Lonely in the Heart of the World

by Mindi Meltz

  Lonely gazes for a long time upon the expanse of her past, which from this angle looks as mysterious as her future—the earth such a complicated reflection of a sky so clear and open. She misses Rye and Fawn, Chelya and Eva. She would have liked to see them again. She would have liked, too, to see Yora’s face again, and ask her about that sorrow lost in her eyes.

  And she would have liked to know—she wishes she had known, as she traveled through each scene of her journey—that everything was okay after all. That she would make it, in the end. Because then maybe she could have seen that nothing she did along the way was wrong or a mistake, but merely one of the steps she had to take to get here. Maybe she would have seen, as she thinks she sees now, that every love she felt—for Yora, for Dragon, for Moon, for Fawn, for Rye—had in fact been real, had in fact been love, and was not worth less than the love she would feel for her prince, the one she was destined for. Each was only a different kind of love. Some loves more of the body and some more of the heart; some loves frightening and some peaceful; some loves waking and some soothing. Each one was important, each one real.

  Now she will go up into the sky, and everything will change. She will find the one, and that will be enough. For he is her one purpose; he is the answer to the long, passionate question of her life. Even though the question, too, was beautiful.

  But when she turns back around, she must stand still in a sudden, seeping despair that pools around her feet and sucks her heart downward. That mountain, as intimate as its beauty may seem, rises from a fog with the same unyielding finality that she could see from all the way across the earth and the ocean. She cannot see its peaks in the clouds, and the sides sweeping up to those peaks are swift as flight. There is no way up.

  Her second cause for anxiety is the openness all around her, whose sudden eeriness she cannot explain to herself until she realizes that the horse is gone. She stumbles forward over the jagged crystal of the stones. The wind begins to pour over her, like a river whose current travels against her.

  Lonely, it says. Lonely, Lonely, Lonely. An emptiness seems to open beneath her feet, as deep as the mountain is tall, and as white, as silent, as familiar. Lonely shall be your name.

  “No,” Lonely whispers, closing her eyes, the old woman’s curse rushing in upon her. She tries to sense the horse’s presence, certain that she must be near. She needs the warm anchor of that body beneath her hand, to keep her from the abyss that keeps opening and opening, and has always been opening.

  I would rather have no name than be called Lonely, she thinks in a panic, struggling for balance. I would rather have no name at all.

  When she opens her eyes she sees a bundle in a thicket of bulbous leaves that trail close to the rock as if they could draw life from it. It’s something that has fallen from where she tied it to her horse’s back. It is the dress that Chelya gave her.

  Quickly, she bends and tears it open. She barely looks at the dress as she rips the old one from her body and puts the new one on. She catches a whiff of feathers and grass, blood and stones. Whatever it is, this is the dress that Chelya, little goddess of love—goddess of milk and honey, laughter and fulfillment—told her she would meet her prince in. It clings to her body, affirming her form, and at the same time it sails beyond and behind her, as if opening spaces for her legs to stride. This is not a body whose name is Lonely. She feels its heat, its determination.

  There is no way up. But it’s okay. I, who am more than a horse after all, will save her now.

  A butterfly with miniature yellow wings draws her attention to the flowers that bloom from that strange vine over the rock, and with her eyes, and then with her feet, Lonely follows it. It flies around a corner, around a scrubby, tough little evergreen tree whose needles hold the wind at bay, as if giving her space to pass. It flies down to the smooth, glassy stream, whose flow is slow and prayerful now, and thinner than Lonely’s body. It flies across the stream and up alongside it, and around a silver boulder covered with a stubble of lichen like the stiff fuzz of maleness on Rye’s face.

  The butterfly skips upward against her vision. once i crawled upon the earth, it says. Then it is gone, leaving a waterfall behind it, and me.

