Lonely in the Heart of the World

by Mindi Meltz

  The horse follows the scent of water under the desert, nibbling on leaves for traces of moisture and nourishment, and finding, after a day, and again after another day, muddy pools to drink from. He grows thinner and thinner, but his body remembers this from another lifetime, and it does not frighten him. He feels almost easier this way, lighter, except that he has a responsibility now, to carry Lonely. He feels sorry when she has to dismount and walk beside him because he is too weak.

  “I wish I could carry you,” she says, and he feels ashamed again. She doesn’t understand that she does carry him, when he carries her. She carries him in the safety of her certainty, the direction she gives him, the sense of hope and longing which he does not understand and yet which soothes him. When Lonely rescued him, untying him from where the men had left him, calming his terror with her hands, he felt that he could trust her. Men were frightening and terrible and always had been. He was not surprised at being caught, but he was surprised when they did not catch her. He feels a little safer with her now.

  When he bends to drink at the drying pools, he speaks with the pupfish who huddle together in slimy lumps at its bottom, trying to stay wet.

  i’m sorry, he says, feeling helpless to his own thirst.

  They say, we’ll just sink deeper. somewhere, deep in the earth, the water is safe from the sun.

  But after he drinks from the pool, the water level does not seem to go down. In fact, days after he leaves it, the pool remains, and it seems to the pupfish that the water rises higher. That it is easier to breathe, more rich in oxygen, more clear and pure. And they do not know the reason for this, but for them, reasons are unnecessary.

  Rarely does Lonely stop and wonder, now, if she should turn back, or if she wants to go on. For the desert is always interesting, at each step offering new twists and mazing formations, leading her deeper into deeper design. As they follow the pathway of green, they leave behind the raw expanses where she spent her first night, where the earth looked gored and upturned. Now the desert becomes more intimate, and the jagged hills draw closer.

  But sometimes, for hours, Lonely does not see where she is, but trains her listless eyes on an empty horizon that blurs before her. Sometimes her mind is somewhere else that only minds can go, far away from the body, where it wonders whether the old hag was right and there is no such thing as love. She wonders where she is headed, what she is really seeking, and why she thought she would find it on the top of that distant mountain that never gets any closer. Nothing feels certain. Even the rocks, feeling steady under her as she sleeps, are not certain: they, too, speak of fading with the wind, turning to dust, blowing away and traveling the world without direction or home.

  Neither hunger nor thirst stop her, and so she finds no reason to take breaks, to focus her mind on any need. Sometimes she feels perhaps tired—not so much from riding but from the weight of the heat and her own sweat—and then she looks at the horse, and asks, “Should we rest?” For it seems that she could rest, or she could go on a little further, and it would not make much difference. She welcomes the horse’s pauses at the occasional pools of water, for they give her a definite reason to stop. Sometimes she remembers to drink too, but then the soft water swells within her and reminds her so painfully of her deeper longing that she would rather stop drinking, and keep walking in dryness, her mind as barren and tuneless as the wind.

  They pass the men, who are driving back home now. Lonely looks toward them and does not feel afraid now, with her horse carrying her again. She watches their heads turn to look at her and keep looking at her until her horse breaks into a sudden trot and turns her away from them, and their noise gradually fades behind her. She is even more confused by them than before. How will she know love when she finds it, or ever heal her own loneliness? These are men, but how is it that she does not want to go to them? Will she not recognize love when she sees it? Is she wrong to travel on? Is she wrong to disobey, after all, what her father told her? Will her prince come for her and find her gone? But the tower, too, is gone. There is nowhere for him to find her.

  At night she dreams again of that formless place below the tower, where the old woman’s aching voice awaits her, and those blinding eyes, and those hands which bind her wrists and test the very pulse of her heart as if Lonely did not own it. She dreams of swimming through that darkness as if the darkness were the sea, and she smells again the smell of death in the vultures’ breath, and it is everywhere, so that she wakes fighting to breathe.

  Then she wonders again at the moon, swinging lonely above her. It does not seem like something that lives solely for the giving of light, for the light it gives is murky and fickle. She thinks its purpose must have more to do with beauty—or perhaps it is only a piece of the sun that got left behind, or a memory to keep the hope of the sun alive. As she lies awake watching it, she is filled with longing, and wonders what it is that she truly longs for.

  On the morning of the full moon, space spills open before her into a glorious expanse of open flight: the playa. Lonely looks up and cries, “Oh!” and feels a piece of the old thrill of meadows flare up in her chest. She feels hopeful again for the first time since then. The cool wind taps her face, relieving her of the heat they have slogged through for days.

  I bring rain, says the wind. Again and again, passing over the mountain, I forget. I let the rains fall in the mountains—I forget. I leave the rains behind, and the desert stays a desert, dry. But then sometimes, once in a great while, I remember. Today I remember. I have brought rain for the desert.

  Lonely doesn’t know what the wind means, doesn’t know what rain is. But she asks, Why do you forget?

  You, too, will forget, answers the wind with its usual laughter, when you pass over the mountains. Wait and see.

  “But why?”

  Happiness. Love.

  “Happiness and love make you forget?”

