by Laura Resau
Wendell takes the crystal from his pocket—the one he’s had since he was a baby. He presses it to the base. Perfect fit, clean break. He lights the remaining candles. I let my candle drip and press it into the pool of wax, standing it upright. Wendell does the same. Now our hands are free and the room is swimming with reflections and refractions of firelight.
“Who made this altar?” I wonder aloud. “Taita Silvio? Faustino?”
“If we ever get out of here,” he says, “I’m gonna bring my mom and dad here.”
I do some quick calculations. It would probably take his parents a six-hour plane ride to get here, then a couple of hours by bus from Quito to Otavalo. Less than a day. They could be here by tonight. He might see them tonight.
If we get out of here.
I try not to think of our bodies decomposing and turning to skeletons and being discovered centuries later. Layla says that’s a good meditation to do—to imagine yourself dead. It makes you aware of the fleeting quality of life. Makes you live life more deeply. It still feels creepy to me.
“What about Her?” I ask, and as soon as it pops out of my mouth, I wish I could snatch it back.
“Who?”
“That sort-of-ex-girlfriend.” I feel pathetic. “Do you want to bring Her here?”
“God, Z, I haven’t thought about her since—well, since that e-mail. I wrote her back. Told her I met someone else. Told her I was moving on. And she said okay. Those were our last e-mails.”
Lowercase she. I can definitely tell the difference.
He stares, his face close and warm in the orange glow. Suddenly, I understand why Layla cried at dusk at the desert dunes in Morocco and at sunset on the beach at Phi Phi Island. When something is really beautiful, part of you knows it won’t last long. And it’s almost as if you’re an old lady looking back at your life at that amazing moment. Oh, old lady Zeeta would say in her old lady voice, I remember that time in the cave with Wendell when we had our first kiss.
It’s about to happen, I know it.
The space between us is obvious, a magnetic field. And now, almost imperceptibly, the space is growing smaller and closer and I don’t know if it’s him moving or me moving, but we’re closer and closer and now we’re touching, my fingers brushing against his fingers and my breasts touching his chest, and now his arms are around my waist and mine around his. In one last movement, my eyes close and our lips touch.
You know how you listen to music sometimes, and it has a certain color and taste and smell and feel? This kiss tastes like cinnamon and caramel, with a hint of minty Altoids. It feels smooth and tender and round. It’s warm and golden, like bread or sunshine.
I forget I might move to Maryland.
I forget we’re trapped in a mine.
I forget armed men are after us.
I forget everything except this moment.
Layla’s right. There’s something to be said for candlelight.
Chapter 28
After kissing for a long time, Wendell and I lean back in a kind of seat-nook we’ve found, where the crystals are smooth and angled enough to sit on. It has to be late. How long have we been in here? Hours? It’s hard to tell without any natural light. I tuck my head on his shoulder and close my eyes and drift off.
I’m flying through a dark place. I look down and see the earth below me, all blue and green swirls. And I realize I’m hanging on to something, a small blue chair. And then I see a speck coming closer. Wendell, with his own blue chair. We hold hands and hold on to our blue chairs and head toward a crystal that turns into a star. We sit there together on our blue chairs, and I know that when we want to, we’ll fly with our chairs to another star, and another, and another.
…
Whenever I tell Layla about my dreams, she says,
A man goes to sleep in the town
where he has always lived, and he dreams he’s living
in another town.
In the dream, he doesn’t remember
the town he’s sleeping in his bed in. He believes
the reality of the dream town.
The world is that kind of sleep.
It used to annoy me that she’d mess with my sense of reality. Who tells their kid that life could be one long dream?
But now, half awake, between the dream world and this one, I keep my eyes closed, and ask myself, Why can’t your dream become a reality? Why can’t you paint your own picture of life? Why do you think Layla has to do it for you? If you want to fly with Wendell on blue chairs, why not make it happen?
Some time later—maybe minutes, maybe hours—I open my eyes. Wendell’s staring at me, his face close.