  In her vision I am white, but I feel blue, and the clear color of the water feels blue to me, too. And that blue that I am feels like light, not color at all. The waterfall is thin and wispy, as if more air than water, and neither of us is aware of its making any sound. Lonely looks at me, and her body turns all to grace. At this moment in the story, I can say who I am. At this moment, in Lonely’s eyes, I am safe.

  She sees my horn and she knows it means something—that somehow the form of the horse she knew now has meaning—but she doesn’t know what it is. She remembers the white horse from the fairy tale, and wonders again, Why?

  Her dark eyes surge toward me, but she is falling, but falling and rising at the same time, and the earth is rising toward her, and the sky lowering to meet her.

  She must crawl on her hands and knees to reach me, dizzy. I wish I could help her but I am too shocked by this realization I am having, again, of who I am, and cannot move. Both of us are dizzy, remembering now, suddenly, the divinity that we are.

  She collapses against my belly, and gazes up, and she sees through my head, up the tower that spires round and round from my forehead. She remembers that the place where she herself comes from is high at the top—the top of that tower, where she was born of dreams, born of the clouds and the freedom of possibility. And so her eyes spiral up and up and up, and we keep going, higher than she could ever see, and still she spirals upward until she is so dizzy from spiraling, she forgets everything but her own soul.

  White clouds open above her, revealing light behind light behind light. Lonely is in the tower again, and the white bird is there, his wings constantly waving—never lowering him fully to the ground—and his feet are careful and spider-like as they lift her heart. His eyes are blue like Eva’s, but they glint with the reflection of her own. And she thinks, Oh yes, I forgot about you. I forgot there was no tower after all—only love.

  Where she is going now, she will forget me: the one that carried her. I know why. The lips that wake her draw fire into her mouth. They are wet like ice that is melting. They feel like the slick clay at the bottom of a river she has never yet entered into, only walked beside all her days, full of a longing that began before she can remember. The tower is gone again, and fear folds around her like the universe, and she knows why she waited so long to arrive.

  For in all her father’s fairy tales of love, this was always the end of the story. There was nothing that came after.

  Lonely, I call, because I am afraid.

  But she is gone.

  Dear Moon,

  I’m so lonely. I had no idea.

  This is the letter I would write you, if I could write a letter.

  If I had paper and a pen. If I could still form words with these hunting, killing hands, which I’m not sure that I can.

  If I knew where you were.

  If I thought you would understand.

  I have a lot of questions. Dragon made me come. What does that mean? I don’t want to be owned by anyone. I don’t want to see him any more. I avoid him. But sometimes (I don’t know why), I watch him. When he finally emerged again, he brought a woman with him. I don’t know where she came from. I tell myself I don’t care.

  She’s definitely a goddess, not like anyone I’ve ever seen. She’s like some terrible grey cloud, but she moves like the inside of her is made of glass. Like she’s afraid that if she steps too heavy, she’ll break, and be pierced by her own shards. She holds Dragon, but when he touches her she looks back at him in a strange, empty way, like she’s really somewhere else.

  I can tell that drives him crazy. I know, because Mira used to look at me like that. I want to know, how can someone love you but be somewhere else at the same time?
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  Moon, when I saw the Unicorn, I saw that there is something else to life, something more that we haven’t realized. Something so beautiful it’s worth following, and not giving up your body to whoever and whatever wants it along the way. Like you do. Yes, okay, like I do.

  I thought that girl who came to Dragon in the spring—the bright white girl—was pathetic. But what pisses me off is that she wasn’t. If I know anything for certain, I know that girl owns herself. When she speaks the word “love”, she knows what she’s talking about. When she looks at you, she’s all there, you know what I mean? I don’t even know how to be looked at like that. It scared the hell out of me when she did it.

  That’s the way the deer looked at me, too, though. That’s the way the animals look at me right before I kill them.

  Moon, I thought wanting was the only thing I could be sure of, but I don’t know what I want any more. I try to do what the snake told me, to follow the pain upward. From my vagina, which is always frustrated and hurt and angry, through my stomach, always hungry, through my heart, which is—I don’t know. I try to follow the pain upward but it’s so—well, you know, painful.

