WHAT YOUR HEART MAKES

by Ruby

Spring 2007

Running, running, the monster swung her limbs with a slicing grace, she must not let them catch her. She must not let the hated ones catch her and put her back in the tower. Tower? No, that couldn’t be right. But nothing felt right. Nothing had felt right for a long time. She had no name. The name that tickled at the back of her mind made her bare her fangs. She was no one, alone, a monster. Monsters had no ties, no family, no parents. Parents. She hissed and skidded to a stop. She knew she had put enough distance between herself and her pursuers. It was dark here, she passed the last few sputtering torches a ways back. But it didn’t matter, she could see just fine in the dark, a creature of the darkness had come home to it.

Some steps carved into the rock curved down and she took them even further into the earth. She exited into a space where the rock was dripping and wet with moss. Life. She felt uneasy. Why should life find a way to continue this far down. This was a dead place for monsters. And she was a monster.

She saw a glow from a chamber opening. She wasn’t alone down here. She snarled. She crept closer to the chamber entrance to see if the occupant could be ignored or if they would be trouble. As she crept closer, a voice called out, “Come in! Come in! I’ve been waiting for you, my pretty one!”

On alert now, she bared her fangs, her claws fully extended at the tips of her fingers. She crouched at the entry and peered in. A small Black woman busied herself at a table. She was working over a bowl at the center of the table. Her fingers brushed across the items around the bowl without her seeming to look at them but finding what she needed by touch. The young woman at the entrance saw the cataracts in her eyes. The woman was blind. She straightened up and took a few paces in. Speech had left her with her name. Her hated name. She knew the woman could sense her presence.

“So you’ve lost your way and you’ve come to see old Narcissa, eh?”

The younger woman with the face of a lioness growled.

“Ah, the madness that took your papa when he was your age came back for you. Let’s see what is to be done then.”

The younger woman with teeth as sharp as needles hissed.

“Ha! You think you’re an ugly thing so you act ugly! Silly child. Come look in the bowl, and see what you really are!”

The younger woman felt words forming in her throat, against her will. She croaked them out like bad tasting things.

“I…know what I am.”

“You do not. You only know what your fear tells you. You’ve forgotten your dream.”

Now the woman felt a rage like copper in the belly that made her want to lunge at the older woman and rend her to pieces.

“My dream…is useless, a stupid child dreamed about being able to live in sunshine and walk down the street with nobody staring, she was a fool, a stupid fool. I’ve killed her.”

“Have you now? Well then no harm looking in the bowl then.”

The younger woman snorted but walked to the bowl and looked in. Her hated reflection looked back at her, but then the water clouded and changed. She saw a child, there was something of her in the child’s eyes, in the child’s high cheekbones, but the little girl looked more of whomever her father was. A pretty child, and a happy one. The young woman watched the child dash through the park and run into the arms of a gray-haired woman. The image faded and her reflection was left looking at her with a renewed anger.

“Why did you show me that, old woman?”

“Temper! Fire like your mother’s. I show nothing, you see what you bring to the waters.”

The young woman felt her fury fraying into a dangerous calm. “I got to see what I would look like if I wasn’t a freak, huh?”

“Humph! Since you were a child I see your wish in the waters, like I can see all the dreams of the dreamers in this crazy place. I thought you knew better. You were your parents’ dream! Don’t you see the child is yours?”

And understanding nearly made the young woman’s knees buckle. “The child…is mine? I will have a child that looks..a child that could go Above?”

“Ah, you’re starting to understand now. Yes, we are the dreams of the people who love us, and the people who come after us make the dreams come true that we couldn’t.”

The young woman wanted to run, she needed to think. It was too much. To think that someone would want to touch her as a woman, to be her lover, to father a child with her. Her. A mother, not a monster, but a maker of life. The older woman could sense her distress and smiled warmly.

“Go and cry your silly eyes out, pretty girl. You won’t remember this, but you don’t need to, you’ll live it one day.”

The young woman ran as if her feet had wings. She collapsed by a river that ran underground and opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out. She wept instead and did so until sleep took her.

When she awoke, she walked on unsteady legs back to where she had lost her pursuers. They had built a fire and were quietly talking. They didn’t hear her approach. She had her father’s silent step. She crouched by the fire. The pair by the fire stopped talking, they watched her, afraid that if they said anything she’d run again.

The young woman wrapped her arms around her long legs and watched the fire. She still wasn’t ready to have a name again, but she wanted to sit by this fire. She felt tired again. She needed her rest. For when she was ready to have a name, when she was ready to have…a child? Already the chamber with the woman calling herself…Narcissa? was fading like glimpses of faces caught in a passing subway car.

She breathed the name out like a sigh, “Narcissa…Narcissa told me it would be all right…” and exhaustion pulled her back into sleep.

Catherine and Vincent left their places by the fire and knelt by her. They looked at each other. Narcissa had been dead these seven years.

Vincent covered the young woman with his cape and the two watched their daughter sleep.

Vincent looked into the inky darkness beyond the ring of the fire. “Thank you, Narcissa,” he whispered.

And there was only the sound of the fire, crackling gently.