Lonely in the Heart of the World

by Mindi Meltz

  “But what are you afraid will happen to them?” she asks. “Is the storm dangerous?”

  “I don’t know. Yes, it can be.” Lonely hears dishes bang together, and the sound startles her almost more than the thunder. She has never heard Fawn’s voice like this—broken and uneven, as if splashing over stones. She doesn’t know what to say. She wants to go to Fawn and comfort her, but she knows that Fawn will feel embarrassed by her touch.

  And she feels a sense of helplessness, seeing Fawn’s fear. There is some memory of her father here, huddled like this, with his back to her. Lonely had gone to him, placed her small hand on his shoulder, told him it would be okay. But she didn’t understand what was wrong. He did not turn to her, did not even seem to know she was there. Like her father, Fawn seemed so strong. Fawn, she realizes, has saved her. Is saving her. It was Fawn all along, not Rye, who rescued her from that lost, unearthly state, where she traveled forever in a circular abyss unconnected with anyone or anything. It was Fawn who made her human. It was Fawn that she needed.

  “Fear is so heavy,” Fawn says, as if talking to herself. “If Chelya knew, going out like this—how heavy fear is—” She closes her eyes, and Lonely watches her clumsy hands, terrified herself to see the weight of that fear dragging her friend down. “After this,” Fawn adds, “I just want to lie down, not think. But it never works. I can’t stop thinking about them until they’re home.”

  Lonely looks down at her hands, feeling guilty for knowing where Chelya goes—and having shared in the joy of it.

  “Tell me about something,” Fawn says. “Talk to me.”

  “About what?”

  “Tell me about the tower. Tell me about where you came from.”

  Lonely looks at her. “What do you want to know?” she asks dubiously.

  Fawn’s face is rigid. “I don’t know. Was it …cold?” Her voice is a whisper again, like when she talked to Lonely for the first time, and asked her didn’t they have seasons where she comes from.

  “No,” says Lonely, after thinking for a moment. “It wasn’t cold.”

  “Was it warm?”

  “No, it wasn’t warm either.”

  “Did you see birds?”

  “No. I mean I don’t remember.” What had it been then? A space of nothingness, a now blank expanse in her memory.

  “Were you afraid?” Fawn whispers.

  “I don’t know. Sometimes. Not really though. I didn’t feel much of anything.” It makes her shiver now, that nothingness. That’s what loneliness is, she thinks. She feels frustrated with the questions, stupid for not having the answers. She watches Fawn’s comfortable body lean over the fire and the water, watches her hands move—an assumption in them about what life is made of that Lonely’s hands have never taken for granted, and have had to search out and discover. She can’t remember any more what happened in the tower. She can’t remember feeling anything. She knows only that sometime tonight, in the middle of the night, in the middle of the storm, Rye will enter Fawn’s bed. Perhaps he will run his hands over her body, meeting and understanding every detail of her being. Perhaps he will enter her with that strange instrument, and make melodies inside her that Lonely can only imagine.

  “I guess I was only dreaming,” she tells Fawn dully. “I wasn’t really alive yet.”

  “What made you leave? Your prince—you wanted to find him?”

  “No,” answers Lonely, surprising herself. “It was really the old woman who made me leave.” It’s true. If it hadn’t been for the old woman’s face swirling before her in a dream, she wouldn’t have screamed that hole in the ice. If she hadn’t looked through and seen the old woman facing out to sea, ignoring her cries, she wouldn’t have felt so determined to get out. Then it was the old woman who pushed her into the sea, who challenged her to seek out that which she kept saying she wanted. Maybe if it weren’t for her, Lonely would still be dreaming up in her make-believe tower, dreaming up love and never going in search of it. Is it possible the old woman didn’t hate her so much, after all? But she hated Lonely’s father….

  Fawn is staring at her, hard. “What’s wrong?” Lonely asks, alarmed.

  But then the thunder crashes upon them again, and the weight of rain collapses fast over the house—the sound of release.

  “Let’s go out,” says Lonely, standing.

