Circle Nine

by Anne Heltzel

  The rain falls around me in torrents, flowing from the mouth of the cave above us to the ground by my feet like a waterfall, splashing up at my toes. I am barefoot. I stand behind the sheet of water and let it mist around me, wetting my face and clothing. Its cold beads touch my skin all over like a thousand tiny needles. The rain has been like this all day. Sam is curled up on the metal cot behind me. Water drips through the ceiling on and around him. He’s shivering, feverish. His body has turned a pale color, and his skin is nearly translucent. I never thought his skin, dark and rich like latte, could become this color, as if his anger drained it of its pigment. It is damp and unpleasant in the cave — so strange and different — but in a moment it may be incandescent and lovely again as always. Everything is distorted in my head, and I don’t know which reality I’ll wake up to anymore. For now, the air smells of mildew, and the walls leave a slimy residue on my fingertips when I make the mistake of touching them. We have Sam’s cot and a folded-up blanket for me on the floor, and our clothes. We have run out of food, and Sam is needing his medicine more than ever. I think maybe his medicine is slowly killing him. But I know he’s dead without it.

  Even the rats seem afraid. They’ve long since stopped scuttling away. Instead, they huddle in the corners at night like they are on our side and we are all on the same level in this place. It isn’t always like this. If everything was always like this, I don’t know how I would live. I would never have come here if this, this confusing dark world, had always shown itself right along with the one I love and have grown accustomed to. I can’t control the reality I see. I can’t control what happens in my head. It used to be bright, beautiful, and full of life here all the time. I used to be happy here all the time. But that was before I started losing him, before I knew how he lied, before I discovered the Secret. I think that might be the trouble about disaster: maybe by the time it settles on you, you’re already in the eye of the storm, and you don’t realize what’s happening until it’s already done. Maybe that’s what has happened to us. I only wish I could think clearly, see things clearly, the same way every time.

  I walk over to the fire I made earlier this morning — it is struggling, fighting to stay lit against the damp. I warm rainwater over it for tea. No tea leaves, just warm water, enough to pretend; and after all, I am used to pretending. I laugh at this bitterly. I put a cup of my makeshift tea to Sam’s lips, hoping it will warm him. Our cups are dirty tin, and a few plastic ones we’ve collected over time. As much as I am angry with Sam, I hate to see him suffer. Nevertheless, my fist tenses around the cup until I can gauge his reaction.

  Abby? Sam whispers. He is delirious but gentle. Abby, don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me.

  That is what he is most afraid of, what he’s been afraid of for weeks since I’ve started figuring things out. He’s fought to hide every shred of the truth from me, but I have still managed to piece some of it together, and it’s left him terrified. It wasn’t always this way. There was a time when the world began and ended with Sam, and we were happier than I could have imagined would be possible. Now he senses my pity. It is the most powerful emotion I can remember feeling in months. We both know something is about to happen. We are waiting for it, dreading it and wanting it all the same.

  I wake up and there is a boulder in my skull and a hand on my cheek. I startle and struggle to lift myself from the ground, and when I do, bolts of pain stab my eyes and brain. I lie back down. I let the hand caress my cheek, because it’s the only good thing I feel right now, and I want to hang on to it.

  In the seconds that follow, I assess my surroundings. I am lying in an alley. Or maybe a small, empty lot between two houses. The air is saturated with the smell of cinder and meat, as if there has been a giant cookout nearby. I turn my neck cautiously and feel it creak, hot-poker pain shooting up my head and down my back. I can barely make out the feeling of intense heat, then the flames to my left, which blaze a strange, brilliant white against the last of what looks like it had once been a two-story home. Then I turn to my right and see an angel-god-boy. His face fills my line of vision, infiltrates my nerves and synapses until the hairs on my body rise toward him and my heart strains against my rib cage.

  Come with me, he says urgently. His eyes are molten lava. He looks over his shoulder and takes my hands in his. Hurry, he tells me. They’ll be coming soon. I hesitate at first, and he tugs my wrist hard. They’ll come to put it out.

  Put what out?

