by Lucia Ashta
She could remember every single one of them. They were part of what made her nighttime tears bearable.
He shifted and she lifted her finger, hovering her hand above him, waiting for his alertness to pass. It did, and he turned away from her, still mostly asleep. She moved against him. She pressed her breasts, abdomen, and thighs against his back and buttocks. His skin was warm and inviting from deep sleep.
Once his breathing regained its rhythm, she closed her eyes. He would fully wake soon. He slept only a short time past sunrise. For whatever time she had, she allowed herself to fall asleep too. She joined him in the oblivion of forgetfulness and dreams.
It was the first time she had slept in years. That morning, she wanted any sort of dream to come along. It would be preferable to the reality that swept across the planet like a fever, contagious and threatening the onset of terrible and irreversible changes. In her dream, only a mirage of relief, she dreamt that the planet broke out in fever blisters.
12
The Sound of a Breaking Heart
More time passed. It always did. There was nothing the man could do to stop it.
He was old now. His age announced itself as soon as he woke each morning, when one of the first things he felt was the ache and creak of his bones and joints while he stretched the sleep from his body.
But it was not the very first thing. Before he even opened his eyes, he felt the expanding love in his heart for the woman he considered his wife and for the jungle that provided everything they needed.
She had changed him a long time ago, and he remained a changed man. He could see through pain and tragedy to what lay beneath. Ultimately, behind it all, even when it didn’t appear possible, there was beauty.
When he looked at her, illuminated by the soft light of dawn, he knew the day had come. He was surprised, even though he had known it was coming. He couldn’t argue with the signs his body had been giving him for some time, nor did he try.
He no longer accompanied her on walks that took up most of their day. It was too much for him. He would join her halfway, then sit until her return, enjoying his own slice of time in the forest.
She had been waiting for him to wake as she often did. Lately, it seemed that he woke most days to find her gazing at him with love in her brown eyes. He looked back at her, wondering exactly how many more moments like this were left to him.
He thought he understood. She knew this day would come. She might have even known it would be this day.
Today he would die.
Her brown eyes, the ones he could never get enough of, foreshadowed that exacting reality. He hadn’t thought he would mind knowing death was coming, but now that it was upon him, he wished he could hide where death would not find him. The thought of never staring into those eyes again was making his breath come short and raspy.
Was it the thought of losing that brown stare, or was it death, coming to get him so early, robbing him of his last full day? It didn’t seem fair that death could cheat him of a final day. Death should never be allowed to take you before you lived out your last day on earth to its fullest.
The man squelched unexpected desperation, tamping it down, back to the shadowy corner from which it had escaped. If it could only stay there for a few more hours, he would never have to deal with it.
Everything looked different than he thought it would now that death was closing in on him.
The woman, the one that had changed him in a way that perhaps not even death could erase, leaned over him. Her breasts dangled heavily above his face until she positioned herself to help him sit.
He leaned against one of the tree trunks that demarcated the perimeter of their home. He smiled at her. It was a weak smile, but it didn’t matter. It carried just as much love for her as his smiles always did.
“I am going to die today, aren’t I?”
“No,” she said, though the sad shake of her head defied the truth of her words.
He waited. He could feel death coming.
“But today I will leave you.”
A seed of frantic panic sprung out of nowhere in his stomach. How could that seed be there without his knowing?
“What do you mean you will leave me?” He drew the question out slowly, delaying as much as he could the answer that would inevitably come.
“I do not want to go. But I must.” She forced herself to look at him while she spoke. She knew what it would be like for him when she left. She knew exactly how much courage it would take for him to face death without her. She would not shy away from her choices; she couldn’t do that to him.
Something plummeted within him, something that he couldn’t quite describe. If he were forced to, he would have to say that a part of him died right at that moment. And if it didn’t, it wanted to.
“Do you really mean it?” He slumped against the tree behind him; it was the only thing holding him up. “Will you really leave me?” His words were little more than a whisper. Anything louder than that might have made them more true.
“Yes.” And in the profound sadness and resignation he found in her eyes, he knew that she would.
He didn’t expect it of himself, but he didn’t know how to stop it. Cries slipped, broken like he was, from his lips. It was as if it weren’t him making those awful sounds, almost inhuman. It was the sound of his breaking heart.
She was so much stronger than he was. He didn’t know if she had aged at all since he first met her. He had been certain that she would outlive him a hundred times over, and that she would be there with him at the end, to lend him her strength when he began the journey that every human had to make alone.
The thought that she wouldn’t be there with him for his transition was equally startling and unbearable. How could she do this to him? After all they had shared together, why would she make this choice?
