by Mindi Meltz
She doesn’t know why she’s denying Mira’s existence like this. She doesn’t mean to. It’s just too complicated to explain. But no, that isn’t it. She’s trying to protect Mira somehow, like she always tried to. But she doesn’t know why or from what.
“Were you sad when your father died?” asks Dragon, and she can tell he’s sad for her, which embarrasses her.
“I don’t know,” she answers, shrugging into his belly. “I didn’t want to be like my mother, wailing and carrying on like an idiot, not caring about anything else but him, like the whole world had ended.” She’s relieved to find that none of the things she’s talking about seem to hurt much any more. She can do this. Bring it on, Dragon, she thinks. See if you can move me. I’m like stone.
“What’s boarding school?”
“It’s where they lock you up, and try to make you forget about your body. All they care about is numbers and words. Shows you how much my mother knew about me.”
“Right,” says Dragon, and she can feel his little laugh. “No one can tell Delilah what to do.”
“Right,” says Delilah, smiling a little in spite of herself. “There were these bitchy girls there. I was the only dark one, they hated me, etcetera. It’s kind of boring to talk about.”
“Didn’t you have friends? Those kids you made fires and burned things with?”
“Yeah,” says Delilah, surprised that he actually paid so much attention to what she said, that night he made the fire for her. “A few kids of other colors, from other peoples that got lost somewhere, like my father’s. And other kids, not from the school—whoever was on the outside of things, I guess. But we didn’t share anything. We had no loyalty to each other; we just got together to burn things and steal stuff and help each other feel something. I was never able to spend a lot of time with them, though, because they did so many drugs, and I didn’t do that because I didn’t want to end up like my father. So I spent a lot of my time fucking, honestly. That was the only thing that got me through. Boys didn’t have a problem with my dark skin when they wanted to get laid. In fact, they liked it then. And I liked sex. Made me feel powerful and alive, you know?” Helped me block out my sister’s empty stare, is what she doesn’t say.
“It made you feel wanted,” says Dragon. “Made you feel loved.”
That’s your trip, Dragon, not mine, she thinks, but she doesn’t want to hear about his issues so she only snaps, “Don’t psychoanalyze me.”
“What?”
“Nevermind.”
“So then what happened?”
“Then, like I said, I got fed up. I ran away. I was failing school anyway. I was smart, but I hated my teachers. They didn’t understand me. I hated everyone. I don’t know how I didn’t lose my voice from all the yelling I did in those two years there. I didn’t want to be there so I didn’t care how much trouble I got into. It made me crazy that nothing I did could get me sent away, maybe because I had nowhere to get sent away to. I never beat anyone up or did something that would put me in jail, though. Anyway, I hadn’t heard from my mother in over a year, since she got evicted from our apartment because she couldn’t pay the rent anymore. She probably ended up wandering the streets somewhere, or dead, but I didn’t want to find her. She never cared about me. My father, at least, disliked me or was afraid of me or something. My mother didn’t care at all. So anyway I lived in the streets for a little bit, too, and one day I found myself back on my home street, which was out at the west edge of the City. Of course, I had no home to go back to at this point. But I climbed up the little hill to a meadow overlooking the City, above my street, where we—where I used to play. I looked out, and I saw the desert. I remembered that there was this whole world out there, so much bigger than this reality which I hated. And the desert just looked like the answer. So I decided to go there. And I went.”
“That’s it? You just went? I’d think any other human would die out here.”
Delilah sighs. Whatever. No need to keep everything secret. “Moon helped me.”
“That’s your lover. The boy who stayed with you a while ago.”
Delilah tenses. Was he watching her all that time? Is that jealousy in his voice? “He’s not my lover. Moon and I don’t have sex.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’s different. He’s my only true friend.” She feels a little more interested suddenly. She wants to talk about Moon. She misses him so much, all the time. Now that she’s recovering from the pure agony of his initial absence, thinking of him can bring her closer to happiness than almost anything. “I knew Moon since I was little. Like my earliest memories are of him—playing with him up in those same fields, dancing around while he played his flute for me. He was a rain god. By the time I was born there was no more rain in the City, but sometimes rain clouds would still pass over, and we’d hear thunder, and I would always go up into the fields and stand in the wind, hoping that the rains would finally come. Because I’d heard my mother talking to my father about them. They never did come, but Moon came, first by chance, I think, drifting by with the clouds, and then later to see me and play with me, because he could tell I wasn’t like other humans. I was way more fun than other kids. He was sweet, and he loved me for who I was and understood me, from the beginning and always. He kept me alive. He made my life worth living when everything else was ugly.”
Dragon lets out a gushing breath, something like an “Ooh,” but softer. It weirds her out a little, the way he seems to feel viscerally everything she’s saying. Maybe more than she herself does. She wants to pull away from him now, but then he asks, “But what happened to him while you were at boarding school? Wasn’t he your best friend?”