  This fire, he says impatiently, looking behind me.

  I turn and stare at the rubble through the smoke haze. I’m sure I’ve never seen the house before. Just to make certain, I look long at the yard, at the houses beyond. I’ve never seen any of them before. I’ve never seen this boy before, either; I am sure of it until just after I’ve thought it, when nothing seems sure at all.

  I know you? I ask. A few seconds tick by, and he stares hard.

  Yes, he says carefully, speaking slower than before. You know me. His eyes look confused, like he can’t believe I’d forget.

  I let his words sit there in my head until they feel comfortable. The boy looks sweaty, panicked. His eyes dart to one side and then the other, a metronome of glances. He looks afraid. For me?

  My eyes move to the striped tank top I’m wearing, then the tattered jeans, both heavy with soot. I don’t recognize these clothes. Something thick lurches in my gut. Would I recognize my face if I saw it?

  Come on, he says again, his voice so tense it might snap.

  Who am I? I whisper. His face is a mask of confusion, and mine is only a mask.

  Who are you?

  I nod. There is a pause. His eyes dart downward and linger there for a moment, like he’s trying to figure out how to handle me. Like I’m an unpredictable thing.

  You’re Abby, he says, meeting my eyes again.

  Abby? I ask him. The name rolls thick and unfamiliar off my tongue.

  Yes, he says, and his confidence and urgency have returned. It’s written right here.

  He taps my chest and I flinch, but he’s only going for a thin gold chain that encircles my neck. He gives it a quick tug. I look down and see there’s a name formed from cursive gold, an upside-down Abby. Is that who I am? A girl who carefully selected this chain from all the rest, mulling first over rows of gold, cursive names?

  He’s tugging me again, harder now, saying something: Abby, we really have to go right now. They’ll be here soon. There were others in there.

  Where are they now?

  They didn’t make it.

  Who are you? How do I know you? I am reluctant to leave.

  Sam, he says in a gravelly, smoke-congested voice. I’m your friend, Abby. Now, let’s move.

  I nod slowly and a strange look passes over his face, something like pleasure mixed with relief. I remember Sam about as well as the house, but I let him help me stand up anyway and then I nearly collapse, I am coughing so hard. The boulder in my skull has turned into a knife. It halves my brain. Right brain, left brain — they are halved already anyway, so I’m not worried. Sam lifts me all the way up, draping me over his shoulders as if I’m a sack of feed and he is a mule. I press my cheek against his shoulder, where I can faintly feel his skin pulsing with exertion, and it is familiar somehow. I feel suddenly as if Sam is the only person I have ever known, and I don’t even mind, because I hear distant voices and all of a sudden I have to leave as badly as he does. Something about all of this seems so desperately wrong.

  We are silent for many minutes. My sharp panting sounds staccato against his longer, deeper breaths. I am glad to be on his back. I’m relieved he’s taken charge. I wouldn’t have known where to go on my own. No one is behind us; no one follows. It is just the two of us heading away from everything else.


  For a time, I sleep.

  Where are you taking me? I ask him when I wake in a fog after what seems like many hours.

  North a few miles, he tells me. Just up a ways into the forest, to my place. You’ll be safe there. I hear his breath laboring, shorter and quicker now, so I wriggle my way down his body. I am small, but not so small that carrying me miles would be easy. We go on like this for a while, me stumbling in halting steps and him leading. I have to stop a lot to catch my breath. It seems my lungs are full of something thick and unkind. My right arm shrieks in pain when I grasp Sam’s elbow for support. And when I can’t make it anymore on my own, he carries me again. And again I sleep.

  When we get to Sam’s, he puts me down on the ground. I am awake but barely — just enough to see that Sam doesn’t have a house. He has something better: a craggy underground lair like a hidden kingdom. He brings me tea and plumps pillows on a mattress for me, then helps me up so I can nestle on it. The mattress is on the ground, like what you might find in Asia, but I’m not sure how I know that or whether it’s accurate in the first place. I am suddenly seized by the compulsion to know who I am. I search for memories, but my mind is empty and there’s a profound exhaustion settling into my limbs. I remember nothing and no one. I look at Sam drowsily and am at once so grateful to have someone by my side. I trust him. Then I realize it doesn’t matter whether I do. I try to think about the right and wrong of this, but it eludes me. It’s as if all of my innate senses have vanished entirely.