He couldn’t face her while he lay, weak and shattered, against a tree that would also outlive him. He couldn’t look into those brown eyes while his heart completed its breaking.
The sounds that poured out of him regained their humanity, and then settled into heaviness and sniffles. Still, he didn’t want to look at her. The betrayal was too great to meet those eyes he had lost himself in so many times before and not risk all the memories of their time together. Regardless of what he felt now, he cherished those memories. It was all he had left. He would not risk coloring them with a betrayal he could not understand.
She waited, sitting next to him, just holding his hand, nothing more. That was enough, to know she was there with him, that she cared. It was all he had expected of her at the time of his death. What she was doing now would have been sufficient for him.
When the tears dried, and he still wouldn’t look at her, she reached up one warm hand, its flesh still smooth, and turned his head to face her. It was a tender movement, gentle as she had always been with him—until now. There was nothing gentle about breaking his heart.
“I do not want to leave you. I never do. This is as difficult for me as it is for you.”
In all the time they had shared together, he had never seen her cry. He hadn’t cried either. There had been no reason to until now.
When he looked into her face, he discovered the trails of tears dried against her cheeks, lines of white against that beautiful brown. She stared at him intently. “I will leave you only because I must.”
The man worked hard to contain another wave of sorrow, more mighty than a tsunami that threatened to swell within him. He didn’t know anymore if he was there or not, or whether sometime since his lover had started speaking that morning, his broken heart had actually killed him.
He didn’t care about living out the rest of this day anymore. All he could think about was how it would feel to be without her.
When he spoke, he was numb. “What could make you leave me? Is there something more important than the love that we have shared for so many years?”
She smiled a sorrowful smile. Everything she did now seemed to transmit her
regret when he had never seen her truly sad before this day. “There are many things more important to this world than our love, many responsibilities that must take precedence.”
Even more hurt flashed across his face before finding a place to hide within him. Finally, she lowered her hand from his cheek, but only to place it on his chest above his heart. “But there is little more beautiful or important to me than our love.”
“What is more important to you than our love that you must leave me at the time of my greatest need?”
“It is not what is more important to you or me. That is not the correct question for the answer you seek. It is because my love for you is so great that I must leave you. I cannot watch you die.”
The hurt within him unclenched for just a moment, hopeful.
“Why can’t you watch me die? Is it because it would be hard for you?” He placed a hand atop hers, and even through it, he could feel the desperate beating of his heart.
“It is because it would be so difficult for me that I might do something terrible.”
He squeezed her hand. “You wouldn’t take your life. I know you too well. You may fear it now, but you value life too much to do it. The thought of it would pass.”
“I would never end my own life. My life is tied to countless others. There is a greater reason. I cannot watch you die because I might try to save you.”
“That is understandable. I would feel the same if our roles were reversed. I would want desperately to save you.”
“I know I will want to save you, because I always do. It has been the same with us every time. I want to save you. And I never can.”
“My love, you do not have to leave me because you cannot save me. It is how life is. When death comes for us, we must go. There is nothing you can do to change that.”
“I am not like you. I have told you many times. You and I are different. I can save you. And I cannot allow myself to do that.”
She slid her hand out from under his and stood. She left him there, against the tree trunk.
As he watched her leave him behind, he hoped she would be back. He hoped this wasn’t the end. He couldn’t bear it if it were. He wasn’t sure he could bear it even if it wasn’t.
13
Hiding in Plain Sight
He waited all day long for her to return so he could ask her one question. In all the time she left him to think, he came up with theories—not all of them plausible and none of them accurate—and different ways to phrase his pressing need to know.
When she finally came back, he blurted it out. If she had meant to greet him, he didn’t give her the chance. “What do you mean, you can save me?”
She sighed. It always came down to this with them. She sat across from him and crossed her legs. He had barely moved all day, and he was back to resting against the tree where she had left him. Death was coming for him, and his body knew it. He stored his energy for when he would need it, even if it was only for crossing the line between life and death.
She sat with a straight back, with the strength and vitality of youth. She exhaled before she began. “I can save your life.”
Why didn’t she want to save him then? Again, hurt rushed up his spine, aiming for his brain and for his heart as if it were a race it intended to win. This time, however, the man pushed it down and waited.
“I can save your life, but at great cost. And it is a cost too great to bear.”
He waited some more. He waited while the notions of life and death chased each other across his mind until, at length, he realized that he didn’t care that much about either of them anymore.
“What is that cost?”
“Nature must remain in balance. Everything within it is quintessentially in equilibrium. The cycles of life and death balance each other. Predators and their prey are in balance. Everything in nature evens out part of the whole. It is like this at all levels, the big and the small. Everything that exists helps to balance something else. And it is this ultimate harmony that allows life to continue.
