The whole thing reminds me of a sick game of rock, paper, scissors: Mike with the scissors, Logan with the rock, and little old me, about to sneak up on him with the paper.
The distance closes and now I’m right on top of them. They’re about to attack each other, but then Mike notices me over Logan’s shoulder— one hand on fire, carrying the sun in my palm— and he can’t help but smile, just a little bit, because we both know this is the end.
Logan notices Mike’s face, and he’s about to turn around, but I’m already reaching under his jacket, shoving the sock filled with dried eucalyptus leaves underneath it, letting its neck stick out like a tail before setting it ablaze, a makeshift stick of dynamite.
Logan turns, but it’s too late. “Paper covers rock,” I say, and before he can answer, the interior of his jacket catches fire. It’s a waterproof jacket, so the inside is warm and dry, kept safely away from the snow— the perfect environment for my stick of dynamite.
Logan screams, running into the snow, rolling over, trying to unzip his jacket and stop the fire within from spreading. He shakes it off but the damage has been done. His undershirt is burned black, the skin underneath it already blistering, red sores forming under exposed, charred remains.
“You bitch,” he tries to come at me, but Mike’s already running for him, knife in hand, ready to finish it, to end it.
Logan stops, retreating as if he’s just remembered something, and then he takes off, heading higher up the mountain toward the cable walk. Mike and I look at each other for a second, wondering why he would head for the least advantageous position, but then Mike groans, and I know why Logan’s running.
“The gun,” Mike says, and we both take off trying to reach the place where Mike disarmed him, further up the mountain. Mike’s injuries are too debilitating— there’s no way he’ll run faster than Logan. He calls out to me, “Zoe, don’t! Stick to the plan—” but I leave him behind, my legs carrying me as fast as they can into the distance to the spot at the edge of the trees, where the forest ends and the mountain begins.
It’s not far, maybe eight-hundred feet away, and the landscape around it shows signs of a struggle— blood on the trees, cracked branches, disturbed footsteps in the snow.
Logan’s figure comes into view, searching in the snow for the gun, but finding nothing. We’re at the carved edge of half-dome now, and the side of the mountain drops off into nothingness, the end of the world in front of us, waiting. I look over my shoulder, but Mike’s out of my line of sight.
We’re alone.
Silence fills the wild again, as if every animal is watching, breathless. Logan turns, his back facing the edge of the world.
“Where is it?” He says, voice calm, steady.
“It was my job to get the gun,” I answer, pulling it from my backpack, turning it over in my hand. “While Mike was distracting you.”
“You could’ve shot me back there.”
“I might have hit Mike.”
“Yes,” Logan says, pretending to be hurt, his tone dripping with manufactured sadness. “We wouldn’t want that, seeing as you ‘love’ him.”
“I do.”
We wait for a minute, letting the stillness settle.
“Was this part of your plan?” Logan asks.
“No,” I say, and it’s true. This was not part of our plan. Logan looks out over the edge of the world, eyes unaffected.
“What do you see, when you look out there?” I ask him, wondering if he knows about the Great Everything, wondering if he’s felt the depth of her love— love that isn’t connected to biology, or chemistry, but just exists wherever the light goes. He doesn’t answer. “You’re going to keep coming after me.” It’s a statement, not a question.
“Yes,” he says.
“If I turn and walk down this mountain, you’ll follow me.”
“Yes,” he thinks aloud. “If I can make the trek. If not, I’ll wait until the opportune time.”
We stand there together, my finger on the trigger, Logan’s life in my hand like the fire I palmed just minutes ago, flickering, unstable, a living question I can’t answer.
“You’re not a killer,” he says, and even though I know he’s right, I also know that sometimes fish fly, and sometimes birds swim, and animals do all sorts of things under unusual conditions, just to go to that place where the sky and the earth are the same for a moment.
The gun’s metal is crisp against my fingers, final and heavy, and holding it makes me think about all the time I’ve spent looking for the monster in others. The nights I’ve lain awake, worried about fangs. The sideways glances at a person I thought I knew. The careful orchestration I bring to situations that don’t call for it. All of it, meant to safe-guard against the presence of the animal in someone else, when— maybe— the best chance at safety would have been to find the animal within me.
The world told me to hide my animal, to subdue her, but she is the one who protects me from harm. The Great Everything gave her to me. The Great everything made me wild, and to be anything but that misaligns the cosmic balance, throws universes out of orbit.
There’a reason I’m a hotel manager; there’s a reason I took a job that requires me to be nice even to the rudest of guests. I’m an expert at hiding the sharp pieces of myself, the ones that aren’t pretty to look at it.
But now, it’s time to embrace all parts of me.
Yes, I am kind, but I am also mean.
I am warm, but aloof.
I have fur to soothe and teeth to bite.
I am bitter, and sharp, and I think too much, and there’s pointy edges here, and barbs that might prick, and all of it needs to be allowed to take up space— to exist— because that’s the grand design that keeps galaxies spinning.
Bang.
I shoot him.
Logan slumps to the ground, his eyes wide with surprise, and he’s clutching his chest before he realizes that’s not where he’s been hit.