  I try to be wary of him because I have to be. It’s as if I’ve been built with some internal device that tells me to fight my instincts. This device is different from my instincts, and both are different from my heart. I don’t know what to trust: my gut, my brain, or my heart. Which one speaks the truth? So I am wary because my head tells me to be, I am tempted because my heart has sought his ever since I opened my eyes and found his face, and I am inclined toward him because I know I have no other choice.

  Besides, there was a certain gentleness about him last night. The way his face curved up in a tentative smile as if he were hoping I would like him. He asked questions with his body: His shoulders hunched up when he pointed to my bed. His head tilted to the side as he watched me sip my tea. He wants me to like him, and every little bit of insecurity betrays who he really is: someone I can trust. His other gestures, the hard ones — I know he’s cultivated these the way I’ve cultivated my own. How do I know? Instinct. Something, something I don’t quite remember, tells me to keep my distance this first full day. But the rest of me says that after today — after I’ve told him in my own way that I, too (yes, even I who don’t know my own name), come equipped with these senses — after that, after boundaries have been established, then I can relax.

  I don’t know my own name.

  I think of this and search back in my memory for what must have once been there. But there is nothing. An empty void punctuated only by the same knife stabs I’ve felt for hours. The nothingness is oh-so-exhausting, my head so racked with pain, and I fight hard to keep my eyes open at the unbearable recognition of this awful chasm. Knowing nothing means there is nothing for me anymore, and as I look at him, I come back to the simple fact: even with the keenest instincts I have no choice. I must depend on someone. I stare at him, his dark lashes framing his still-sleeping cheeks. It could be much worse.

  While Sam is sleeping and my headache abates, I assess my surroundings more carefully than I did last night. It appears we are in a cave, but it is like no cave I have ever seen. It’s a palace carved from rock in the recesses of the ground, and sitting in it, I feel like Persephone. But this is not Hades; it is light and life. There I am again, trusting my instincts. It’s much harder to trust my brain because when the brain is empty, I suppose it must create its own truth.

  And so this is not so odd, this cave-palace. If it isn’t Hades, then it is the opposite — paradise. For the walls shimmer gold and I see that Sam has decorated them with his own art: word art, which surely if carved away from these recesses would be fit for a distinguished gallery, it is so lovely. The rich blues and oranges and purples of phrases and poems glitter like the walls themselves, and suddenly I’m no longer Persephone but Hatshepsut. This beauty drifts into my head as easily as the air damp with morning chill that decorates my skin. My brain, in its spongy emptiness, is filled all at once with this beauty. Beauty restores me. These things are knowable to me — Hades and Hatshepsut — in the same way I’ve found other bits and pieces knowable over the last day, when I reach into the recesses of my brain. They rattle around in there, alone amid a bunch of space. The space is the important thing. The space is all the things I don’t know. I know a million Otherthings, but what I don’t know is who I am. So I let the beauty sink in deep, and I focus on the Otherthings, and I let it be a cold sponge to my searing fear.

  Everything yesterday was disordered; everything today is more disordered still. I went to sleep last night and woke up today in a world infused with color and a mysterious boy to share it with. I woke up today with phlegmy coughs the color of tar and boils on my skin. I am light, I am happy, I am free. I am hurting, I am worried, I am lost.

  I let it go. I focus on light, happy, free. I stare at my blistered hand and watch it heal over as if by magic. It is magic; now I feel sure of it. I feel no pain. I rise above it; it cannot harm me here. I walk to the mouth of the cave, now my home, and look out all around me. I can see that it rests in a wilderness of sorts, and now I am neither Persephone nor Hatshepsut but Snow White. The world around me is early-morning damp. There is a blue lake, glistening; I am surprised it doesn’t bore bright tunnels into my eyes. There are trees that strike green arrows into a clear sky. Everything is new and lovely. Fully restored, I retreat back into the thing I call paradise and wake my prince.

