Lonely in the Heart of the World

by Mindi Meltz

  “What is that?” she whispers.

  Fawn stands, removes her cloaks one by one, and steps into the water. As Lonely watches in amazement, she steps forward, and sinks up to her waist. The rainbows swirl up her body. “Come in,” she says, gazing up at Lonely, her face suffused suddenly with a feeling like joy—and Lonely tries to remember what that feeling is, because it’s something she recognizes from long, long ago, when she herself was still a child and she did not know her age because childhood is eternal, and she remembers now: wonder.

  “It isn’t cold,” says Fawn.

  Lonely tears herself out of her clothes and half-crawls, half-tumbles in—not careful at all, hardly aware of which limbs move first or of what carries her—giddy with surrender, as if falling finally into her lover’s arms.

  They have stood here for days and days, nights and nights, and the Unicorn cannot bring herself to go on.

  The fences have ended, broken off into nothing. Like everything else in the City, they were an illusion, built to hide the heart. That boundary between the City and its heart is marked by a fog so thick it seems to pulse—so heavy it drenches her fur on contact, pressing it against her skin, making her feel more than ever like nothing but a body.

  She is unaware of Sky now, who also waits silently as if he could wait forever, upon her back. She is unaware that his fear is as great as her own. She would rather stand here forever, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, than go forward or back. But tonight, on the full moon, this painful weightiness of her own damp skin is all that she can feel. The feeling of herself fills up the whole universe—the dry inside of her mouth, the raw insides of her ears, the cold bones of her ankles and knees, the pull of her belly, the wail of her spine—nothing but herself inside herself inside herself, and it is the most terrible thing to feel this, and she is screaming, but the scream of a Unicorn cannot be heard. It comes in another language, not made of sound.

  But Sky, who has become a boy again, about thirteen years old—his strong, nervous young hands clasped around her shoulder blades, his back leaning over her—hears. He doesn’t throw his arms around her neck or tell her to hush. Instead, he bends his head down and presses his forehead to that place where her neck connects her head to her body, and prays. Very gradually, his calm calms her, and his respect releases her into the safety of her own true nature, and the feeling of actually being heard makes her stop screaming.

  “I’m sorry,” she says.

  “It’s okay,” says Sky, speaking for the first time since they arrived. “I’m scared, too.” He feels tenderness for her like he has never felt before for anything.

  “But what are you afraid of?” she asks him. “Isn’t this where you wanted to be? Isn’t this your home?”

  “But what will it be now? Who knows what remains. The only one who lasts forever—”

  “I know,” says the Unicorn. Then they are both silent again.

  “I couldn’t believe it when I found you,” Sky says. “I couldn’t believe there was a Unicorn after all. How could it be true?”

  She doesn’t answer him. “What is She that remains?” she whispers. “Why can’t I bear to come closer?”

  Sky holds tighter to the Unicorn’s mane. The mists begin to take form before him, swaying and sighing, and he has to close his eyes to still his pounding heart. “She is the Nothing from which we come. She is the Goddess we thanked at each birth, and surrendered to at each death. She is the mystery behind the reflection. She is the truth that each of us is afraid will kill us if we face it.”

  The Unicorn trembles and cannot stop trembling.

  “But you don’t need to be afraid,” says Sky. “Because you come from there.”

  “No,” whispers the Unicorn—the horse who is not a horse, but someone’s soul. “Not me.” For she is remembering now: the chemical smell that surrounded the infant Mira’s birth, the white masks, and the place of shouting and dirty shadow where she sat in her crib and watched, for hours and hours trapped, and the desperation—even then, already—in her father’s eyes, and the sorrowful, unseeing envy in Lilah’s.