  You told me to follow the pain, to go inside myself, but you don’t know what’s in there either. You won’t look inside your own self. You can’t bear it, can you? Why do we hate ourselves, Moon?

  I ran away to the desert, but it swallowed me up, swallowed me up inside my past. You know how your past follows you—not just the things that happened to you, but the things that didn’t happen. Not just the things you did, but the things you didn’t do. I think about death all the time, and you’d think I wouldn’t care about death, but I’m so afraid of it. I don’t know what it means to be old. But that Unicorn was old, I think. Older than I will ever be.

  I hate to admit it, Moon, but sometimes I want someone wise. Someone who knows more than me. Someone who can explain to me what it’s all meant, how it all fits together, what I’m supposed to do. I’m not okay any more in this mortal life, hunting animals, hunting men. The hunger never ever goes away, and I’m tired of it. It scares me that if I stop feeding it, I’ll die.

  Sometimes I wish I could find that Unicorn. I know it won’t love me. I know it won’t want to look at someone as ugly inside as I am. But I long for it anyway. Should I try to find it—somehow?

  You would tell me yes. You would tell me to do whatever I want, you would say something wise. But you’re not wise. You try to get me to love myself but you don’t love yourself either. So you don’t really understand.

  I have to tell you something, Moon. I hate you for leaving me. Every time you come here, you leave again. Couldn’t you be the one person who doesn’t? Don’t you get it that I’m going to die someday? You’ll have eternity to fly around the world, wasting your powers and denying yourself. Why can’t you stay with me while I’m alive?

  I tried to be the one to leave once. I came here to leave everything and everyone behind. But it didn’t work. Because they left me first, a long time before that. They won.

  —Lil

  “Open your eyes. I need to know if you’re real.”

  But I can’t, thinks Lonely. I’ve died.

  “Please.”

  “I can’t,” she says, surprised at her own voice. “I’m afraid.”

  “Of what?”

  “I’m afraid to find out you’re not real, not really there.”

  “Of course I am.” But the voice is soft—caught and hushed, as if it will at any moment flee with the wind, leaving her in silence again. “I’ve always been here,” he whispers. “Every part of the way. Don’t you remember the squirrel, the dog, the snake, the dragonfly, the thrush?”

  She can feel his breath with each word against her cheek, and her lips buzz where his mouth a moment before weighed them down. His hand cradling hers is cool and tight, with slim, confident bones—his thumb hooked in hers. The pleasure of it hurts. But still she cannot look.

  “Lonely is my name,” she says, not knowing for sure any more if she’s speaking aloud. “What if I don’t know how to love? What if I mess it up?”

  “But you’re already here. Haven’t we already loved each other this whole time, journeying toward each other? Hasn’t love always been happening, and loneliness, too? Nothing is ever gained, and nothing is ever lost. So you don’t have to be afraid. Lonely, we are the only ones in the world.”

  She’s not sure, later, if any of it was spoken aloud. But when she opens her eyes, no one is there.

  Sometimes you get a glimpse of the absurdity of it all.

  Information leaks—in the form of a smell, or the mumblings of a homeless person, or accidentally taking the wrong route home one day and finding yourself in an unknown neighborhood. And you have the faintest realization that something is wrong. Where does all the trash go, anyway? And the fumes from the cars do make people double over in tears and cough, if they get too close. And was this food something that was once alive? Where does anything come from, and what is sacrificed in the making of it?

  Maybe, for a few of you, the questions grow. Maybe you cannot stop thinking about them, for a while anyway. Though you never speak of them, they obsess you. Are cars destroying the sky? The very air I breathe? You notice your own breath for the first time. Yet without your cars, you could not get to work, and you could not make money, and you would starve. Without your cars, you could not see your loved ones. Without your cars, you could never leave this little lot you call home, which does not actually produce anything you need to live or be happy.

