Wendy Saturna

As the new-age hippie hype of the 1960's died down to bizarre memories, one group managed to slip away. The Saturnalian Family was a hedonist cult of not-insignificant membership, who in 1977 had pooled their resources from candle, clothing, and questionable substance sales (as well as every new member's personal finances, surrendered to the group in full upon initiation) to buy a plot of land in the jungles of Colombia, away from the eyes of their American critics. This plot would come to be known as the Ring, in reference both to Saturn's rings and the 'ring' of the family's close-knit relationships. Farms were established, cabins erected, kitchens and pavilions stocked; Saturnalians flocked there in dozens by plane and sea, and the Ring became a hive of work and play, all under the watchful eye of Calem, the unassuming accountant-turned-occultist who had ignited the group to begin with back in 1959.

The waning years of the Ring and its family would be what Wendy Saturna was born into, graced with the cult's traditional surname. His mother, self-titled Rain, was a longtime family member who'd had her son in the usual way--at random from some father unknown, but loved and cherished nonetheless (It would be quietly obvious, though, that the kitchen worker Wendy most resembled was probably the guy, just like the many other kids that shared this man's likeness). As Rain would find love with a Colombian convert dubbed J.V., Wendy would find a proper father figure, someone whose tension the little boy couldn't quite understand.

Wendy was left to himself many days, running wild with the other children, avoiding anyone who looked ready to put them all to work. But he noticed his parents were rarely so lucky: it seemed more and more that they hardly had time to themselves, worked to exhaustion in the fields only to be dragged out of bed and made to 'patrol' the Ring by moonlight (which was inevitably just a march around the brush in the dark; the man that looked like Wendy was kicked and stomped until he no longer moved when he collapsed one night, and Wendy never saw him again). J.V. would whisper fervently to Rain on the rare occasion they were alone in the assigned cabin, their words too quiet for young Wendy to hear but obviously unfriendly. But whatever they hissed to each other about, J.V. would stay, even if they turned their backs to each other as they slept.

One night, J.V. didn't return until very, very late. Wendy remembered being shaken awake along with Rain, some panicked conversation flashing between his parents as he scrubbed the sleep from his eyes. At six years old, he was commanded to not speak a word for the rest of the night before Rain plucked him from bed and trailed after J.V., who led them crawling across the fields and running between cabins until they could throw a stolen rug over the barbed wire fence and escape into the dark. He wasn't sure how long they ran for, his hand trapped in the vice of his mother's, but he knows that they had slowed when the pops of gunfire echoed from behind them, startling Rain into snatching her son into her arms and tearing off at a sprint. She and J.V. would keep moving until morning, when they could no longer hear anything but the jungle and clambered together into a leafy hollow to hide in for the day.

It would be three days total that they'd wander the jungle, delirious from hunger and exhaustion, surviving on rainwater and what little they recognized as safe to eat. By the time they stumbled upon civilization as three gaunt, filthy figures, the news had already spread: the infamous Ring had been busted for drug trade, raided in the night by Colombian police and ending in a spectacular firefight that had claimed most of the lives in the compound. Some had escaped into the jungles, but many were hunted down by the armed guards instructed to leave no survivors in case of attack. Calem had conveniently managed to disappear in the chaos. So when these three strangers staggered out of the jungle, everyone knew where they had come from.

Eventually, Rain was able to get to the U.S. Embassy, begging for a return flight home along with the other jungle escapees that were crawling to the Embassy's doorstep. Her awaiting family would pay for a flight for J.V. after hearing Rain's harrowing tale; he would become a U.S. citizen in due time. But he and Rain were suffering the scars of their shared experience, and found themselves too afraid to stay put, fearing retribution from some imagined remnant of the Saturnalians. And so, they packed everything into a beat-up van, raising Wendy together on the road for several years, always on the move and avoiding the pleas of Rain's family to come home.

It wasn't until Wendy was fourteen that he'd first attend proper school. He'd started with the scattered preschool of the Saturnalians, transitioned into homeschooling on the roof of the family van, and was now unprepared for the customs and expectations of an American high school. He still lived out of that van, just driving between parking lots and campgrounds in the same area instead of crisscrossing the country. Without the first eight years of proper schooling, he crashed and burned in high school, getting abysmal grades and struggling to fit in with his peers. He managed an impressive two years (much to his teachers' dismay) until dropping out, spending less and less time with his paranoid parents and more time with the wrong crowd of the backwater California town he was stuck in. He'd be embarrassed to admit it as an adult, but he'd begun dabbling in his new friends' crimes; he was too soft at heart to do the deed himself usually, but was fine with being the getaway driver of a friend's car or scoping a place out before they broke in through the windows. On the night his peers were getting their diplomas, he was staring at the ceiling of the precinct jail.

In a desperate effort to pull their son back from his downward spiral, J.V. and Rain got him a summer job on a local farm. Wendy had always shown an affinity for animals, and the prospect of extra cash earned for getting to hang out with some cows appealed just enough to get him to try out attending. He truly didn't expect how he'd fall into it. Something about the rhythm and the animals sparked a love in him he hadn't felt since feeding the farm animals back in Colombia. One thing led to another--his new boss was so impressed by his work that when the job wrapped up for the summer he was recommended to the vet as a helper; next he was getting his GED so he could apply for a proper veterinary training program; from there he discovered a passion for wildlife, culminating in a degree in animal science and a promising career with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as a wildlife rehabilitator.

Nowadays he's very stationary, maintaining a small cabin in rural Alaska near the wildlife reserve for which he works. He's technically a bird specialist but has experience across a number of animal types. Most of all, he's a different person now, having reconnected with himself and making every effort to be the kind and helpful person his parents tried to shape him into. He still struggles with trusting others and has compromised with himself on that in some regards (such as staunchly refusing to say where he lives), and on rare occasion has to turn down interview requests from those writing about the survivors of the Saturnalian Family. But he's also found some comfort in Forrest Glass, the local forest ranger whose bizarre attempts at personal connection have managed to baffle Wendy out of his own shell. Forrest may be strange, but he's also trustworthy on a special level, and it means a lot to Wendy. Overall Wendy seems to have found some real balance for the first time, and plans to make the most of it with his quiet little life.