by Randy Mixter
Neither spoke as they lay in the grass. Somewhere, close by, a guitar strummed. Alex closed his eyes and gave himself to the music. A girl was singing in the distance, so far away that he could not make out the words of the song. There was something about the melody, something familiar. He tried to concentrate on the voice and the guitar, but his mind was spellbound by the smoke he had inhaled, and would not cooperate.
He was ready to resign himself in futility when the wind shifted. It moved down the hill, carrying the song with it.
Alex sat up. He had heard this song before. He remembered it from a dream he had earlier in the year. The wind swirled playfully about him as he rose to his feet. He turned and looked up to the very top of the hill.
At first, the brightness of an ebbing sun obscured the dancer on the hill. Then she moved into the shadow of a solitary tree and he was finally able to see her outlined on the sky. He could see her long blond hair and the flowers about her head. She wore a long white dress that exposed her arms and shoulders and ended at her bare feet.
Now he remembered his dream. He remembered this girl and this song. He walked slowly toward her so as not to agitate his fragile thoughts. The song became louder as he moved. This was the girl and the song of his dream. He was sure of it now.
He was almost close enough to see her face, just another step or two would do the trick. She had stopped dancing now. He could not yet see her eyes in the shadows, but he could feel them. They seemed to be looking at him; looking through him. She slowly raised both arms until they were at shoulder level. Her hands opened to the air and she lowered her head. Alex stopped and looked at her. He was still too far away to see her face clearly. She raised her head and again faced him and he sensed she was smiling. So you came, his mind said to him in a voice he had only heard once before. They said you would and you did.
“Where you going my friend?” he heard Chick ask from somewhere behind him. He turned to tell Chick that he had seen the girl of his dream, and that she was here, standing just beyond his reach. He felt the need to get closer to her. He had to see her face. He wanted to ask her how she could speak inside his head. He desperately needed to know these things, and then he would tell Chick everything. He turned into the sun and she was gone. At the crest of the hill, a tree stood alone. Its branches giving shade to grass only. The song was gone too. The air about him hummed with words and laughter, but not a single note of the song remained.
“We had better start heading back now champ.” Chick had moved next to him. “It’s getting close to supper time, and I don’t know about you, but I could eat a horse.”
A WORLD OF MAGIC
On the way back to the house, he related his dream to Chick. When he began to describe the girl on the hill, Chick stopped him.
“It sounds like you saw Sarah. She’s one of ours. Been living at the house for a couple of months. She loves to dance at the top of the hill. Same spot all the time. She rarely does it during the day though.”
“Sarah,” he said. Alex liked the way the name felt on his tongue and in his head. “She lives at the house?”
“She does, but, I must warn you, she’s very much a free spirit. I have seen many of my brothers try to move into her space. Most by now have given up on what they perceived as being a hopeless cause.”
Chick glanced at his companion, who had resumed his awkward gait, and could not help but feel a twinge of pity. The writer had been here less than a day and already had sore feet, in addition to his soon to be broken heart.
“Take a breather. I’ll give you a tip, only to delay the sting of rejection by a day or two.”
Alex gratefully stopped walking and gave his full attention to his newfound friend.
“At night, before their bedtime, Sarah will tell the three children of the house a story. Sometimes another woman or two will join her but never any of the men. It might be beneficial for you to sit in at storytelling time.”
“Why haven’t any of the other guys tried that?” Alex asked as they resumed their walk.
“Because it’s storytelling time,” Chick replied as they continued their walk.
They arrived at the house on Ashbury Street shortly after six in the evening. Alex relied on his watch because Chick refused to wear one. Chick, in fact, had pressed hard during the day for Alex to lose his. “Keeping track of time is a businessman’s burden,” he said at one point. “Let the day flow into the night on its own accord. That is the natural way of things. Step out of the world of time and into the world of magic.”
His heartfelt speech affected Alex to the extent of moving the object of scorn from his wrist to his pocket.
The difference in the house between the time they left it and now was quite amazing. The place virtually bustled with activity. A group of hippie types, men and women, lounged out front, while inside the open front door he saw figures walking back and forth.
They climbed the wobbly steps; Chick introduced him to those assembled outside. After the handshakes and the raised fingers of peace, Alex resigned himself to forgetting most of the names he had just heard. The women had the odd names of Belladonna, Cactus Girl, Celeste, and Isis. The men’s names were mostly normal, Skip, Benny, and Cowboy. The exception was Sandman who, according to Chick, earned his moniker by his ability to fall asleep at any time without provocation.
Inside, they encountered a flurry of activity. He attempted to appear nonchalant as he scoured the room for a girl named Sarah.
“Supper time is a big deal around here,” Chick announced. “No one wants to miss a meal prepared by the Hope sisters.”
“Who are the Hope sisters?” Alex asked, as two small girls playfully ran past him.
“They’re trained chefs who decided to take a sabbatical from their cooking school to visit our eccentric community. They’ve been here for over a year.”
