by Tom Crockett
She tried this circle as well. The energy was cooler and greener here. The story Téves had told her of Oriolis flooded back over her as vivid and alive as when she’d first heard it. Mai-Ling was clearly pleased that Marina could sense the flavors of energy so distinctly.
She pulled Marina along anxiously to the third circle.
“This is Molten Dreams,” she announced.
Each of the stones that formed this circle was chipped and crudely, but effectively, carved into a human form. There were female forms and male forms, though they did not alternate evenly. Marina asked if she could pick one up. They were light, she noticed, almost porous. “It’s lava flow,” Mai-Ling offered. “It’s old, but I know where to find it.”
“They’re beautiful,” Marina said as she set the stone back in place. Mai-Ling adjusted it compulsively with her toe.
Marina didn’t need to ask or wait to be invited. She stepped inside the circle. This energy was more refined. Autumnal, Marina thought, though she did not know why. It was an energy for slowing down, for going to sleep. It was hard to step outside of this current. She could easily let herself be swept up in it.
The fourth of Mai-Ling’s circles was called Earth Work, and it was deceptively simple. It also broke the pattern in that it was not truly a circle. It was a hexagram defined by five sets of five river stones. Each set of stones was wrapped or decorated differently.
Mai-Ling pulled Marina inside the hexagram and made her sit. It was a small form and Mai-Ling knelt behind Marina, directing her hands to each of the five sides. The side they began with had stones wrapped almost completely in the petals of different colored flowers. These petals had dried and shrunk, molding to the stone like a rainbow skin. The second line was made up of smaller stones interpenetrating carefully carved wooden stakes that had been sharpened at both ends. They looked sinister and weaponlike. The third side had stones bundled in reed jackets and tied with red grasses. They looked like little samurai warriors dressed for war in bamboo armor. The fourth side was composed of standing stones, gray obelisks that looked like Stonehenge, simple and unadorned. The last side was made up of five rounded, heart-shaped stones. Each stone had been carefully split in half then bound back together with dried vines.
The energy within the hexagram was erratic but personal. It seemed to be telling Marina things about Mai-Ling. Each side was a code, Marina was convinced, but she didn’t have the key. She could not quite get inside it.
For the final stone circle, Mai-Ling led Marina back to the stream that ran past the hut and over the waterfall.
This circle, Spilling Water, she called it, was built of large stones. Some undoubtedly had been found in place, Marina couldn’t imagine Mai-Ling moving them, but others had been rolled, pushed, or cajoled into place in such a pattern as to form a circle of steps ranging from about three feet high to ground level. On each stone step was one of Mai-Ling’s bowls, each with a tiny hole drilled into its side. Again Mai-Ling pulled her into the circle and made her sit.
“Close your eyes,” she said. “Just listen.”
Marina saw her dip a ladle into a tiny pool of water and pour this into the highest of her little wood bowls before she closed her eyes. The water trickled from bowl to bowl creating a strange but beautiful musical scale. The sound and the energy spiraled around her. It took her down and brought her back up again. She still imagined she heard the water long after Mai-Ling had stopped refilling the first bowl. Mai-Ling did not rush her from this last experience, but let her sit until she was ready to get up.
“They’re so beautiful,” Marina said as they walked back to the hut. “Why do you build them, though? Where do they come from?”
Mai-Ling’s stone circles did something to the energy patterns that Marina had learned only recently to sense. They channeled and smoothed out the wild energy. They amplified it and made it more intense.
“I don’t know. I do them because I can, I suppose. I do them to celebrate and honor the energy.” Marina felt that Mai-Ling was only telling her half the truth. There was another reason, a deeper more significant reason. “They’re my altars.” This, Marina felt, was closer to the truth but still not entirely the truth. “Anyway, you should tell me why I build them.” Marina didn’t understand this challenge, but she couldn’t forget it, either.
