Lonely in the Heart of the World

by Mindi Meltz

  She’s not making any sound and she’s looking down so they won’t see, but Eva, the only person who can be aware of everything at once, and who is sitting next to her anyway, places her hand firmly on Lonely’s back. Lonely doesn’t know why she is crying, when none of this is about her, and Willow is the one who ought to be comforted, and she doesn’t know why Eva is holding her, but, at the touch of Eva’s hand, she begins to cry so hard she can no longer keep it silent. She sounds as if she is choking. Everyone stops and looks at her. Only Morgan doesn’t seem bothered at all. He just snuggles in deeper as if this yielding to emotion is the deepest, most comfortable place for him to be. But Eva, with a gesture so subtle that Lonely doesn’t really see it, lifts Lonely’s arm and leads her away.

  They go around to the side of the house and sit in the last rays of sunlight on a couple of stumps by the woodshed. Lonely cries and cries, relieved to be with the one person who she knows doesn’t need an explanation. In fact, maybe she can give Lonely one.

  “Why am I crying?” she asks finally, between hiccuping breaths.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” says Eva with a deep sigh. “Because you feel alone. Because you have no family. Because everyone is ignoring you.”

  “But that sounds so selfish.”

  “Well. That’s what needs are. They’re selfish. That’s okay.”

  They keep sitting together, Lonely resting in the hopeless bliss of release. The wind pounces in sudden bursts through the grass, nudging at her heart, and she realizes how long it’s been since she’s listened to it.

  “The wind talks to me,” she says to Eva suddenly, “when I have no one else.”

  Eva nods. “That makes sense. Spirit of air.”

  Lonely wants her to say more, to explain the wind and what it means, and why it makes her lonely even while it takes the loneliness away, but she doesn’t know how to ask.

  “I had this dream,” she tells Eva, “about my prince.”

  She looks at Eva, and when Eva doesn’t answer, she adds, “He’s the one I’m searching for. He’s the one I have to find. He’s waiting for me. I don’t know where he is, except that I think—I feel I need to go to that mountain, that high mountain in the east. But I don’t understand why he doesn’t come for me.” She shakes her head, her heart pounding now that she’s finally spoken it aloud. “Maybe he’s not even real,” she adds, but that makes the tears start to flow again.

  “Maybe he doesn’t know yet that he needs you,” says Eva.

  Lonely looks up fast, breathless. “But he said, in the dream, that he missed me, that he needed me.”

  A light smile twirls the corners of Eva’s lips, and she looks at Lonely. She seems in no hurry to answer. Sparrows converse over their heads, and the breeze makes a hollow sound in Lonely’s ears. The weight of Eva’s thoughtful stare keeps her anchored to the ground, holding her restlessness at bay as she waits for a response. For a moment she can see this other way of looking at life—the way you look at it, maybe, if you are very old—as if life were simply a fascinating story, even in its pains and sorrows, that you are ever delighting in figuring out and piecing together, playfully wondering what comes next.

  “When a person comes to you in a dream,” says Eva finally, “he doesn’t always realize that he has come to you. His waking self may not even know. What came to you in the dream might be a message his soul wants to send to you, of which he himself is not aware. We have dream selves that act separately, sometimes, from our waking selves.”

  When Lonely doesn’t answer, she adds, “Maybe his spirit is speaking on behalf of his real self, asking you to come rescue him.”

  “From what?” asks Lonely, frightened.

  Eva smiles and says nothing. They sit for what seems a long time to Lonely, whose heart is tightening again with urgency.

  “I need to find him,” she says.

  “Yes,” says Eva, still smiling. “But you are loved here, too, just not in the way that you want.” She pauses. “I wasn’t sure if you knew that.”

  Lonely looks down, trying to take nourishment from those words. She feels selfish for keeping Eva away from the meal, but she needs her so badly. Eva looks to the side, off toward the high mountain; its snowy peak looks impossible in the heat of the day.

