Wind rocks the van and I tense, thinking, at first, it’s a hand.
“I can’t really count how many. I couldn’t do the whole monogamy thing very well.”
Now the tension isn’t about being in a Giant’s clutches. At least not an actual Giant’s. “Okay,” I say again—third time—shifting in the seat.
“But I want to, now.”
I can’t look at him; I can tell our gaze might light something on fire.
“And I wasn’t always a boy,” he adds. “My name was Alexandria. I called myself Lex at first.”
Non sum qualis eram. I am not what I once was. Written boldly on his body.
I’m more shocked by the first statement than the second. He wants to be monogamous? With me? He wasn’t always male. So what? The vision I had of him in the pink room was my first clue. And it’s been on his skin anyway, clearly there the whole time. Non sum qualis eram. I am not what I once was.
I think of Moira. How I used to feel such wonder at the way her cells had joined together to form the miracle of her. Now this love was just another loss in a sea bubbling with corpses of loss. My crush had ceased to matter because everything had ended and it seemed trivial now to have ever worried about my sexual identity, especially in a family that was so open-minded. But then there were still the politicians and the preachers screaming about family values and hell and it had made me doubt myself, even though I knew better. I’d stopped worrying about it all in the midst of so much real loss and grief. I had forgotten what I thought about sexuality, except that I liked to be near Hex, that I liked to hear his voice, to watch him hunkered down, staring out at the ruined horizon, black steel-toed motorcycle boots kicking at the dirt like he was trying to find something buried there. His gender seemed irrelevant. All I knew was that I didn’t want him to touch anyone else, even as a strategy.
Hex pulls at the neck of his T-shirt like he’s too hot, like the collar is too constricting for that slender neck with its Latin words. Then he hesitates, looks at me, deep, and pulls the shirt over his head. His ribs stick out and his chest is slight and very white beneath a large tattoo of an anatomically correct human heart and the word Heartless.
“That’s one thing you’re not,” I say.
“I’m not what I once was.”
“I don’t give a fuck what you are or were. I just don’t want you to go away. Ever.” Tears squeeze out of my desert-dry eyes, streaking the dust on my face.
Hex leans over and runs his hands over the prickling stubble that has grown in on my scalp. Part of me wishes I had hair again, long hair, like Then, wishes I had Beatrix-hair, pretty-girl-hair to let him lose himself in. But it doesn’t matter. I can feel his mouth kissing my face, his tongue licking at my tears. Her. It doesn’t matter.
“I love you, Pen,” Hex says. “You are the who I love.”
As my lips become indistinguishable from Hex’s, it is like the stirring of a hundred orange butterfly wings around us, fanning to life a perfect flame. I can see the fire tearing over the planet, not a force of destruction but of renewal, a prescribed fire like farmers sometimes used, wiping out all the debris and waste and death so that something new can grow.
The world might be gone but somehow, here with Hex, it feels like when we open our eyes it will all come back, so much better than before.
15
OASIS OF TARA
AROUND US STRETCHES MORE DESERT, harsh and blank except for rocks. Even the Joshua trees are gone, all of them, as if violently harvested, ripped from the ground by huge, rough hands. The Cahuilla Native Americans used to eat the white flowers and the seeds of the Joshua trees’ pale green fruit. My mouth salivates to think of this. When my family and I drove to Joshua Tree for a camping trip years ago, I never thought I’d want to get down on my knees and weep for the lost plants, never thought that, in spite of the warnings, they’d ever really become extinct.
None of us speak. In the backseat, Ez rests his head on Ash’s shoulder. Hex doesn’t even hum one of his songs from Then like he usually does. He’s probably sung half the hip-hop and emo/alternative hits from the last five years over the last week.
We’ve driven for two days to get here, making our way around junk and cracks in the road, using up most of Merk’s fuel and some of the extra rancid vegetable oil from the fast food place. We kept driving anyway, taking turns at the wheel. Although the landscape has been rather merciless, it is, in some ways, easier to take than the ruined city with all its reminders of what once was. Most important, it’s on the way to Las Vegas and Ash thinks we’ll find water soon. But now I’m starting to doubt our decision.
