The Moment You Doubt (a peter pan story)

4.75 - Enough

My apartment had one bedroom, a kitchen, a living room, and a bathroom. The wallpaper was faded, almost sickly pink, and the furniture matching leather. Wilburs perpetually unused doggy bed laid dejected in the corner, Sweetie's and Margie's habitats lining the same wall. There was bristly silverish carpet in the living room and bedroom and alternating black and white tiles in the kitchen and in the bathroom.

So maybe I had no real conception of what beauty looked like in a home. But as soon as I opened my eyes in Odysseus' home underground, I knew I would not leave here.

We had slid down from the surface into a sudden pit of darkness that opened into a warmly lit burrow, a huge, cavernous space supported above by inveterate tree roots that embraced the walls of the cave like protective mothers. The floor, packed down dry dirt, showed trail upon trail of little footsteps, following the lives of its inhabitants from the time they woke to the time they slept. All the footprints led back to two huge beds in the corner, propped sideways against the wall like on an overnight train. In the center of the room, a grandly twisting tree shot like a water spring from the ground, all the way to the ceiling, maybe beyond, I couldn't tell from the floor.

Toward the back of the burrow, a set of logs had been (pasted? tied?) put together to form a makeshift counter, right ahead of it eight cushions all placed in a perfect circle. I imagined the girls sitting down to eat, hungrily rubbing their hands together. No utensils would be used, no plates, either, I imagined. I decided I was probably correct.

The girls had scattered by the time we arrived. A couple sat inordinately close to the fire, at first I presumed for warmth, but then I saw that they were sticking their fingers out in front of themselves and flicking them through the flames as fast as they could, yelping with exhilaration each time they came away unharmed. On the other side of the room, one little girl sat on a large, red (almost false looking) toadstool, a crude fishing rod laid in her lap like a sleeping child. She fiddled with the line and bent at its spine, clicking her foot impatiently against the dirt. In front of her, a hole in the ground emanated cold, foggy breath. Another girl had her legs around the thick trunk of the center tree, giggling as a branch gave under the weight of her foot. On the ground, her friend called bad advice: "Don't use your hands, just climb with your feet, it's safer, tear down that vine, use it to hoist yourself up, oh, who cares if you fall, nothing will happen." I flinched and flinched harder when I caught sight of two of the oldest girls shrouded in a dark corner, punches flying, groans and grunts traveling around the cave and echoing back. I couldn't see them well, but limbs flashed in the firelight and the sounds painted a gruesome picture.

Odysseus carried me through the center of the cave. As her leather-bound feet swept across the dirt, all the cheerful chatter became muted as they stared at us. I watched over Odysseus' shoulder as one of the girls in the corner took the other by the hand and pointed at me. They whispered to each other, cheeks pressed together. I laid my head on Odysseus' shoulder and closed my eyes. I listened to her demand the two girls at the fire to pull down one of the propped-up beds.

They did, slamming the thing down with a crash muffled by the dirt that stirred up a cloud of debris. The girls coughed but did not move, transfixed by Odysseus as she laid me gently in the center of the bed. I opened my eyes at tried to catch her gaze to smile gratefully, but she looked down. Her knuckles remained pressed against my neck like a kiss.

"Dessa?" asked one of the little girls. She had deeply brown skin, smudged all over with grayish dirt. Her hair, black and curly, an unruly mane puffing around her head, glowed at the edges like a halo. She had exquisitely large brown eyes and a small mouth, giving her the look of perhaps a frightened nocturnal animal. "Is the lady okay?"

Odysseus looked at me now. She didn't meet my eye exactly, but she watched my shoulder as she stroked her finger gently up and down my jaw. I thought about the loneliness of floating alone in the Never sky, so afraid, so cold, so tired, and decided to enjoy this for as long as it would last. "Don't worry about her, Abdullah. She's . . . tired."

I was. Abdullah nodded, sitting on the very edge of the vast bed. I wanted to tell her she was welcome to come sit with me, but my voice seemed like a distant memory. My throat felt dry as sand paper.

The other girl I recognized as the one who had supposedly killed me. She had large eyes too, green, and a startlingly thin face on a bony little frame. She gave me a sweet, shy smile and hoisted herself on the bed. "Don't be afraid, Lady," said the girl. She patted my foot through the thick quilt Odysseus had pulled up to my chin. "We won't hurt you. My name is Svetlana. I am very sorry for slamming you into the ground."

How strange, the way that in the normal world, I would have chuckled at such a string of sentences. How cute, I would have thought, maybe said. But here, these were not childish ramblings, but rather, my life.

"Don't worry," I said, sounding hoarse as a lifelong smoker. I tried to reach out and pat her hand in response, but she was too far from me. "I'm okay."

"What's your name?"

"I'm--"

"Leave her alone, now," said Odysseus. "You've done enough."

The little girl sniffled and slid weightlessly off the bed. "I'm sorry," she repeated. She laid a hand on Odysseus' leg, a silent beg for attention, but the older girl brushed her away and stood as well.

"We are going to let the lady sleep now," she said. "Go back to the fire.

Wait, I almost called. Wait, what if I have a concussion? What if I'm not going to wake up again? What if I'm not supposed to be here? What if I'm not who you're looking for? But they were gone too quickly and I was asleep too suddenly to say anything.