  “Every year,” continues Sky, his voice turning cold and distant, “a woman of our people is chosen, through a dream, to meet with the Dark Goddess. We perform the rituals. We prepare her. Then we send her down. There, beneath the water where we can never see and never know, the light and the dark meet and become one, and from that union rises the Unicorn—the most sacred being, the bringer of Transformation. It is this meeting that makes death turn to birth, keeps the cycles of the seasons turning, keeps the people falling in love over and over forever, keeps hearts open. It is this meeting that holds the paradox of the world together.”

  Then his voice softens, and turns a little more real again. “But now I think that maybe the Unicorn must be born even if the ritual is not held. Nothing can stop the Light, any more than the Darkness. If we do not consciously facilitate this sacred meeting, if the meeting is for some reason thwarted, the Unicorn will still be born, and life will still go on.

  “Only that birth will be much, much more painful. That is why you’ve had to spend your whole life, Unicorn, trying to remember what you are.”

  The Unicorn shakes her mane. “Enough,” she says. She begins to walk. For the stillness, she feels now—for the first time in this life—is no longer safe.

  Later, though Fawn will tell Chelya all about it—of course she will tell Chelya everything, and Eva, too—and though she will tell Willow and Jay about it, and one day she will tell Chelya’s children about it, and Willow’s daughter Thea, and Thea’s children, the first person she wants to tell—whose arms she cannot wait to come home to, finally—is Rye.

  He wraps her up in blankets in the middle of the night, the way he wrapped her in his cloak one night when she was sixteen, and came running in from a thunder storm with the flush of gods still hot on her face. That day, the way she remembers it, was the very beginning of their love.

  “It wasn’t a dream,” she mutters wildly now, “because she’s gone, she’s gone now.”

  “Who’s gone?” says Rye.

  “Lonely.”

  She feels like a child, held out from him at arms’ length, watching his serious, searching expression as if from far away. Not until this moment has she really seen the distance between them. It is alive and solid, as real as what she’s experienced in the river. She doesn’t know how or when that distance got so big. But she comforts herself thinking, it is only the length of his arms. Absurdly, deliriously, she thinks, That’s as far as anyone can push you away—only the length of their arms.

  “Fawn,” Rye says, and he looks into her eyes. “What happened? What dream?”

  “It was like a dream,” murmurs Fawn, turning into her mind, afraid of forgetting.

  “Should I get Eva then?”

  Fawn looks up suddenly and sees him, sees him really there, because his hands are no longer touching her and he is turning away. And in that passionless willingness to get her what she needs, that resigned assumption of his turning body—the assumption that what she needs, he does not have to give her—she sees for the first time how she has hurt him. She sees for the first time the wounds she has made, so long after the fact that those wounds are already scarring over, perhaps irreparably changing him. How, she wonders, could she not see it before? How could she feel revulsion at the violence of the dream she just ran from, when she herself has been inflicting this real violence on the one she loves all this time? She did not even know she was angry. This has been a dream. This strange living, ever since Kite left.

  “No, not my mother,” she manages to tell Rye now. “I want you. I want to tell you.”

  He turns back and faces her. He looks at her face, and she can tell he wants to do something about the tears in her eyes, but the steps they once knew so well, between them, have been blurred. It’s like he doesn’t remember the way back
.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m so sorry how I’ve been. I’m sorry.” Then she is unable to speak, but he comes and holds her the best he can, and she feels his helplessness. How could she never have seen this, that he felt just as helpless as she? And what will she do now, as he steps away again, still not understanding what she wants from him, still afraid of not being able to give it, still afraid of being blamed?

  She takes his hand, and the earth floor carries their feet toward the fire, where they sink down. Always, the earth reminds her, things happen slowly. Slowly, the seasons will come around again. Here is her love, her first and only love—the adventurer, the restless boy, the stronger of the two brothers, but always so gentle, so gentle in his heart! Oh, the person she has been in the last few moons—she did not know she could be that person!

