The Winter Boy

by Sally Wiener Grotta

  An hour, perhaps more, we chewed, swallowing what small flakes our teeth were able to separate from the whole. I soon understood that the answer was not to fight its resistance, but to work it with patience. My breathing slowed, making me realize how rushed, how tense it had been. And I felt the peace of the land, of Alleen, enter me, claim me, calm me and revive me.

  In all that time, we hadn’t spoken. At first, I was too drained. Then, too busy with chewing. But when no reason for silence was left, I did not know how to break it.

  “Questions are always a good place to start,” she said, as though she knew my thoughts. “But if your questions haven’t found their form yet, perhaps you would like to start with your story.”

  “My story is drier than this land.”

  “And probably just as lively.”

  Her smile caught my heart as I realized how true her words were ~ about the land and about my life. They drew my thoughts together into a question, the first of many. If I were to point to any one moment when my life turned from the path where it had been pushed to a path of my own choosing, it would be the moment of that first question. “Yes, lively, where yesterday I saw only emptiness. How is it that you see, can call forth, what no one else knows to exist?”

  “I look and listen.”

  Alleen said nothing else. Instead, she dug at the base of a tiny dry twig that I hadn’t noticed. I guessed that it was probably another water-root plant.

  I leaned over to help her dig. “How is it that you see and hear so much?”

  “Take a deep breath. What do you smell?”

  I shook my head, because I smelled nothing out of the ordinary.

  “Now, go over there.” She pointed to an area away from our shade. “Does it smell the same?”

  I walked where she indicated. “I don’t know. The taste of the air seems the same, but, well… it doesn’t seem possible.” I returned to the shade, where she continued to dig, and inhaled deeply “Could it be that the air is somehow weightier here than there?”

  “Yes! That’s the water we’ll find here. I’m pleased you understand so quickly. You’re ripe to learn.”

  My delight in her approval ignited something in me. I knew then that I wanted to learn, needed to learn all she had to teach.

  “Yes, ripe and healthy. I called well yesterday when I called you to me. Soon I will be able to rest.”

  We had reached the root and she was crushing moisture into my upturned mouth before I could ask the questions that stirred in me. So she continued with her previous thought.

  “This moisture isn’t hidden by the sand if you can smell it out, if you know what twig marks its resting place. So it is with all life in this desert. I have learned to temper my senses ~ to see, smell, hear the small steps, feel the diverse vibrations of life ~ to awaken the wide spectrum of colors. It’s all there, for anyone to discover.”

  Alleen reburied the root after we had both relieved our thirst. Then she beckoned for me to follow. At the top of yet another hill, we sat, and she gestured at the landscape that stretched to the horizon. “What do you see?” she asked.

  “Sand and sky.”

  “And…?”

  I struggled to find something, anything to describe to her. “Hills so small they look as though they were poured through a giant’s hand.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, I can see that the sand ripples like a lake. Even so, there is no breeze, but the air isn’t still either. I can feel the slight pressure of it against my face”

  “Yes! A good beginning, but there is so much more.” She searched my face as she had the landscape, studying me. “Yes, you are ripe to learn, and I shall teach you.”

  At no point had she asked me whether I wanted to learn her secrets, her ways. Hers was a declaration of fact, of fate. For she knew and understood me, as she knew and understood the snake and mewmit. I obeyed her completely, placing myself, my new future into her care and guidance ~ though I had not known until that day that I had any future. My lessons began with the ease of breathing, with no preliminaries, no explanations, no pause between declaration and instruction.

  “Sit here with me, as we were earlier. Today, let us silently seek out what our eyes may find. Or perhaps I have forgotten the measure of time for beginnings. Let us say that we will give the days yet to come to learning to see. Now close your eyes to look inside yourself, to calm your heart.”

  I did as she instructed, and rested in the quiet for several breaths.

  “Now, slowly, open your eyes and focus, look for the details, the life and beauty that surround you. See each grain of sand as separate from all else.”

