by Tom Crockett
“I’m sorry for intruding, but when I found you . . . Well, you were pretty dirty and disheveled. I couldn’t tell what were injuries and what was just soil. I couldn’t seem to wake you, so I put you on a blanket and dragged you here. I’m afraid I bathed you and combed out your hair in the little pool. I didn’t know what else to do. Touch is the only healing tool I have, so . . .”
“No. Thank you. Really. I don’t know what I have to be embarrassed about. I’ve worn little more than that jacket since I came here. I’m sure you did what you thought was right.”
“I washed the jacket,” Mai-Ling offered, “but it’s pretty torn up. It looks like you had a bad fall.”
“I don’t remember much of it. Have I broken anything?”
“I don’t think so. Your ankle was swollen, you had some bruised ribs and a cut on the back of your head, but nothing else I can find.”
Marina blushed again to think that she had been so carefully inspected while unconscious, but she supposed she would have done the same thing.
“How long?” Marina did not need to finish her sentence.
“I found you yesterday morning. That’s a day and a half. You were in one of my stone circles.”
“Your what?”
“Stone circles. They’re my little altars. I’ve laid them out in different places around here.”
Marina pinned the silk across her chest with her arms and leaned up on her elbows. Her head pounded and for a moment she saw flashing lights, but it passed quickly. She looked around.
She was in a structure that looked much the way Rafael’s hut had looked, except that there were woven reed blinds that unrolled to the floor, creating translucent walls on some sides. Some of these blinds were rolled up, and she saw a stream-fed pool outside that trapped water temporarily before it plunged over a far edge. She could hear the splashing of a waterfall. Beyond the pool the landscape dropped away sharply and she could see the tops of the trees that flowed gracefully down to the sea.
“I fell,” Marina said, remembering. “I had come over the mountain, the volcano, after dark. I had made it, but something chased me. I got as far as the tree line, then I must have tripped and hit my head.”
“You got farther than just the tree line,” Mai-Ling corrected her gently. “It’s a long way from here to there.”
Marina was confused. Was she remembering correctly? She had dreamed of being picked up and carried, but that was after Chechnya, wasn’t it? Thinking about it made her head hurt more.
There were woven mats with pillows on the rough plank floor. There were also a number of low tables at the height for sitting and working on the floor. One of the tables had pieces of wood and simple hand tools for cutting, carving, and sanding. Another of the tables had candles, flowers, fruit, and colored stones in little wooden bowls. She recognized the wooden bowls. Rafael had said that Mai-Ling carved the beautiful vessels. There were cabinets and boxes as well. It seemed that Mai-Ling had possessions.
Marina saw her own possessions. Her shoulder pouch was beside her. Neatly arranged in little wooden bowls were her ankle bracelet of coral and black pearl and her circular stone from Rafael. Beside them was the little branch she had carried out of the volcano. She assumed her other things, the stone from the mirror pool and Téves’s pendulum, were in the pouch. They were few and simple treasures, but they were all she had. Each object contained the essence of so much experience.
She sat up and drew her legs into a cross-legged position. She winced at the pain in her tender ankle and the silk cover slipped. She covered herself again, trying not to appear self-conscious.
Mai-Ling stood up in a single rocking motion—forward, to tuck her toes, back to shift her weight, and then straight up. She was wearing a pale pink shirt of silk, with short sleeves and tiny cowry-shell buttons. Her midriff was bare and smooth in the gap between shirt and skirt. Low about her hips she had wrapped and tied a piece of turquoise and jade green silk. She was a small woman and the wrapped skirt hung straight from her hips. She wore no jewelry that Marina could see.
She went to one of the cabinets and opened it. She pulled something out and brought it to Marina. It was another silk piece. This one was block-printed in a subtle pattern of orange and black over red silk. Marina slipped it on over her head. Thin little straps held it up, leaving her shoulders bare. It felt good against her skin and her breasts glided against the fabric. She was grateful that it was not too small. She was larger than Mai-Ling and couldn’t imagine her wearing this.