  “I want to tell you—” Fawn begins. “The dream I just had, that was real. A nightmare, but I think, maybe, it was good. Can I tell you?” The formality of her own voice breaks her heart, but he takes her hand and nods, like a little boy. Like her own son, the only time she ever yelled at him—the way he stood there afterward, the need in his eyes. All men are like this—only boys. They don’t know what she has now learned. They have not surrendered to the swirling waters. How could she forget her duty as a woman to give them that deep compassion, that deep sea?

  “Lonely and I went into the water together,” she begins carefully. “Into the river.”

  She looks at him, to see if he will be confused. But his eyes say, I will take anything. Your love in any form, except anger. Will she be able to explain that part too, when it comes?

  “The whole time, we were under the water,” she continues. “But we could breathe, and it wasn’t cold,” she says. “It wasn’t cold because—” She takes a deep breath. “Because it became something magical. It became emotion.”

  She looks at him. “Did you know that emotion is magic?” she asks, hesitantly.

  He shakes his head, and smiles a little, but sadly.

  “I didn’t know either. We have to remember how to work with this magic. We have to become sorcerers of our own emotions. That’s what Yora said.”

  “Yora?”

  “Yes. Yora. She was there. Yora, the goddess of that river.”

  Rye raises his eyebrows.

  “There is a goddess,” Fawn whispers, leaning forward, “of that river. I knew it, when I was a little girl. Everything has a spirit, everything has a keeper. I remember now. They are trying to speak to us.”

  She looks up at Rye, as if for confirmation. He nods, but she can’t read the expression in his eyes.

  “Lonely and I held hands, and we went under together.” She speaks slowly, choosing her words carefully. “We didn’t have to think about it; it just happened. Something was pulling us down, and we weren’t afraid. Under the water I saw many women’s faces, as if there were hundreds of women swimming around me, and then it was as if we stood in the river again, only it wasn’t the same river. It was like the river beneath the river, in another world. The water was warm, and swirling slowly around us, and I don’t remember seeing the banks of it. There was nothing but water. And me and three other women standing there.”

  Again, she looks carefully into Rye’s eyes. He is simply there, listening, waiting.

  “The three women were Lonely and Yora—and this other woman I had never seen. She was called Delilah. I could never tell whether she was human or goddess. She was very small and dark, and always moving, always climbing out of the water onto stones, like a creature who couldn’t bear to be in the water too long. But I could see by the way she moved, restless—I could see by the meanness in her eyes, and the anger there, and the way her body sliced into the water—that she was made of fire. She scared me, and I didn’t understand why she was there, or who she was.

  “I think we were all naked. Yora was so beautiful, the way you’d dream the river would be, if the river were a woman. So graceful, and she was constantly changing into the river itself, as if the way she moved was the way the river moved. It’s hard to explain.” Fawn looks at Rye and feels the impossibility of this story, how difficult it will be to put into words. She sighs. “Oh, Rye, I wish you could understand what I’m telling you. I wish you could see how it was.” Don’t you feel anything? she thinks with sudden desperation. Am I the only one who feels so much? What happens inside you, all these days since we lost our son, and why won’t you ever show me? She feels the tears rise up in her eyes again.

  “I’m sorry,” he says stiffly, dropping his hand from hers. “Lately I don’t seem to be able to do anything you ask of me. I can’t bring Kite back. I can’t tell you what’s going to happen to him. I can’t feel exactly how you feel or do anything to fix it. But I do know—”

  Fawn shakes her head. “That isn’t what I meant, Rye!”

  “I was going to say,” he continues, “that I do know who you are, and the strength inside you. If you remembered your own strength, Fawn, you would not feel so helpless.”

  Fawn looks carefully into his gaze and sees the kindness there. “I know,” she says, ashamed.

  “Go on,” he says.

  “In the river, Yora said, ‘This woman (she meant Lonely, but she never called her by that name)—this woman is going on a journey. She wants to journey to where someone else’s heart is, and to do that she must learn to shapeshift. She must learn to change the very elements inside herself. Each of us here has a gift to give her, to help her do that.’