  Fawn doesn’t respond but watches Lonely as she tears past, around the fire and the wide chimney, to the back door that opens toward Eva’s hill and the high mountain. When Lonely opens the door the rain comes in to meet her, stinging her body and flinging itself past her into the shadows of the house. She steps forward, emerging into the wind which seems to know her more intimately than anyone, though its grey fury slashes the rain across her face. She can feel Fawn’s presence behind her, fading behind the magnitude of the storm. How amazing, that the air is everywhere, blowing and formless; how amazing, that the rain falls evenly through the whole world as far as she can see, filling space without form or intention, free-falling into her skin. Thunder breaks through her, shattering the idea of her human bones, shattering—for a moment—her memory of where she has come from and where she is going. She presses her chest toward the sky, where desire is not emptiness but a living, breathing flower that must unfold or die.

  Out in the rain-hazed fields, through water-heavy eyelashes, through a confused rainbow, she sees a white blaze of fire burst up under white light and noise, a tree transforming, flailing its arms of flame. She sees the spirit of the tree rise up in smoke as the rain falls over the fire and extinguishes it, and she sees the earth as the water sets it free, flowing downward and onward where once—in the dry heat—it blew upward into the air.

  Then she sees a Unicorn rearing up in the storm, her voice—neither horse nor human—sending tremors through her magnificent body. Or maybe it’s a flash of lightning.

  At the same instant, she hears her own name—“Lonely!”—cried out as if from all sides, but when she turns, she sees that it is Fawn who has called her, though Fawn is standing silent in the doorway, the name only a whisper on her lips. She looks so small, her cheeks round and childlike around the tightness of her mouth, and her eyes, beneath the shadow of her hair fallen shaggy around her face, are as dark as the room waiting behind her. And Lonely, feeling suddenly her power over all the world, emboldened by the storm which speaks her own name—whatever it is, and it is not Lonely, but that other name that she cannot remember—must go to Fawn, must go to her friend and wrap her arms around her feverish, shaking body.

  Fawn’s arms hang loose at her sides, but Lonely feels the other woman’s breath rise up hard and sudden against her.

  “Lonely,” Fawn whispers into her neck, and Lonely’s hips shudder ever so slightly against Fawn’s. “What is it?” she asks Fawn to cover her confusion, thinking her voice will be lost in the storm, not understanding how a woman so strong could lean into her like this, as if with need. The pressure of their bodies against each other is subtle but as loud as the rain.

  She can hear Fawn’s answer as clearly as if they stood in perfect quiet, though they have not moved from the wild doorway, and the rain still coats Lonely’s back with its cold paint of water.

  “I’m afraid of so many things, Lonely.”

  “Why?” Lonely asks, but there is no meaning in the question. The looseness in her own throat tells her what will happen, as Fawn reaches for Lonely’s lips with her own, her breath young in its quick urgency, her body old in its confidence as she pulls Lonely closer. Her lips are ten times softer than a man’s, slippery as the thin green leaves of the corn plants that wave in the wind of the eastern garden, almost ready to bear fruit. When the kiss ends, Lonely is dizzy with the emotion she can see contorting Fawn’s face. She wants to know where it has hidden all this time.

  “But you’ve never been lonely,” she gasps before she can stop herself. “Have you?”

&nbs
p; Fawn opens her eyes. “I don’t know, Lonely. I don’t know why, but what you have, what you are—I want it. I don’t know what it is. It terrifies me, too.” Her voice is so soft. She lays her hands on Lonely’s shoulders and then runs them along her arms in a way that melts Lonely, a delicacy so delicious that Lonely cannot believe how easily it is traversed—this pathway of pleasure that Dragon never knew. Fawn takes both of Lonely’s hands in hers.

  “Come lie with me,” she whispers. “Come lie down with me, for a moment. The storm frightens me.”

  Lonely, amazed, lets herself be led inside, up into the loft where Lonely has slept so many nights of the summer alone in Chelya’s bed. Following Fawn up the ladder, Lonely sees her motion more than her form itself, the skeleton bones of the ladder meeting her hands like extensions of her own body—and yet tonight Fawn’s hands are hesitant, as if this once-familiar terrain feels suddenly new. She leads Lonely to the wide bed where she and Rye sleep together in the winter, and the two women kneel before each other, neither one knowing what to do. Fawn’s courage, apparently, brought her only this far. She looks across at Lonely, her eyes flickering in and out of emotion like candles.