I kiss him. “You know Don Celestino?”
“The blind man?”
“With the blue chair,” I say. “He told me once that he never feels scared because his blue chair’s always with him.”
Wendell considers this. “What made you think of him?”
“His chair was in my dream. Two blue chairs, actually. One for you, one for me. We were flying through space in blue chairs. And I knew that with our chairs, we’d always be at home, no matter where we flew.”
Wendell plays with a strand of my hair. “I wouldn’t mind flying around with you on blue chairs.”
Our faces are so close, I can make out every detail of his face, a small stray hair that he missed shaving, the tiny pulse moving at his neck, a nearly invisible scar on his eyebrow. I’m vaguely aware of hunger and thirst and needing a bathroom soon, but it’s easy to ignore all that with his face filling my field of vision. I brush a wispy eyelash from his cheek. “Did you have a feeling about this? Us, together?”
He smiles, almost shyly. “A hundred times, Z. Us, here. But I didn’t know if it was just wishful thinking.”
He’s tracing the contours of my face now. Running his finger to the tip of my nose, up my cheekbone, across my forehead, down my jawline, and back up again.
“Wendell, why did you go off and stay with Faustino? And leave me in the dark?”
“I don’t know. I guess I felt stupid about getting drunk and throwing up and everything. And you obviously didn’t like Faustino. But I wanted to like him. I wanted to trust him.” He cups my chin in his hands. “But Z, even though I tried not to think about you, I couldn’t help it. Whenever I closed my eyes, I saw this.”
I swallow hard. “Can you see us in the future, too?”
“Actually—” And then he’s quiet, his head tilted, eyebrows furrowed. “Hear that?”
I hold my breath and listen. The scraping of rock on rock. The stone we put in front of the entrance is moving. I glance around the chamber, searching for a hiding place. Only glowing light and crystal, no dark corners.
The stone moves aside.
I’m squeezing Wendell’s hand so tightly my nails are digging into his palm.
A head of black hair appears.
Black hair laced with silver.
And then a face, Silvio’s face, and his shoulders and belly squeezing through.
“Taita Silvio!” we say at the same time.
His eyes take in the situation. “Mis hijos.” He makes his way toward us, nimbly. He knows exactly where to step and which crystals to use as handholds. “What happened?”
We explain, our words tumbling out somewhat incoherently. The emerald smuggling, the thugs, the guns, the zombie flowers, the poisonous creatures, and Faustino unconscious.
He nods, appearing to understand, and then he tells his side of the story, pausing every few sentences so that I can translate for Wendell. “The girls came to me, worried. They said you’d gone to get Wendell, and that the guys in the truck came shortly afterward. I ran up the road and saw a machine gun by the door. A set of keys lay on the ground beside it. I picked up the keys and headed inside. Empty, but their truck was there. Sounds came from the garden, panicked cries. I found the two men there, on their hands and knees, looking for something. They were frantic, shouting about needing to find the keys and go to the h
ospital. They looked pale and were sweating, in shock.
“I calmed them down and pieced together what had happened. They described the snake that had bitten them, the arrow-shaped head, the Xs on the back. Each of their arms was already swelling, turning blue, blistering. Jergón was my guess. Pit vipers from the Amazon. ‘Listen,’ I told them. ‘The venom is very fast and very potent and you’ve already wasted time. You could lose your arms. I will give you herbs to slow the poison. And then I will take you to the hospital for antivenom.’
“‘Thank you, thank you,’ the men said.
“‘First,’ I said, ‘where are the boy and girl?’
“‘They’re fine,’ the younger one said. ‘We didn’t touch them.’
“The older one said, ‘They ran off.”
“I couldn’t tell if they were lying, but I had a feeling you were safe. Luckily, Faustino had the sense to keep the snakebite remedy jergón sacha in a pot beside his door. So I chopped up the root and mixed it with water. I had them drink it, and wrapped more of the root on their arms with a leaf. Then I drove them to the hospital in Otavalo, but they didn’t have any antivenom. So I drove them to Quito, just in time to save their arms from amputation. The younger one turned to me and said, ‘Señor, thank you for your help. There’s something I must tell you. The kids and Faustino are in the mine, locked in.’
