particularly with females, was something unknown to him.
'Actually, I have been feeling very down recently. I think I would like to talk to someone about things,' Jack confessed.
Andy grunted. 'Yeah, sure,' he said unconvincingly and without enthusiasm. 'Come and see me sometime.'
'Jane has overcome some great trials and got past difficulties. Picking yourself back up again and being strong opens up new depths to the soul. I wish I could be there with her, just her and me, to offer guidance and healing to help her.' Andy clasped his hands together. 'You can only be truly enlightened if you share oneness of the spirit. Yin and Yang.'
'I'm not sure Matt would like that, seeing how she's his girlfriend and all. Didn't you try asking her out that one time when you were wasted down at The Depot?' Jack wasn't quite sure why he'd made that last comment. It just popped out, maybe in retaliation for Andy's own condescending remarks. Jack remembered what a stoned, drunken mess Andy had been for days before he summoned the courage to ask her out on a night when they were all at The Depot. He got rejected, again, and started crying right there on the bar floor in front of everyone slyly taking pictures on their phones. Jane had to stay and comfort him and persuade him to take a taxi home and not jump off a bridge.
'She's just stuck in a bad place! She's got her demons and is being held back. She's coming around, but I will persuade her – I will show her how much better things can be. If she was with me, then she would be truly happy. She just has to extricate herself from the last dark confines of her past! Matt's dark and negative, not enlightened at all. He doesn't understand her. No one understands her, not like I do. He just controls her!'
It seemed to Jack that he had really made Andy cross this time. Jack apologised quickly, many times in a row.
'Sorry. Sorry, I don't know why I say the things I do sometimes,' Jack said with a cringe of discomfort. 'Have you ever, you know, found oneness with someone? Like, you know, just you and them?' he asked.
'No.' Andy looked embarrassed. 'I'm waiting for the right person, so it can be meaningful.'
'Yeah, same,' Jack lied, as he gazed slack-mouthed at the Herb, his mind reeling, completely spaced. In truth, he was desperate to get it out of the way and be free of the terrible stigma of being untouched, something that haunted each day and every social interaction.
Jack's vision swam, and with each new angle he looked at, the jungle of Bhuna seemed to be as if he was viewing it through the many-faceted panes of stained-glass windows. Jack seemed to get higher the closer he stood to the plant and peered in through the labyrinths between its leaves, and the recurring patterns of geometries dazzled him. The leaves seemed to breathe in and out, writhe with life, and he could feel their vibrant life force and the sense of them growing and candidly knowing about him – they looked back at him and saw his true nature with a calm, infinitely wise sentience. Perhaps it wasn't that he didn't know the answers to the questions, it was that he didn't know the right questions to ask.
Jack studied the strange wonder of the Herb with his new-found appreciation and observed the Bhuna in all its weird beauty, from tip to stem to base.
He stared hard at what he saw in the soil. So strange, so surreal. He must be seeing things. His imagination was going haywire.
There, in the compost, single, bare and white, with a round nail and wrinkled lines across the joint, he saw a thumb.
Jack muttered that he had to leave.
He escaped to the open air, gasping, falling. The cool fresh air filled his lungs and the precarious doubt of everything came filtering back.
Jack was none the wiser after all the things he had heard. He hadn't learnt a damn thing.