  I am lounging on a gold damask sofa, my feet in Sam’s lap, sipping pomegranate wine we made ourselves. The lighting is warm; it gives off colors like orange and yellow, not purple or blue. It envelops us like the goose-down comforter we keep on our bed.

  The bed became “ours” from “Sam’s” yesterday. It only took days. Am I the kind of girl that slips under someone’s sheets after just a few short days? What is implicit in that kind of girl? What other things can you learn of her from that simple fact? But what does it matter; I don’t know the rules anymore. It’s freeing, anyway, to live moment to moment because you have to. When you have no past, when time and history don’t matter, you can be mistress only of your present decisions. You can’t even really look forward, because what would you base it on? Decisions you make today? Having no history, I decide, is a blessing. I wouldn’t want to be cursed with the memory of a lifetime of mistakes.

  Sammy is reading to me: Dante’s Inferno, by Dante Alighieri. Another someone famous I’ve never heard of. I’ve not been here long, but it’s enough to know that I know nothing about who I am or who anyone else is, except a few random bits of information floating around unfettered in that space I call my head. Sam can be my library, my just-beginning, hopefully never-ending well of interesting facts and startling truths. I’ve been alive three days; there was no life before this.

  I levitate above not knowing. I transcend everything that came before.

  I am blissfully happy. As Sam reads, I finger the notebook he keeps around, much of its contents torn out and scattered like rubbish through the cave. They’re half-covered with bits of phrases and rambling sentences; I think how nice they’d look with pictures, too. What’s left of the notebook feels right in my hands, as if it belongs there. With a pencil, it’s complete, a natural part of me. But for now I’m just listening, holding the notebook and allowing Sam’s words to drift over and around me. Sam is kneading my toes with his palm; my stomach is full with my last meal, which still lingers on my tongue. I stare at him staring at the tattered pages in his hands — the wear of the pages shows he’s read this book more than once. I wonder why he loves it. I can already tell that Sam is a complicated person.
I heard once, sometime long ago, that people are two types: uncomplicated or complicated. Cerebral or surface-level. I haven’t figured out which type I am or which type I might like better. This book is hard to follow, but its jarring images stay with me. One man eats the back of another’s head then wipes his mouth on the other man’s bloody hair.

  What do you see when you look around, Abby? I laugh at this; I am becoming used to Sam’s games.

  A circus clown on stilts, I say, all seriousness.

  No, really. He jabs me hard in the arm, impatient. Look around. Tell me what you see. I see stone walls, etched with art like an ancient Egyptian tomb. I see the remains of a bountiful feast, goose and wine and fruits stacked a mile high: passion fruit, star fruit, fruits I’ve never seen before tonight. I see this gold lounge where we’re reclining, and a faded red trunk in the corner, all shabby and antique. Our bed is canopied, and its mahogany frame is five feet tall. There is a tiny staircase next to it, three steps high, so we can climb up and collapse into its folds with ease. There’s the other bed, my Asian pallet where I slept the first two nights, opposite us and barely visible in the second room. I relay all this to Sam, and he stares at me in wonder for a long time after I am finished. His reaction to my descriptions is startling; his eyes have begun to tear.

  That’s right, he whispers. It’s beautiful. You and me, our world . . . it’s perfect.

  I nod in agreement. It’s almost as if this thing we’re living is a dream in reverse. The dreams I’ve had the past two nights have been jagged black. I don’t remember them, but there have been trails of dried tears on my cheeks when I wake up. Dreams are supposed to be good, life a harsh reality; that’s what I know from somewhere unidentified, knowledge lodged deep down from Before. My life with Sam is a rich tapestry, better than any dream state. My dreams are cursed. Everything has turned over on itself.

  Then: You should stay here always, Abby, he says with eyes pleading. You don’t ever have to leave. He looks frightened, like a child, as he says it; then in an instant he’s back to normal Sam. I hug him closer, but what he asks of me is silly. How could I ever leave? Where would I go?