“Where do you get these clothes?” she asked, hoping she wasn’t being rude.
“I sometimes see people from the lower island. I trade my bowls for what I need.” Mai-Ling gestured in the direction of the pool and the view beyond.
“There are other people, then?”
“Yes, not far, maybe half a day’s walk. Can you stand up? I’ll show you how to tie this on.” She lifted the long, yellow silk square in her hand.
Marina found that she could stand up. Her ankle did hurt, but it was more bruised than sprained. Putting weight on it didn’t make it hurt any more. She let Mai-Ling take the silk from her and once again she was self-conscious about standing there only half-covered.
But Mai-Ling quickly wrapped the square of yellow silk low around Marina’s hips several times, tying and tucking it intricately. She undid it and redid it several times so Marina could study the technique. Finally she let Marina try it. The tying went well but the tucking was not as graceful. Still, in the end, she’d managed it and felt proud of herself.
Standing, Marina noticed her reflection in an old scratched mirror that leaned against one of the support posts for the hut. She turned and looked at herself. She was not used to seeing herself in such bright colors. For years her wardrobe had been utilitarian khaki, warm subtle earthtones, black or gray. Now I look like an Indian princess. . . . Or a temple prostitute, she thought, though she caught herself smiling to think this. There is, after all, a goddess within me. Shakti would approve. The red, orange, and saffron yellow were sensual, hot colors against her skin. She had a fuller figure than Mai-Ling and the skirt emphasized the curve of her hips.
There were other changes, though. She’d seen herself reflected in still pools as she traveled over the island, and she had grown used to the almost-new skin she’d had after emerging from the sand and seaweed wrap on the beach. Now her skin was the skin she recognized, the skin she had grown into over the years. She walked close to the mirror. She could see the little lines again, and some of the scars had returned, but there was also something different. Something illuminated her from the inside now. Yes, the little lines around her eyes had returned, but she had never much minded them anyway. Now, however, her eyes seemed to sparkle. She looked hard at herself and liked what she saw.
“I’ve always hated mirrors,” Mai-Ling volunteered, as if she thought Marina was about to make some self-deprecating remark. Rafael had said something about Mai-Ling, something about how she saw herself. Marina looked at Mai-Ling in the mirror and caught a subtle brushing of the hand as Mai-Ling instinctively touched the scar by her eye. She has touched that scar a thousand times a day, Marina thought. She’s keeping it alive. She wasn’t sure where this observation came from. It seemed to spring up suddenly in her.
“Well, how do I look?” she asked, changing the subject. She twirled once to feel how the fabric moved. Despite the little aches and pains of her fall, she felt like a young girl again, trying on clothes with a best friend.
“Beautiful,” Mai-Ling said softly, but the way she said it made Marina feel sad.
They ate a meal together and afterward they sat on stones by the little pool and talked as the sun began to descend behind the volcano. Marina was amazed that she had come so far down the trail before falling. It seemed much farther than she remembered. She also looked out and down to what Mai-Ling called the lower island.
The same ring of white coral that she had seen from her vantage point high on the western face
of the volcano continued around to the eastern side of the island. There appeared to be a little channel of deep blue that cut irregularly through the coral near the farthest eastern point of the island, but otherwise the island was well defended. She could see some flickering lights far below, but if there were buildings down there she couldn’t see them.
“What’s down there?” Marina asked. She’d hiked up her skirt to let her feet dangle in the cool water of the pool. It felt soothing to soak her ankle.
“I don’t know. I’ve not been down there.” There was nothing simple about this answer, but Marina proceeded cautiously.
“Don’t you want to go on?” Marina assumed that if Mai-Ling was, as Rafael had said, like her, she would understand what this question meant.
“I’m not . . . I don’t think I’m ready yet. You’ll understand when you get closer.”
“Closer?”
“Closer to the world of the living.”
There, Marina thought, Mai-Ling had broached the subject. They had been circling the topic carefully. Now there was an opening.
“I thought once I crossed the summit I would be back in the world of the living.”