  Happiness and love draw more happiness and love to them. That is why I cannot help but let the rain fall. But the desert is lonely, and loneliness brings more loneliness. So it stays dry. That’s the way it is.

  “But that’s not fair,” says Lonely, wondering if she will ever reach those mountains.

  It isn’t about justice. It’s about what you name yourself. Anyway, loneliness, too, is important. It makes you pure.

  As Lonely struggles with these words, wondering as always if she only imagined them, the wind becomes still, and in that long, silent moment, the clouds merge and thicken, losing their design.

  The wind flickers one more time. Look up, Lonely, it says. Those shapes are the dreams of your beloved.

  Lonely looks up at the great, looming fairy tale of the clouds: grey spires of glory to mirror the grand lost shapes of the desert.

  Then the sky gushes down.

  Lonely stands enclosed by water, barely understanding. The water is deafening. It touches her constantly, yet it cannot be touched. She cannot see any single drop, but only the confusing effect of many drops at once that only become real as they come together upon her skin, defining the slopes of her body. The water wakes her, and then she is too much awake. The water presses her tenderly, and then too hard. Clothed in water, she lifts her face as if to shake off its heavy cloak, but the rain slams into her eyes.

  She can see nothing but the horse’s head beside her, erect and alert, and though she is not riding him he is close enough to seem like part of her. She reaches out and touches his now glossy white fur, as if she has never felt it before. He shivers, and water pours from his sides. Then he turns back the way they came and runs.

  Instinctively, Lonely follows him, screaming without knowing why. The horse has never run so fast. In the roar of the rain she does not hear the roar of the wave or the roaring of the earth shaking beneath it as it comes barreling across the playa, a great frothing bull of water colored with dusky mud. But after they reach the top of the slope and the horse turns aro
und and around, snorting and trying to settle, she arrives in time to see the water’s great mass seething up like an ocean storm right where they stood, and then receding.

  A few moments later, the rain is gone. As the sun peels apart the clouds, she stands still, her pink skin as shiny as the sandstone cliffs. The playa is empty, covered as far as she can see with a thin film of water.

  Then, with a gasp, she runs down into the scent of wet red clay, the scent of glowing minerals, the scent of live earth in love with the rain. The mud slips through her toes, drawing her body downward. It is so soft with the water, softer than anything should or could be, softer than clouds or sky or the wind through the meadow grasses—so soft she cannot get enough of it into her hands, her skin; she wants to absorb it, devour it, slide like an eel inside it. She sleds through it on her hands and knees, draws flowers on her thighs with the slick paint of it. She hears the horse whinny warningly from above, but nothing matters to her but this matter, this fluid solid, this joyful substance.

  Skating on the callused soles of her feet, she crosses the whole playa in an ecstasy of mud. On the other side, the river is flowing rich and brown through smooth hills. Lonely wades into it, letting the mud fall from her skin, her whiteness turned pale gold with sun and earth. Her wet dress kisses her body, and she does not take it off because it feels so good to be touched by it. The water swirls up slow between her legs, and without realizing it she is dancing. From between her legs blooms a flower of heat that mushrooms into her hips, swirling her around, and the fingertips of one hand graze the bony V below her belly, and she touches her throat and her mouth, her lips clumsy against her hand. She rides her own motion, a motion that feels older than her life—the rhythm of the horse, the rhythm of waves under the surface of the sea, the rhythm of dreams recurring against the shores of waking. She rides it until she knows it so well that she is not afraid to see the god walking toward her: the very answer to her desire.

  When she sees him—as if she knew all along that she would—she moves toward him with urgent, difficult strides surging through the heavy water. She hurries toward his deep dark smile, hurries toward his rescuing eyes, his capable, wide-hearted chest, his own easy stride, his bigness, his otherness, his heat.

  She stumbles into his outstretched hands, and he grips her tight, holding her in front of his body with an expression of awed delight. He raises his eyebrows, as if waiting for one of them to speak, to explain what is happening. But his touch eclipses everything that went before.

  “I’m afraid,” she says suddenly, her body going blank.

  Dragon is not concerned. He smiles easily. “Don’t be afraid,” he says, and cups one hand under her, hoisting her up against him. The press of his fingertips is so dramatic that she cannot feel it at all, but the musky smell of his shoulder makes her open her mouth against him, makes her turn to languid mud, and something inside her begins to weep. Water trickles down her legs, sticking her to him, turning immediately warm.

  Dragon carries her up a hillside and lays her down in a little circle of grass surrounded by elaborate white pinnacles of stone. Lonely is dying, the story of her past replaying before her mind as the stories of her future used to play across the tower glass. For this, surely, is what her father never told her. This is what lurked behind his silences. This is what fell upon her from the midnight sky when the glass finally let reality in. This is what the wind is saying, and what she longed for, and the reason she first stood up from her bed. This is what the meadow was saying, what the City was saying, what the moon was saying, and what the vultures and the nightmares were saying, and what everything, everyone, was saying. This.

  This simple touch, like a word.

  You do not speak of sex. There is no particular place for it, no particular context, no particular time when it is okay. Everyone knows about it, and some people do it, but no one knows what it is. And that makes you nervous.

