Waiting
by Dena

Waiting

by Dena

According to Chinese tradition the bride of Emperor Huang Ti, a 14-year-old girl called Hsi Ling Shi discovered the invention of the first silk reel. Back when silk was gold.

Marco Polo spoke of the Silk Road, he said; "When a man is riding through this desert by night and for some reason - falling asleep or anything else - he gets separated from his companions and wants to rejoin them, he hears spirit voices talking to him as if they were his companions, sometimes even calling him by name."

I often lie awake at night, wondering if I'll hear you call my name. It seems so long ago when I think about it, but I know little time has passed. It was you who brought me here to this cold place. To this wonderland of white and silver, never mind my reservations, my fear of the separation from all I had known. I followed because it was you who led me and who am I to stand in your way?

It was a time of being new. Something I had long ago given up, reborn again in your smile and touch. We came here to find a life together. You were full of dreams and ideas and hopes, I was more cautious, reserved, you called me scholarly and laughed when I insisted on loading the cart with my trunks of books.

"With no one but you around for company," I'd said, lifting my nose in the air, pushing up my glasses with a fingertip, "I would probably go spare within the week."

You laughed at me, shook your fine hea

d, you hair brushing your shoulders like honey silk. "What makes you think," you said with a wink, "that I will give you time to bury yourself in these?" And you slapped the trunk and played at shoving it off the cart, laughed again at my protest and winked at our guide.

I turn from the vista of white outside the window. I walk across the room, one of your few luxuries hangs on the bedpost, and I pick it up. The robe of tarnished gold silk, I never put it on, but drag it behind me as I move from the room, listen to its rustle on the rough wooden floors, feel it brush my calves. It was always too long for you; I could always hear you move about the cabin.

I was never the adventurer among us. It was you who dared to cross the first line, with you lips on mine, and your hand resting on my back. We were just two boys then. Young and uncertain, playing a game forbidden by our elders, frowned on by our society. What choice did we have but to run away? You had a dream. To forge our future in a place that was still new, as new as we were, where few stayed.

I add another log to the fire in the main room. The wood is dwindling and it will be hard to replace it now, in the heavy snow. The axe lies buried somewhere between this cabin and the patch of trees beyond. Lies where it was dropped and never taken up after. Lies near the pile of stones that took days to haul. I look at my hands, no longer sore and stiff and raw. I sit in the crooked chair with its roughshod pillow stuffed with straw and pull the silk robe over my knees.

Waiting for darkness each day is my only pastime. Because sometimes in the darkness you will speak to me, smile your enigmatic smile and be your charming dreamer self. In this place is our future. In this place is gold if only we look hard enough. You will take me places when we are rich. We will see the sights and tour the nations. We will be side by side and let no one or no thing make it otherwise. With our gold we can buy our freedom. If only it were so simple. If only it worked that way.

But you had found your freedom here. In the fields of wildflowers, the green of the pines and the sunshine that beat down on your golden head, turning it near to white in its luster. I could only watch in amazement and perhaps a bit of jealously as the surroundings seduced you, as would any fine lover. In this place you would know happiness and love. And you would draw me in, as you had so many times before. It was often said that you would ultimately be my downfall. A joke among our friends, how they teased me that I was merely a sheep or perhaps your faithful spaniel that would come when you whistled.

Or when you raised your voice to cry out my name. Many times you had done so, hovering over me in our bed, I twisted beneath you on the sheets, as my head slid off the silk pillow casings, your other minor indulgence. You grinned down at me. Your wicked grin and moved your hips, slowly. You liked to hear me beg. So deep inside of me, chasing all the cold away. "This will keep you warm," you would croon to me, reminding me of my remarks on the bitterness of the wind, "you know I won't let you get cold." Your hair shimmered in the firelight and hung to either side of my face like a curtain and I was enthralled and inspired and warm. I was warm above all else. Inside and out, you always made me warm.

I am pulled from my faux miasma of heat. My thought induced warmth. I often take myself there to preserve the dwindling firewood. The cold reminds me of another cry of my name. Not the love slurred combination of sounds that tumbled from your lips as you made love to me, but a high and shrill sound, as I'd never heard from you before. The wilderness was jealous. She had come to claim you as a creature of snarls and fangs and brown bristling fur. Her embrace was not as sweet. All my strength and the dull axe could not pull you from her grip until she was done. And after her kiss all that was left of you was the broken shell that lay between the patch of trees and the cabin.

A cruel heartless thing she is, this wilderness. Her jealously left me here, alone and cold. She wrung you dry and took your spirit and left me a husk to bury under a pile of stone. She did not even have the decency to let me follow. It has started to snow again; the silk of your robe is worn shiny in spots where I rub it with my fingers. The food has been gone for days now; the guide will not be here until spring. I close my eyes and wait, hoping to hear you call my name from the darkness.