Circle Nine (2 page)

For a time, I sleep.

Where are you taking me?
I ask him when I wake in a fog after what seems like many hours.

North a few miles,
he tells me.
Just up a ways into the forest, to my place. You’ll be safe there.
I hear his breath laboring, shorter and quicker now, so I wriggle my way down his body. I am small, but not so small that carrying me miles would be easy. We go on like this for a while, me stumbling in halting steps and him leading. I have to stop a lot to catch my breath. It seems my lungs are full of something thick and unkind. My right arm shrieks in pain when I grasp Sam’s elbow for support. And when I can’t make it anymore on my own, he carries me again. And again I sleep.

When we get to Sam’s, he puts me down on the ground. I am awake but barely — just enough to see that Sam doesn’t have a house. He has something better: a craggy underground lair like a hidden kingdom. He brings me tea and plumps pillows on a mattress for me, then helps me up so I can nestle on it. The mattress is on the ground, like what you might find in Asia, but I’m not sure how I know that or whether it’s accurate in the first place. I am suddenly seized by the compulsion to know who I am. I search for memories, but my mind is empty and there’s a profound exhaustion settling into my limbs. I remember nothing and no one. I look at Sam drowsily and am at once so grateful to have someone by my side. I trust him. Then I realize it doesn’t matter whether I do. I try to think about the right and wrong of this, but it eludes me. It’s as if all of my innate senses have vanished entirely.

I try to be wary of him because I have to be. It’s as if I’ve been built with some internal device that tells me to fight my instincts. This device is different from my instincts, and both are different from my heart. I don’t know what to trust: my gut, my brain, or my heart. Which one speaks the truth? So I am wary because my head tells me to be, I am tempted because my heart has sought his ever since I opened my eyes and found his face, and I am inclined toward him because I know I have no other choice.

Besides, there was a certain gentleness about him last night. The way his face curved up in a tentative smile as if he were hoping I would like him. He asked questions with his body: His shoulders hunched up when he pointed to my bed. His head tilted to the side as he watched me sip my tea. He wants me to like him, and every little bit of insecurity betrays who he really is: someone I can trust. His other gestures, the hard ones — I know he’s cultivated these the way I’ve cultivated my own. How do I know? Instinct.
Something,
something I don’t quite remember, tells me to keep my distance this first full day. But the rest of me says that after today — after I’ve told him in my own way that I, too (yes, even I who don’t know my own name), come equipped with these senses — after that, after boundaries have been established, then I can relax.

I don’t know my own name.

I think of this and search back in my memory for what must have once been there. But there is nothing. An empty void punctuated only by the same knife stabs I’ve felt for hours. The nothingness is oh-so-exhausting, my head so racked with pain, and I fight hard to keep my eyes open at the unbearable recognition of this awful chasm. Knowing nothing means there is nothing for me anymore, and as I look at him, I come back to the simple fact: even with the keenest instincts I have no choice. I must depend on someone. I stare at him, his dark lashes framing his still-sleeping cheeks. It could be much worse.

While Sam is sleeping and my headache abates, I assess my surroundings more carefully than I did last night. It appears we are in a cave, but it is like no cave I have ever seen. It’s a palace carved from rock in the recesses of the ground, and sitting in it, I feel like Persephone. But this is not Hades; it is light and life. There I am again, trusting my instincts. It’s much harder to trust my brain because when the brain is empty, I suppose it must create its own truth.

And so this is not so odd, this cave-palace. If it isn’t Hades, then it is the opposite — paradise. For the walls shimmer gold and I see that Sam has decorated them with his own art: word art, which surely if carved away from these recesses would be fit for a distinguished gallery, it is so lovely. The rich blues and oranges and purples of phrases and poems glitter like the walls themselves, and suddenly I’m no longer Persephone but Hatshepsut. This beauty drifts into my head as easily as the air damp with morning chill that decorates my skin. My brain, in its spongy emptiness, is filled all at once with this beauty. Beauty restores me. These things are knowable to me — Hades and Hatshepsut — in the same way I’ve found other bits and pieces knowable over the last day, when I reach into the recesses of my brain. They rattle around in there, alone amid a bunch of space. The space is the important thing. The space is all the things I don’t know. I know a million Otherthings, but what I
don’t
know is who I am. So I let the beauty sink in deep, and I focus on the Otherthings, and I let it be a cold sponge to my searing fear.

Everything yesterday was disordered; everything today is more disordered still. I went to sleep last night and woke up today in a world infused with color and a mysterious boy to share it with. I woke up today with phlegmy coughs the color of tar and boils on my skin. I am light, I am happy, I am free. I am hurting, I am worried, I am lost.

I let it go. I focus on light, happy, free. I stare at my blistered hand and watch it heal over as if by magic. It is magic; now I feel sure of it. I feel no pain. I rise above it; it cannot harm me here. I walk to the mouth of the cave, now my home, and look out all around me. I can see that it rests in a wilderness of sorts, and now I am neither Persephone nor Hatshepsut but Snow White. The world around me is early-morning damp. There is a blue lake, glistening; I am surprised it doesn’t bore bright tunnels into my eyes. There are trees that strike green arrows into a clear sky. Everything is new and lovely. Fully restored, I retreat back into the thing I call paradise and wake my prince.

