Place of the Heart, Part 3 of 3
Meier was too tired and too awestruck to feel as foolish as he
otherwise might have for cuddling a woodland animal like a child with a
grossly oversized teddy bear. It was a night of incongruities, and Meier
accepted this as unthinkingly as he had the great creature's latest
gift. Still kneeling, he regarded the sprig in his free hand, relieved
that it showed no sign of withering at his touch. He was slipping it
into a pocket when his fingers touched the creature's earlier gift, and
this he pulled out to regard once more -- the pearl in his palm, the
runner of periwinkle flowing between his fingers. For a moment he
thought the very vine in his hand was moving unassisted -- but no, one
of those claws was bending it, until the flower at its tip bowed down to
eclipse the pearl. Meier looked up, and the creature pointed once more
toward the city dome.
"I wish I understood you," Meier said. "I want to -- I truly do. But I
am a stranger here. I don't know the language, it seems. I wish you
could _show_ me."
The creature responded with another of those impossible grins, then
straightened to its full considerable height. It seemed to stand on
tiptoe, raised both forelimbs, then slowly moved them down. As if they
were indeed wings and that gesture a singly mighty wingbeat, it rose
with majestic slowness from the ground. Midway up the trees about it,
it paused, rear claws en pointe, arms outspread once more, and
seemed to widen its eyes at him.
Levitation! Meier had regarded it with mixed feelings when it numbered
among the powers of other Nobles. His scorn for such a pretentious mode
of flight was a thin veil for his envy -- flying with wings was a skill
he took pride in having mastered, but it was nonetheless no small feat:
fatiguing to maintain using a body designed to be earthbound, and with
its share of risks and obstacles. Those who could levitate, it seemed,
simply wished for flight and flew. But there was no directing envy or
scorn at the embodiment of magic when it smiled down at him, and Meier
quickly pocketed his treasures and leapt skyward, cape merging to his
arms.
Two wingbeats bore him to the height where the creature had hovered, and
two more carried him through a dark, intangible tangle. Suddenly he was
well above the forest, overflying its dense unbroken canopy.
Unbroken canopy? Meier's wings faltered for a stroke as he stared down,
incredulous. There was no sign of the little glade that the stars had
gazed upon. It had been swallowed up. Meier swooped and circled,
blinking. Change of height and angle made no difference.
"Is it gone?" he shouted to the creature. "Have I lost even her grave?"
Meier's companion responded with a smile and several whisker-twitches,
then flipped in a loop-the-loop before gliding forward -- toward the
great dome of the City of the Night. Meier followed with more economy of
motion and more puzzlement than ever. He had powers that violated what
were usually thought of as the laws of physics, but making bits of
woodland appear and disappear was another matter. And then he reminded
himself: he had found the mysterious glade twice now. Surely a third
time was possible.
The dome, already huge, grew larger and larger in their view. Nearly at
its edge, the creature performed a pirouette and simply sank down feet
first like a cooling hot-air balloon. <<Show-off,>> Meier thought dryly,
but the dead zone about the dome gave him space for the angled
descent that his own manner of flight permitted. His cape fell free of
arms that were arms once more, and he retrieved the pearl and
the periwinkle, hoping that they were keys to the puzzle before him.
The creature lifted the pearl from his open hand -- Meier still could
not believe its claws were so dexterous -- and pressed it into the dry
dirt so only a half-sphere was visible. Meier knelt to look closer. The
creature tapped the side of the pearl -- this with astonishing delicacy
-- then tapped the city wall in an identical gesture.
"The same thing," Meier murmured, referring to the gesture, and then it
dawned on him: "The city and the pearl are the same thing? The pearl ...
represents ... ?"
"YAWWW!" the creature enthused, whiskers twitching with the force of its
grin. It plucked the periwinkle from Meier's hand and laid it down so
the pearl was concealed entirely, then pulled the pearl out from under
it, returned it to Meier, and smiled once more.
"And you'd rather there were green things in its place," Meier
concluded. "That's ... that _is_ it. The city -- it even _looks_ like
a pearl. And it's no more welcome to this planet than a pearl to a
shellfish. You would make green things grow in its place if it were
gone ... yes. Yes, you would."
The creature returned the periwinkle sprig to Meier as if bestowing
laurels on a student who had scored particularly well on an exam.
"Well." Meier rose, expression pensive. "I don't know what you want
me to do, now that I understand. The city ... the City of the Night is
dead. There's nothing alive in it, and there hasn't been for centuries."