“I thought that, too, but I think we are still in the shadows here. We are close, but we have not crossed some final threshold. We are not ghosts exactly, more like fairies.” Mai-Ling paused a moment, then continued. “People from the lower island do occasionally wander up here. If I want them to see me, I can be real and solid, but if I sit very still in one of my circles, they can pass right by and not see me.” Again she seemed to think for a moment, then added. “Except children. I can’t seem to hide from children.” They were both silent for a while, then Marina spoke.
“Was it hard for you,” she gestured at the volcano, now silhouetted by the sun, “the crossing?”
Mai-Ling shuddered and looked away. Again Marina saw her fingers unconsciously trace the scar beneath her hair. Marina noticed that Mai-Ling kept her straight black hair pulled back behind her left ear, revealing the beautiful shape of her face, but on the right it fell so far forward as to almost hide her right eye. Done purposefully, it would have been a mysterious and seductive style, but it seemed only sad in this situation. What little she could see of the scar was not that dramatic or disfiguring. Marina suspected that, like an iceberg, the true scar ran much deeper than it appeared.
Marina changed the subject.
“Rafael said that you had a turtle tattoo when he met you.”
“Yes.” Mai-Ling brightened. “The Turtle Mother gave it to me. It’s gone now though. Did you have one?”
“Yes.” Marina touched her scalp. “It was headed this way last time I saw it. But it was pretty faded by that point.”
“I didn’t see it when I washed your hair.”
They were both quiet for a moment, vaguely uncomfortable.
Then they compared stories. They did this carefully, discussing the events of their journeys without touching on the content or the significance of those events. Mai-Ling did not say how she came to Turtle Island, but Rafael had said that she had slit her wrists and Marina did not push her for more details than she was willing to volunteer. She had not been paralyzed as Marina had, but she spent several days wandering blind along the beach. An old woman had helped her regain her sight, an old woman with a turtle tattoo on her back. Mai-Ling had named her Turtle Mother. She did not recall a younger version of the woman.
“With my sight back,” Mai-Ling continued, “I wandered until I found an abandoned hut. There was a loom and different tools in the hut, so, to pass the time, I began to carve little wooden bowls. In life I’d been a sculptor, but after death I had no desire to carve anything in the image of anything else. I carved little bowls more as a meditative practice, trying to find the bowl inside the burls and chunks of wood I found in the forest around me. I carved more bowls than I could use, so I set some afloat on the stream and imagined them being carried out to sea. Perhaps, I thought one would find its way back to the land of the living.”
She’d burned the remaining bowls in little ceremonial fires. It was one of these fires that had brought Rafael to her. They’d become lovers. She admitted that. She helped him figure out how to work the loom, and though she had no interest in weaving, he seemed to take to it well. He’d been angry then and sometimes he would rage against death, but gradually he grew to understand his fate. She’d taught him to mix and prepare essential oils and to heal with his hands through massage. She’d brought these gifts with her into death.
She enjoyed Rafael’s company, but he was haunted by the sins of his life and found it hard to relax his vigilance. In time, she came to understand that she was to move on, even though she knew Rafael was not yet ready.
She took only her tools when she left and from that point, her experiences and Marina’s diverged dramatically. Mai-Ling described wandering aimlessly for days, unsure of her path, quite lost and despondent. She spoke of a long, dark cavern and a torture of mirrors. She dreamed and redreamed her life, never able to change a thing or wake from the dream. She did not tell Marina the nature of any of the events she alluded to reliving, but it distressed her even now to recall it.
Marina asked her if, at the time, she’d understood that she might work her way back to the living as she crossed the island. Yes, she answered, she understood that was an option, but it had not been what motivated her to continue.
Had she been aware of learning anything important on her journey? Marina asked. Marina herself had been keenly aware of what she was learning, was in fact, hungry to learn. Yes, Mai-Ling answered, she’d been aware of coming to new understandings, but she admitted also that she was still struggling to integrate what she’d learned.