“I suspected you’d found this room, that you were all right. But I guessed you were getting hungry and thirsty and scared. I took the keys to the garden and cave from his neck, and since I already had their truck keys, I drove back here. I wasn’t sure whether they had someone else guarding you, so I was quiet coming in. And here I am.”
“Gracias,” I say.
“Gracias,” Wendell echoes, and takes a deep breath. “Did you see Faustino on your way in? Is he okay?”
After I translate, Taita Silvio sighs. “He’s alive. His head wound is minor. His eyes are open, but his head is full of terrible visions. Two flowers are usually not enough to kill a person, only enough to drop them into a world of nightmares. Soon he’ll be all right.”
Silvio takes us on a small tour of the crystal chamber, shows us his favorite crystals, the ones that captivated him since boyhood. Wendell motions to the circle of candlelight. “Who made that?”
Taita Silvio flushes and rubs his hand over his face. “When I told you I never set foot on my brother’s property since the situation with Lilia, that wasn’t exactly true. I come here every year on November sixth.”
“My birthday,” Wendell says.
Taita Silvio nods. “The place where I broke off your crystal. I light a candle every year and wish you well, wish that your life is happy, wish that you learn to use your powers for good.”
Wendell’s eyes shine in the light from the sixteen candles. “Will you teach me?”
“Nothing would make me happier, hijo.”
We make our way across the chamber, and again I have the sensation of flying, wings opening and closing in harmony. I can almost hear Layla’s voice quoting Rumi.
“Your deepest presence is in every small contracting And expanding,
The two as beautifully balanced and coordinated
As birdwings.”
That’s what we are, Layla and me, each a wing. We need each other to fly. “I have to talk to Layla,” I say.
“And I should call my mom and dad,” Wendell says.
I can’t suppress my smile. “I have a feeling you won’t need to.”
We find Faustino leaning against the wall just inside the cave’s entrance. The door’s open, silvery blue moonlight streaming through.
“Are you okay?” Wendell asks in Spanish, kneeling beside him.
Faustino nods weakly. We walk with him through the garden, stopping at the cistern outside his house to wash the dried blood from his head. After feeding his animals and grabbing our bags, we head down the dirt road.
“We shouldn’t leave Faustino alone,” Taita Silvio whispers. He turns to his brother. “Come to my house, hermano. Eat with us.”
Faustino lowers his eyes and shakes his head. “I can’t.” But he comes anyway.
On the walk through the garden, Faustino says in a gravelly voice, “I thought you swore never to set foot on my land again.”
“I also swore never to let harm come to my nephew.”
Near the base of the hill, I see people walking toward us at the crossroads. Three people, their moon shadows stretching far behind them. Strange for people to be out at this time of night.
Closer, I notice they’re not wearing shawls and ponchos and skirts. They’re not Otavaleños. Even closer I see that they’re not Ecuadorians, either; I can tell from the way they walk. Two of them walk like Americans, that purposeful swagger. Gringos.
And the third person, she flies along beside them, as though she has wings.
Layla.
Her feet are bare and her white dress is billowing out around her, holding the moonlight. A braid wraps around her head like a crown. The other two must be Sarah and Dan. Sarah’s wearing a sleeveless linen blouse and khaki pants and rubber sandals. She’s shivering, hugging her arms around herself. Dan, clad in khakis and a T-shirt, keeps one arm around her, warming her.
I look at Wendell.
He’s smiling, raising his hand and waving and then running toward them. Sarah and Dan and Layla start running toward us. Smack in the center of the crossroads, Sarah throws her arms around Wendell. She’s crying. And Dan’s crying. They hold their son for a long, long time.