  I kept the silence that she had commanded during our daylight vigils and tried to focus on individual grains of sand. But how can you see only one grain of sand, when so many uncounted grains fill your vision?

  “Patience, child,” she would tell me in the evenings. “This first lesson is the most difficult, but you make it more so. Don’t struggle. Your eyes will find what your soul needs.”

  “But a single grain of sand, separate from all others?”

  “Trust me, if you can’t trust yourself. I know it is already there inside you to see the fullness of life.”

  I did trust her, almost unquestioningly, as a drowning man will not question a thrown rope. If I did not see, it must be in how I sought to see. So I changed my manner of focus. I did not look at the substance of the sand, but at the light and shadows that played upon it. Eventually, I saw light and shadow as the definition of sight, delineating shapes to my eye. I used the minute lines of shadow and saw them as boundaries of space between substance. So intent on this exercise was I that I did not realize until the end of that day that I was, indeed, seeing individual grains of sand. But more than that, I saw a minuscule hole ~ a small enlargement of shadow ~ where a tiny creature lived. I watched that hole until I saw a long spindly leg reach out and catch an even tinier insect for its supper. Then I returned to the wonder of shadow and light, of individual grains of sand, of the ecstasy of true sight.

  That evening, I didn’t need to tell Alleen of my discovery, my transformation. “You are ready to move on to the next lesson,” she said. “Tomorrow, you will close your eyes and listen.”

  Listening was more difficult, because it was so restful. With my eyes looking only onto the red curtain of my lids, I often lost myself in a half-consciousness, akin to that warm, comforting haze that comes just before sleep.

  After days of struggle, I no longer fought the haze and found, to my surprise, that I did not sleep. Instead, I rode the air that gently pressed on my inner ear, feeling it change timbre ever so slightly from time to time. When I tilted or turned my head, I could feel the shape of the sounds where the air curved over hills and rode over flat land unheeded. And there, in the far distance, I knew that a storm was forming, but I felt no fear of it, because I realized we would have ample warning from our ears and eyes, should it veer toward us.

  So it was with my lessons of smell and taste, which were the same sensation. I learned to taste the air with both my mouth and my nose. It was wondrous beyond wonder. But when I sensed all the life around me on my skin, when each hair on my body reached out for it, like tendrils seeking their own kind, then and only then did all my senses coalesce so I was no longer able to separate them ~ just as I could no longer separate the snake from the mewmit from the currents of sand that formed the land, nor you from me. We are all of the same substance, the same life. Though there are many differences between us, those are merely the shadows that delineate our boundaries. Our light is the same.

  How long I stayed with Alleen, I cannot measure; time did not exist for us. Each day was a new adventure, new knowledge to discover, new places and creatures to encounter and explore. But one evening, after another hope-fulfilling day, Alleen made me cry from deep within my soul.

  “I have taught you almost everything I know. There is only one more lesson for you, and it will be the most difficult. Therefor
e, I will teach it quickly, so you cannot delay in understanding.”

  She took my hands in hers. They were now so similar, dry and cracked. By our hands and our spirits, you would see us as sisters, though once we had seemed so different.

  “Roen, my sweet child, death is the nature of life.”

  I knew the truth of her words, and my face tasted moisture even in that dry place.

  “When I join the land, you must leave.”

  “No, I can’t leave our creatures.”

  “These animals are not our creatures,” she said. “Though through them we have learned much, we belong to humankind. Would you have our knowledge die here in the desert, where no other human heart beats? Why do you think I called you to me? I am too old to return to our peoples, but you must. Take what we have learned here to the blind ones. Teach them of life, so that they can no longer commit the sacrilege of cruelty and war. Your task will be difficult, and you will not succeed in your lifetime. But if you choose your students well, what I have taught you will live on and branch out. In the time of generations, what we have learned here may yet have meaning beyond our own lives. Promise you will do this.”