He looks down at his leg, and the new hole I’ve created there. It might as well be in the center of his forehead, because a shot to the leg keeps him from moving, and— in the cold— movement is life.
If we leave him here, he’s as good as dead.
I step toward him, and the look in my eyes must be truly crazy, because he cowers, putting up an arm as if hands can stop bullets.
“Listen up you little fuck,” I tell him, spit flying. “The person you’ve imagined me to be doesn’t exist. Do you know who I really am?”
He shakes his head.
“I’m the bitch who’s going to tear your throat out if you get within five hundred miles of me, or anyone I love. You know what I’m good at?”
Again, he shakes his head.
“Finding monsters,” I tell him, and it’s true.
I turn around, and Mike’s behind me, with a look on his face that says he’s been here the entire time and watched the whole thing.
He takes my hand, and we head for the cable walk together, two wolves making sense of the wild.
We don’t look back.
21
Logan is behind us, but hours later, and the danger remains. Mike and I side-step our way down the mountain, leaning on each other like two trees uprooted in a hurricane. I throw up three times on the way down, but it’s not because I’m sick over what happened up on the mountain. Something’s wrong inside me, a sharp pang in my stomach making me stop and hurl.
We reach the bottom of half-dome, and even though everything is spinning, I recognize this as the place where I felt small. The shadow of the mountain extends across the valley, eating its way across the landscape, consuming everything in its path. Half the day has passed, and we’re both weak from blood loss and lack of food. We stop to bandage our wounds. Mike’s lost a lot of blood, but compression seems to help. He’s in better shape than I am, and the heavy fatigue pumping through my veins makes the world seems like quicksand. I’m too dehydrated. I try to drink water, but I can’t keep it down. Mike checks for cel
l-service, but the batteries on both our phones have died, and even if they hadn’t, it’s unlikely we’d get reception anyway.
Mike stops to unfold my map, guessing at the nearest spot where we might find help.
“There’s a road,” he exhales, his voice heavy. “We’re not too far from Yosemite Lodge. We can make it, Zoe.”
He says the last part more for himself than for me. It’s an effort to convince; as if only saying something out loud will make it true. I don’t answer, and when Mike hands me the map, I pretend to glance at it before nodding in agreement.
We walk, and it’s a never-ending journey, forest on forest spreading wider into the distance.
Sometimes, my legs give out, and my head slumps toward my chest, but I regain consciousness right before I hit the ground.
The world clicks in and out of focus, and my eyes can’t help but shut every now and then, as if my body is trying to reboot itself.
The valley’s beauty fades into multi-colored streaks of green, brown, and white. It’s an impressionist take on the wild. Roughly brushed outlines of shapes I’ve seen before, but can’t quite place. Everything blends together, soft and inviting. Something sharp inside my gut sends a shockwave across my mid-section, and I must have gasped out loud, because now Mike is looking at me.
“Zoe?” He puts his arm under mine, taking in my face, looking for what’s written there. “Are you with me?”
“Yes.”
It’s all I can manage. His good arm is under my shoulder now, keeping me upright. As we walk, Mike points out a million beautiful things, trying to make me stay alert.
“The hawk. Do you see it? Way up there.”
I don’t see it, because I can’t look up. My head is too heavy. I’m aware of some pain inside me, but at the same time, I’m detached from my body, floating around outside it. Maybe if you ignore basics needs— hunger, thirst, companionship— for long enough, your body ejects you in retaliation, like a fighter pilot tossed from the cabin of his own plane. Another sharp pain cuts through my midsection, and I double over.
“Why does it have to hurt?” I whisper aloud, not actually meaning to say anything at all.
“It hurts? Where? Zoe, look at me,” Mike answers, his voice dripping with something I’ve never heard in it before— panic.
I don’t look at Mike, because I wasn’t talking to him. I was talking to the Great Everything.
She answers in colors, shades of the forest, burnt and beautiful, as striking as they are overwhelming.
There’s no way to directly translate her response into words, except to say that beaches come from rocks that are torn apart by the sea, and thunder always booms before the lightning, and nothing beautiful has ever been made without the soft edge of creation first being dragged across the blade of “to be.”
No bird builds a nest without exhausting its wings. No seed becomes a flower without first breaking free from its shell, splitting itself open because it yearns for the sun.
The smooth interlocking of two hands in love is always preceded by the pain of reaching out into the unknown, braving the darkness in the hopes of finding light.
Growth rarely comes without pain, and to live is to sign a covenant of experience. Our existence comes in spirals; circles of attention that narrow in focus on one central point, the light that serves as the Universe’s center and the only place within it where no speck of darkness can be found.
Every moment of our lives is spent trying to move closer to the light. For the privilege of seeking the sun, we agree to allow the world to bring us to our knees, all so we can be two steps closer to the light of the Universe when we stand up again.
At times, we fear the darkness, but this is unnecessary, because darkness is only the absence of light. It’s defined entirely by its opposite, allowed to exist only insofar as it serves its purpose of bringing us closer to the light, again and again, until one day we find our way into the infinite warmth of creation.
That’s where I’m going.
