by Starr Meade
The rugged man drew near to Dylan and smiled, his kindly eyes twinkling. “My friend Mert here says you want to find the Founder,” he said.
Dylan nodded. “But I realize that you don’t find the Founder, he finds you.”
The shepherd smiled again, and nodded once. “That’s right,” he said. “And you don’t think you’ve been found?”
Dylan opened his mouth to answer, then closed it again. He wasn’t sure what the shepherd meant.
“There are all kinds of reasons to believe you have been found,” the shepherd continued.
A voice spoke from the side of the road and Dylan turned to face the tree. (He had been right; it was “his” tree.) “I told you it was the Founder’s voice you heard back in the cave,” the tree said in a grave voice, to which, this time, the lighthearted little tree added nothing. “He called you out. If he hadn’t, you would still be sitting there.”
The gatekeeper stepped off his stool and chimed in. “Yes, and how do you think you found the flyer about Holiday in the first place? Didn’t it look to you like it had been set there on purpose, leaning against the fence like that, just waiting for you to find it?”
It seemed to Dylan that his brain was functioning very slowly. “Did you put it there?” he asked.
The gate guard shook his head hard. “Nope, not me,” he answered. “The Founder did. He wanted you to come looking for him.”
Dylan looked down as Missy Mistletoe began to speak.
“Who paid your fine, when you lost your pass?” she asked simply. “And who planned your way through that neighborhood where you saw so many things about yourself that you didn’t like? Could it be that the Founder had found you?”
“Who sent me to bring light when you were lost in the darkness?” the candlemaker asked. “Why did you get out into the light while the Darkness Dwellers are still in there?”
From the candlemaker’s hand, the bell spoke up. “Remember how you had plenty of really good things to eat and water to drink, even up on top of the mountain? How did it get there for you, if the Founder didn’t bring it? Why would he give you what you needed if he hadn’t found you?”
There was a pause, then, which Dylan found awkward at first, until he realized that it was the star’s turn to talk, and everyone was waiting for her voice to reach them. Finally it came. She said, in her whispered roar of a voice, “We stars shine on everyone. Everyone sees us. Who hears what we say about the Founder—except those who have been found? You heard us, Dylan. You’ve been found.”
“By the Founder!” said another smaller voice, full of excitement, also coming from high in the sky.
The penguin stepped forward. His chest puffed just a little more. “If you didn’t know the Founder, you’d be just as productive as those dead, bare trees in the winter wasteland, back by my place.”
“If you didn’t know the Founder,” Penny Poinsettia added, “you wouldn’t want to give him a gift.”
Mert stepped forward, eagerly. “But you do know the Founder. And you did give him a gift. You gave your last day in Holiday to helping other people, which is just what he would have wanted.”
Now even Clare got into the act. “And Dylan, you yourself said you wanted to do that because you really thought it was what the Founder would want, that it’s what he would have done himself. You do know the Founder, Dylan; you’ve even begun to think like he does.”
Could it be true? Did the Founder know him? Had the Founder found him? Is that why he had been so obsessed with finding the Founder? “But I’ve never seen him,” Dylan still objected.
“None of us have seen him either,” the shepherd answered. “There were those who saw him once, but that was a long time ago. No one’s seen him for a long time now. But we all know him, just the same. And love him. You may not have seen him, but he’s been with you all along. You have a long ways to go in getting to know him. You’ll need to work on that every day of your life. But you can stop worrying about finding him. You have found him, because he’s found you.”
The shepherd cleared his throat, stood up straight, and recited:
“You don’t have to find the Founder; he’s found you.
When the Founder finds you, he makes you a finder too.”
Everyone responded with absolute silence. Then the shepherd winked. “It rhymes!” he announced, and the whole crowd, not least of all Dylan, exploded in laughter. Dylan laughed and laughed, until he could no longer breathe. He looked over at Clare who was holding her sides, doubled over. The gatekeeper was wiping tears of laughter from his face while even the candlemaker had set down his candle because he was shaking uncontrollably. The laughter went on, peal after peal, with no one in any hurry to stop.
When Dylan finally gained control of himself, he saw the shepherd smiling at him. “Look at your pass,” he said. Dylan pulled the green visitor’s pass from his pocket. Dylan had no idea how or when it had happened, but words had been stamped across his pass. He read, “Permanent authorization to keep Holiday all year, in all places, and at all times.”
“Thank you, all of you,” Dylan said. “And now I really must get home.” He turned to Clare. “Let’s go,” he said. “We’ve got to get back to Mom and Dad. They’re going to want to know about this.”