* * *
That night Mai-Ling came to her again. She had fallen asleep this time and did not see Mai-Ling arrange the little bowls in a circle around where she slept. She came awake slowly to the warm press of Mai-Ling’s body and the light stroke of her hand.
She seemed again to have no agenda beyond comforting and intimate touch. Marina wondered if this was a slow acclimation, a slide into seduction. She invented boundaries in her drowsy mind. She imagined borders on her body, which, if crossed, would require some sort of defense, but she had not much strength to resist this soft invader. In the morning she could not recall if any of her borders had, in fact, been crossed.
Time passed thickly and slowly with Mai-Ling. They spent their days as sisters, fellow artists, explorers. Marina taught Mai-Ling to see like a photographer, even though they had no camera with which to practice. Mai-Ling taught Marina the sacred arts of wrapping and arranging.
If they were lovers by night, Marina could never recall it in the morning. She had delicious dreams with Mai-Ling beside her—moist, floating, water dreams, but nothing hard, specific, anatomical.
Marina began to experiment with her own altar. She tried careful arrangements of the sacred artifacts of her journey. She had told Mai-Ling, that for her, an altar would need to be portable. She needed to define her own sacred space, her own sanctuary wherever she found herself. Mai-Ling carved a little wooden box for her to carry her stone from the mirror pool, her pendulum, and the circular stone Rafael had given her. The leather cord had broken in her fall so she didn’t wear it now, but it was no less important. She still wore the coral and pearl anklet, but took it off at night and kept it on her altar. When Marina began to play with the little branch as a way of supporting both the anklet and the pendulum, Mai-Ling carved a hole in the box to support it as a stand.
Mai-Ling also surprised her one day with a rich brown bowl, striated with blond tones and inlaid with mother of pearl. It too joined her altar.
She found that the elements of her altar were a kind of secret language that only she understood. The anklet threaded around the top of the little branch reminded her of balance and cautioned her against her propensity for the dark side of things. The stone circle made her think of a little lenseless magnifying glass. Live in the moment and pay attention to the details, it told her. If she twisted the shiny black pebble from the mirror pool just right she could see different reflections of herself that reminded her of her own mother, her childhood, and other women inside her that needed to be honored and cared for. The pendulum suspended from the branch encouraged her in slow spiral dances to keep an open heart and search for the patterns. The branch itself was a sign of her strength and her will. She would never again slide helplessly into death and despair. She would not seek death out, but neither was she afraid of it. Mai-Ling’s cup she felt was important, but she did not yet understand the language it spoke.
To her collection of sacred symbols, Marina added flowers, found stones, seed pods, feathers, candles. Mai-Ling gave her two little bottles of essential oils, one the vanilla, cinnamon, and cloves mixture, the other a light, floral smell with an overtone of moss and ferns. This second scent she began to wear regularly, touching it to her ankles, wrists, and the hollow of her neck. She did this almost unconsciously, and when she thought about it, she wondered who she was doing it for. Was this for Mai-Ling? she wondered. Was she playing a part in her own seduction? She’d always associated perfumes and scents with something put on for others, but this oil she wore for herself. She liked the subtle scent around her.
Gradually she began to develop little rituals for her altar. She would take the placement of no single object for gra
nted. Each day she would spend some time with her altar. She would not let dust settle long on any of her sacred treasures. She cleaned them each day with a soft cloth. She replaced the flowers as they wilted. She picked up each object and held it for a few moments, feeling its particular energy and spirit. As she replaced each object, she tried it in a new position or orientation until she felt it was right. Her altar was dynamic, not static. Some of her found things spent only a short time on her altar before being carefully and thoughtfully returned to the forest.
These rituals reinforced positive patterns of energy, building up her focus and will. The rituals and then the altar itself calmed her and protected her. It offered her a secret garden into which she could always escape for a moment’s respite.