Layla’s crying too, which doesn’t surprise me. What does surprise me is the force with which she hugs me. “I thought I’d lost you, love.”
“I thought I’d lost you, Layla.”
“I don’t know what I’d do without you, Z.”
“Likewise.” Which really means, of course, I love you, Layla.
After the hugging and tears, Wendell puts his hand on Taita Silvio’s back. “Mom, Dad. This is Taita Silvio, my birth uncle.” He motions to Faustino. “And this is Faustino, my birth father.”
They all shake hands, and Dan says, in Spanish, “Thank you, Faustino, for helping to bring our son into the world.”
Faustino stares at his feet, until Taita Silvio claps his hands. “My wife would like to meet you all. Please come to my house.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” Sarah says. Her Spanish is good too. “We don’t want to bother her.”
“That won’t be a problem,” Taita Silvio says, smiling. “She’s used to unexpected guests.”
The walk to Mamita Luz’s house feels surreal with the moonlight on the corn leaves and the strangeness of Wendell’s parents being here. It turns out they showed up at our apartment a few hours ago, at around eleven o’clock. Layla answered the door, frantic with worry. She’d read my note and had been using our landlady’s cell phone, trying to get ahold of Gaby all evening. Apparently Gaby’s cell-phone battery had run down. Finally, around midnight, after it had recharged, they reached her, and she directed them to Faustino’s house. They were on their way there when we found them at the crossroads.
We walk single file through the tunnel of corn leaves along the irrigation ditch, Silvio and Faustino leading the way, Wendell in front of me with his parents, and Layla behind me.
Moonlight skips over the narrow channel of flowing water beside us. I hear Layla’s footsteps stop.
I turn around.
She’s skimming the reflected light with her fingertips, as though she’s trying to soak it up.
“You know what’s weird, Layla?”
“What?” She glances up.
“You’re by a river in moonlight in the middle of the night.” I look at her significantly.
“And?”
“And you’re not quoting Rumi or anything.”
“That’s true.” She studies the water.
“Don’t you have the urge?”
She considers. “I feel an echo of an urge.” Her fingertips keep sliding over the water, sea
rching, leaving silvery trails. “I hear echoes of what my old self would say.”
“What would she say?”
Layla closes her eyes, offers a small smile. “She’d say she bets the crystals in the cave are a kind of gypsum, maybe selenite. She’d ask if you knew selenite comes from Selene, the Greek goddess of the moon. She’d ask if the cave looked like crystallized moonlight.”
“Actually, it did.” I feel a giant wave of tenderness for her. “What else?”
“She’d say, who knows where the name gypsum came from, but it must have something to do with gypsies, like us, how we used to be, traveling around, chasing moonlight.” Her face is almost iridescent.
Quickly, before I can stop myself, I say, “You’re the mother I would choose for myself. The old you. The real you.”
She takes her hand from the water. Her fingers are dripping moonlight.
I keep talking. “And this is the life I would choose for myself. Traveling and exploring and filling up notebooks.”
She stands. We’re exactly the same height, something I never noticed until now.
The words pour out. “Layla, I know you like Jeff and you’ve changed for me and I feel selfish, but I want the real you back.”
She grabs my hands. Hers are wet and cool. “I don’t know how. I don’t know who I am anymore.”
I search for something to say to that. Rumi comes out. “There is an inner wakefulness that directs the dream.”
She finishes for me. “And that will eventually startle us back to the truth of who we are.”
A whistle pierces the night. It must be Silvio or Wendell, wondering what’s holding us up. I whistle back, and then we jog through the rest of the corn-leaf tunnel, to Mamita Luz’s backyard, where moonlit smoke rises from the chimney.
At the door, Mamita Luz and the girls throw their arms around us and immediately start chattering. Eva tells us they’re staying here until their father finishes an alcoholism treatment program. They seem thrilled with this arrangement, and even more thrilled to be awake in the middle of the night with three more foreigners. Odelia keeps bouncing and dancing and skipping in circles like an excited puppy.
