The Mistress of Spices (37 page)

“Raven,” I whisper. And I lift his wounded hands to my lips.

When we have finished saying what lovers say after they have almost lost each other, when we have held each other long enough so that his breath is mine and mine his, Raven starts the car.

“There’s a box of maps near your feet,” he says. “Different routes into the mountains up north. Why don’t you look through them and choose the one you like best.”

“Me? But I know nothing of these roads, which is good, which is otherwise.”

“I trust your intuition. And hey, if we go wrong, we’ll just try again. We’ll keep searching until we find our paradise, and enjoy each step of the way together.”

His laughter is a golden fountain from which I drink thirstily. Then I run my fingers over the maps and by feel pick one out. It pulses its promise into my fingertips.

Yes, Raven, together
.

One last stop, the tollbooth, then it will be only us and the night.

The bridge comes up smoothly, its lights calm and unconcerned as once the eyes of the spices were. They give me permission. Yes,
yes
. I whisper the words to myself, put my hand on Raven’s knee. He smiles as he slows to pay. Afloat on that smile, I dimly hear him say something to the man in the booth.

“Yeah, real bad,” says the man. “Worst one in years. The fire’s done more damage than the quake. Where you folks coming from? Oakland? They say that’s where the center was, near downtown. Strange, huh? No one ever thought there was a fault line over there.”

I snatch back my hand as though its touch might scorch, look down at my palm. Ah Raven, here’s where the fault lines are.

The car is moving again, smooth, fast, confident. I stare north over the choppy water, its broken reflections of stars. Beyond it land, beyond it mountains, beyond it somewhere earthly paradise with a black bird hanging motionless in a silver sky.

It exists for Raven. But can it exist for me.

When we reach the other end of the bridge I put my hand on his arm.

“Stop, Raven.”

“Why?”

He’s upset, I can tell. He doesn’t like this, doesn’t quite trust what I might do. His whole body strains to keep going. But he pulls over to the viewing area. I swing open the door, step out.

“Now
what are you doing?”

But he knows already. He follows me to the edge and looks on with me.

Down south across the water, a dirty red glow, a city burning. Almost I can hear it, the fat hiss of flames, the houses bursting open, fire engines, police cars, bullhorns. The people crying their pain.

“Raven,” I whisper. “I made it happen.”

“Don’t be crazy. This is an earthquake area. These things happen every few years.” He wedges his hand under my elbow and tries to guide me back into the car. In his mind already we’re walking under the redwoods smelling the cleanness. Gathering acorns for food and wood for kindling. If only I would quit this foolishness.

I know what burning smells like. I have not forgotten the death of my village, though it was lifetimes ago, for that too I caused. Smoke and scorch. Smolder. Each thing that fire takes has a different odor. Bedclothes, bullock cart, cradle. That is how a village goes up in flame. A city would be different, buses and cars, sofa sets covered with vinyl, an exploding TV.

But the smell of charred flesh is the same everywhere.

Raven looks at me. There are new lines, tight and tired, around his mouth. A new wariness in his eye: the fear that his dream will fail, here at the last, after the final bridge has been crossed.

Regret rises in my throat like lava. Raven, I who love you more than I have ever loved anyone in all the worlds I’ve traveled, to think that I should be the cause for that look.

It would be so easy for me to turn my back on that burning city. To take your hand. I can see it, the car flying true as an arrow
through the dawn, sunlight shimmering off its flanks, not stopping until we reach happiness.

Every pore of my body cries out for it.

“Raven.” The words are crooked bones I must pull, bleeding, from my throat. “I cannot go with you.”

A part of me hates myself for the pain that leaps in his eyes.

He puts out a hand as though to grip me. Shake me into sense. But after a moment he lets it fall. “What do you mean?”

“I have to go back there.”

“What?”

“Yes, to Oakland.”

“But
why?”
His voice is jagged with frustration.

“To try and help.”

“I told you, it’s crazy to think you were responsible. Besides, they’ve got lots of other people who are trained for these things. You’d just be in the way.”

“Even if you are right,” I say, “even if I did not cause it, I cannot just leave such suffering behind.”

“You’ve been helping people all your life. Isn’t it time you did something different, something for yourself?”

His face so raw in its pleading. If only I could give in to it.

