What would you do if you were Sarah?
Chapter 32 of my dystopian utopian novel, The Lost City of Desire
[This is a serialized novel, short chapter by short chapter. You can read the previous 31 chapters here. A new chapter will be delivered every week.]
Sampson led me to my room – I would spend the night as a guest of the mystic, La Gloriosa. All the windows were open and wind and dust and leaves blew throughout.
“Tea in 30 minutes,” Sampson said, shutting the door.
The bed was high and cozy and I lay down against a stack of pillows. A hawk’s feather rested on the nightstand, next to a pitcher of water. The bed was nice, so comfortable after the last few nights.
I lay still, more awake than asleep, resting and feeling a particularly strong sensation – of energy, spirit, something nice that was in the air. I silently asked the sensation for guidance – why not? I got no answer, but I hoped, actually I believed, that I would get a response when the time was right.
I thought of Joe, but it was hard to imagine what or where he could be. I felt I’d deserted him. Had I? Had I deserted Carmen? Had they somehow deserted me? Still, I did not feel alone. I would see them at our meeting spot, in the hills before the wall.
I got up and looked at myself in the mirror above the mantel. My hair was ropy, and my eyes shone bright. I looked wild, like I’d been walking in the woods for days.
I smoothed my wrinkled shirt and went down to meet La Gloriosa for tea. The main floor was split by a wide entrance hall at the bottom of the stairs. On the right were three wide, closed doors covered with carved vines and flowers that created a line of curiosity for me – I wanted to open one and walk through to whatever mystery was there. On my left an open door led into a grand room flooded with late afternoon light, and against the far wall a fire roaring in a huge hearth. La Gloriosa sat in a puffy easy chair there, gazing off into nothing and everything. Then she saw me.
“My darling, welcome,” she said, gesturing for me to sit in the chair near her.
She wore a voluminous turquoise, gold and red caftan. She poured us each a cup of tea and we sipped them with honey.
“How do you like your journey?” she said.
“I’d like it better if we hadn’t run into Shonda,” I said.
“Hmmm,” she said.
“I just want to cross the wall and find my parents, but I can’t because she took Carmen hostage. And these pretend Indians who seem associated with her kidnapped Joe. It’s a mess, and kind of scary. But I think I can get both of them free, once I get to the other side. It’s not even about my parents anymore. I have to deal with my friends first.”
I just kept talking. I couldn’t stop.
La Gloriosa inhaled deeply, putting her hand to her chest.
“You just told me a lot, but a lot of stuff I don’t really know. Let’s have a look,” she said.
She had me close my eyes and try to drop my thoughts into the area around my heart, to reside there as well as I could for as long as I could while she herself went into the unknown to find the truth, the future, whatever it was that would be revealed.
“How am I supposed to drop my thoughts into my heart?” I asked. “Can you help me?”
I trusted Tara, and because of that I trusted La Gloriosa, unusual and eccentric as she might be.
I looked at her.
“You close your eyes and try to let your thoughts just flow through your head without latching on to them,” she said. “And when they cross through your head let them slide down a chute straight into your heart. Like the thoughts are a waterfall falling off a cliff.”
“That’s it?” I said.
“It’s a lot, really,” she replied.
“No one should ever be forced to do what we are about to do,” she said.
“And what is that?”
“We are going to find out what’s in store for you. To make sure that you can be safe.”
“Here, wrap this around your head,” she said, handing me a scarf.
She wrapped another one around her own head and suddenly we must have looked like the matriarchs of an old European village.
“The scarves are important for showing respect for the elders when we travel together.”
“Travel?” I said.
The air was thick, and when I looked at La Gloriosa I could no longer see her face; it was a smear of color, caramel and café and pink. I heard a buzzing in my head, just inside my ears. It made me want to close my eyes.
“When we travel…” she said, hard to make out what she was saying. “When we travel…” the words sounded slow and bent, like the letters were made of molasses. Everything felt altered.
I tried to stand, to walk away— this was too much for me. La Gloriosa was changing the energy of the room and I found it overwhelming, but my mind couldn’t make my body move. It was like Tara, or the creepy kid in the East Village, only 100 times as powerful. I felt like I’d pitched a cheesecloth tent and the milky raindrops were dripping on my bed.
“Close your eyes, Sarah, and let your heart feel everything.”
My eyes were already closed and I sent my brain into my heart.
“I’m going to lead you,” La Gloriosa said.