  “Then this girl Delilah, whose name I knew somehow in the dream, spoke up. She jumped up on the rock like a little girl and turned around and around, avoiding everyone’s eyes, and she said, ‘I’ve already given to this girl. Enough. I have my own journey now.’

  “And Yora’s voice was strong the way anger is strong, but not angry. She said, ‘Delilah, you think that giving always means sacrificing. You think it will always leave you empty. You think it is you losing, and the other person winning. I am not talking about that kind of giving.’

  “Then Delilah was silent, and she actually sat down on the stone and rolled herself up into a ball and was still, but listening, I think, though she didn’t want to show it. Then Yora looked right at me, and she spoke to me first, though I don’t know why. Her eyes were tender, and I believed she remembered me from my childhood, when she used to comfort me in the wilderness before I had a home. I remembered her from even before that, from the womb itself. She said, ‘We all bring the gift of the emotion that most haunts us. Fawn, what emotion do you bring?’”

  Fawn takes Rye’s hand again. “Rye, you understand, of course I said, ‘Fear.’ It was fear that had made me forget her, fear that had made me forget even myself all these years that I’ve felt the City coming closer, coming to take me back.

  “I could feel the others looking at me, and I felt ashamed. This girl Delilah looked as if she felt contempt for Fear. And for me.

  “But Lonely walked to me through the water, and she put her arms around me. Something about her embrace felt so forgiving and also so like a child’s. I realized she’d always seemed like a child to me. I realized how much I’d both loved and almost hated her because she lives her whole life with that innocence that I was forced to give up when I was very, very young, because life was so—because it demanded so much of me.

  “She said, ‘Teach me about Fear.’

  “And Rye, I could only stare past her into the fire of Delilah’s eyes. I don’t know who that girl was, but everything she was made me afraid. She was staring right at me now. It was so frightening. I felt like if I spoke out loud, I might die.

  “Then finally Lonely spoke again, and she said, ‘I’m afraid of being alone forever.’ I remember the stillness of the moon behind her head, like it was holding its breath. She went on—it’s amazing how I can remember every word. She said, ‘I’m afraid of an old woman on an island, and the curse s
he placed on me, and I’m afraid to realize that she is my own mother. I’m afraid that no one in this whole world really loves me. I’m afraid I’ll never see the Unicorn again, and I won’t be able to find my way. I’m afraid I’ll never see my beloved again, and I’m afraid it will be my fault.’

  “That gave me courage, somehow, when Lonely said all that. I knew she’d said it for me. I knew she was my friend, and I guess I’ve always known that. It’s only been hard, sometimes, to know it, because of what she asks of me. So I said, ‘I’m afraid to speak right now.’

  “I know my voice was really small, and I know that fire girl was still looking at me that same way, but once I said that, I found I could keep going, and it got easier.

  “I said, ‘I’m afraid that something terrible will happen to my son, or has already happened. I’m afraid I’ll never see him again. I’m afraid to lose everything I have, I’m afraid of the world coming undone, I’m afraid of the seasons changing their course and the very cycle of life we depend on coming unraveled, and I’m afraid of my home being taken away from under my feet the way Willow’s was.’

  “Then Yora lifted the water up in her hands like a magical thing, thick like glue—like the glue that holds the world together—and it sparkled in the moonlight. She said, ‘This is Fear.’

  “And I could see that it was! The way it sparkled like that, the way Fear starts to tingle all sharp and bright at the base of your spine. And that’s only the beginning. But she said, ‘We cannot hide from ourselves any more. The world is falling apart. We are all dying, all lost, all lonely. Women, this is all we have. We cannot be selfish any more with our emotions. Fawn, this is Fear. This is your power. So lead.’

  “Then it was like— Oh, how can I explain? She seemed to open the river to me. The spiraling water we stood in—she opened the center of that spiral, and there was this dark abyss between us. I could tell that was where I was supposed to go, because it was so terrifying. Like something saying to me, here it is, what you’ve always feared: do you want to see it? Well here it is.