School

One more dune before I succumb…a lie told by thousands of doomed souls before me. I crest the hill, speak the lie again; crest another hill, speak the lie again. Finally, the lie is supplanted by a pulsing, undeniable truth expanding in my chest: there are worse things than death. Many things. Worse by far. Another truth: death is absolute. So why not now?

I accept. My lower lip bursts, bleeds as my smile widens; the viscous liquid, greedily gathered by my tongue, swallowed, soothes my throat. It is a parting gift from a benevolent God, or a blood sacrifice, an entry fee paid to the devil that awaits me. I sigh, content in my ignorance of what lies ahead, and let myself fall forward. I tumble down the shimmering dune. 

I am again a child, spinning, arms flailing. Close your eyes tight, my brother had told me before he shoved me down the hill; the advice of an elder who wishes to have fun at your expense, but not cause more pain than is necessary for their amusement. So I laugh as I once did. Sand fills my mouth, but, because I heed my brother’s warning, not my eyes. 

The dune levels off. I come to rest on my side, curl my body in just as I did in the womb, close my eyes and wait. 

And then.

The sand against my cheek, though beaten by the sun, is cool. I open my eyes, then blink as a drop of water flecks against my pupil. I start, then roll back onto my knees. A fist-sized white and gold fish, not a koi, but something similar, flops atop the sand beside me. 

I cock my head. “Well that shouldn’t be there…” I say to the void, turning left then right. The fish struggles, fins flapping. The eyes of a fish, lacking lids, are always wide, but in the throes of death, wider still? The spectacle entrances me, but does not stir me to action. In this torrid, depleted place, what help could I provide? 

The koi comes to rest, unlikely with the same serene acceptance of death that fills me. Fins cease first, then eyes. A few bub bub bubs from its mouth before that too stills. 

We are bound only by our shared fate, and yet my thoughts are nearly familial: I will join you soon, dear friend—followed by: wait, how did you get here? Are you my salvation? I grab the fish and suck the moisture from its scales. The water stimulates my mind; the sand is cool…why? 

I place my departed friend behind me and dig with fury known only to the damned. From cool to unquestionably cold, to, heavens help me…moist. Two feet down, then three, four, I stand amidst an oasis, flinging mud behind me, then: a sound like an hourglass; a steady lessening, a wind? The ground shakes for a moment before giving way.

I land in flowing water.

Serenity cradles me despite the darkness, the rush of the river. The serenity of death? Surely, I must have surrendered my mind to a mirage. But who, in the midst of hallucination, can find assurance in their reality? Who wishes to find it? My friend felt real, tasted real, stank of life in dark and wet. The sound of the current in my ears, the water that invades my nostrils and chokes me: if this is fabrication, if I lie now on dry sand, cooking beneath the sun, then the mind of man is truly as mysterious, as unknowable as the God who created us. 

My stomach lurches as the womb of water releases me. I fall, fly, five feet or fifty? In the darkness I do not see the water’s surface approaching, my brain does not take that instinctive gasping breath before submersion. 

Too many years in the desert, too many hours shuffling across the sand; my strokes are unpracticed, performed by aching muscles, and find no salvation, no unlit shore. 

Is it better to drown in darkness or slowly desiccate beneath the sun? I take a final breath, grinning with the knowledge that at least my corpse will not be picked apart by scavenging birds. I will lie forever in unknown depths, a riddle for my loved ones to ponder: did he fall, hit his head, find another life, another wife in another land? 

And then.

Life stirs about me, light stirs about me. My legs are buffeted by a thousand gentle collisions. Is it better to desiccate beneath the sun or be torn apart, still living, by ten thousand teeth? Finally, my heart beats heavy with fear. I thrash, find strength to reach the surface with my fingers, but no…that is no redemption. I sink again, go limp, wait for flashes of pain to overwhelm me. 