I am biting my nails so that the tips of my fingers are peeling and raw. We really shouldn’t have come out this way, I think. What if Merk and his map was all BS? Are we on a suicide mission and just too cowardly to admit it to ourselves? Are we all already dead? That would make the most sense of all.
But when the sun is highest in the sky, beating down on us without the protective layer of ash that blankets the city, Hex points out the window to forms in the distance. The sunlight blinds me and the world goes white.
“It’s a mirage,” Ez says. “It has to be.”
The light does tremble, miragelike, but as we go closer we all see tall fan palms clustered together and I swear I can smell water. I want to run to the majestic scaly-trunked trees, dripping with fronds and green light and put my arms around them but Hex says no and fastens his sword to his waist.
“We have to check this out first.”
We park the van and get out, then walk through a gate. There’s a swimming pool, empty save for a small amount of muddy residue. The building beside it has broken windows. We walk in slowly, Hex in front with the sword drawn instead of hanging from his waist where he usually wears it when we explore.
“Anybody here?” Hex shouts.
Inside are empty booths, a sticky bar covered with sharded glass. There’s a sweetish-rotten smell under the smell of spilled alcohol and we don’t want to know what it is so we leave quickly and walk out the gate again, toward the palm trees.
They grow thickly, reflected in a lake of dark green water that smells like minerals, like life, not like death. I want to hold on to the trees until I turn into one, like a nymph in a mythological tale. There are more plants, too. Silver-green willow and cottonwood and arrowweed with lavender flowers. I can hear, or imagine I hear—a sound like … birds? Could it be? A small red houseboat floats on the center of the lake.
The girl—she must be about sixteen—is seated cross-legged on the shore, under a spiky, red-flowering crown of thorns bush. Her hair is piled loosely on her head, some strands falling down over her shoulders. She’s draped in thin ruby-red cloth and I can see her breasts through the fabric. The only thing more mesmerizing is her face, which is round with kind lips and high cheekbones. Her skin is sunlit satin. I would guess she is only a teenager but as I get closer I see that her dark, slanted eyes look somehow very old and wise. In one hand she holds a glass vial from which she is dropping liquid onto the ground and as the light of the setting sun catches the glass, red sparks shoot into my face. There is a flock of orange butterflies around her, the most I’ve ever seen together in one place except for the time my parents took me and Venice to a butterfly tent at the Natural History Museum.
The girl looks familiar but I can’t figure out why until Hex whispers, “The mural at the Lotus Hotel.”
Yes, that was her, on the wall. Even the petals swarming around her like insects, even the necklaces at her throat like crystal bones and the bangles on her wrists like snakes made of metal. Someone saw her and drew her on the wall, unable to accept that she was “gone.” Wasn’t that what art was, after all? Desperate artists telling stories, drawing images, in order to keep some part of the goddess alive and close?
When she tells us her name, it becomes even clearer. Tara.
Tara? Maybe she truly is the Tibetan goddess. Wait. What am I thinking?
Hex lowers hi
s sword and bows his head. I kneel before her and bury my face in my hands to hide the tears. I don’t know why I’m crying just now. But I can’t stop. Hex puts his hand on my back and more tears release with the pressure of his fingertips.
I’ve missed you, Tara, I think, which doesn’t make any sense. I longed for you. It’s as if I’m speaking to a part of myself that was severed from me.
“Why have you come?” she asks, her mouth perpetually curved as if smiling, but not quite, her voice tinkling wind chimes. “How did you get here?”
It’s Hex who speaks. “We have a van.”
She closes her eyes. Her eyelids shimmer, swaths of sunlight in the shade of the palm trees. “You are looking for someone?” And I know that we were meant to come here.
“My family,” I whisper, the words scraping my throat like sandpaper.
Tara’s eyes open and she looks around her, past the green enclave of the oasis, toward the empty white sky. I am aware of a stirring in the palms that makes me uneasy.