  “There is a legend of a certain people still living on those high peaks,” she says thoughtfully. “Or perhaps not people exactly. Perhaps spirits, or gods, or ghosts.”

  Lonely reaches out without thinking and grasps Eva’s hand. It is soft and hard at once, the veins warm and ropy against her fingers. Real, just as the old woman by the sea said that Lonely’s hand felt real, when she reached out and grasped it. Without surprise, Eva turns back to her, her hand steady, not pulling away.

  “Tell me,” says Lonely.

  “They were the first people,” says Eva. “They were the original people, the ones who remembered, who lived at the heart of the world. Who understood what life is and what it is for. Who understood the Earth and our part in its cycle.” She pauses. “They didn’t die, exactly. But they would not be ruled. They transformed themselves into animals, spirits, or some kind of—others. We call them the Dream People, who became like dreams instead of real people, hiding in a world close to the sky, where they could never be captured or destroyed. Some say they are behind those most powerful, life-changing dreams that call us back to our deepest selves, that they still dream for us and keep our dreams alive.”

  “But are they real?” If he isn’t real, then I am not real. Nothing is real, if the dream that keeps me alive is not real.

  “No one knows. No one has ever found them, of course. They are not in a form that can be found. Besides, no one has been able to climb that mountain, the highest one. It is difficult even to get close to it. And when you get close, there is no way up.”

  Yet something in Eva’s face keeps Lonely from despair. Eva is looking toward the mountain again. “But you’ve been there,” Lonely whispers.

  Eva is silent for a moment. “I have been close,” she answers. “When I first came into the wilderness, from the City, I was afraid. I had Fawn with me and I did not know how we would survive. I came to the base of that mountain and prayed and prayed. I was young, so when I prayed I was only begging—begging to be saved somehow by these Dream People I had heard of, to be taken to some magical land where we wouldn’t have to struggle with hunger and fear and cold. I was so passionate, so romantic, like Chelya—only with less sense than she has, because I had no one to guide me.

  “I was delirious, and Fawn cried with hunger day and night. But I started dreaming. Animals came to me in my dreams, teaching me things: plants I could eat, how to catch fish with my hands like the bears. I knew how to make a fire. Still, it wasn’t easy to survive. We lived for a long time barely making it, in the little tent I’d brought with us in the lower, warmer mountains, before we eventually met Rye’s family, who took us in and taught us how to live off the land.

  “Through those dreams and those first moons of hard survival, I understood that the Earth was calling me back to Herself. That my place was here, a human being in a physical, tangible world, and that the learning of my soul had to come through my body’s trials of survival. It wouldn’t come by escaping to some dreamworld. Instead, the dreams came to me, helping me to live better in reality.

  “So Lonely, I don’t know why that mountain calls to you, or what your prince has to do with it. Perhaps there is a way for you to go there that I could not find, that was not right for me. Or perhaps there is something for you to discover in the journey itself—simply in trying to go there—as there was for me. All you can do is follow where your heart leads you, and sometimes there is no point in asking questions. Certainly I am not the one who knows the answers.” She meets Lonely’s gaze pointedly, as if recognizing the demand in Lonely’s eyes. Almost everyone’s eyes in this family are shades between green and brown. B
ut like Blue’s eyes, Eva’s eyes are a painful shade of blue. They burn like ice. They seem to look right through Lonely, and they make her feel naked inside, as if she herself is made of glass.

  Lonely sighs. The wind starts up, roiling around her. Is that a sign? Is it saying she’s headed in the right direction? She glances back toward the table, where the others sit talking and forgetting her. How easy their life seems to her, with everything they need right here.

  Eva clasps her hand, which was drifting away, and pulls her attention back. “No one else knows your path, Lonely,” she repeats, as if she can read Lonely’s thoughts. “Only you. When you ask the same question over and over, it is only to avoid what you already know you must do.”

  4th MOON

  She tells herself she’s just out walking. She always goes walking on the new moon, to stretch away the pain in her womb. And this is where she’s often walked before, past the dragon caves, and she’s not going to stop doing it because of Dragon.