More introductions took place in the hallway before they moved into the kitchen. Alex saw her immediately. Her back was to him as she prepared food over the sink. She was dressed as she was on the hill. He saw that she remained barefoot, and the crown of flowers still adorned her head. The room was alive with activity as several women shuffled about, preparing the evening meal. Alex only saw one, a girl dressed in white with flowers in her hair.
“Ladies,” Chick said loudly. “Allow me to introduce our newest boarder, Alex.”
He broke out of his daze long enough to realize that this was the first time Chick had addressed him by his given name.
The kitchen became quiet as everyone stopped in his or her tracks and turned to the new houseguest. He acknowledged them by a wave of his hand and an ill at ease grin.
When she turned to face him and their eyes met, his heart melted in his chest. His dream, and the brief sighting of her on the hill, had not prepared him for her delicate beauty.
She wore a dress of pure white. Thin straps held it to her shoulders. The dress continued to her ankles where it billowed out, but not enough to hide her bare feet.
Her long blonde hair, parted evenly across her brow, followed the curve of her shoulders, ending near her elbows. Centered atop her head was a tiara of colorful flowers, all in various stages of bloom.
Around her neck was a gold chain attached to a locket. A jeweled bracelet adorned each wrist, but her fingers were undecorated.
The sunlight filtering into the room from its only window favored her above the others, burnishing her pale skin in its glow.
She was smiling at him, and he could not look away. The girl next to her whispered something in her ear and Sarah’s blue eyes shimmered slightly, just enough to draw him to them. In this brief space of time, when a dream became real and the earth ceased its spin, he knew Chick was correct. This was a world of magic.
“You can stop grinning now,” Chick said, as she turned away to face the sink.
Alex assumed more introductions awaited him, but he was not ready to leave the kitchen yet.
“She’s a moonchild you know,” Chick said.
>
He watched her hair move about her shoulders as she prepared fruit for the evening’s meal. “A moonchild?”
“Sarah was born when the moon crossed the sun. She entered this world during a solar eclipse.”
A moonchild, he thought as he watched Sarah laboring over the sink. At that moment, he would have believed Chick if he was told she was parented by the Gods of ancient Greece.
Someone said something to Sarah and she laughed. It was a beautiful sound. He knew then, in that moment, he had found a place where beauty truly existed. A place where a child of the moon danced on a summer hill in a sun washed breeze. A place where the laughter of a girl dressed in white and a windswept song not only shared the same moment, but also had the exact same sound.
STORYTELLING TIME
The Hope sisters knew how to cook a meal, Alex thought. Chick was right about that. The dinner’s menu was announced as a West Indian vegetable curry, made with butternut squash and other exotic ingredients. A salad with an oil and vinegar based dressing complimented the main course. Chick had advised him earlier not to expect meat. Almost all the people gathered around him were vegetarians. Chick suggested that if he craved a hamburger, to walk to Haight Street, or to the park where a vendor made good money servicing human carnivores.
On this particular night, he was fine with the Hope sisters fare. From where he sat at the large table, Sarah was three seats down from him. He knew his appetite was undoubtedly the byproduct of his introduction to marijuana earlier in the park, but he also suspected it was because he could not see Sarah from his chair. He was still at the awkward staring stage of their relationship, and expected to be there for a while.
House members occupied all twelve chairs surrounding the table. Three young girls, aged five to eight sat at a small adjoining table. Alex remembered their names as Aisha, Blossom, and Scarlett. According to Chick, they were the recipients of Sarah’s nightly stories.
During the meal, Alex listened as the assembled group relegated their tales of the day’s sojourns. While the women talked of assisting the needy in various ways, the conversation among the men centered specifically on the quality of drugs at different venues, which ones to seek out and which ones to avoid.
He found it odd that the discussion never moved in his direction. He was fully prepared to answer any questions relevant to his stay here but the subject never came up. One of the girls at the table asked him if he had ever visited the grave of Edgar Allen Poe in Baltimore City. When he replied that he had, she said “far out” and that was the end of that.
“Hey Chick,” someone yelled from the far end of the table. “The phone’s been disconnected again.”
Chick looked up from his plate. “Benny, I’m afraid that, for the time being, your collect calls to your parents, asking for cash, will need to be made from a pay phone, as ironic as that sounds.”
A girl, who Alex remembered as Celeste, from Chick’s earlier introduction, looked at Chick.
“I’m assuming the phone bill money went to a good cause.”
“Rest assured it found a good home,” Chick replied before digging in to a forkful of curry.
The conversation then shifted to the events of the day. The police evidently ordered a crowd of nonconformists gathered on a Haight Street corner to disperse and, when met with token resistance, made some arrests. The girl Alex knew as Isis sadly announced that a local legend named Ken Kesey had begun to serve a six-month jail term, on this very day, for an earlier marijuana conviction. The subject of communes came up and the chatter kicked into high gear. Many of the areas temporary residents, it seemed, were leaving for them daily, finding these retreats a peaceful alternative to bad drugs and angry cops.
Cowboy, who Alex remembered from his stair-inflicted limp, spoke up from the other side of the table. “So what do you think of this commune idea, Sarah?”
