Lost Nowhere: A journey of self-discovery in a fantasy world

by Phoebe Garnsworthy

  “How can you expect to make friends when you are not friends with yourself?” he objected, placing his hands together across his chest and bowing his head lightly. “If you love yourself completely first, then and only then are you are able to give love to others limitlessly. How can you feed the world when you, yourself are hungry?” he asked, keeping one hand on his chest he held the other open toward her.

  “I still see loving myself as vain though, Jacques.” She pleaded for understanding, taking his open palm as the two of them walked hand-in-hand around the room.

  “It’s arrogance of the ego that is vain, but if you loved yourself, I mean truly loved and respected yourself, nothing would ever harm you.”

  Lily thought about nothing ever hurting her again. She thought about the outside world and all the people in it with their judgment and the problems she faced everyday. How was it possible for all of that to just disappear? If what Jacques said was right, and if learning how to love yourself was the key to being invisible, well she ought to give it a try, she thought.

  “So, how will I know if I love myself?” She stopped the two of them in their tracks, as they stood in front of the giant cauldron that overhung on the fireplace.

  “Loving yourself comes hand in hand with knowing yourself,” he said.

  “And, how am I meant to know myself?” Lily argued, feeling the anguish of frustration creeping back through. And she pondered on the idea further. Although she spent a lot of time alone, knowing herself felt so foreign. She knew what she liked to do, and what she didn’t like. But how could she know everything?

  “Just trust that one day it will all make sense.”

  “Jacques nothing makes sense to me. I don’t even know where I am!” Lily argued back exhausted, and she used the edge of her skirt to rub her eyes, realizing she had been awake for quite awhile. Her legs were sore and she wanted to sit down, but there was nowhere to sit. And the tiredness in her eyes made her feel weary. She needed some water and a soft bed to sleep on, as her body was starting to feel heavy.

  “Come sit by the fireplace and I will make a special potion to re-energize you,” Jacques said as he encouraged Lily closer to the fire.

  “Can you read my thoughts?” Lily asked puzzled.

  “No, the idea just came to me then. Did I guess right?”

  “Strangely yes, I was just thinking how tired I was.”

  “I’m not surprised really,” Jacques chuckled as he twirled his finger around in the air and sprinkled some dust in a circle. He then pointed to the ground where a large cushion appeared on the floor.

  Lily looked around confused. Had it always been there? she thought. Too tired to question, she sat down on the cushion and watched while Jacques walked to the large cauldron over the fire. It swayed from side to side and he sang to himself as he worked.

  “Some prana and zirin oh chi la di da, some coco and maca and you see… voila!”

  Jacques wobbled his head as he picked up invisible items from the air and poured them into the large cauldron. They created a loud smashing noise as though components were falling inside the pot, but there was nothing to be seen on the outside at all.

  “Are my eyes playing tricks on me?” Lily asked, sitting wide awake from the aroma of Jacques’ cooking. “Nothing is there, right?”

  “Nothing is here?”

  “Yes, nothing is there.”

  “Who says?”

  “Me!” she squeaked, and she jumped up to have a closer look inside.

  “Are you saying it doesn’t exist?”

  “I’m saying I can’t see anything.” She blinked her eyes several times in an attempt to see, although a sweet smell of cedar-wood was striking through the air. Jacques held her sight and stared directly.

  “Haven’t you realized yet?”

  “Realized what?” she retorted as she looked around uneasily.

  “You and I do not see things the same,” Jacques chuckled with his rosy fat lips and he picked up a large spoon, stirring inside the pot with wide slow strokes.

  Lily looked at the large cauldron and back to Jacques, wondering how they were seeing different pots when they were standing right next to each other.

  “But aren’t we in this world together?”

  Jacques shook and nodded his head at the same time.

  “This is precisely the notion you are missing that I tried to point out to you before. We interact separately but we are connected as one.” Jacques pointed to the air as a line of pink marshmallow-looking clouds streamed down, splitting and reconnecting together into a knotted bow. It disappeared into nothing and yet Jacques continued to stare.

  “So, why can’t I see what you can see?”

  “It will come, when you learn how to love yourself. Now, drink this. It will make you feel better.” Jacques handed Lily a glass cup that looked completely empty. But after the last conversation, Lily was nervous to reveal that she couldn’t see anything, and instead decided to pretend as well, drinking the nothingness drink, down her throat and into her tummy.

  “It’s delicious!” she exclaimed.

  “It’s my special recipe!” He winked back, nodding his head happily.

  Bizarrely though, she did feel different. And within seconds a shot of energy poured through her entire body making her leap ever so slightly into the air. She now stood tall with perfect posture and a very straight back.

  “What now?” she asked, her eyes opened wide, eager to go back out into the wilderness.

  “I’m not sure. Perhaps show me what you brought in with you in case there is anything else I need to tell you,” he said as he pointed to her crochet bag.

  Lily started to take off her bag and give her only possessions to the odd man, realizing how much trust she had automatically granted him after such a short time. Am I wrong to believe the goodness in someone so quickly? she thought.

  “You look confused?”