Because I cannot, I say, “Isn’t everything we do for ourselves, ultimately? When I was Mistress, too …”

But he is in no mood to listen. “Shit,” he says. “Shit.” He slams his fist into the railing. His lips are thin and white.

“What about the earthly paradise?” he says at last. In his mouth the phrase is a broken sound.

“You go on. Please. You don’t have to take me back. I’ll get a ride.”

“So you’re going to go back on your promise, huh? Just like that?” Unshed anger fills his eyes.

My heart is so full of sorrow I have to hold on to the railing just to keep standing. Is it ever possible for two people, no matter how deep the love, to explain our lives each to the other? To tell our motives? Is it even worth to try?

I am about to sigh. To say, Leave it, you’ll never understand.

Then I think, No. Raven, because I have placed you in my heart I must say to you what I believe to be truth. Whether you understand. Whether you believe or no.

I turn to him, and for one last time I cup his chin in my hands. How soft the night-growth on it, like new pine needles.

He looks as though he will push me away. Then he lets it be.

“It wouldn’t work, Raven. Even if we found your special place.” I take a deep breath, then say it. “Because there
is
no earthly paradise. Except what we can make back there, in the soot in the rubble in the crisped-away flesh. In the guns and needles, the white drug-dust, the young men and women lying down to dreams of wealth and power and waking in cells. Yes, in the hate in the fear.”

He closes his eyes. He does not wish to hear any more.

Good-bye Raven. Every cell in my body cries out to stay but I must leave, for in the end some things are more important than one’s own joy.

I turn to start back over the bridge, I, once Tilo, who is just now learning that the love flower grows only on the nettle tree.

“Wait.” His eyes are open, and in them a resigned, faraway gaze. “Then I guess I’ll have to come too.”

My heart lurches so hard, I must grip the rail to stand. O
ears, what cruel trick are you playing. Is it not burden enough, the thought that I must spend my remaining life alone.

Raven nods in response to the disbelief in my eye. ‘That’s right. You heard me.”

“Are you sure? It’ll be difficult. I don’t want you to regret it later.”

He laughs a gritty laugh. “I’m not sure at all. I’ll probably regret it a hundred times over even before we reach Oakland.”

“But?”

“But,” he says. And then I am holding him tight, laughing against his mouth.

We kiss, a long, long kiss.

“Is this what you meant?” he asks when we pause for breath. “Is this what you were saying about the earthly paradise?” I start to speak. Then I see he needs no answer.

Later I say, “Now you must help me find a new name. My Tilo life is over, and with it that way of calling myself.”

“What kind of name do you want?”

“One that spans my land and yours, India and America, for I belong to both now. Is there such a name?”

He considers. “Anita,” he says. “Sheila. Rita.” I shake my head.

He tries a few more. Then says, “How about Maya?”

Maya
. I try the sound, like its shape. The way it flows, cool and wide, over my tongue.

“And doesn’t it have an Indian meaning, something special?”

“Yes,” I say, remembering. “In the old language it can mean
many things. Illusion, spell, enchantment, the power that keeps this imperfect world going day after day. I need a name like that, I who now have only myself to hold me up.”

“You have me too, don’t forget.”

“Yes,” I say. “Yes.” And lean into his chest which smells of open fields.

“Maya, dear one,” he says against my ear.

How different this naming is from my last. No pearled island light, no sister-Mistresses to circle me, no First Mother to give her blessing. And yet, is it not as true? As sacred?

I am looking over his shoulder as I think this. Smoke hangs gray-green in the sky, like fungus moss in a dying forest. But the bay water is pink pearl, the color of dawn.

And in it a movement. Not waves. Something else.

“Raven, do you hear a sound?”

“Only the wind in the girders, love. Only your heart beating. Let’s go now.”

But I am hearing it clear, loud, louder now, the sea serpents’ song. That shining in the waves is their jewel eyes holding my gaze.

Ah.

You who have followed me through my up-and-down life, I leave you with one last question: The grace of the world, taken or given back, is there any accounting for it.

“I Maya,” I whisper. “I Maya thank you.”

The jewel eyes blink their acceptance. Then sun struggles through a rent in the smoke and they are gone.

But not gone too, inside my heart.

“Come on,” I say to Raven, and hand in hand we walk toward the car.