“No,” says Delilah, her voice still even. “I lost him for a long time. It was my fault. I started to get sexual when I was really young. Something about the feeling of touching and being touched like that made me feel—I don’t know, anchored to something, and okay somehow. When I wasn’t being touched I felt out of control, disconnected from everything and at the same time burning up. When I was still pretty young, eight or nine, Moon and I started touching and pleasuring each other. It was beautiful, and we had fun just exploring each other’s bodies. I felt safe and alive with his hands on me, and his body was like the only thing real in my life. Then one day, when I was about twelve, I caught Moon making love to another boy. I found him in an alley, not in the fields, and he was kneeling down and sucking that boy off while some other boys stood around and watched. I felt so betrayed, I couldn’t bear it. I never went to the fields again, and I hid from him until he finally stopped looking for me. He probably could have found me if he’d really tried—the neighborhood wasn’t that big, and he’s a god after all—but I think he felt hurt, and Moon isn’t the type to go chasing after love. If he’s hurt, he just runs away.
“Anyway, that same year my father died, and I got sent away, and it seemed like nothing from my former life was real. Then two years later when I left the boarding school and returned to that field for the first time, Moon found me there. He said he came there sometimes because he still missed me—” Delilah has to stop. This is ridiculous. This all happened so long ago, but it must be saying it out loud that’s fucking with her. She never talks to anyone any more, except for Moon.
“Why would you abandon the one person who loved you?” asks Dragon.
“I thought he’d abandoned me,” Delilah tries to snap, but her voice comes out low and shaky. “Anyway,” she continues, “he told me I had been his best friend, that he loved me more than anyone.” She talks fast, to get it over with. “That his father, who was some god of the sky, hated him now, and that he couldn’t bear for me to hate him, too. I told him I didn’t hate him, that I thought he wanted boys instead of me. But he said it wasn’t an either/or thing. That he didn’t want to be sexual with me any more, but not because he didn’t love me. It was because he loved me so much that he didn’t want
to get sex mixed up in that love. Which didn’t really make sense to me but I got it, at least, that he loved me. He was the only guy who ever wanted to be with me for something other than sex, so I guess that meant something to me, too. It’s weird, but I don’t want that from him any more. I never think of it when I’m sleeping with him. He’s like my brother. No, like more than that. Like a better part of myself. Anyway, he came into the desert with me. He taught me how to hunt for food and gave me a magical bow. He’s the reason I survived. And he still comes back to visit me, sometimes.”
Dragon is silent then, which is a relief to Delilah. There is a sound around that silence, the faint roar of the water boiling somewhere near, but it’s impossible to pinpoint.
The more she lies there, the more vividly she feels the shame of the position she’s in. Lying in his arms, with her back to him, she thinks she can feel the sticky substance of his pity, and she hates it, but now she’s trapped. If she gets up suddenly and tries to leave, he’ll think she’s frightened. Her body begins to tense as she tries to plot a way out.
“See,” says Dragon. “Now we’re friends.”
For a moment Delilah’s face freezes, and then she snorts derisively.
“Aren’t we?” says Dragon.
“Dragon, the animals are my friends, and Moon is my friend. That’s it.”
“You can trust me more than Moon. He only shows up once a year, and you never know when.” Delilah can hear what he doesn’t say—that Moon might, at some point, stop coming back at all—and she hates him for reminding her. It’s true, she thinks. I don’t love Moon because I can trust him to stay with me. I love him because I got sucked into it when I was too young to know better, and now there’s no way out.
“I think you have these rules you make about who you are and what is possible for you. You’re the only one who’s holding yourself to those rules,” says Dragon.
“Those rules are why I’m still alive.”
“That’s only another rule. Something you made up.”
“Fuck you. Who the hell are you to think you know me? Fuck you.” She spins around, hands curled against the earth, ready. She expects his pleading, his longing, and she hardens herself against it. She feels like herself again. She feels fine.
But he says, “Fuck you, too. You think you’re tough. I’m tough, too. I was raised by dragons. I’m as tough as you.”
Delilah laughs.
“I am,” he roars, his words booming suddenly through the strange, still space like two explosions as he rises up faster than she can see and pins her to stone as smooth as skin. His eyes seize her. He holds her wrists above her head.
Delilah bends her knees and presses her feet into his chest, too many emotions—of memories, of vulnerability, of the surprise of Dragon’s fury—making her careless. With her feet she presses her own power against his, willing him to break her. She no longer feels any pain, and she is wide awake.
They wrestle. They bend with the force of their hands against each other, twisting and shaking with the effort of each body trying to hold the other down. Delilah becomes knees and elbows and bones, banging herself into Dragon’s beauty like metal, her body a broken toy some child forgot—that doesn’t fit with anything, whose edges are all sharpness and danger. Dragon flames over her, his heart roaring. And Delilah feels her own fire, her muscles as powerful as a man’s, her passion as furious as a god’s, but her power doesn’t make her feel good. It just makes her angry. It makes her beat Dragon’s chest with her fists and scrape his belly and his soft groin with her sharp toes and her bony knees. She can’t throw him off so she concentrates on keeping his body away from hers. But when he manages to free a hand enough to reach down and touch her exactly where she wants it, she falters a little.
