Lonely in the Heart of the World

by Mindi Meltz

  The wolf I allowed to embrace me, felt his great muscles and steel claws, felt the howl in his breath. I let him drink of my blood. I said to him, “You must teach them to be humble.”

  The frog I bathed in my tears, spilling clean into his delicate body, and I said, “You must teach them the magic of spring. You must sing them your song, so that they will feel the rain again.”

  The honey bees I allowed to drink sweetness from the spiral of my horn, a sweetness I could never taste myself, and told them, “You must carry their love. You must sting them even, to wake them up to themselves.”

  To the birds I gave my white light and said, “You must fly in the formations of beauty; you must remind them.”

  To the deer I gave my beauty and my eye, saying, “You must bring them your gentleness and compassion. You must bring them back their silence.”

  The dog I kissed on the mouth; I gave him the heat of my body and said, “You must keep loving anyway, as I know you will.”

  To the cat I gave the softness of my fur and said, “You must let them touch you, you must allow them the gift of you; you must purr, for it heals them.”

  For the spider I wove a web in the sky with the white silk strands of my mane and tail, and said, “You must remind them of that other, truer language: the more subtle, the more patterned language.”

  The turtle’s shell I hardened with the bone of my horn itself, and I said, “You must teach them to be still and go inward.”

  The snake coiled around me, taking my very breath, and I said, “You must remind them of the dark womb of earth.”

  To the whale I sang my knowing, echoing her feelings back to her so that she felt heard. I said to her, “You must keep the memories.”

  With the seal I surrendered and played with what little body was left to me, and said, “You must remind them of fairy tales.”

  To the owl I gave my other eye and said, “You must keep their secrets, until they are ready again to own them.”

  To all of them, I gave these gifts of myself. To each of them, I said, “Teach them. Appear to them when they despair, when they feel alone. Nestle up to them when they are lonely. Stalk them when they feel afraid of themselves, and call out in the night when they forget. Make constellations of beauty around them.”

  But then they said to me, “It is you who must begin for us. You must go back and tell them, or they will never listen. You must call to them as you have called to us, so that their hearing will change, and they will hear our voices again. We have always known you, but they do not know, and they are afraid, and their fear hurts us. You must use your voice. You must speak.”

  By the time I reached the City, I was no longer female or male.

  Dragon walked with me. As we came closer, I could feel his heart beating faster, in tune with that faster world that the City is. He felt the thrill of you burning in his mind and his body, the thrill of the unknown. He found it more and more difficult to remain focused. Yet he felt pride, too, in being the protector of the Unicorn, though most of you could not see me. This was in the beginning of spring—you remember?—when the Prince and Princess were just arriving.

  The problem, I told him as we walked through the outskirts of the City in the early morning, through the graveyards and alleys, among the same homeless men and women who had always lived there and for whom nothing had changed yet. The problem, the great Council has decided, is that the people cannot find their souls. They have forgotten where they put them.

  That morning we stood in a quiet spring rain that fell on the rubble of buildings, useless wires, broken lights, a rusted truck that had long forgotten what it was. The sun was patient behind clouds. A mother and her son crossed the street ahead of us with some pieces of wood in their arms, and they did not have to look both ways for cars. A couple of old men sat on the edge of the sidewalk and looked out blankly, aware of each other’s presence and yet not knowing what to do with that awareness. A beautiful young woman in rags drank water from a metal pipe. And the water was pure now, because I had touched all the rivers of the world with this simple horn—which once, long ago, my mortal self had wished to cast away.

  It’s okay, I said to Dragon beside me, feeling his fire. Only stay with me for one last moment, while I try to speak the first word.

  Dragon stood steady, and I believed in him, and he believed in me. He knew he belonged to the City; he knew he would never truly leave it. For fire, though you did not invent it, belongs to you, the people, now. Only people, of all the animals, can begin it, and only you can use it, and only you can end it. Dragon will never tire of burning among you, burning you alive with his determined gaze of desire, touching you with his hot fingers, reminding you of your original fire, your original life—forcing you to awaken.

  I cried out. Only Dragon was not startled, and his presence kept me from being afraid of my own sound.

  It was the same cry that I made before the Council, after which, for many days, every being on the earth came to me, in response to that call which reverberated through air and water and earth for great distances all around. It is a call the animals recognized but which the human beings, now, did not. It is terrible and unearthly, as if the moon had a cry, as if the moon—all this time—had something to say.

  It sounded like this.

  You stopped what you were doing.

  You were not aware of hearing anything. But suddenly you were listening, in a way you had not listened in a long time. Perhaps you had never listened in this way.

  You heard your own breaths, echoing, as if each of you were enclosed in your own small room. As if your cars were still moving faster than you, isolating you from every other person. Yet you were still. You heard the clouds floating above you—rubbing like fur against the sky. You heard the ancient, hungry minds of insects whirring. You heard slow water moving in its forgotten veins beneath the pavement. You heard the pattern of the rain.