  When your shoes are worn out, should you try to repair them instead of throwing them away? But no one knows how to repair shoes any more, least of all you. No one knows how to make shoes. Isn’t there some natural way to make things waterproof, or to stick things together, or to store food, or to sterilize things, or to clean, or to heal a wound? But no one remembers, or knows where to begin. Maybe a few of you—I know it sounds crazy—miss nature. You wish, almost, that it would come for you. Come find you, come take you, even if—oh god, Hanum—it tears your lives apart. Because you cannot find your way back to it.

  You have good intentions, after all. Do not be angry with yourself. You are trapped in the world you grew up in, where the knowledge you were trained in and the mechanical body of the life you were given is not made for those intentions. With every move, you destroy—without even meaning to, without even always knowing it—as if your limbs are the limbs of a giant and merciless machine even while your soul still thinks itself human. Deep down—how can you help it?—you are living your lives in shame.

  Maybe some manufacturer takes advantage of this secret shame and begins to sell “natural” things. Their origins and making are just as confusing and complex—and more expensive. You cannot do it yourself, say the advertisements. And you can’t. You wouldn’t know where to begin, and there is no one left to teach you. Deep down, you are living your lives knowing those lives are wrong, and yet you close your eyes and ears and noses now to the signs, because there is nothing you can do. You close up your senses, and cease to trust them, and live your lives outside of your bodies.

  It’s as if one day you decided to be happy from now on. But you’ve never been happy, that you can remember, and all the neural pathways in your body are rigged for sorrow. The entire architecture of your being was built that way, so long ago that you don’t remember how it was built, or how to take it down, or how to begin again.

  Lonely sits up fast beneath a copper sky. I am somewhere different, she thinks, so it can’t have been a dream. But fear moves in her belly. She remembers the image of her prince in her glass tower, how she cried and cried for it to return, and how it never did.

  Her first impression of this sweep of earth before her, rising into a last, humble bluff of dead grass, is of finality. Bare rock painted thickly with close sun, only the tiniest of scattered trees, and a giant lake with no distu
rbance upon its surface, reflecting only clouds. There is no sound but for a very slight wind. Like the end of all things.

  Then a flock of soft white birds explodes around her body from behind, from nowhere, so close she can feel them. Now already they are a great distance ahead of her, spiraling like scattered pages over the still lake and coming down. With a kind of angry determination, Lonely rises to her feet and follows them. She recognizes them. They are like a hundred copies of the bird that held her heart in the tower.

  It seems that in an instant she has arrived at the edge of the lake, though it seemed far away before. She can see every bird clearly, as it floats there in ripples—as if she were close up to them, though the lake is large. It is like this, she will discover, here at the top of the world. Distance—the time between a thought and a word, the separation between two beings—is so thin as to be hardly noticed and is crossed instantaneously.

  Someone in that white mass is saying her name—that name she has forgotten, that is truly hers.

  She searches among the birds, and then she sees him: a stranger in their midst. A stranger to her, his face turned away. His body blurred by their beating wings, but unable to hide among them, for his skin shines and the shadows between his limbs are dark. The birds begin to fall apart from him, as if willing her to see him. Still, he does not face her, but she knows that he can see her. Water drips from his black hair; his bare shoulders twitch beneath the cold drops. The birds puff along the water like clouds, heedless and free.

  The moment they leave him, he turns and wades fast, almost running, through the water—away from her. She has no doubt that she will follow, but she moves more slowly than he, afraid of his coldness and the hidden expression on his face. Quickly at the shore again, he walks upward, but his walk is oddly smooth, as if he moves by more than walking—to the top of a bluff that seems the highest point of this lost peak among the clouds. At the very top of the world, he stops between two leaning outcroppings of stone: eerie, ancient stacks of grey fragment that Lonely will remember for the rest of her life. Though he is far away, he looks at her now; he gazes at her solemnly as, catching his gaze, she begins to run.