“If anything in nature becomes out of sync, nature can readjust and, in time, regain its health. But when things are artificially thrown out of equilibrium, it is difficult for nature to recover.
“Nature is designed to regulate itself. When something operates outside of the principles of balance and a respect for them, then nature struggles to compensate for the error.
“Like when men cut down the trees of the jungle. Those trees are an important factor to the balance of the forest. They clean the air for all animals, including humans. They provide homes for animals and plants, and shade for those that cannot thrive in full sunlight. Their roots lend strength to the soil so that it does not erode in the rains. What the trees do for nature as a whole goes on and on.
“Many humans don’t recognize the importance of balance. But I do. I know how significant it is. I understand it better than anyone else alive. And I know that if I were to save your life, there would be imbalance in the world. Life and death come when they are meant to. Conception and death are never accidents. Death arrives when you have fulfilled your purpose for this lifetime. Not before, and not after. Death is precise.
“One disruption to the equilibrium, even one so subtle as a whisper of the wind, is sufficient to endanger well-being. Sometimes, the imbalance does not end, but continues to cycle through nature, upsetting its harmony every time it passes.”
He had waited all day to hear her explain why she couldn’t save him. Yet now, he barely listened as she spoke. All he could think of was all the trees he had cut down before she took him away. He had thought so little of it then that he didn’t even know how many trees he logged and dragged to a truck bed to be carted away.
“I was a logger. I cut down many trees. Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“Because once you were with me, you did not cut down trees anymore. You learned to respect life. There was nothing I needed to say then.”
“But I could have gone back to the other loggers and told them about the need for balance in the rainforest. I could have helped them see that they should leave the trees alone.”
“Do you really think you could have?”
He thought about it, unsure whether they would have listened. When he lived in Guayucuma, he viewed the forest as something to be subdued. The townspeople probably still did.
“There are humans that do not hear what they do not want to hear. Many are out of balance, and have been for a long time, for so long that they don’t know how to attain equilibrium anymore. They have tried to remove themselves from nature in such a way as to see themselves separate from it and all its life.
“Humans have interfered with those elements in nature meant to balance it. There is little that can be done now except to let this imbalance run its course. Eventually, one day, its energy will fully dissipate and the opportunity to achieve harmony again will arrive.”
“But I will not live to see it.”
She shook her head. “No, you will not. But it is possible that neither will most humans.”
“Yet you will?”
She nodded, back still straight, regal almost. “I will. I will be around until the very end.”
“There will be an end for you too?”
“Yes. What is unknown is whether that end will come from balance or imbalance. And it will make a great difference at the end which of the two it is.”
“Will you die then?”
“Yes, eventually, I will die. All life does.”
“But you will not die soon.”
“No.”
“Are you really that different from me?” Even as he asked, it seemed an absurd question. Beauty radiated from her. She overflowed with life.
“In some ways, we are incredibly different. In others, we are not. Life is life, and the same essence courses through all of it. Richness, fullness, existence—it is within me as it is in you. I have told you before. You are man. I am mother.”
He had asked her years be
fore, Whom was she mother to? But he didn’t think he’d understood her answer. He wasn’t certain now that he had understood any of her answers, not truly.
“Whose mother are you?”
Then she smiled the first true smile of the day. It brimmed with the pride and joy common to all mothers. “I am mother to everyone and everything, even you.”
He found that difficult to comprehend. He didn’t know if perhaps his mind were too old and frayed to figure out what she was telling him. The key to understanding must be there, hiding from him in plain sight. Still, he didn’t know if he would find it before death took him.
“I am woman. You are man. It is the quintessential essence of all creation. The feminine and the masculine, joined, create life.”
He didn’t grasp much of anything anymore, just that he knew how much he would miss life with her.
He didn’t decide to, but he closed his eyes anyway. After a minute, he heard her stand. He didn’t open his eyes to watch her elegantly unfold long legs and stand with firm muscles, her breasts and hair swaying slightly from the movement.
He must be about to die. He had never intentionally missed watching her. The beauty of her captivated him and was worth every moment he devoted to filling his memory with her.
Her hands were on him, caressing his long, gray hair and the white hairs that scattered across his chest. Again, she rested her hand on his heart. Was it to make sure it didn’t break all over again with what she had to say next?
“Come on. Let’s go. We have one last walk to share together.”
She helped him stand while he tried not to cry. It didn’t occur to him to look back at the home they had made to hold so many wonderful memories. He didn’t fully comprehend the fact that he wouldn’t return, that it was impossible to return to their home to live out what little was left of his life knowing she wouldn’t be there to share it with him.