  My heart burst, knowing that her words had ever been true. We spent the evening together as though it were an anyday, seeking water and food, sharing our stories, our hearts. Soon I was calmed, and she was reassured. We slept in a hollow, near a water-root twig. Before sleep claimed me, I reached out my hand, and she held it.

  The next morning, I felt Alleen’s hand on mine, but it no longer held me. I pressed my ear to her heart, though I knew it would be silent. As I lifted my head from her body, pain welled up from my womb and careened through me, reverberating against my skull. I felt the land flinch at the unnatural sound of my scream, and the creatures came. Not one by one, as had been their custom when Alleen and I would call rhythm by rhythm, but all in one swoop, converging on the small hollow. They came not to listen, but to mourn, each adding his own rhythmic sorrow to mine, lifting it, so that it rested not on my heart alone, but on theirs, too. The burden was not lightened, but in their act of sharing, it was less cold. Somehow, the creatures took a portion of my pain into themselves ~ of Alleen’s death, for she belonged to them as much as to me ~ but also of the emptiness inside me that originally had brought me to them.

  The creatures and I continued our songs as I buried Alleen where she lay, in the hollow where we had slept our last night together. Then they swarmed over the mound, in farewell. When they had gone, I lay my head on the sand where she now slept. I could not bring myself to leave her, so I stayed there through the day, crying at times for my own pain, laughing at times for the joyous memories, aching to reach and touch her, to sing with her, to share the day and night and days and nights with her.

  But she was no longer there. In time, not even her body would remain, so scant are water and meat in the desert. And I knew Alleen would not have refused that one last gift to the creatures that had shared so much with us.

  So it was that my feet honored her last behest. One step after another, I moved across the desert, my feet once again carrying me where they wished, as the days passed unwilled, unwanted.

  While I was still in the desert, I continued to sing to the land and to the creatures. But my songs took on new rhythms when I once again saw the Village at the End of the World.

  Dov gently closed the book and rested his hand on its cover. His fingertips caressed the embossed leather, though his mind was elsewhere, still adrift in the desert.

  Gradually, he returned to the now. First, to his hand on the book, then to the sofa, where his legs stretched toward the woman who curled into herself. When she opened her eyes, it seemed to be a gift for him, bound up somehow with the Traveler and her stories. A gift that pierced his protective shell as a mewmit cracks open a walnut, or a miner strikes a stone in search of a gem.

  Something broke inside him, in the pit of his stomach. New feelings erupted, too intense and strange. So he swallowed them, without thought, as he might swat at a fly that annoyed and distracted him.

  The Allesha saw these changes and more, in the seconds they played on his face. Yes, sweet boy, she thought in the silence of her mind, it’s all there inside of you, just as Alleen taught Roen, taught all of us. There is no empty land, no empty man. Life, Dov, you can try to swallow it, to hide from it, but I’ll dig it out of you, one way or another.

  She leaned forward to drape her body over his legs, bringing her mouth to his ear. “Meet me in the inner room, Dov,” she whispered.

  Chapter 33

  On entering the darkness of the inner room, the boy lit a single gas lamp, which threw small dim islands of light here and there among the shadows. Just enough illumination for him to make his way to the pond to await his Allesha.

  Playing with the currents as they danced over his body, he directed the pressured streams of hot water to bubble against his shoulder blades, his stomach, between his toes, around his genitals. But when his heel pressed against one of the openings, water shot up into the air, drenching his face, hair and the surrounding floor. A small amount even went up his nose, with a shock of stinging discomfort that reminded him that it had been far too long since he’d entered, and she still hadn’t appeared.

  Damn that woman! Why can’t she be where I expect her to be? Why does she keep changing the rules?