Alex was preparing to eat his last forkful of curry when he heard this. He put his fork down.
“Someday,” she responded.
It was the first time he had heard her speak, while awake, and he did not know at the time that her answer would come back to haunt him.
The group quickly dispersed at the end of the meal. Some of the girls went back to the kitchen to begin the clean up, others adjourned to the front porch, followed by most of the guys, and the smoke of freshly lit joints soon filled the air. In the ensuing commotion, Alex lost track of Sarah, who it seemed had disappeared on him once again. After surveying the kitchen, he joined the gathering of smokers on the porch. Chick was holding court on the old wooden structure. All gathered were watching Chick, who had a joint in each hand comparing their virtues.
“I’d have to say that Sandman’s ’pulco wins this round,” Chick said through the thick haze of smoke enveloping him. He took a long pull off one of the joints. “Though Benny’s stash has its virtues also.”
While Sandman celebrated his victory by announcing that anyone interested could find his winning weed in his bedside backpack, Alex looked for Sarah.
“She’s not here, champ,” Chick said. He had worked his way next to him. Chick held out his hand. In it was what was left of Sandman’s pride and joy.
“You might want to take this with you. It’s storytelling time.”
Alex politely refused Chick’s offering. He had forgotten about Sarah’s nightly story telling. For all he knew, she was, this very second mesmerizing her young audience with tales of mystery and adventure.
He thanked Chick and hurried into the house. Alex remembered Cowboys limp as he hit the stairs to the second floor and reluctantly slowed his pace. He had barely stepped into the hallway when he heard her voice. It was coming from just beyond the beaded entrance of the room directly across from him. He moved stealthily across the corridor, as silently as he could among the creaking floorboards, until he was standing next to the room’s threshold. There, pressed flush against the wall, he considered his options. Sneaking around like a burglar was not one of them, but he did not dare try walking unannounced into the room. The beads would have made just enough of a racket to draw attention, and perhaps even stop the story. Who knew how the kids would react if that happened. He wondered why anyone in his right mind would replace a sensible door with noisy beads.
Alex held his breath and snuck a glance into the room. Sarah sat cross-legged on the floor, her back to him. Two lit candles, one on each side of her, provided the room’s illumination. The three girls sat on one mattress across from her. He glimpsed two other women sitting in the shadows against the far wall. Sarah was talking softly and he could barely hear her, but this would have to do. He was certain that Chick had good intentions, but storytelling time was so far a bit of a bust. Then he heard Sarah clearly, for the first time, and he was spellbound.
“And so it came to pass that the princess had to bid farewell to her prince as he prepared to journey to a faraway land. The princess was sad that her prince was leaving her for she felt she might never see him again. But the prince took her hand and told her she would see him every night in her dreams. He would always return at night and hide behind a star until she slept. Then they would be together once more.”
Sarah stopped for a moment before she continued. Alex barely heard the softly spoken words. “He was true to his word. Every night he visited the princess in her dreams, and every morning she woke up smiling because he never really left her. The princess knew that her prince would always be with her because a far away land is as close as your next dream.”
He once again dared to look into the room. Two of the girls were lying down, on the verge of sleep, but one of the girls was inquisitive.
“Did she ever see the prince again?” she asked.
“That’s a story for another night,” Sarah said as she spread a blanket over the three of them.
Alex quietly edged toward the stairs. He would have stayed by the doorway all night if she had continued to tell stories. The sound of her voice captivated him. Now that the story was over
however, he felt like an intruder in a moment meant for someone else.
He was almost at the stairs when he spotted a cat walking up the dark hallway toward him. The cat was pitch black and walked awkwardly, hugging the far wall. At first, Alex assumed that the feline had somehow accessed Sandman’s prize stash, but, as it neared him, he could see its left eye was cloudy and dull. The cat’s head tilted in a manner favoring its good eye, leading him to believe it was partially blind. The cat was directly across from him when it stopped, its cocked head turned toward him. The good eye appraised him as a stranger might assess its competition, then the animal turned and tottered its way through the beads into the storytelling room.
Silence greeted Alex on the first floor landing. He saw no one in the dining room, kitchen, or front porch. The house was as silent as the first time he had entered it earlier in the day. Even Chick had vanished, which gave him a distinct feeling of paranoia. He went to the front door and saw a few flower children ambling about on the sidewalk, but none of his housemates. Alone and despondent, he sat on the porch’s top wooden step. He was studying the busy street when he remembered that Sarah was close by, and his mood brightened.
He thought about retreating into the house, where he might run into her, when she casually walked past him. Before he could ask her where she was going, she turned to face him at the foot of the steps.
“Did you like my story?” she asked as a cool evening breeze gently grazed her flowing hair.
Alex was surprised that his clandestine maneuvering was all for naught.
“I only caught the ending of it”
“My stories have no endings,” Sarah replied. “That’s the joy of them. Endings are too sad, too final. The best stories go on forever. You’re a writer. You should know that.”
Alex was about to reply that his boss required his stories to end after no more than four pages when he felt something nudging his hip. He looked down to see the half-blind black cat at his side.