  Downstairs they hear Kite’s light footsteps, the closing of the door so quiet it cannot be heard above the sound of the rain. Kite always moves quietly, and never seems hurried, even when he’s running. His footsteps fade as he descends to the basement, and Fawn sighs and closes her eyes. He is safe.

  “I know where Chelya goes on the full moons,” Lonely says clumsily. “I don’t think you should worry.” She pauses, not knowing how to say that Chelya is wiser than both of them together, that she’ll never get herself in trouble, that she alone seems to own herself entirely and know exactly what she’s doing. “She has so many friends, so many—spirits protecting her, when she’s out there.”

  Fawn stares back at her, and says nothing. Lonely wonders if she should feel guilty somehow, as if she has stolen something from Fawn by loving her family in ways that Fawn cannot—sharing things with them, in that love, that Fawn cannot or will not share.

  The thunder, which no longer surprises Lonely, bursts again around the walls, and she sees Fawn stiffen. The loft is so dark, Fawn’s body merges into it, a shape of lush warmth shaking in its bonds of shyness. Once again she seems the quiet, contained woman that Lonely knows and admires, except for the shaking.

  “I’m going to take my dress off,” says Lonely. “It’s wet.”

  Fawn seems unable to answer, her eyes trapped and wild—as if it is Lonely who has brought them here, Lonely who has initiated this ceremony, whose rites Fawn does not know. Lonely pulls her dress over her head, keeping her own eyes trained on Fawn’s face. She lies back on the bed and takes Fawn’s hand, waiting to see what will happen.

  “Who are you?” breathes Fawn.

  Lonely shakes her head sadly. “I don’t know.” She remembers Yora, long ago, who remembered only her own name. At least she had that much. But she couldn’t stay with Lonely. You can’t be with anyone else until you remember who you are, thinks Lonely. That’s why. But it’s so strange, because she, Lonely, could see the beauty in Yora, even if Yora could not see it herself. Just like Fawn seems to see something in Lonely that Lonely cannot see. Is that how you find yourself, after all? Through other people’s eyes?

  “I think you’re very beautiful,” says Fawn. Lonely watches her lips, the way they fold carefully together again after she speaks, and how a ripple passes over her chin and down her throat as she swallows.

  Then with a quick intake of breath, Fawn slides down beside her, her eyes bright and close in the dark. Lonely holds herself still and lets the storm inside herself bleed quietly into Fawn’s warmth. All the longing, all the need—she tries to just let it ease over Fawn like water, without moving, without grasping. It floods over the bed, pools over the floor.

  “I miss Rye,” Fawn whispers. Lonely can feel puffs of breath on her cheek, dark and hot. “I should have gone with him—there’s a little more time now, before the fall planting begins, and it’s the first time he’s asked me to travel with him for a long time. He wanted me to go with him. He was angry with me when I wouldn’t. He said, ‘I’ll take Lonely then.’ And I cried, because I wanted—I don’t know. I wanted—I wished I could be like you. Brave. Hungry for things, like you are.”

  Lonely says nothing. She’s still holding Fawn’s hand, and the back of her hand brushes Fawn’s breast every time Fawn breathes. The cloth that covers it is faintly rough, and so thin, like the inner lining of an eggshell. Warmth comes through it fast. How could someone so warm be afraid? she wonders senselessly.

  Fawn closes her eyes and presses her face to Lonely’s neck. Lonely stiffens, afraid of her own longing, and closes her eyes, too. She listens. Listening is easy, and so sweet in the safe darkness, with the thunder fading outside and the rain going on forever.

  “I know loneliness like yours must be hard,” says Fawn. “But it’s hard to have love too, because the more you have, the more you’re scared to lose. Every day I love my children, and my husband, more and more. Every day I’m so grateful, and every day I’m terrified I will lose them! Whenever I’m not with them, whenever they’re not right beside me, Lonely, I’m afraid.”

  Lonely squeezes Fawn’s hand; she kisses her cheek. The thunder comes again, but Fawn doesn’t tremble this time.