  That was the beginning. That was how I introduced the rebirth of the world, and the time that was coming.

  I let Dragon go then, to find joy in his world. May he release the responsibility of any guilt or the heaviness of any past thing.

  Then I went quiet for a little while. I walked in the shadows and felt the fear and the suffering that you were feeling; I felt it with you, so that your burden would be a little less. I walked in the hidden places of the City and let myself get caught in the river of a ragged people who were moving anew through the streets—people who were called Mad. I walked with them, so that the focus turned toward them again, and so that this time you would see their light.

  You did not see me at the Councils the lovers called, where they spoke with you—as I had spoken with the elements and the other beings of the world—about what you wanted. But I walked with this man and woman, whom you called “Prince” and “Princess”, wherever they went that spring and summer, so that they would not be alone in the solitude that these names forced upon them.

  I walked with the Princess when the Prince was living his last days more and more among you, wanting to understand you and to be as human as he could be. I knew these would be the loneliest times for her. For though she laughed at the fires where you gathered in the evenings, still she was not yet one of you. Only after he died, when she would be forced to join you and feel the understanding, forgiveness, and humility of so many hundreds of others who had lost as much or more than she had, would she finally belong. Only when she had lost the love she spent her whole life longing for, would she finally cease to be lonely.

  So I stayed with her now and gave her the old, simple comforts. I pressed my animal warmth to hers in the night. I let her rest her hand on my back as she walked beside me, to anchor herself and quiet her thoughts. I listened to her desperate questions. I gave her my enduring, wordless love.

  And I thanked her: for her friendship and for reminding me what love is, so that this ne
w story could be born.

  As the Prince grew nearer to his death, I spent more and more time by his side also, so that he began to glow so brightly that you almost saw me. In my presence, he was able to connect with you as he had never done before. In my presence, you were able to see his gestures and their meaning; you were able to understand the language of all the beings of the world and hear the messages I had carried from the elements. Those messages were for your hearts—for it is you, despite everything you have done, that the world longs to love. So I gave those messages to you, though most of you—at least the adults among you—did not know I was there.

  I listened to what Sky would not tell anyone, even his beloved. How he never knew that, all those years he had tried to help you in your dreams, he had also hated you. How he never knew how angry he still was, for the destruction of his homeland. How, until now, his love for you had been selfish: he had wanted for you to change. How he understood now, the way Hanum had felt: alone and without a people. He understood the bitterness, and he did not want to keep that in his heart any longer or continue to pass it on. He told me that he saw, now, how much you had lost. How you had lost your homes, too, and yet at the same time had never had a real home or even known what home was. How he pitied you. And how gradually, with all the effort of his being—and then later with relief and no effort at all—he forgave you.

  I kept speaking to you, in a language you only heard through the words and presence of Prince and Princess, and through the words of the animals and trees which you had never before understood. With every word I spoke, I gave a little bit of myself, until I had entered and become the world, and there was nothing of me left.

  Now I am only a memory, which will soon fade as well. I am the memory of that first moment when you felt your souls again, when the whole world changed.

  It was morning, and a quiet rain was falling. Do you remember? You stopped what you were doing. You remembered the promise of childhood—a certain taste, a certain smell, a certain way that molecules seemed to sparkle, a certain delicious ease in your belly. Pigeons alighted around you and bowed their smooth little heads. Two rats were speaking together in a gutter. A dog leaned against your legs, joyously breathing. A cat, to whom you had given a little scrap of that meager food you had, licked your hand.

  Then you looked at the person next to you, and you saw a god.

  Kite will dream of Mira, the girl, for a long time to come. But she is never again as pure and humanly close as she was in those nights she came to him in the forest for real, when he did not yet even know that she was real, and when he looked into her as into a deep well under a full moon on a wide black night. In his later dreams, which are only dreams after all, she keeps changing, and she touches him as she would never actually have done. She becomes less and less herself, and more and more a part of Kite and his dream of what woman will become to him in the future.

  Yet on his last night in the forest, less than a day’s walk from home, Kite dreams not of Mira but of a man he has never seen before.

  All day he has walked in near total silence with Delilah. This final ascent into the mountains is especially steep, and all her focus has lain in carrying herself forward step by step. Their way has been terribly slow since Dragon and Mira left them, for her exhaustion has weakened her so much, she no longer has the strength to pretend it isn’t killing her. She spoke to Kite only once on the first day, but with kindness in her voice, as if she could feel his sorrow and confusion.

  “We’ll see them again, Kite,” she said, and Kite was ashamed to feel tears break in tiny waves under his eyes, and he turned away. “So many times I’ve lost the ones I loved most, and it seems like they always have a way of coming back to me. It’s just been hard for me to realize I can’t control when or how.”