  Still young, you run into sex like a black hole in space, not looking back. You are pulled in by something bigger than yourself, bigger than your lover, bigger than any rule or law or reason. It feels like the loving hand of a god you profess not to believe in, reaching through the darkness for your own hand, offering to save you from a world you cannot stand.

  You reach back, but somehow miss, and end up with only a body. To your surprise, you are still alive after passing through that blackness. You are yourself all over again, only worse than before, and more alone.

  Because nobody knows what sex is. Nobody can find the right word for it. You wake soft in the morning and you feel it. You choose your clothes, feeling it. You press the gas pedals of your car, and you feel it. Someone passes you in the hall, eyes turned elsewhere, and you feel it. You feel it all day long.

  What, exactly?

  You dream of Hanum, who is a god and cannot be touched. You dream of the princess, who may not exist. Your body itches. You are angry in your car. You rock against the others in the crowd, and you cannot feel each other’s touch. In the City everything, everything is defined in straight, clear lines. But somewhere in the body that cannot be seen, there is a black hole opening into space. Somewhere in the body there is an opening into chaos, and everyone wants to go there.

  You come home and duck your head against your mother’s stare, stumbling to your room. Your mother says nothing. She is as terrified as her daughter is of the body’s unpredictable ability to turn divine.

  Something is wrong.

  The horse is afraid again, with Lonely gone.

  Since the day the men captured him, a fear as large as the world began to close in upon him, and only Lonely, like a ring of light, has held it at bay. Perhaps they would not be able to capture her, he thought.

  But now she has been taken after all, and he walks in fear, breathes fear. Afraid of the heavy, sinking mud, he stumbles around the playa, over hills of crumbled stone, and he is careful with his big and tender hooves. His body is powerful but so fragile, so easily spooked by the ghosts that ride hungry on the wind. He is bigger than people are, but thin and strangely hidden; it is easy for him to hide himself among the forest of stone structures, or even to stand in the open and blend with the rock whose color melds with his whiteness in the direct sun. He sees where Lonely has gone, and he sees the man she has gone with, and he thinks he knows that man, and he will not go near there. Not ever.

  Yet he cannot leave. For above them and far from the green and the river, he can see another woman watching them. He would not have noticed her, so far away and blending, in her darkness, with the black of the cave behind her. But he does because deep within him—where he is something else, not this body, not horse—he recognizes her.

  Without meaning to, he moves closer to her, taking comfort in the fresh taste of the grass as he walks, smelling the constant breeze which orients him with its now familiar scents of water and dust—dust that still echoes with dryness in its wetness, giving its scent an intensity that keeps him alert. He is so hungry. He eats and eats. He cannot help it.

  The dark woman stands in a tight, poised stance like a predator, each muscle aware and ready. He can see her clearly because something in him remembers her. He can see the pain in her face as she looks out toward Lonely. He can see the fire giving life to her body and eating it away at the same time. He remembers her courage, her determination; once, long ago, he thinks he remembers loving her. But he is not what he seems to be; he is not what loved. What he was, once—that other who knew her—could never say it, and was always sorry. He feels she is the one he should be carrying, though she would never let herself be carried, and anyway he cannot; he cannot go to her, not yet. It is too difficult. She is so strong, so bright. She would not have let it happen to her—what happened to that other.

  But he wants to tell her that she shouldn’t hate the pale, beautiful goddess he has brought here, because they are connected. He can sense the constellation of these three people wh
o surround him now—the only human beings in this vast, red and yellow eye of lonely dust. He knows their importance to each other, and he knows they must see each other, and he knows—as if his very survival depends upon it—that something must be done or undone between them. But he does not know what, and the whole question—as if the desert itself is one great eye, watching, waiting to see what will happen—terrifies him.

  He only knows that somehow, he remembers Delilah.

  I am someone’s soul. But whose, he isn’t sure now. When he tries to remember, a white terror makes his mind go blank. He knows there was a perpetrator, and he knows there was a victim: one was male, and one was female. He does not remember which one he was, and he hopes that he was neither. But he knows that Delilah was the salvation they both longed for, the only one who could have stopped it.

  And she didn’t.

  Every part of the girl is perfect. Her eyes are moist and clear as glass, their irises glowing with darkness, so dark that their color cannot be told. Her skin, though its glow has been dimmed by the sun, is such a fragile white, so tender that it is red at the edges of her eyes, and flushes in small hot circles under her high cheekbones. Her lips are a bubble of the softest pink, like swells of nectar that will melt upon contact. The line of her chin swoops back and upward beneath, like a caught breath, into the flesh of her bare neck. Her smooth skin collapses over her shoulder bones like fine thin cloth, and the graceful bones winging down from her shoulders are lifting and falling, stark and prominent in their delicacy. Below them her breasts lilt upwards, her nipples uplifted like an offering through her wet dress, and her arms fall to her sides like white rivers.

  Dragon’s desire pounds in his ears as he climbs on top of her, as he claws at her and for a moment she claws back, as he grabs her everywhere with his hands and drops his weight into her softness. It pounds so loudly that he can barely hear the girl as she gasps, “Wait—please.”