She stands in silence, fingertips to lips, and beckons for us to follow her; she has a very light, dancing step. She’s swaying her hips. I don’t worry that Hex is falling in love with her because I have already fallen in love with her, too. But not in the way I love him. Hex, I want to kiss all the time like we did in the van last night; for some reason that I don’t quite understand I want to worship at the young woman’s feet with the delicate metatarsal bones and the small silver rings on the toes. The butterflies still surround her, forming an animated cloak.
We cross a creaking, slatted bridge to the houseboat. Inside it is dark, with a low ceiling, and smells of dried grasses and flowers. Glass jars of dried herbs and pickled foods line the wooden shelves, also small bottles of colored tinctures that our hostess says can purify questionable water or add nutrients to the soil and canned food. There’s a small U-shaped wooden harp, a bed draped in diaphanous cloth, and cushions on the floor. Most of the butterflies have stayed outside but a few of the more tenacious ones decorate her hair and collarbone.
It’s cramped with all of us here. Ash has to bend his head to fit, though the rest of us aren’t that tall. We sit awkwardly on the floor and Tara brews us tea over a small fire pit. The tea smells rich and medicinal and when I sip it there is the taste of twigs. A slight coating covers my mouth as if I’ve been licking a plant with furry leaves.
Ash asks if he can see the harp, which he calls a lyre. I’m surprised that he knows the real name. He holds it in his lap like an infant, but doesn’t play.
Tara sits cross-legged on the floor and tells us that her parents owned the inn but she’s the only one left. She was in the mountains gathering herbs when the Earth Shaker hit and somehow she and her oasis were spared. Like us. After it happened she began to have visions. “Everyone was taken from me but in exchange I received this sight.” Her voice is somnambulant and I wonder about her sanity, but then, who am I to wonder that?
“I see the lost living,” she says. “I saw you three before you came. I see a woman. But she’s almost gone. I think there is also a boy.”
I grab Hex’s hand without even realizing I’m doing it. “Where?” I say but my mouth is so parched the words are like slivers of dry skin.
So Hex says it louder for me. “Where?”
“You have to start in the Afterworld,” she says. “I’m sorry.”
Afterworld? I don’t like the sound of that.
“Are they both there?” Hex asks.
She shakes her head. “Only the mother. And she is a prisoner of your greatest enemy. He discovered that she is your mother. It will take great sacrifice but that is your only chance.”
“How do we get there?” I ask, trying to keep my voice from rising in pitch to the pure desperation I feel. “Where is Venice? My brother?”
“You have to go to the place called Sin,” she says as she sips her tea. “The place that had all the lights. The mother is there.”
So it’s not as bad as I thought. It’s a place where the living can go.
“Las Vegas?” Hex asks.
Ez frowns and leans closer to him. “How does she know?” He looks at Tara. “No disrespect, but why should we trust you?”
“It’s on the map,” I say, thinking of the yellow lines, shining neon. As if this explains her clairvoyance. Or maybe it’s just the truth.
Hex nods and puts his hand over mine, paper over a rock, like in the hand game I used to play with Venice.
“And my brother?” I ask again. Again! “Do you know where we can find him?”
She shakes her head no, winding tresses like silken rings around her fingers. “I’m sorry, I can’t see that but I see his face. Light eyes? Not blue or green, though. Almost … like the lightest shade of the rocks? Perhaps he’s hidden himself, his psyche, as protection from others who have sight?”
Since when can Venice “hide” himself from those with second sight? (I remember: He hid himself from monsters in his dreams.) Since when is second sight an accepted element of the world? Since when is the world populated with giants and magical girls? Since the Earth Shaker.
But there was a question in her voice when she suggested he had hidden himself from her mind. Perhaps she can’t “see” where he is for a worse reason. Perhaps he is gone. Tara said she could see living people; she never mentioned the dead. No, he can’t be.…
I cover my eyes with my palms and try to breathe but it catches in my throat as if there’s a wishbone lodged there. Hex holds up my cup and tells me to drink more tea.
“I don’t think he’s gone,” Tara says, in answer to my silent terror. “I can only see his eyes, not where he is. The mother may know. Or … the man.”
