by Mindi Meltz
Later on, he will already be far away from this place. Later on, someone will tell him what happened here: the men refused to leave, and eventually the people broke in and murdered them all out of sheer fury at the nothingness they found. But Kite will never forget that darkness, as if those faceless men still shuffle forever in their own self-made jail, as if he can never escape their confused humanness or the sickening stench of their stubborn helplessness. He will never forget his disappointment, or how much he longed, inside that cold immortal place, for the warm dinner his mother would serve him in a bowl made of river clay, and the easy curl of Chelya’s cheeks into laughter. He will never forget his own selfishness, when he stepped outside and was so dizzyingly grateful for the light of day that he forgot to turn around and hold the door open—forgot to call out to either the people or the men, or to hold that door with all his strength against the force of their fear, so that they wouldn’t rush forward and slam it shut again behind him. Because maybe if the door had stood open then, what happened later wouldn’t have happened. Maybe that was the only moment, when Kite stepped out again into that churning web of humanity, when humanity would have actually forgiven.
Because in that moment all the colors were so much brighter and at once running together in rainbows. Kite took his jug out of his pack and held it under a stream of water pouring from a gutter, and a few people saw what he was doing, and instead of shouting at him that he was a god, they did the same. People were looking up at the sky instead of at the building, and holding each other, and weeping and dancing, and you could see their wet, beautiful bodies through their clothes.
How can I describe the song that is Lonely, now that Lonely is a song? She is a song everyone knows. She is a song you remember when you close your eyes, listen, and remember that the wind knows your name.
This is the end. There is nowhere else to go but back again. Knowing that makes the longing so bright, so big, so loud inside her—Sky’s memory in her mouth, in the formation of her body, in the shape of her spirit, in the very color of her eyes changed by the beauty of him—and her longing is her song; her longing is all that she is. It is a longing whose history began before the world was the world, before life knew itself and lost itself again. Before anything had a name. For the first time in her life, she feels herself a goddess, and she knows what it means to make magic—not the magic of her father who wrestled and changed things into his own image, but the magic of surrendering to a humble human need so deep and universal that its fire rips the rains right out of the sky.
Her longing—bigger than she, bigger than Sky—calls forth the rains, and they come. The rains are soothing, and she is not afraid now of returning. For she misses the sea. She misses the waters that rocked around her all through her childhood, that kept her safe, that blurred all boundaries so that everything felt possible, and that she didn’t realize saved her over and over in that empty place, dowsing her soul in its depths and tossing her up reborn.
She misses the sky, which she enters into again now, as if all she ever wanted was that feeling again, of flying.
And she isn’t angry or desperate, but really quiet now, in the center of her long, flying song over the sea, as she asks the wind, “But why? Why couldn’t I have what I really longed for?”
“Beloved,” says the wind, “you can have anything you want.”
“But why did you say that time, in the meadow, when I was so alone, Love is right here, all around you? It wasn’t enough for me, the love of grasses and flowers. It wasn’t enough!”
“I was only telling the truth. You are love—all the time.”
“But I needed the love of another. You mocked me. You would never help me.”
“You never asked.”
And Lonely! Lonely. She feels very soft then.
What once was Lonely flies and flies, through all the colors of the sunset, as the wheel of the rainbow winds back into darkness.
“Do you know yet, Princess, what you truly longed for? Do you know yet what longing is for?”
And she feels the purity of it, the virginity of it: that longing. Inside that longing, she is absolutely whole.
She remembers that first awakening on the sand, that first breath, the drops of water on Yora’s throat. She remembers the horse endlessly rocking beneath her and the meadow spinning her in dazzling light. The song of crickets, the nights dissolving in open earth, the animals talking, the wind making her laugh. The story of the desert on the soles of her feet, the miracle of water, the hooded mystery of the vultures, the rising of Dragon in the river, his touch and the untouchable fire. The black hole of the rainbow, the journey of the waterfall, Moon’s single, tender, forever kiss, and the forest’s silent, wet surrender. The weightless embrace of trees, the firm arms of Rye, the first breakfast with Fawn and Chelya, the goats who knew her, the drumbeats, the forbidden kiss, and her own story in Eva’s old, complex face. The muscle in her own legs, climbing and climbing, and the dream of the river beside her, and the determination of the Unicorn, and the kiss of waking. And every moment she spent with him—in the clouds, in the meadow that bloomed, in the lake, in the snow—whether with him in flesh or searching for him in dreams, finding him in every animal, every person, every living thing. Always that longing was what made her alive and what made life worth living. That bright tension, holding her to the divine.
It’s okay, she whispers to the people—to the children abandoned in the streets, to the teenagers who left their families long ago, to the old people locked in rotting buildings, to the husbands and wives who cannot remember what desire felt like, to each and every woman and man who thinks no one will ever understand. It’s okay, whispers the wind, who is Lonely. Everyone is lonely. Everyone.
Rain, rain, rain. And what is her name? It is this song, played through a flute by a boy on a rooftop—a song of risk and longing and forgiveness. But the song is too long and complicated to remember or repeat, and so she, like everyone, ended up with some strange, misleading abbreviation.