I’m not afraid of dying. I’m not sad about it, either. I’ve spent seven days in the vastness of the world in its most primitive form. I drank the water. I watched the pine trees lean away from the wind. I smelled the flowers, opening wide in the morning only to shut tight at sundown. I’ve found my fangs, and made peace with myself, even the parts of me I learned to hide. I’ve stared straight into the eye of the Great Everything long enough to know that she’ll send me where I’m meant to go. Even if there’s darkness first, she’ll guide me to the light. I don’t have any regrets, except one:
Dying means leaving Mike, alone.
He’ll be fine without me. He’s too perfect not to find another. If I’m able to watch him from whatever lies beyond, I will, every day. When it’s his time, he’ll find me, because love is how we find each other.
I sink into the snow. I don’t have any regrets about what happened on the mountain. At least if I’m leaving, I’m doing it as the real me, whole, complete, not partitioned so as to be made more palatable to the world. Maybe that was the plan all along. My life’s purpose was to find myself, and now I have, so I’m leaving.
Mike’s still trying to keep me alert, pointing out so many beautiful things in the wild, but I can’t walk anymore. He pulls me into his arms. His mouth is moving, but I can’t hear what he’s saying. I glance up one final time, and the last thing I see is the look in Mike’s eyes, his irises made from fractal shades overlapping in a way too beautiful to be real.
I should have looked at them more, when I had the chance.
The world turns black.
***
If you’ve never died before, you haven’t lived.
When I died, a tunnel waited for me, but it wasn’t vague, or ethereal, or filled with light. It was hard and tangible, like the cement semi-circle formed beneath a freeway overpass.
It was so real I could reach out and touch the walls. I felt my way through the darkness, pushing toward a pin-prick of light in the distance.
The tunnel’s exit waited for me, there, a worm hole between the body I was leaving behind and the next phase of existence. It was a wrinkle-in-time calling me onward, and nothing about it was particularly dream-like.
It was scientific in its construction, almost architectural, or biological, a clock-work process as self-assured as gravity, ushering me onward to be born-again-backwards. As I walked, I felt no fear, no sense of strangeness— just an innate animal knowledge that forward was the way to go.
When I reached the end of the tunnel, the light grew so bright it burned through me, becoming a feeling more than a sight. In a single bite, the light ate me and spit me out in reverse. The tunnel’s exit was its entrance; a quantum conundrum.
Now, I’m back in Yosemite Valley, familiar trees rendered strange from a new perspective. Whatever beauty the Earth held for me before is multiplied by a thousand.
The snow isn’t just white— it’s every shade from cream to eggshell, stacked on top of each other in infinite parts that make a whole. The wind doesn’t just blow— it ripples across the valley in an orchestrated movement, millions of threads weaving themselves into an invisible blanket smothering the Earth.
My senses work together in a way I didn’t know was possible. Synesthesia makes sight and sound one and the same. Colors are tastes. Green is my favorite, heavy and crisp, like an apple baked into a pie.
Smells are visible. The scent of the pine trees renders as wisps of smoke, wafting, soft on the winter air.
Nothing is hidden. The grand design is fully apparent, all its pieces revealed in vivid strands.
When I move, the world adjusts in a kaleidoscope shift, so many pieces rearranging themselves, briefly turning to streaks of light before settling back into place.
Every bird is a galaxy, every acorn a moon. Atoms on atoms reveal themselves, unfolding in infinite combinations we call “mountains” or “pebbles.” Size is nothing but a construct— one I don’t need anymore.
I alway
s imagined dying as moving into some watered-down state of being, soft and muted, but I feel more alive than ever.
I don’t realize I’ve stepped outside myself until two figures reveal themselves in the snow.
The man is Mike, but he’s Mike like I’ve never known him before. No piece of him is hidden. Every feeling he has— every thought— presents itself as a color, falling from inside him and landing on the snow.
He holds a woman in his arms: the old me.
“Zoe!” his voice isn’t a single sound, but an entire orchestra, so many shades of purples and yellows making up the tone that belongs only to him.
Mike shakes the old me, but she doesn’t wake up. “Stay with me…” His feelings drip onto the snow in shades of red and blue, and the crack in his voice makes me want to leave all this beauty behind, to try again. But my body is so far away, I’m not sure how to get back to it, or what tunnel to take.
Mike picks the old me up, carrying her body across the endless expanse of the wild. The effort breaks the bandages on his arm, causing the wound to bleed again.
I want to tell him to leave her, and I half-try, but when I speak the words come out as a feeling, a golden ball floating from whatever piece of me is my new chest.
I push it toward Mike and it hits him in the ribs, but he doesn’t react. He just walks on and on, step by step, leaving a single set of footsteps in the snow.
Hours pass by. The sun changes its angle in the sky.
I wonder why I haven’t left yet. I feel like I’m late for a train.
I follow Mike and the old me through the forest, watching as he grows weaker in the cold, carrying two with the body of one.
Finally, it happens. Mike sinks to his knees, unable to go further.
He lays the old me down in the snow, taking his coat off and wrapping it around her shoulders. Arms shaking, he holds her wrist in his hand, searching for a pulse.
Animals We Are Page 19