  “I just… I don’t know you that well, that’s all,” she admitted fearfully, holding her bag tightly in her hand.

  “I understand completely. You’re a young girl, in a new place, with new people. It can be quite scary. So just be still and ask yourself if you can trust me.”

  Lily didn’t even need to close her eyes and take a moment. As soon as Jacques finished his sentence a huge YES screamed from her heart; and she handed her favorite bag over in one motion, without hesitation.

  Jacques held the cream pouch up to his nose and smelled the edges from right to left. It was slightly old and tattered, and the crochet was worn down. It was hand made by her mother when she was a similar age to Lily’s, and in memory of her, Lily liked to carry it always.

  “This bag doesn’t belong to you,” Jacques said as he walked to the center table and placed the bag down, holding his right hand just above it to read the bag some more. “But it was somehow made for you, before you were born. And it likes to be with you.” He continued smiling, as though he could hear the bag speaking words of happiness to him.

  Lily’s mouth gasped at his statement, and she promptly followed him to the center table. Anything that brought up memories of her mother always caught her attention.

  “How do you know Jacques?” she asked excitedly, resting her hands on the cool marble bench.

  “Because voices are telling me. I am told that with every stitch that was sewn, there was a great deal of love that went into it. With each movement of energy that was used to create such a masterpiece, all of it was transformed purely into love, just for you.”

  Lily looked at Jacques with admiration and happiness to have met him. And the fact that he cherished her mother’s work just as much as she did made her realize that it was a quality in him that she hoped to find in other people that she would meet over the course of her life.

  “That’s very sweet Jacques, thank you. It was my mother’s. I liked to think that she created this for me, although I never really got to ask her. She died just shortly after I was born. I never knew what it was like to
have her in my life, but I talk to her often. Is that strange? To talk to someone I never knew or saw?” She looked shyly to the ground as she asked, lifting her eyes up to meet Jacques intermittently.

  “No my dear, don’t ever question these things. Just believe it is to be so. She is always with you. She is everywhere. In this bag, the sun, the moon, even in the flowers that grow from the ground. She is always watching you. Talk to her still, she really loves it. And she will always be listening.” Jacques held Lily’s hand securely between his two like a sandwich. Pushing warmth from each side, to display empathy to her loss.

  “They think I’m crazy because I talk to her,” she confided, looking down to the ground at to the red sparkly dirt.

  “They?” Jacques asked inquisitively.

  “The doctors, my father. Everyone in my world. They think I blame myself for her death.”

  “And do you?”

  Lily had never really asked herself that question before. She had never pinpointed what it was that made her act strangely. She thought it was just her hobbies that didn’t really match to those around her. She opted to spend time by herself, without that many people. She felt safe not getting close to anyone, constantly worrying that something bad would happen to them if she did.

  “I don’t know. Sometimes I feel guilty, but I feel like it’s expected of me. And that it makes everyone happy because now they have a reason as to why I act so weird. And now they can put me aside and say this is why. Maybe I’m looking for an answer too.” She answered solemnly, running her fingertips along the edge of the marble table as she spoke. “But Jacques something doesn’t feel right and I want to think differently, I do. But I’m just used to thinking this way, I don’t know any different.”

  Jacques slapped his hand on his knee fiercely. It was so loud and startling the whole pyramid shook as it echoed.

  “You do know different! Well, you can learn. Have you never thought of that before?”

  “Every now and again,” she replied honestly. Those kinds of thoughts had presented themselves to her before, but she had learned how to dismiss them.

  “Hold onto that idea,” Jacques said as his hand formed a tight fist as though he was grabbing something strong. “That’s the thought you should be listening to.”

  “But they tell me I have abnormal thoughts.”

  “They?” He raised his eyebrows.

  “They, as in, the doctors… my school peers… my father.” She had recited the proposed group of ‘they’ so many times before.

  “Why are you listening to anyone other than yourself?” Jacques asked sternly. “You know the answers.”

  Lily had never heard of herself been thrown into the group of ‘they.’ Why was that? she wondered. When did the group of ‘they’ become more important than I?

  “I thought I knew the answers Jacques, but when there is so much noise around you, it’s hard to remember, do you know what I mean?”

  “No, I think I need you to elaborate more.” He stepped closer to Lily, and stared intimately into her green eyes. The backdrop of the pyramid disappeared behind him and she felt obliged to tell him the truth. The awful statement that deep down she knew was wrong to believe, yet it still very much existed inside of her.

  “What about if I have thoughts about not being good enough?” Lily covered her mouth quickly, terrified that she had said too much. She had just let a complete stranger into the darkest parts of her mind. How would he take it?

  “It sounds like your problem is actually a disconnect between what is here now, and what you aspire to. There is a missing link between loving yourself as you are now, and allowing your imagination to run wild.” The backdrop of the pyramid came back into vision, and as Jacques said the words run wild, the entire room spun around behind him, as though it was chasing itself.

  “Believe me, my imagination runs pretty wild,” she chuckled to herself as the pyramid spinning stopped, thinking of how her current surroundings didn’t really surprise her at all.