Like everyone else, she could only remember that word. Lonely.
The old woman never had a name. Because she was chosen from infancy to meet with the goddess, because she was never meant to live that kind of personal, human life in which one loves and is loved for one’s differentness, and feels that one’s personality is one’s soul, she was never given a name. She was meant, from the first, to embody something greater than herself. From the time she was born, the divine was channeled through her, so that she became a vehicle for beauty, a receptacle for light, with no name but the breathlessly uttered, the reverently whispered, “She.”
It was dangerous to be given such power. But her people had done this over and over, for as long as they had existed. Every thirteen years, a woman was given to the Goddess. And they knew she would be safe from the unwieldy egotism that such power could bring, as well as from the fear of death, as long as they never gave her a name.
When Hanum took her, he called her “my love”. That was his name for her. But later, when he no longer loved her, he stopped calling her by that name. He called her other names, always changing and never kind. So she knew that wasn’t her real name. The Bright Goddesses across the sea, at the other end of the river, call her Dark Goddess—but she is not She. Once she was a child, once a girl, once a virgin, once a lover, once “woman” with reverence, once “woman” with scorn, and now an old woman, now a “witch”. Yet she knows herself. She recognizes herself, in a way she did not when she was young—if not by a name, then by something else: perhaps by pain itself, or by the very things she has lost.
Things were lost because she did not take the path that was destined for her. She turned away and lived another life—a life she chose but which she could never understand, a life lived in the shadow of the life she should have lived.
She used to think that the real Dark Goddess would never speak with her again, once she had turned he
r back, once she ran away with Hanum for this other life. But when she came to the island, and Hanum turned away from her forever, she found the Dark Goddess here waiting for her after all, speaking to her in the voice of the sea, and this is the only real conversation she has ever had since.
Perhaps she is immortal now, like the gods. For some reason, she has not needed food for a very long time. She belongs to water and also to earth, while Hanum was made of air and fire, neither of which she has ever since trusted. Yet it was fire—a falling star fizzling out above the ocean’s horizon—that told her of Delilah’s coming. And now it is the wind, always present and yet never before speaking to her, which tells her of her daughter’s return.
Above her, the moon has lost her invisible child, as always. Nothing is ever kept. Nothing is ever safe. The moon is gone, but the old woman’s daughter is returning, and for what?
She always told herself she would feel nothing. Yet when Delilah held her before—the first time anyone had touched her in many, many years—she realized the tension she had kept in her spine and her hands and her face, the tension that had held her for eleven moons in expectation of her daughter’s return. She also realized, to her surprise, that she wanted to know that her daughter had succeeded, after all. She wanted to know that she had found him. She wanted to know what he looked like now, what he felt like, what he sounded like, and if that fire still lit his eyes.
Now, sitting again at the edge of the sea, she feels Lonely’s body near her. Once, the old woman was also a mother. Once, this girl’s body was part of her—aching inside her, stretching her insides wide, yawning her open. Once, she nearly died for this body, and was reborn again in the hope its tiny fingers and big eyes brought her. Now she feels nothing. Or almost nothing.
“You’re not as frightening as I remember you,” says the girl. The old woman can feel her youth—those young, stubbornly fervent thighs near her own crooked knees, that quickly beating heart leaning over her own head. She remembers how ashamed she felt on that night so many moons ago, of her own daughter’s desperate loneliness and determination to seek out one man. Yet she admired it too, didn’t she? Now there is something changed about this girl. No anger now, demanding and selfish. No fear, that fear that made her stupid—made her think she couldn’t get off the island on her own. No sorrow—that sorrow that blurred her, that she didn’t understand she was carrying. No, now there is only some deep peace. Some strange, deep peace that the old woman, who has sat here for more years than she can count, has never felt.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” comes the inevitable question. “Why didn’t you tell me who you were? Why didn’t you tell me you knew him?” But her daughter’s voice still holds no anger.
The old woman shrugs, not raising her head. “I am no story-teller.” Her voice hurts. She had hardly spoken to anyone in years, and today she has already had to explain things to two people. And there is so much more for her to explain. Too much.
“Who will tell me then?” asks the girl. “My father would not tell me. Sky would not tell me.”
“Ah,” she closes her eyes and nods almost involuntarily. “Sky. Is that his name?”
“No. That wasn’t his real name. But you know his real name, the name he had before. Don’t you?”
“No, I do not. I never knew anyone’s name.”
The girl is silent then, and the old woman is, too, except that she seems to hear someone screaming. It could be she herself who is screaming, but she isn’t sure. She remembers, eleven moons ago, that scream she heard from the tower, how it knocked her and dragged her down to the stones on her knees, how it took her breath away with grief, how almost—almost—she wanted to go to her daughter, finally, at last, but even then she could not reach the top of the tower, even once Hanum was dead. Even then, it was closed to her.
Now, gradually, she becomes aware that someone is shaking her. Her daughter’s thin hands, bony-strong, around her shoulders. But no, it is she who is shaking, and her daughter is holding her still. Like before, only before it was that girl Delilah. Life repeats itself, a spiral passing the same point over and over again as it turns ever inward, each time more painful than the last.