I was already far, deep, away inside a cottony darkness that draped just right over my body. Suddenly, I felt very much at ease. There, in front of me, were the three turtles we had killed in Central Park, three turtle bodies looking as naked as could be without their shells.
“Come,” said a voice. La Gloriosa?
We were both sitting on chairs, but I followed her anyway, into a cloud of grey, past a bunch of teeniny pulsing lights, along a meandering path and into a tunnel that seemed to fall between the clouds, forever. I had no sense of my body, no sense of where I was – though I didn’t feel lost, or powerless, or fearful at all – or who I was. Just a sense that we were moving to the place I wanted to be.
We entered a tunnel, red and black with walls rough with cavities like a limestone cave and we kind of fell into it, falling, falling until suddenly we came into a giant room of sunshine and green, with a lake and a river flowing out of it. I liked this place. There, in a tall chair in the perfect grass, sat La Gloriosa. In memory it feels so odd – she was next to me, but also in a chair in front of me – but at the time it felt normal.
“What is Sarah to do?” La Gloriosa next to me asked herself, who was also sitting in the chair, a double image.
“Turn sideways at the wall and slide right through,” the chair version replied.
“And when she crosses into the other side?”
“Carry pepper flakes and carry a gun. The former is for everyday defense. The latter is for saving someone’s life, and that life could be your own.”
“Is there any other advice you see to give Sarah? She’s leaving tomorrow.”
“My advice to Sarah, based on what I see, is to not worry about anything. To keep this feeling in her heart. To send all her thoughts to her heart. And to have faith. I see clearly that it is all going to unfold naturally, and beautifully. Blessings to you.”
“And you,” said La Gloriosa next to me.
“That doesn’t mean there won’t be trouble.”
Before I could say anything we were sucked back into the tunnel at a rapid rate and back into the cloud of grey and back into my thoughts and back into the room and I was opening my eyes very slowly and looking across the room at La Gloriosa, who was sprawled, smiling, on the scarlet couch.
“I feel like passing out,” she said.
“Oh man, me too. “I feel the same. But first answer me one question, ok? What was that about pepper flakes and a gun?”
She smiled and said, “That is metaphorical. Meaning be prepared for trouble --- try to stop it with a deterrent and if that doesn’t work, then resort to any means necessary to defend yourself.”
‘What about Carmen. What about Joe?”
“You have a journey in front of you. You just have to follow your intuition to your meeting point. When I look, I don’t see Joe.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t see him.”
My heart sank.
“Is he dead?”
“I just don’t see him. That’s all there is. In the end, we’re all alone.”
Soon I went to my room and fell into bed, big and comfortable and free. I closed my eyes and saw the gray cloud again. It felt warm and kind and very quickly pulled me into a deep sleep.
I slept straight through the night, waking at dawn to the sounds of woodpeckers pounding a tree for grubs. I felt good in the world, the feeling you don’t realize you were always looking for until the moment when you actually find it and then it all makes sense. Life is good.
The floorboards outside the door creaked and I heard someone slipping paper under my door. I got up to find a yellowed envelope on the floor with my name printed neatly across the front. Inside was a letter written in pencil in a lovely, undulating script:
Dear Sarah,
My hopes are that you slept well, as I imagine you would, given how deeply your meditation went yesterday evening.
I am seeing (my mind’s eye) that your journey across the wall is both necessary, and dangerous. You are going to need to develop some skills. I will help you with these. We must work today.
Please come to my downstairs living room this morning once the sun is fully risen. Bring an open mind, and an open heart.
I will expect you.
La Gloriosa.
I didn’t want to do this at all. I found the letter kind of irritating, to tell you the truth, because it just seemed like another thing getting in the way of me finding Joe and Carmen and seeing my mom and dad. Especially my mom. I missed her the most – I wasn’t sure why. But when I thought about her I felt connected, warm, like my head was on her stomach and she was stroking my hair, pushing it behind my ear, touching her fingers to my neck and calming my pulse. I wanted to see her so badly, to ask her so many questions, but I knew I needed to train my impatience, to tone it all down, to focus on the task at hand.
“La Gloriosa will help guide you,” Tara had said.
And so, she did.
It’s not easy to remember the details of these last hours with La Gloriosa, as throughout I felt overcome with an enveloping white noise that seemed to quiet me even as it pulled me into the profound depths of some other world, or worlds. For the first time, really, I say my path. I was now, and forever, on my own.