  “Well of course it does. But has it run as far to the edges as it possibly can? Have you pushed the question of the stars so far that you can’t push them anymore?”

  Lily thought about the universe a lot. The stars and the planets fascinated her beyond comprehension. But that was just it. The idea made sense to her more than any other school subject, the thought of infinite possibilities excited her more than a conversation with her fellow peers. But this behavior was considered strange, and so she learned to keep her ideas to herself.

  “No,” she replied, upset with her now obvious lack of being true to herself.

  “No?” he repeated abruptly.

  “No! You are right. I haven’t,” she admitted, hitting the marble counter lightly, dissatisfied with herself.

  “Then you are holding short of your dreams, no one else's. You don’t need to be interested in what other people are interested in. Why can’t you just be yourself?”

  Lily rarely gave herself that kind of encouragement. When she was younger she didn't care what anyone thought, but as she grew into a teenager it became apparent that her thoughts did not match those of her fellow classmates. Her unique ideas drew a lot of unwanted attention. She wondered how different her life would be if they had just accepted her for who she was.

  “I guess because I have been told that my thoughts are not normal,” she replied, remembering the hours she had spent at the doctors throughout her childhood.

  “Nonsense! You sound perfectly normal to me,” he argued back loudly, kicking out whatever horrid doctor memory she was reliving in her mind. “Your gift is a positive, not a negative. Won’t you just be open to thinking that you are love?”

  “I am love?”

  “Yes, you are love! If love is present, then nothing bad can come from these ideas.”

  “But I thought I am a sick girl.”

  “If you keep thinking that you will become one. For what other option does your body have other than to believe that it is so?”

  Lily smiled at the man and looked away to the ground. And as she looked down she felt his words sink deeply into her skull, she felt the courage to look back up to his eyes, as she tried to process his message. His smiling rouge eyes were staring right back at her, waiting for a response. But she didn’t say anything. And after several seconds of comfortable silence, he continued to pursue her attention.

  “Shall we see what’s inside this beautiful creation of your mother’s?” Jacques said as he pushed his bony fingers inside the crochet satchel and pulled out the contents.

  “Ahuh, ahuh,” he mumbled quietly while examining each and every item with scrutiny. “This little envelope with the ‘I love you’ card is interesting. How sweet!” he said as he picked up a very tiny silver metal envelope and engraved card.

  “My papa gave it to me not long after my mother died. He gave it with the bag, as a little symbol of him, my mother and me.”

  “Is this a seashell? I have heard about such a miraculous piece of nature existing, but never in my whole six hundred and eighty-eight years of life have I seen one! Oh Lily… you are not just a gift to this world, meeting you has been a blessing to me!”

  Lily smiled from Jacques’ compliment. How kind, she thought. And she thanked him dearly. She had never felt so happy to be somewhere with someone other than her family, and was so grateful not to have left after their first quarrel.

  “Do you know where seashells come from?” he asked as he rubbed the smooth shell over his fat lips.

  “They are home to the creatures at the bottom of the ocean, I believe.”

  He nodded in agreement, smiling with tremendous animation and continued to pick through the pouch.

  “Lily, now you have a choice not to choose, but if you so shall, I will foretell you a secret.”

  She nodded her head in reply.

  “The world of Sa Neo has seven different lands. In your pouch, you are already carrying a crystal from each land!”

  Lily stared wi
th astonishment as Jacques laid down each of the crystals out into a line to display them. But as he pulled them out of the bag, they transformed from rough edged stones to smooth, lustrous shapes. The amethyst a pointing dagger arrow, the carnelian a tear drop cluster; and the garnet stone upon the land they now stood was perfectly round, a polished sphere.

  “You have red garnet, yellow carnelian, orange citrine, green malachite, blue kyanite, indigo azurite and purple amethyst.” He pointed to each crystal as he pronounced their name. “Now, I would like you to choose three that you are, hmm… let’s say, most attracted to.”

  Lily looked to the crystals as exactly three of them glistened extraordinarily, almost calling her name. How odd, she thought. She moved the following stones toward Jacques—the red garnet, blue kyanite and green malachite.

  “What does it mean?”

  “It means that you are going to visit these lands,” Jacques replied with confidence as he lifted up the three crystals and juggled them in the air. “The garnet stone is the land of Otor which you stand upon now. This tells me that I should direct you to Karisma, the queen who rules this land.”

  “I’m going to meet a queen?” Lily shrieked with her eyes opened as wide as Jacques, the white around her pupil popping out with fascination.

  “Perhaps my dear, if you desire it to be so. Then after Otor you may visit the land of Deia, where the crusts of the islands are decorated with sliced blue kyanite. And then my dear, the land of Tehar, where Queen Jade resides. But please be careful of the green sweet Lily. Play with it, but do not let it consume you.”

  Lily jumped up and down with excitement, and accidentally knocked the amethyst crystal off the table. It fell down very slowly to the ground, and the tip of the arrow pierced the dirt to a hold.

  “Lily!” he shouted as he smiled with his chubby lips and white teeth.

  “I’m sorry!” she cried. “It was an accident.”