“How do you think a cathedral like Chartres can resonate with such power?” Mai-Ling asked her one day. “It’s nothing more than an altar on a grand scale. Some Druid or perhaps some early European shaman felt the energy that resonated from a certain site. That shaman marked the site with stones. Later a priestess of some lost goddess religion would replace the stones with a sacrificial slab. Druids would plant a grove of trees around it, and Romans would dedicate it to the Goddess Diana. Later, Christians would usurp the site and build their churches and cathedrals over it.
“Over time, all the devotional energy absorbed by that site gives it an immense and transformative power. It comes to have a life of its own. I believe this is how our altars work. They focus our energy through ritual and repetition.”
That night Marina dreamed of sacred groves and standing stones. She saw Mai-Ling as a priestess, a shaman, a wise woman celebrated and honored by her tribe. She saw Mai-Ling burned at the stake for witchcraft. The dreams ran on into other dreams, some inviting, others disturbing, but the blast of a ship’s steam horn woke her in the dark night. She was alone. Mai-Ling had not come to her. She listened for Mai-Ling’s breathing across the room. It was arrhythmic, not the steady breath of sleep.
Marina got up and went to her. Her wooden bowls were spread around her in a sacred circle. Marina crossed over them and knelt by Mai-Ling. She lay on her side with her back to Marina. She was crying. Marina could see the tears glinting even in the darkness. She stroked Mai-Ling’s soft hair and whispered, “What is it?”
Mai-Ling rolled onto her back in the dim light. She was naked and had no sheet over her. “You will leave tomorrow, and you still haven’t told me why I build the circles.”
“You told me you build them to honor the energy. You taught me what altars and sacred spaces are for.” Marina was confused.
“But why do I build them? Why am I stuck here? Why can I go no further than this?” Mai-Ling’s hand went of its own volition to the scar on her face.
Marina had seen her do this hundreds of times, but this time she caught Mai-Ling’s hand and stopped her. With her own hand, Marina caressed the raised white burn scar. Mai-Ling winced, but not from pain. Marina bent and kissed the scarred place, but she did not immediately pull her lips away. She let her lips feel the irregular surface. She let her tongue gently taste the old wound.
Images startled her like electrical current. A man Mai-Ling had loved had done this to her. Rafael had told Marina that much. Mai-Ling had never spoken of it. Now Marina saw the man. It was no accident, no drunken rage. It was sober and deliberate and evil. She’d loved him completely with a full and open heart, and he’d surprised her just as completely with his cruelty. When he’d tired of what she gave willingly, he took still more from her. He’d raped her and marked her with a knife heated to a red glow in a candle’s flame. He might just as well have torn out her heart and sewn up her chest, for there was no trust left in her.
She could love. She had learned that after death. Turtle Island had helped Mai-Ling find her heart again, but she was stuck here and could not go forward.
Marina pressed her lips to the burn scar once again.
“You build the circles from fear. That’s why you can’t move on.” Marina whispered this in Mai-Ling’s ear, soft like a lover’s secret. She was not sure where her answer came from, but she knew it was true as she heard herself say it. “You are keeping this alive.” She kissed Mai-Ling’s scar as she said “this.” “You are so much more than this wound.” Marina ran her hand lightly along Mai-Ling’s cheek, over her throat, across her small breasts, smooth stomach, past the silken juncture of her thighs, as far as she could reach. She could not recall if she had ever touched Mai-Ling like this before. It did not feel familiar.
“Let go of this pain.” One last time she kissed the scar, then she kissed Mai-Ling’s lips. They were soft and tasted of salt tears. It reminded her of a dream that now seemed long past. If Mai-Ling had asked her at that moment, she would have made love to her. She would have done it with abandon and with a full heart. She would have wrapped herself around her, found ways to be inside her. She would have held nothing back.
And if Mai-Ling had asked her at that moment she would have promised never to leave her.
But Mai-Ling asked for neither of these things.
“Hold me,” she whispered. “Sleep beside me one more time.”