  When she stops at the edge of the billowing steam, hidden behind the stone, she tells herself it’s because she needs to know what’s going on in her territory. She lives all alone out here. She needs to know who’s around and what they’re doing, in order to survive.

  But her body aches, and she has to crouch down for a moment. Tendrils of the steam reach her unbidden and soften the skin of her face. From a safe distance, she watches the bubbles arise from themselves in sleepy meditation. She watches until she is sure—she can feel it—that he is no longer here.

  And in the moment when she knows that, when she ought to feel utter relief, instead the pain gets worse than ever before. It gets so bad she can’t think. She can’t remember where she is. All she wants is to be home in the safe darkness of her cave, wrapped in her blankets, her familiar old animal scents, but she is doubled over and cannot even raise herself up. It’s never been like this before. Usually the pain of new moon bleeding makes her hot and restless. Now for the first time, she is cold and afraid, like a child, and she cannot move.

  She barely notices when Dragon lifts her up and carries her in his arms, down into the soft water. She tells herself she’s dreaming, so she won’t have to hate herself for not fighting it.

  When she opens her eyes in a cavern of dim, warm air—some magical chamber inside the water, shifty with the echoes of water’s reflections like the flickering memory of fire, like the inside of an organ surrounded by hot swirling blood—the muscles in every part of her body seem to have relaxed.

  “Where are we?” There seems to be more space inside her body than there was before. She’s too curious and too weak to feel angry yet, though she can feel that her head rests in his lap, and she’s not sure how it got there. Her hips and legs are supported by a smooth floor like limestone or hardened lava. Dragon’s fingers grace the edges of her face, the sides of her neck, her shoulder bones. He feels different somehow than she remembers him; there is something wise and protective about the frame of his body around her. He feels more like a man than a boy. But he is behind her. She can’t actually see his face, and she doesn’t want to.

  “This is where I was first raised,” he answers her finally, his voice still distant and unsmiling. “For the first six years of my life.”

  “In this boiling water?”

  “No. There was no water then. Back then, there were only dark caves of fire. That’s where the dragons lived, until they had to descend into the earth, and leave me behind. I’ve come here since then, but the caves were empty. Then one day, while I was wandering the desert, after Yora left me, I came here again. And there was water. Just like this. Water bubbling up from fire. I don’t understand it. But I feel like it’s a message from the dragons. I feel like they’re sending me a message of love, because water—do you know, Delilah?—water is love. I realize that now. They’re telling me this is my home. Even though they’re not here, they still love me, and this is my home.”

  His voice grows more animated as he speaks, and for a moment Delilah wonders if he is insane, because the possibility doesn’t seem incongruent with her general sense of him. But he is a god, after all, or at least partly one, so maybe he really was raised by dragons.

  “I know what you mean,” she says, “about home.” She’s surprised at how relaxed she feels, maybe from sheer helplessness after days of pain. Or maybe it’s this place, which doesn’t make any sense—like a dry womb inside the water—but she’s too tired to care. She’ll only rest here for a moment. Only for a moment, before she leaves …

  “Delilah, why did you come to the desert? Where did you come from?”

  Delilah starts. Apparently she fell asleep, and his voice woke her.

  “Please tell me,” says Dragon.

  “Why.”

  “Because I love you.”

  Delilah is silent. Here we go again. She wants to tell him off and get up, but she doesn’t do either. She feels so tired.

  “I do love you,” he repeats. “You’re like a hummingbird.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “Have you ever met a hummingbird?”

  “Yeah, there’s hummingbirds in the desert.”

  “But have you ever hung out with one?”

  “Not really.”

  “You are like them,” Dragon insists. “I used to see them all the time in the Garden where I grew up. I used to watch them. They’re really tough, like you—even though they’re tiny. They take lots of lovers. They love to make love and they’re messengers of love between the flowers, too. They’re always hungry, like you, because they’re always moving—lots of energy, like fire. See?”

