THE CAVERN OF DEEP HARMONY

PART TWELVE:

She sat there against him feeling like an ember that had fallen loose some while back, had rolled alone out onto the hearth and was losing its glow. Then someone had come and scooted her back and she was pressed against the log that she was a part of once more. She didn't even know the man, had only just met him, yet there she was, content because she was home. Never in her life had she had such a sense of that, such an awareness of 'homing.'

How it could be she did not know. Right now she did not care. His heartbeat had become the center of not less than everything. She was a little afraid that if she held this homing in her hands, examined it carefully, that it might slide between her fingers and simply plop on the carpet. Perhaps it was only because of their strange meeting, maybe it was only that that made her feel bonded to him? It certainly was not at all normal for her to feel this way, act this way

on such short acquaintance. But she didn't care about that, not right now. She hadn't really understood the degree to which she'd sat alone on the hearth, not until she was pressed against him, not until she knew about...home.

But what must he be thinking of her?  And the possibilities of that jarred her, shredding away her comfort and shrouding it with a sense of embarrassed self that was unable just to...be. So

her mind left the fireplace and began bumping about the room, looking for something to say, anything at all, in that way minds have when self is suddenly thrust out into the footlights of the stage and feels it must speak. She licked her lips as she performed a last, inner ripping loose from what her heart wanted, yielding to the jarring urgings of her less attuned mind.

"Marshy?"

He laughed, little puffs of his breath ruffling the top of her hair. And she felt him pulling back, felt his presence lift from off her hair as though an anointing oil had been sucked back into its vessel. And there was the loss of it. But she plastered a semi-smile on her face only because she needed it there to mask the loss that was not, after all, really hers to lose. He could not possibly know what the moment meant to her. So she tried to recover as though the moment had not been, or, if it had, had not been what she imagined of it. His arm came down from around her
and he rested his palm flat on the floor, bracing himself.

"Yes, Marshy. Jeffrey was the only one who ever called me that, and only when I was very little."

"I like it.  It sounds very...affectionate."  She combed her fingers through her hair, trying to restore some lost order, realizing as she did so that she must've hit her ribcage as she fell

against the table. There'd most likely be a big bruise before long.  No matter. It was nothing compared with what had happened to him.

Wadsworth, unsure about what had just happened, was hovering near and began to lick Marshall's face, then Eden's. She spluttered as a large, wet tongue swiped across her nose. Marshall laughed again. "He's licking you? He never licks anybody but me. He must think you're special."

"It...it's a compliment?"

"A big one," he chuckled, reaching up to pull on Wadsworth's collar to make him stop.

Suddenly his smile faded and his face grew serious. "What happened, Eden? I need you to talk

to me."

"Oh, God...no," she breathed, not really meaning to have said it aloud.

He put his hand on her arm as though he knew exactly where it was. "Yes, Eden." His deep voice was very soft, yet very compelling. "Come, sit on the couch with me."  He moved to get

his feet under him, unable to stop a slight gasp of pain.  Recovering quickly, he even helped her to her feet, maintaining a light hold on her arm as they walked across the room to the couch.

He was aware of the tenseness in her body, something that had been totally absent just a

moment before when she leaned against his chest.

She sat about a foot to his right, playing with her fingers in her lap. Wadsworth settled in front of them, almost across their feet. "Who are you, Eden?" he asked softly.

"Who am I?"

"Yes, tell me who Eden is."

No one had ever asked that before. She wasn't even sure she'd asked it of herself.  Briefly she placed a palm across her eyes, then let it drop back into her lap. He was waiting, quietly, patiently.

She blew out a long breath. "When I was a kid I wanted to be a photojournalist for National Geographic. My Dad had all the issues going back to 1929. His whole den was shelves of yellow."  Then she wondered if he knew about that, but let it pass. "And I always liked to write...poems, little stories, pretend news articles. Majored in journalism at Carlow. I guess I always kind of found my sense of identity in what I wrote, in the pictures I took. And I always loved movies.  When the National Geographic thing didn't turn out to be a reality, I sort of found a place for myself writing about the movies I saw. Other people's stories. Other people's pictures. But I got paid, get paid, for what I have to say about them. I like it, but it's not quite... enough. Not any more." She paused, absently running the fingers of her right hand around and around the palm of her left. "Nothing's really been enough, not for a long time."

"Since when, Eden?"

"Since Miles. I guess since then. I think I'd sort of settled into a certain kind of life with him

and then it was just suddenly gone. Over. Completely, utterly over. And then...."

"Then?"

"Not much. Not much at all. I dream from time to time, always improbable things. Tibet. The Andes. The Li River. Places I'd love to see, write about. But what I do is go see 'Seven Years

In Tibet' or 'The Painted Veil' and there I am in what other people wrote and other people

saw. Other people's stories. And I wonder if my story ended in the snow that night."

"The snow?"

"Yes, Miles was killed in the snow. Shot in the neck by a man whose car he'd pulled over."

Marshall's hand came out, cupping over both of hers in her lap. "It was a terrible thing, a big thing, Eden. But not the end of your story. Not at all.  Maybe the end of a chapter, yes, but here you are and your story is still being written."

"It's just...so often...it doesn't feel like that. It's more like I'm just repeating the same page most days. Except for two days ago. That was definitely a new page."

He smiled. "I shall have to fall into gullies more often then."

She looked at him, at his genuine smile. "I'm so glad I was there."

"Possibly not as glad as I am."

"You have no idea," she added, looking back at her lap and sighing. "I'm not very good at being unhappy. I always enjoyed life, enjoyed being me growing up, then I sort of just got swept along into Miles' life.  There was kind of an odd balance to it, probably because of his job. It was like dancing right at the edge of a cliff. You enjoyed yourself and you laughed and joked, but the

cliff was always nearby and you never really forgot it, not even when you were laughing the hardest. Maybe you even remembered it more then and so you laughed harder.  Then he fell

off and nobody was there to pick him up. That double-sided laughter all just stopped and you discovered you'd forgotten how to just...laugh. That kind of laugh where there was no cliff. So you didn't laugh much after that. I think I've been trying to find my way back to that, that cliffless laughter. But it's hard."

His fingers squeezed a bit on hers. "Who am I?" she murmured and then for the first time put something into words. "I think I'm a writer who's not found her story."

"Sometimes," he said, his voice really, really soft, "our story finds us."

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