“I would not do this again,” Mai-Ling held up her wrists for Marina to see. There were two neat scars running lengthwise up the insides of her wrists, following the veins. This had not been a cry for help or an accident, Marina observed silently. Mai-Ling had wanted to die and knew how to do it. “But I don’t seem to know how to go back yet.”
Marina appreciated Mai-Ling’s honesty. She herself, even in her recently kindled passion to return to the world of the living, had not really thought about what it meant.
“So here I sit and wait, building my circles by day, watching the lights of the living at night. I’m waiting for a sign, I guess.” She traced the scar again without thinking.
* * *
Later, in the dark, Mai-Ling came to sleep beside Marina. At first Marina did not understand what was happening. Mai-Ling carefully arranged what looked like a set of her wooden bowls in a ritual circle around Marina. Then she slipped silently beneath the light, cotton sheet and pressed her smooth body against Marina’s.
Marina had never had a woman as a lover. She didn’t want to hurt Mai-Ling’s feelings. Mai-Ling might have saved her from losing her chance at life. She was grateful, but uncomfortable. What would be done to her? Marina wondered. What would she be expected to do?
But Mai-Ling merely nuzzled close to Marina, cupping her breast lightly, as if holding onto something secure, and fell asleep. After a time, Marina relaxed, timing her breathing to Mai-Ling’s. She seems so fragile, Marina thought, for someone who’s made it this far. Marina did not think of herself as fragile, but then she’d never seen herself that way. Mai-Ling was like an unfired clay teacup. The beauty of the form, the potential, was there, but a strong or clumsy hand could still break her. She could not yet hold tea, or realize her purpose.
* * *
In the morning, Mai-Ling was not beside her and the bowls were gone as well.
Marina washed and pulled on her bright silk top. She was pleased with her ability to tie on the yellow skirt herself. She found a brush and brushed her hair. There were almost no tangles, which she found unusual, until she remembered that Mai-Ling had washed and combed out her hair while cleaning the cut on her scalp. She felt the place where she’d struck her head and decided that it must have been a small cut, for it was
nearly healed over.
Mai-Ling returned with fresh fruit, and they ate breakfast together, neither one mentioning the previous night.
“Would you like to see my circles?” Mai-Ling asked after they’d finished eating. “I mean, do you think you can go for a walk?”
“Actually, I think it would be good for me to walk. But what are these circles? You’ve mentioned them several times. Did you say you built them?”
“It would be easier to show you,” she said, pulling Marina to her feet.
As they walked through the forest, Marina practiced seeing the auras of the trees. It was not easy at first. It did not come as naturally as it had with Téves in Adytum Wood, but gradually it came back to her. She tried to talk to Mai-Ling about it, but Mai-Ling did not seem to understand that there was something that could be seen. She seemed, however, to feel the energy in some way, because wherever Marina detected the magical patterns in the filtering sunlight, she found that Mai-Ling had built a stone circle there. Her gift, it seemed, drew her to the places as if by magnetic attraction.
The first circle they came to, Mai-Ling called Dragon’s Heart. It was composed of smooth river stones painted with tiny mythical creatures. Marina got on her hands and knees to inspect the stones. The detail was incredible. Most of the stones had images of dragons painted in red and orange and yellow and gold. But some had other creatures Marina could not identify. Between each of the large stones were little hollows dug in the ground. In each hollow was one of Mai-Ling’s little bowls. The bowls were charred and filled with ash, but still held their shape.
“Go ahead, step inside,” Mai-Ling said.
Marina did, and she felt the change immediately. It was almost as powerful as the old trees that had spoken to her in Adytum Wood. Energy coursed and crackled through her. For the first time Marina wondered if Mai-Ling was as fragile as she had supposed.
The second circle Mai-Ling brought Marina to was one she called Bone Music. It was constructed of twelve small wooden tripods, each supporting three polished black stones. The stones sat up off the ground in their tripods, each stone smaller than the one beneath it. Upon close inspection, Marina noticed that between each stone was a pressed green leaf. The wooden tripods were lashed together with braided grass cord, and they’d been stripped of their bark so that they looked as white as bleached bone.