The Secret of the Plantation

Way in the heart of Africa, where the banana trees swayed in the tropical breeze and the exotic birds called to each other with their beautiful songs, there lived a man named Mr. Ferner. Mr. Ferner was very rich, and owned a plantation on which he grew cotton, bananas, mangoes, and tobacco. The plantation was so big that almost a thousand employees worked there. Of those thousand workers were two hundred maids, who cleaned the mansion in the center of the plantation.

One of those maids was named Abby, a woman in her forties and very experienced at being a maid. She had pale blue eyes and wavy brown hair, and she wore perfume that smelled like roses. Every year at Christmas each maid would be given a special gift from Mr. Ferner himself for all their hard work. Abby had gotten the fancy rose perfume.

When Abby had first arrived at the plantation long ago, she was infatuated with her work. She loved dusting the bookshelves, adjusting picture frames, and setting the long dining table with gorgeous china every night. However, throughout the twenty years after that, working at the mansion became less and less enjoyable. Cleaning had become a boring chore, and wasn’t fun anymore. To add to her misery, the economy had forced Mr. Ferner to cut everyone’s salary, causing Abby’s roommates and friends, Ginger, Natalie, and Kimberly, to pack their bags and quit.

The only thing that made Abby happy was that Mr. Ferner permitted her to walk around the plantation on her two days off. She would go deep into the rain forest and see all sorts of animals and plants. She would sit under a tree and take in all the smells and sounds around her in the shade on hot afternoons. Then she would walk quietly through the crops and sometimes snap a mango off one of the trees when she was hungry. Abby thought being outside was heaven.

Then one day Abby went farther than she normally did into the rain forest. Most of the workers in the fields had gone to lunch, so not too many people were outside. She eagerly walked through the thick foliage and sang her favorite tune as she went along. Then she came to a fork in the trail, one she had never seen before. Abby took the right one, just because she was curious and had a gut-feeling inside.