  The water was no longer pleasurable for the simple reason it was where she probably expected to find him. He climbed out, dried himself off and threw the towel over the puddle that had formed on the stone floor. But he didn’t know what to do next. Should he leave, return to his own bedroom and let her come looking for him? She deserved that, but what if she didn’t follow him? That would mean no sex tonight. Still, he couldn’t just stay there at the pond like a hungry puppy begging at a closed kitchen door.

  As a hunter, he’d often hide in a thicket, to await the game that was certain to come his way.

  If I must wait, let it be as a hunter, as a man.

  He searched the room for a place of power, where the advantage would be his. In the few spots where the dim light of the doorside lamp fell, he could discern dark hints of the soft shapeless platforms. He knew them to be like a field of boulders reaching up to the wall, so that he could never decide where the wall started and the floor ended. So like a woman’s body, a woman’s mind, it was eerie.

  The single lamp threw more shadow than light, but they were shadows of different densities, softly blending into the light. Like the desert in that story.

  Part of him felt that the woman was trying to push him toward something again, and that part of him resisted. But on a deeper level, he was curious.

  Hell, why not try it? No one’s here to see me make a fool of myself.

  He climbed to a high platform and sat cross-legged with his back against a curve in the wall. If she came into the room, he would see her before she could see him. He tried to plumb the shadows and light, as Alleen and Roen had in the story, to discover details that had eluded him before. It wasn’t that different from reading a dark forest for animal signs, except without the variety of textures and shapes that made a forest. Here, everything seemed so much alike in its softness and moist warmth.

  But not so alike, maybe. Over there, near the pool, the stone floor glowed, reflecting, almost magnifying the dim light from the one lamp. Where the carpet met the stone, the essence of the light changed as the cloth almost absorbed it, forming the only hard edge in the room. Not so much a physical hardness as a sharp transition of material and light.

  His eyes flowed over the platforms and humps, the light and shadow. His vision seemed to be changed by what he beheld, pulled this way and that, following the contours onward and upward. But there, about halfway down and to his left, among the deepest shadows, the undulations changed dramatically, into smaller curves and a different kind of shadow that held an internal glow, just beyond his ability to perceive it. He stared deeply into that area, but could see no more than nuanc
es that nagged and worried him.

  As he climbed down toward that shadowy area, his concern grew into a burning temper, which he didn’t recognize as embarrassment. “How long have you been hiding there?” he demanded.

  “Wonderful, Dov, you found me.” Tayar ignored his question and his anger. “Which sense did you use?” Stretching, she reached up to him.

  Standing over her, he chose to hold onto his fury, banking it against an even deeper fire that burned at the silhouette of the deliciously naked woman. He winced when she laughed. But it was that deep-throated laugh of hers. A laugh he couldn’t possibly mistake as anything but her delight in being found.

  “Was it a game, then?” he asked, trying to find a path out of his anger and pride.

  “As much as life is a game, my dear.”

  She held her hand out to him again, and this time he took it, pulling her up to her feet and pressing her body against his, flesh to flesh, mouth to mouth. Then she glided back down toward the platform, still holding him, crushing only one finger under their bodies. After a few minor adjustments, they lay together, their mouths pressing, their hands exploring. But she broke away and rolled onto her side.

  “Tell me, which sense did you use to find me?”

  Dov didn’t know how to answer her. That, in turn, made him feel trapped and out-maneuvered. He held himself in tight check, not wanting to lash out, not here in the inner room, where everything had been so wonderful until tonight, until she had lain in wait for him, watching him, cornering him.

  “I knew you’d find me, but I wasn’t sure if you would use sight, sound or smell,” she said.

  “Sight.” He said the one word as an automatic response to her list, not sure where to go with it.

  “What did you see?”

  On edge, he found it difficult to believe it could be as simple as she seemed to be implying. “Well, these humps and platforms, they’re all different, but their shadows have similar shapes. No, not shapes, but types of shapes.” He glanced around, trying to find an anchor for his thoughts, some way to keep his anger from coming to a boil and ruining his chance with her tonight. “Do you see that hump there?”