Gradually, the island becomes quiet again, and the old woman becomes so still that only her heart is moving. Water runs down her face, and she doesn’t understand where it comes from.
“Mother,” says the girl, and the old woman strains forward, wanting to hear it again to be sure, wanting to hear it again and again and again. “There is no proof. I have brought no proof for you, of the love I feel, and the love that he gave me. But it is everywhere. If you cannot feel it, then I am truly sorry for you.”
The old woman shakes her head. “Neither of us,” she says. And she means to say, “Neither of us have names.” She means to say, “No one has a name. We are only what others call us. We have nothing of our own.” But she’s not sure if she finished the sentence.
The girl says, “Please. I want to know the truth. I want to know who I am.”
The old woman takes a deep breath. One more answer, and then truly, she will rest, and never speak again. “The truth is within,” she whispers. “Deep within. You wander this island. You wander in the dark; you come to the place where you are most afraid. You come to the place where the tower once stood. There is nothing there but a black hole in the stone. You go in there. You go inside.”
She waits, but the girl has not gone. Stupid girl. Why does she stay? The old woman begins to rock, trying to pick up the rhythm of the waves again, trying to forget that the girl is there. Finally, the girl is holding her hands in her own. Now these hands feel different: soft, luscious, and deep.
“Mother,” she says. “I forgive you.”
Then she is gone.
The woman tries to call out—because she knows now: she knows what she wanted to say, and it wasn’t about truth, and it wasn’t about names, and it wasn’t about Sky—but she has no voice.
So she sits. These past eleven moons, she has felt, in the sea’s conversation—sometimes passionate, sometimes calm—when exactly the moon grew full and emptied out; she has felt, on purpose, the exact passage of time. But now her daughter has returned, and for what? Nothing has changed. So she returns to the kind of time she always knew before that, time that does not pass but swirls around her, nebulous and meaningless. What has time ever given her? Here on the island there is no summer, no winter; here in her blindness there is no day, no night. Despair makes time irrelevant.
So maybe years pass, or maybe only moments. The rocks murmur the same old tunes. The sea cuddles into them, then whisks dramatically away, then comes tiptoeing back, delighting in its own ridiculous drama. Once, the old woman thinks she feels two spiders alight on her left shoulder. Then she thinks they are not spiders after all but feet—the feet of some delicate bird. The bird is silent, but when she listens to that silence, she notices a sense of peace in a deep cavern just beneath her heart—a peace she had forgotten was there. Inside that peace, inside that silence, she hears her daughter’s words again: I forgive you. When the bird lets go, she thinks she feels its wings blow by her face, brushing through her hair like the fingertips of a lover who touched her so long ago and yet whose touch her body remembers like it was yesterday.
This grief is going to kill her when she lets it in. She has always known this. But would it be so bad, to finally let go?
When will they come, then? She imagines she can feel them coming, already. The ones who haunt her now, like they haunted Hanum. She imagines them like hungry, angry crows, flapping up from the shadows between the stones. She imagines their silent footsteps, their little cries as their bare feet—so long unused, so long pressed to nothingness—tear and wobble over the uneven stones, and the hiss of their breathing.
In every whimper of the sea and the wind, she thinks she hears them coming. The Mad Ones. The ones he kept in darkness all these years. Fo
r they must come, they must wake, if the girl who calls herself sister insists on bringing Mira away with her—they must come, too. She could tell that the sister, Delilah, will have her way. She will not leave Mira behind, no; nothing will stop her.
But oh, when the Mad Ones wake, how they will hate her! How terribly they will wail in her ears, saying if she had never called Hanum’s attention to their brokenness, their poverty, their violence, their suffering, their madness—if she had never pointed her angry finger, not knowing his language but pointing as if to say, How can you tell me this City is perfect? How can you tell me it is good, when there is this, when people suffer like this?—then he would never have gotten angry, and he would never have sent his men to take them, one by one, away to a forgotten island, so that no one else would see. The Mad Ones always spoke the truth. That’s why he took them away, locked them in the darkness, and drugged them to sleep. She is a traitor, though she did not mean to be. She betrayed them, like she betrayed her own people when she went with Hanum. No wonder the Dark Goddess claimed her after all. Not one good thing has she ever done.
She waits for them to come, waits for them—oh, terrible. She tenses her face with the waiting, rocking and rocking.
But someone is speaking to her, and it is not the Mad Ones. Someone has been trying to get her attention. The old woman focuses on the voice, which is coming not from behind her, where she expected them to come, but from right in front of her.
“Queen,” Delilah is saying. “Queen of this Island.”
“What?” she hisses irritably. “What did you call me?”
“Queen,” repeats the warrior girl, with some kind of incongruent joy in her voice. “If your daughter is a princess, then you are the queen.”
The old woman has to laugh at that. She respects this girl, who has a sense of humor, even though she herself does not.
Delilah’s voice comes from down lower than Lonely’s did; she is kneeling again. She has the Unicorn with her. The old woman can see that light—the only light she has ever been able to see since she lost her sight.