  Kite nodded, not trusting his voice. For days after, they hardly spoke, except to communicate the bare necessities of survival. Sometimes Kite, feeling helpless in the presence of her weakness, and not wanting to embarrass her by exposing her breathlessness with questions she would have to answer, tried to distract her with a few encouraging words about his home. But since he is not naturally much of a talker, he managed to fill only a few moments of the silence. Mira was constantly on his mind, and he knew now that Mira was Delilah’s sister, yet he could not bring himself to speak of her, nor could he imagine what he would say. So he distracted himself by listening to the forest and checking their direction again and again in his mind to make sure they were going the right way. He would never have doubted himself alone, but somehow the responsibility of getting Delilah home before she collapsed made him unsure.

  In between worrying about Delilah and wishing he could glance at his map again without worrying her, Kite thought about Mira some more. He thought about what she told him in those few precious days when she walked beside him, and proved to him that she was no dream. Each of her hesitant words was so carefully tongued, he could taste their edges; he could hear the shapes her lips made in pronouncing them. She did not speak many words to him, but each one felt like a gift whose joy would keep him awake all night. She told him she had been hiding in the form of a magical creature, but that he had helped her to release that form and be human again. She said it without any pride or drama, so that Kite could not help but believe her. She told him that, when he saw the white horse, she was there in that presence: that animal held her soul in safekeeping. Kite did not understand what she meant by that, but in the glow of her anything seemed possible to him. That this animal which was connected with her should also be connected with his memory of Lonely made utter sense to him. For in both of those women, those two mysteries—though he had lost them and would perhaps never see either one of them again—there lay, for him, all the potential of his own future and the future of the world. That was something which he could not explain but knew, and he did not mind that.

  Tonight he and Delilah bed down by a great waterfall that Kite has never seen before. He did not come this way, on his way down. He knows they are not far from home now, but the way from here is not obvious, and Delilah does not have the strength or the will for walking along the bottom of the ridge in search of some steep path up. So they stop, though the sun has not yet set. Kite leaves her, though it makes him uneasy to do so, and goes in search of food. He returns after dark with a rabbit, terrified for some reason that something might have happened to her in his absence, but he finds her in a deep sleep right where he left her. He cooks and eats alone and saves the rest to give her later, for when he nudges her she only murmurs fitfully and falls straight back into oblivion.

  Though it’s very late now, Kite cannot sleep for a long time. He watches the moon rise, almost full. He thinks of his family, and wonders what they will say when they see him. Will he seem as different as he feels? He is happy to be coming home, and yet he is frightened too, as if once he enters again into the daily life of his family, he might lose everything he gained. Nor can he define what he’s gained. It feels elusive, and he is not entirely sure that it even belongs to him.

  In his dream, he is frustrated and mad like he felt sometimes when he was a boy, before he went to the City. But in the dream he is outside the City Center walls, pounding on the doors.

  “Let me in!” he cries. “I know something. I have something to tell you.”

  The voice on the other side of the wall—a serious, quiet male voice—asks, “What is your name?”

  “Kite.”

  “But your mother,” says the voice, “named you Malachite.”

  And Kite’s heart falls with the disappointment of a child, as if he has been told that his great journey to the City was all in his head and never happened at all. It seems to him that this is the reason he cannot get in, that his mother insists on this name she gave him, will not let him change it, and will not let him free. “No!” he yells, pounding his fist on the door in fury. “I am Kite! Why won’t she listen? Why does she still
call me Malachite? Why?”

  Then the door opens, and this tall young man steps out, whom Kite has never seen. Yet he looks as real as Mira did, when Mira appeared, and turned out not to be a dream after all.

  “Because your mother holds to the past,” answers the man calmly. “Because she wants to honor what is given from our past, from our ancestors.”

  The man is wearing a skirt of long black and white bird feathers, and his slim chest is bare. When Kite looks into his eyes, he can see the sky, and it frightens him. The man does not look fully human, and yet his voice, now, is kind. Kite is surprised because he realizes, in the dream, that this man is the true inhabitant of the City Center, and he wonders how he never saw this before. Of course those voices in the dark were not real. Of course they were not the answer.

  “We hold onto our past,” the man continues, “because we have lost so much.”

  Then he turns around, and beyond him, Kite sees now not the steel building but a field of green water, and the shadows of giant trees.

  “I thought,” says the man, “that by holding my past a secret, closing my heart even to the one I loved most, I could somehow keep part of it for myself and not lose everything. I thought that the way we lived long ago was the only right way to live, and that no one else would ever understand. But now I see that change comes, whether I will it or not.”

  And as Kite looks at the curves of the trees, they seem also to be the walls of strange buildings—buildings at once earthy and richly textured like his own home, and shiny and grand like the buildings of the City. What he thought were rivers of water through avenues of reeds seem at once to be the streets of a city he has never seen, intimate and full of secret passageways into gardens, and what he thought were wading white birds seem at once to be white lanterns carried by dancing people. Suddenly he feels a great urgency to enter into that green growing place, into that darkness and into that light. For in its depths he thinks he sees that white horse wandering, and he wants to follow her, for the greatest magic he has known in his life is carried somehow within her, and she is his guide into the future.