He sighed. "There's nothing for me there. Now I'm not sure there ever
was. And there's no one else who would miss it. Your woodland ...
is very different from our technology. Inferior, most of my kind would
say. But they aren't here, are they? And I am. If Charlotte had seen
what I have seen --"
Tears threatened again, and after a long moment Meier said, very
softly, "I don't know how to undo what we've done."
The creature turned its grin toward the pale wall and whispered, "Yawp."
The wall seemed to tremble, and a section of it nearly the creature's
size shimmered, then coalesced into grains of white that silently
floated to the ground.
Meier stared at the new breach in the wall, then at the creature. "You
can do that?"
The grin was as plain as a spoken _I just did_.
"Then do it," Meier whispered at last, and his face fell as he closed
his eyes.
But he couldn't help opening them again and raising his head at the
creature's great indrawn breath, and at the soaring, reverberating
"YAAAWWWP!" that seemed to shake the very earth as it glided over the
city dome. The dome's pale skin trembled and grew frosty; the very
fabric of the whole structure was a fabric no more, but a mass of
particles that glided down. The vista was like a great snow globe, the
remnants of the skin coating the buildings and ground with white. And
then the buildings themselves followed suit, trembling, shimmering, and
slowly slumping into piles of sand. These too grew smooth as bits of
dome continued to glide down onto what at last was simply a great white
plain. Gazing across it, Meier could see treetops at a distance. It had
been a huge city, a huge pearl ... or perhaps a huge tumor.
But now the land could heal.
Meier let his gaze travel the full compass of what had been the great
city. There was in fact one remaining irregularity in its horizon -- a
single great rocket ship, the one that had borne him here. The silence
had been long when Meier's voice broke it.
"That's a hint, isn't it?"
Meier turned to see if he had placed the correct interpretation on this
anomaly -- but he was alone.
* * *
The shining dust of the city was like sand; it sank beneath Meier's feet
as he made his way across what was now a great circular expanse of
desert. Although walking was difficult, he felt no inclination to use
his wings but continued to trudge toward what had been the city's heart.
He had touched the earth there once; would any hint of what he had seen
still remain? At last there was an irregularity in the perfectly smooth
surface: a small indentation. Meier felt certain that this marked what
had been the earth bed.
<<Then let his be a memorial,>> Meier thought, <<at the grave of the
Nobles whose time is past. Let me remember them, offer this at least.>>
Digging aside the pale dust, he scooped the earth beneath it into a
little mound and wondered -- would it be ungracious use of a gift?
Surely not. He retrieved the sprig of periwinkle from his pocket. It was
surprisingly fresh, even the tender petals of the blossom undamaged. He
carefully sank the stem into the mound. The vampire-kind had no prayers
for their dead, no rituals of farewell, but Meier knelt, head bowed and
eyes closed, for a long moment, in honor of those who had built the city
as a refuge for Earth's children of the night. They had done their best,
surely, and he owed them this acknowledgment even though their works
had not offered what he sought.
Meier rose, and the breeze that stirred the dust about him moved the
sprig so it seemed to bow. Meier bowed in return, then leapt up in
flight, cape-wings striking the sand. His wings caught the wind, and he
lofted himself up, circling high, high, higher than the dome had ever
stood. Above him he could see the sun-touched tops of the clouds; below,
the planet outspread, as much a ring of green as a circle of white.
Meier looked down to the smudge at the circle's heart -- but in only the
time it had taken him to rise above it, what had been a sprig had become
a bright patch of green.
Even with dawn so near, Meier smiled.
* * *
Meier could take a hint. But not before taking one last look to seal
into his heart what he had brought to this place and what he had left
here where he himself could not remain.
Why not take Charlotte back? Earth had been her home as much as his --
more, some would say -- and there he could bury her anywhere he
pleased, could visit and honor that grave any way he liked. But coming
here and remaining here had been the dream they shared: let it be true,
at least for her. The Earth might change, but if ever a spot promised to
hold true, it was that quiet place where she now lay -- that place, and
the place it held in his heart.
It was the greatest leap of faith Meier had ever taken, greater than
stepping into Carmila's long-disused rocket and giving the A.I. the
command to take off. He stood in the woodland at what had been the
city's perimeter, head bowed, and softly said, "Great One, let me be
with her one last time."