I am suddenly so tired, light-headed, calmer (from the tea?) and I lean against Hex. His arm circles my rib cage. It feels like it’s going to float away from the rest of my body. “I don’t understand,” I say.
I hear Hex as if from far away, for the narcotic drowsiness has overtaken me. “Please tell us more. Explain to us.”
“Sleep now,” she says. “Dream now. I will tell you when you awaken.”
* * *
I sleep so long and deeply that when I wake, sweating, with silver-green shadows falling over my face, I can’t remember where I am, or, for a moment, who I am.
Then Hex says my name and I recognize his face. I exist in his eyes so I exist and even the pain in my body lessens. The water outside laps the houseboat in soft insistence. It reminds me of Argos waking me with his puppy kisses so long ago it seems more ephemeral than a dream.
Ez and Ash are sitting at the low wooden table eating a bowl of something that smells warm and sweetish. The girl isn’t here.
“What happened?” I ask.
“Tara went out to look for food and herbs,” Hex tells me. “She thinks there may still be live plants in the hills.” (I find myself listing the ones I know: Desert lily and yucca. Primrose and buckthorn and creosote and sage. Sunflowers and dandelions are edible. Dogbane for poison.… A mild convulsion rocks my spine thinking of the possible need for toxic substances.) “She says she will tell us more later. She says we have to get ready to fight.”
I cover my eyes and lie back down on the small bed where they must have placed me. The girl is crazy, don’t they see? Why must I fight? I want to run, keep running away. Maybe some life exists beyond all of this.
But what if my mother is where Tara says she is? The map told us to go there, too. But where is my brother? I had more questions to ask. How had I let myself sleep?
I’m angry now—at myself, at Hex, at crazy Tara with her visions and her live trees. I get up and look out at the fan palms and the dark water. There’s no birdsong now but a buzzing sound in my head like mosquitoes, or maybe there are mosquitoes left among the living. What diseases would post–Earth Shaker insects carry? “Did she tell you anything else?”
Hex says no. Ez and Ash were also sleeping when she left. They offer me the porridge she made them but I’m too upset to
eat.
“You needed to rest,” Hex says. “I think she gave us the tea to restore us. I trust her. You’re the one who believes in the orange butterflies.…”
“Then where is she?” Again I feel like I can’t breathe in the small space of the houseboat. There are no butterflies here now. “Why did she leave?”
“She’ll be back,” Hex says. But he doesn’t sound so sure.
* * *
When Tara doesn’t return after dark, an agitation possesses me, Hex, Ez, and Ash, turning us into its dancing marionettes. We break up into pairs and walk around the oasis, calling for Tara as if she’s just gotten carried away looking for herbs and forgotten about us. But inside I know it isn’t like that. I feel queasy and my temples thump as if my brain’s trying to get out of my skull. The night is getting blacker.
Eventually we go back to the houseboat and Ez makes the rest of the porridge. I eat it, sweetened with some honey from one of Tara’s jars, and it takes away the pain in my stomach. Then Ash picks up the lyre and runs his fingers over the strings, begins playing with great surety, as if he’s done it always. I close my eyes, soothed for a moment by the music. It seems to change the ions in the air, makes it easier to breathe again.
“How did you learn how to play that?” Ez asks.
Ash shrugs. “I like instruments. I played piano when I was little. It’s just sort of natural?”
“How little?” Ez asks, eyebrows raised.
“Maybe three? I don’t know.”
“A musical prodigy,” says Ez.
“Yeah, just a nerdy choirboy,” Ash replies.
Hex comes and lies next to me on the bed. As Ash continues to play softly, Hex reads a chapter from The Odyssey to us. It’s the part where Odysseus ventures to the Underworld and consults with the blind prophet Tiresias who had lived seven years as a woman.
“‘You want to know,’ said he, ‘about your return home, but heaven will make this hard for you. I do not think that you will escape the eye of Neptune, who still nurses his bitter grudge against you for having blinded his son. Still, after much suffering you may get home if you can restrain yourself and your companions.…’”
Love in the Time of Global Warming Page 9