I am lounging on a gold damask sofa, my feet in Sam’s lap, sipping pomegranate wine we made ourselves. The lighting is warm; it gives off colors like orange and yellow, not purple or blue. It envelops us like the goose-down comforter we keep on our bed.

The bed became “ours” from “Sam’s” yesterday. It only took days. Am I the kind of girl that slips under someone’s sheets after just a few short days? What is implicit in that kind of girl? What other things can you learn of her from that simple fact? But what does it matter; I don’t know the rules anymore. It’s freeing, anyway, to live moment to moment because you have to. When you have no past, when time and history don’t matter, you can be mistress only of your present decisions. You can’t even really look forward, because what would you base it on? Decisions you make today? Having no history, I decide, is a blessing. I wouldn’t want to be cursed with the memory of a lifetime of mistakes.

Sammy is reading to me: Dante’s
Inferno,
by Dante Alighieri. Another someone famous I’ve never heard of. I’ve not been here long, but it’s enough to know that I know nothing about who I am or who anyone else is, except a few random bits of information floating around unfettered in that space I call my head. Sam can be my library, my just-beginning, hopefully never-ending well of interesting facts and startling truths. I’ve been alive three days; there was no life before this.

I levitate above not knowing. I transcend everything that came before.

I am blissfully happy. As Sam reads, I finger the notebook he keeps around, much of its contents torn out and scattered like rubbish through the cave. They’re half-covered with bits of phrases and rambling sentences; I think how nice they’d look with pictures, too. What’s left of the notebook feels right in my hands, as if it belongs there. With a pencil, it’s complete, a natural part of me. But for now I’m just listening, holding the notebook and allowing Sam’s words to drift over and around me. Sam is kneading my toes with his palm; my stomach is full with my last meal, which still lingers on my tongue. I stare at him staring at the tattered pages in his hands — the wear of the pages shows he’s read this book more than once. I wonder why he loves it. I can already tell that Sam is a complicated person. I heard once, sometime long ago, that people are two types: uncomplicated or complicated. Cerebral or surface-level. I haven’t figured out which type I am or which type I might like better. This book is hard to follow, but its jarring images stay with me. One man eats the back of another’s head then wipes his mouth on the other man’s bloody hair.

What do you see when you look around, Abby?
I laugh at this; I am becoming used to Sam’s games.

A circus clown on stilts,
I say, all seriousness.

No, really.
He jabs me hard in the arm, impatient.
Look around. Tell me what you see.
I see stone walls, etched with art like an ancient Egyptian tomb. I see the remains of a bountiful feast, goose and wine and fruits stacked a mile high: passion fruit, star fruit, fruits I’ve never seen before tonight. I see this gold lounge where we’re reclining, and a faded red trunk in the corner, all shabby and antique. Our bed is canopied, and its mahogany frame is five feet tall. There is a tiny staircase next to it, three steps high, so we can climb up and collapse into its folds with ease. There’s the other bed, my Asian pallet where I slept the first two nights, opposite us and barely visible in the second room. I relay all this to Sam, and he stares at me in wonder for a long time after I am finished. His reaction to my descriptions is startling; his eyes have begun to tear.

That’s right,
he whispers.
It’s beautiful. You and me, our world . . . it’s perfect.

I nod in agreement. It’s almost as if this thing we’re living is a dream in reverse. The dreams I’ve had the past two nights have been jagged black. I don’t remember them, but there have been trails of dried tears on my cheeks when I wake up. Dreams are supposed to be good, life a harsh reality; that’s what I know from somewhere unidentified, knowledge lodged deep down from Before. My life with Sam is a rich tapestry, better than any dream state. My dreams are cursed. Everything has turned over on itself.

Then:
You should stay here always, Abby,
he says with eyes pleading.
You don’t ever have to leave.
He looks frightened, like a child, as he says it; then in an instant he’s back to normal Sam. I hug him closer, but what he asks of me is silly. How could I ever leave? Where would I go?

I focus on what Sam is reading; he’s intensely involved in this story about the circles of hell and the people who are stuck there, condemned. The words roll over and around his tongue like a rich ice cream he takes time to savor.

Betrayal.
Fear. My head pounds, the knife resumes its merciless stabbing inside my brain. There is a sudden flash, a snapshot, and for an instant our underground palace lair is not a palace at all but a dirty, damp cave strewn with garbage and threadbare blankets and stained sheets. Then another flash and I blink and it is normal and lovely again. I shudder.

What,
mija? Sam asks.
What is it, little girl?

I saw a scary place, a place where everything is dark and ugly,
I tell him. I snuggle deeper into his chest.

Not here, Abby. You and me have an invisible shield. We’re protected from the ugliness as long as we’re together.

Then, where?

Here,
he says, shaking his book in the air.
And there.
He points beyond our cave lair.
It’s out there,
he says,
that things are ugly.
He watches me carefully as if to gauge my reaction.