  “When I was a child, when we first came into the forest, we could never make a shelter strong enough to stand up against a big storm. My mother tried to take care of me—and she did. We both survived because of her. But it was so hard, Lonely. She was scared. I could tell she was scared, though she tried not to let it show. She would tell me we’d be okay. But the thunder was coming louder and louder, and I did not believe her. Things came crashing down around us, and once a tree caught on fire, and there were floods. The earth was crazy to me then. I was so scared. But the worst thing was knowing she was scared, too.”

  “I know,” says Lonely. “It was the same with my father. He tried to take care of me, but he couldn’t. He didn’t know how to save me.”

  Fawn holds very still. “I was always afraid,” she whispers. And Lonely listens to the rain and the wind behind her voice.

  “I didn’t stop being afraid until Rye’s family took us in,” Fawn continues after a long silence. “Until I finally had a home with them, and things started to make sense. Finally I understood, then, what the world was, and who I was inside of it. The seasons, the growing and dying of things, and what I had to do every day to help all that happen. They loved me so easily, and we played and laughed, and when Rye found me again later—when he came to me—I was so alive then. My world was clear to me then, every part of it known to me, and beautiful. I recognized his touch then, Lonely. But it is harder for me to recognize it now. I don’t recognize the scents on the wind sometimes—and the sounds Willow hears from where her home used to be—and the things Kite talks about, and the way the seasons are all mixed up, and the way the spring came too early and the trees flowered and then it froze again and everything died—”

  Her voice softer and softer, the words running together like rain, her eyes closed. Lonely looks at her in the dark, her own eyes wide open, trying to get inside her dream. Trying to imagine the comfort of childhood in easy meadows with other children laughing, the sunlight on her face when she turned and saw Rye riding home for the first time in two years, the way she stood and her dress tumbled around her, the way her hands opened in surprise.

  “Please touch me,” says Lonely.

  There is no sound, no resistance. With the fingers of her free hand, which Lonely feels suddenly from somewhere beneath them, Fawn traces Lonely’s throat, the nubs of her collar bone, the valley between her small breasts—and so slowly, as if stroking the feathers of a bird from some distant, fragile other-world, she circles her nipples. Their bodies are close enough that, without using their hands, they ca
n move into each other—their legs sliding between each other’s secretly, as if against their will. Lonely can feel Fawn’s desire—sweet and so much lighter than Dragon’s or Rye’s—misting out from the helpless folds of Fawn’s fleshier body, and the innocence in the recesses of her deep softness, the darkness between her thighs, the hungry weight inside her breasts. Lonely can feel these unseen places speaking to her from Fawn’s body, whispering to her from behind the walls of her fear.

  “You’re so beautiful,” she says to Lonely again. “Like nothing in this world. I think it’s safe being human, knowing what is possible and what is not, knowing how just to live. Then you come here and you’re something else—not part of this world. You make me feel something different, and I don’t know, any more, what I am.”

  Lonely strains to see her in the dark, because she sounds like she’s crying. But tonight it is Fawn who can speak easily, and Lonely whose voice is trapped.

  “But I’m human, too,” she manages. “Like you.”

  “No,” says Fawn, pressing her face close to Lonely’s. “You’re a goddess. I know. Everyone knows, and they try not to tell me, but I know it. You’re not bound by what binds us. But it’s true,” she adds thoughtfully. “I used to go out in the rain too, and when I first met Rye, he danced with me once in the storm….”

  She sounds like she’s dreaming again. Lonely can feel her fingertips against her hips, like Rye’s that time, not holding on, beginning to float up her waist but hesitating. Breathing harder, Lonely locks one leg around Fawn’s and rubs up against her, feeling Fawn’s heartbeat inside her own chest. Somewhere amidst the herbal sweetness of Fawn’s scent, she thinks she can smell Rye—the confidence of his masculinity breathing from deep within the sheets. She tries to imagine the sound of Fawn’s voice when Rye makes love to her—if she makes any sound. She imagines Rye’s brown, gentle hands flowing over Fawn’s body. She wraps her arms around Fawn and begins to sob.