Instead, the rush of light, of life, takes me up. The school supports me, guides me, a thousand tiny bodies wordlessly working in concert. I catch moments of air as my face breaks the surface, submerges, breaks, submerges again. I try to remain relaxed, dare not use my muscles, take control from the glowing creatures who hold my life on their backs. 

Time passes, one minute, five, ten? My foot suddenly comes up against something solid, lifeless. Land. I dip down into the water as the fish depart from my back, but the drop is slight; the world is solid beneath me. I curl forward, break the surface again, crawl onto the shore, dimly lit by the glow of the school. 

I stand, panting, and wipe the water from my eyes. Like a slowly shooting star, the glow begins to extend out in front of me—a channel cuts through the shore, which the fish now navigate. I follow, taking steps somehow solid, my body energized as though the light of the creatures fills me as well. Behind me, I see that the light is constant, as more and more fish fill the channel, thought I must walk briskly to keep up with the leaders. 

My walk turns to a gentle run. Laughter, bouncing about the air fills me with sudden anxiety; I cower, then realize the laughter is the echo of my own against the narrowing cavern. Soon, a smooth wall of rock is at my left, the glowing channel still on my right. I run my fingertips upward along the wall as I jog, and find a ceiling lowering to meet me as I continue onward. I hunch slightly, but do not slow. For how many centuries, millennia, did water run through these rocks, simply to make a passage for me? A glowing road to salvation.

Another minute passes, the sounds of gentle water rushing overtaken by my increasingly heavy breath, amplified by the increasingly narrow tunnel. The leaders of the school have outpaced me, their glow well ahead, brighter in the distance. I stop and narrow my eyes. 

A brighter light ahead; not a glow, but a shine, a headlight on a dark road; hopefully not oncoming. I increase my speed, a feat, given that I am forced into a deeper and deeper hunch, then a crouch. The walls as well have narrowed, there is scarcely more than a foot on my side of the channel, so with a hop I come to straddle it, and continue on. 

The shine intensifies; I shade my eyes. I slow, take careful steps so as to keep my feet from falling into the channel, keep my feet from landing on the backs of my saviors. 

And then.

The tunnel gives way, opens to a larger space, but I cannot yet judge its true size. I must close my eyes against the intense illumination at its center, not just golden white, but woven with streaks of lavender, teal, rose pink, dandelion yellow, patterns shifting on the rock walls. I inch my lids open, my hands away from my face, slowly, but as quickly as I can to safely imbibe the wondrous spectacle.

Finally, I can perceive the source of the heavenly light.

A queen. 

The queen, clearly, mother of the glowing fish that now swim furious laps around the channel, which widens and navigates around her, then winds away and disappears into the wall to my left. She is also a queen among living things, in beauty, holiness. Beneath the glow she is a whirling sea of gold and milky white, just like her children, though much rounder. The mother lies on solid ground but is constantly wetted by a trio of waterfalls that gush from openings in the rock, one behind, and one on each side of the creature. The sound of the falls is loud, but only now, acclimated to the queen’s light, do my ears perceive it.

The queen: saturated certainly, but surely not submerged. Does she breath, as I do? 

Perhaps in reply, the mother’s mouth opens wide; she is large enough to fill a school bus, and her mouth becomes a door. Will she take me home? Pure white fills her, a light that seems to scold the previous glow for its puerility, to scold me for believing that what I had seen before was, compared to her, anything but the flicker of a match. 

A sound joins the rush of water, then dwarfs it. 

Song.

Two notes in harmony, both emanating from within her, growing in volume as her mouth opens wider. The notes drop down, rise back up, joined always in a perfect fifth. Can anything else remain in the world? I stagger forward, neck bowed in worship, not that I could lift my head and face the full force of her brilliance without my eyes burning to ash.

A few feet away now, I step into the channel, feel the rush of her children in communion with her. I mutter an apology, pull my foot out and step forward again, senses overwhelmed by light, song, my face frozen in ecstasy. My lips crack again and blood trickles down my chin. I step forward into salvation.

And then.