And so Marina curled up beside Mai-Ling and slept. She did not hear Mai-Ling say, “Yes, my love, you will leave me in the morning,” or “don’t ever forget me.”
She fell asleep and dreamed of ships gliding through the night.
CHAPTER 7—TURTLE DREAMS
Orientation.
Knowing one’s place in time and space.
There’s a name for it. They say that turtles are somatic navigators—that they feel their way from island to island—but this is not a small answer to the question of how turtles find their way. It’s a big answer, like God or the uncertainty principle. Sea turtles may be both particle and wave, knowing intimately what no outside observer might.
If you wake me from my sea turtle dream to ask me my position, I will surely lose my course. And if you draw me up in great nets to ask me of my course, do not be surprised if, for a moment, I do not know where I am.
Marina did indeed leave the next morning. She woke early and saw a ship far off on the horizon. It was not the ship for her, but she knew it was a sign. The world of the living was calling her.
Mai-Ling was quiet as they ate breakfast and had their morning tea. She said nothing about Marina’s leaving, though they both knew it was inevitable.
Mai-Ling was sad but also light. There was an unusual sense of peace about her. She tied back her hair with a scrap of red silk, exposing her whole face in a way she’d never done before. Marina said nothing about this, but did notice that she didn’t touch her scar all morning.
After breakfast, when they might have gone off to work together on one of Mai-Ling’s circles, they were both suddenly awkward around each other. Mai-Ling spoke first.
“I would say let me help you pack, but you have so little to take with you that it seems silly.” Marina was surprised but grateful that Mai-Ling was able to joke about it. “Do you have anything to pack things into?”
Even Marina laughed at that. “I have my shoulder bag,” she said in mock defiance. She looked down and realized she was wearing Mai-Ling’s clothes. She had worn different pieces of Mai-Ling’s clothing during her stay, but today, without really thinking about it, she’d wrapped the yellow silk skirt around her hips and pulled on the red and orange patterned top, the clothes Mai-Ling had first given her.
“Keep them,” Mai-Ling said, anticipating Marina’s dilemma. “They suit you.”
Marina only had one other piece of clothing: the colorful woven jacket that Rafael had given her. Mai-Ling had washed it, and it had come close to clean. Mai-Ling had taken to wearing it in the evenings when it got cooler. She said she could smell both Marina and Rafael on it. It was hanging on a peg near where Marina slept. She took it down and gave it to Mai-Ling. “I have so little to give. I wish I could give you more.”
“You’ve given me plenty,” Mai-Ling said, as she took the jacket an
d hugged it to her chest. “I think perhaps I will follow you soon.”
“Come with me now!” Marina said excitedly. She had wanted to say this before but was unsure how Mai-Ling might respond. “You don’t need these circles anymore. Come with me, build new ones.” She was not sure what she was asking or offering, but Mai-Ling interrupted her.
“You know I can’t. I’m almost there but just not yet. I’ll come soon enough.”
“I could wait for you.”
“No, you can’t . . . any more than I can hold you here.”
“Perhaps we could find each other, you know . . . after.”
Mai-Ling knelt near Marina’s altar and took the string of coral and black pearls from the little branch it decorated. She took Marina’s foot in her lap and began tying it around her ankle. “If we are meant to find each other again, I think we will . . . but I don’t think we should seek each other out.” Marina did not answer. She knew that, hard as it was for her to say this, Mai-Ling was speaking from her heart. “It will be enough to see your photographs and read your name. And perhaps you will come across one of my circles in your travels.”
Marina sensed the wisdom in this as almost a palpable thing. There was really nothing else to be said. She packed her stones and her pendulum in the little box Mai-Ling had carved. She wrapped the inlaid bowl and the bottles of essential oils in little scraps of silk. She chose some of the feathers and leaves and one of the pebbles she’d found. She put all of this carefully into her shoulder bag and slung it over shoulder. Mai-Ling helped her tie the little branch onto the bag so that it didn’t poke her or stick out awkwardly as she walked.