“Stop,” she breathes. “I’m bleeding.”
“I don’t care,” says Dragon, rubbing harder. But she keeps fighting. She drags his hand away, growling, because she hates him for making her do this. She hates him for making her fight him when all she wants—all she has ever wanted—is to give in. To receive pleasure. To be touched. And she can’t. She’s not that girl full of light, that other. She’s only herself, broken and empty.
So they keep wrestling, their bodies embracing each other in their fury, making a ball of writhing muscle that whirls like a galaxy in space, while the water boils somewhere beyond them, all around them—and there is stillness in the center of their whirling, and beyond the wild water, the great whirling space of the desert is screaming. But gradually Delilah is tiring, though she keeps pushing just to have another body to push against, to make her feel alive. She wants to lose herself in exhaustion, until she has no more will to control herself or to care if she loses control, no more energy to think about the shame of all she has revealed. Gradually Dragon is winning, and as he wins he surrounds her with his body, clamping her tight against the ground with his weight while fingering her deepest desire at the same time. She concentrates on fighting, trying to ignore the rising pleasure. She keeps fighting as Dragon embraces her with one arm, his grip holding her absolutely but now with gentle ease, his lips skewed against her neck, his breath hitting her, his hand determined and slow while her body beats faster against him. He’s not trying to get inside her this time.
She keeps fighting because it is the only way she can stop thinking about coming. Because the coming is the release of something, and she thinks that something could be love.
But if she stopped to think about that, she would never allow it to happen. And it does happen. It explodes through the fighting, through the memories, through her body itself—and it is not her body, and it has nothing to do with sex. It has nothing, even, to do with her—this orgasm. Which is why when it happens, she feels completely lost, like a child reborn into a life she doesn’t remember.
Fawn’s mare finds the new horse even further from the stable this time, but this time she trots up to him with her head held high. She stops soon enough to keep from frightening him, swinging her head in a low, humble arch. Then nervously, making soft little jumps toward him, she traverses the length of his body, sniffing toward his tail.
you’re a woman, she says finally, her nostrils flaring.
Lonely’s horse doesn’t move.
i don’t understand. you were pretending to be male. how? why?
i’m afraid.
of what? The mare stands still as Lonely’s horse looks toward the mountain. Lonely’s horse is male but her soul is female. Or she is someone’s soul, and the someone is a woman, whose body is lost somewhere. She isn’t sure any more. She feels the joyful beauty of Fawn’s mare behind her, her confident wonder as she stands still and watches. Lonely’s horse doesn’t know how to feel that.
i’m afraid to be female. we’re so vulnerable.
But Fawn’s mare sees grace before her now. no, she says, following Lonely’s horse comfortably, grazing with her. you were afraid before. you were afraid to be male. now you are easy to be with.
Lonely’s horse keeps moving. As long as the stallion doesn’t appear, she is safe. If he appears, she will run, or become male again.
i know you’re a woman, the mare continues. and i know you’re a Unicorn. She says this by casting a sideways glance at the other horse’s invisible horn.
The white horse raises her head slowly, like a moving boulder made of dusty quartz. She stands still in the wind. how do you know? she whispers.
everyone knows, the mare snorts into the grass, butterflies emerging around her face. the humans don’t know, but their lives will be different this summer, with you here. no one will go hungry. the water is purer than it has ever been, and it cannot sicken us, no matter what it carries from faraway places. miracles will happen. the hunters will never go hungry, and the prey will never be caught. all of us are riding on light.
The white horse keeps standing still. Only the wind is moving. it’s not tru
e, she says. can those things happen?
it is true, says the mare. the way i am speaking now. not like a horse. the way the flowers are listening, not like flowers. the way the grass is reborn again and again under our mouths.
Slow and unconcerned, the stallion is coming up over the hillside. Dizzy with fear, the white horse wheels and runs into endless distance. She is not the female, no, nor the male who overcomes her; she is not a body who can feel, not a soul with a purpose or a past, but only running, disappearing into a blur of motion that blends white and grey, white and grey, into the air.
Delilah returns to her cave. She lies on the cool dry floor and breathes deep into the comfort of home. The space around her is like a being that welcomes her, relieved at her presence. She touches each thing that she owns: the things that have become her life, that have kept her alive for seven years in her solitude. Her hunting knife. The smaller, cutting knife, a little rusted. The old plastic water jug. The bundle of clothing which now includes several men’s shirts, a pair of men’s pants, and a man’s coat. The sweatshirt her mother bought her when she sent her away to school is still mostly in one piece. It was the only thing her mother ever gave her. It was her mother’s small attempt, she supposes, at making up for giving her away forever.
A bat huffs a breeze of wingbeats past her face—a straggler. The others have already come home for the day.
She cannot close her eyes. It was a mistake to talk about the past. She’d known it was a mistake, but somehow she let Dragon talk her into it. It was a mistake because the past never fades. Not her past, anyway.