  “Dragon, you’re a romantic. You don’t get me. I’m not loving. I eat nothing but meat, and I’m always angry.”

  “But you are like that, like a hummingbird, in your spirit. That’s how you are inside. That’s how you would be if you didn’t have so much pain. That’s how you were when I first saw you, touching yourself outside your cave and laughing at me. Shimmering and bright like a hummingbird.”

  Delilah is silent. She notices that she’s been playing with one of his hands, rubbing his fingers between her own. She lets it go, embarrassed. All she can feel is her own blood flowing out of her. Though in reality it is only a few drops, it feels to her like a river that will never stop. How can Dragon not feel it? Isn’t it everywhere, flooding the cave? The death of possible life flows out of her, as senseless as the death of each creature she kills to sustain her one, meaningless life. There is something wrong with her that she lives alone out here in the desert forever. There is something wrong with her that no man can make her come. There is something wrong with her that she doesn’t want a child, that she wants to be fed again and again by the bodies of men but never give up her own life up for anyone else. There is something wrong with this desire that can never, ever be filled.

  “Tell me who you really are. Tell me where you come from.”

  “My past is not who I am,” snaps Delilah.

  “Maybe it’s what’s keeping you from who you are then. Tell me anyway.”

  He’s peaceful and calm now because I’m helpless, she thinks. Because I’ve let him carry me here, and that makes him feel manly or something. Because I’m being vulnerable. If I fought him again, tried to run from him, he wouldn’t seem so mature and wise any more. When I’m ready to leave, he’d better fucking let me out.

  “Why did I come here,” she repeats after him bitterly. “Because there was nothing left for me in the City, nothing holding me there. That’s why.” She doesn’t say, They had taken my sister away. That was the last person I cared about. Nothing mattered any more.

  “What was your home like, in the City?”

  She sighs. “I was at this boarding school. My mother sent us—my mother sent me there after my father died. My father died of a drug overdose, and my mother didn’t want me any more.” There, she thinks. That�
�s about it.

  “Tell me about him.”

  “Why?”

  “Please. What are you afraid of?”

  “I’m not afraid of anything. He was really unhappy. He didn’t love me. I made him even more unhappy.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. I worried him. Upset him. He used to say I’d come to no good. Too much fire in me. Always getting into trouble. My dark skin, I think—” She sighs again. “It was weird. Even though he was dark, even though I got it from him, I think he wanted me to turn out more like my mother, who was pale.” And more like Mira, she thinks, whom he loved. Whom he taught all his secrets to. Maybe even his magic. “He was probably afraid because he knew what happens to dark people. Their lives don’t end up well. Bad things happen to them, in the City at least. They’re feared. That’s what sucks about the City. It makes a man like my father, who was once a respected shaman among his own people, fear that part of himself that the pale people hate—want to erase it, in himself and in his children.”

  “Why do people hate the darkness?”

  “Fear. Everyone’s afraid of the dark.”

  “Are you afraid of it, too?”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “No.”

  There is an awkward silence. Delilah holds her own hands in front of her face, and turns them around as if she’s interested in them, as if she’s looking for something.

  “What about your mother?” Dragon asks now. “What was she like?”

  “Not much to her. I didn’t respect her; I still don’t. All she cared about was my father. Her whole life was wrapped around trying to save him from self-destruction, trying to make him happy, trying to ease his pain. My father was a very intense person. Before the City sucked up everything, he was part of a certain people, who, I think, lived out in the desert. But I’m not sure, even. He knew lots of magic, but he didn’t use it any more after he lost touch with his people and was forced to work in this meat factory in the City. Then he was just a regular guy. Only he had so much power locked up inside him, it didn’t have anywhere to go. So he started to drink and lose himself in drugs. Eventually he destroyed himself that way. And then my mom was a mess. She couldn’t even function. It was pathetic. And she didn’t want to deal with—me. So she sent me away.”