The world shifted ever so subtly, and Meier did not open his eyes until
he had taken a half dozen paces forward ... and felt grass rather than
leaves beneath his boots. It was there, all there: the clearing, the
grass, the periwinkle still in bloom. Meier sighed an oddly happy sigh and
sat at the foot of the grave. Strange that he could sit here quite
content with the realization that the City of the Night was gone, and
that he had in effect signed the death warrant of his long-sought goal.
If the creature who ruled this world could have wrought that
destruction at any time, why had it not done so long ago? Meier
could speculate -- and did indeed pursue several trains of thought --
but knew its forbearance would remain a mystery.
He felt only a distant amusement at the realization that he was no less
obliged to leave this place than he had been to depart the Earth. He
could not feel bitter at the prospect of returning. On Earth he had
found Charlotte. It was where he belonged, whatever belonging meant.
He would return there soon enough. Or perhaps not; the rocket was
old, and (as the City of the Night demonstrated) even the Nobles'
technology was not infallible. It might leave him stranded in space, or
collide with a meteor and end in a grand silent smash. But just now
Meier could not mourn or fear the thought of his passing. A little of
the wonder and magic of this place had found a home within him, and
would be with him wherever he went. Perhaps it was even to be
found on Earth as well. Meier hoped so, for now that he had tasted it,
it seemed too rich a thing not to be woven into the fabric of all
existence.
End part 3 of 3
Afterword:
About allusions and stuff. The brown-and-yellow moths that I've
associated with "Totoro" are regal moths and imperial moths --
or that planet's answer to them. :-) I used them because of their
names, but they make great inhabitants of the Totoro universe:
their larvae feed on trees, and the adults are huge and fuzzy and quite
beautiful. Either species would make a great model for a moth plushie.
The story of the pearl that was not a pearl and spiritual eternal life is
a Middle English poem that modern editors have titled "Pearl." It is
thought to have been written by the same author as "Sir Gawain and
the Green Knight" and two less-known poems, "Cleanness" (or "Purity")
and "Patience."
The creature's one utterance -- "Yawp" (notice that everything it
says consists of part or all of this word) is from Walt Whitman's
"Song of Myself":
"I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric YAWP over the roofs of the world."
More information about _My Neighbor Totoro_ is at nausicaa.net.
If you haven't seen _My Neighbor Totoro_, it is WAY PAST
TIME you did. _Totoro_ is truly a movie for all ages, classic
Miyazaki that doesn't hit you over the head with its "green" way
of thinking. It is known and marketed as a children's movie, and
a particularly quiet and gentle one at that -- some critics have
in fact found it TOO quiet and gentle. I'll admit that the
first time I watched it I found the beginning almost intolerably
slow; my finger was literally headed toward the VCR stop button
when the first "little Totoro" showed up. I never got anywhere
near the stop button again.
The very long synopsis at nausicaa.net goes into almost
absurd detail of the movie's events and (as it warns) does
include some spoilers. Watching the movie is probably the
best way to make its acquaintance. It has been released
on both VHS and DVD in the USA and should be readily
available. If you're embarrassed to be seen renting a
kids' movie, (a) lie and tell them you're babysitting; and
(b) it serves you right. ;-)
While my enthusiasm for Totoro isn't quite up there with
my fanaticism for VHD, I'm definitely a big Totoro fan. It
is a movie about truths rather than facts, a movie set in
literal reality that keeps the fantastic or supernatural at
the edges rather than front and center -- and yet the
fantastic or supernatural has a supporting role; it's not
just a bit player.
One recurring notion in descriptions or reviews of _Totoro_
is that only children can see the Totoros. This is a
sensible approach (though not the only workable one) in
a movie set in our reality; but the more fantastic the reality,
the more visible "magic" can become. I think the underlying
truth is that there are times when we all have a need for
something outside ourselves, something outside the box
we call mundane reality. Children need it more than adults;
among adults, artists need it more than accountants.
I wanted to write a story about someone who needed and
could accept the magic of the Totoros; the D that we know
is simply too hard-edged and stoic to fill the bill.
Enter Meier the romantic. I didn't have a way of getting
him to the original Totoro's home in Tsukamori forest, but
in the movie Meier was last seen headed for a place that
left my creativity practically unfettered. It would make
perfect sense for the Nobles to have set up housekeeping
on a planet with physical characteristics similar to Earth's,
but in a way that would minimize the disadvantages of
their nature: a structure to keep out sunlight and rain, and
otherwise provide environmental control ... in every sense,
right down to aesthetics.
And that was all the setup I needed. The magic, like the
truth, is out there.
Feedback is welcome.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------