For what seems like too
long a moment considering how serious this moment is to her, he does not answer
her. A wild moment has her thinking he has left her here, a perfect mess in
this hateful room. But then he sits, wrapping a strong, comforting arm around
her shoulders, shaking in her anger and despair. He does not move when she
tries to shrug him off and recoils into herself, wrapping tear-splashed arms
around herself like a cocoon and putting on her stone face. Again.
And then he sighs.
Not a frustrated sigh or
a sigh of irritation. But a sigh like one who is sad to see his loved one upset
for so long. “Let me tell you something,” he says in a voice like a storyteller
about to lay out the map for a story so wild and full of unexpected adventures.
She does not bring her face, hidden behind her self-built wall, up to meet his
but everything within her is tingling with expectation. Whispers tell her not
to believe it, she has been let down before, but the hope swelling in her
drowns the small voices and she leans forward, coiled like a spring about to be
loosed, waiting.
“You think that I have
made you wait because you are not good enough. Or that you are not ready or as
deserving of all these things that you want, don’t you?” He points to the
bold-lettered file, full of her myriad collection of herself, her life in all its pieces. All the
things she thinks are not enough.
She nods, bringing wide
eyes to meet his, the sheen of angry outpoured emotions trace lacy trails across her face like bittersweet caresses.
He shakes his head and
smiles. Then he picks up her file and opens it again
for her to see, thumbing through each page tenderly. “Look at what you have
done, look at the things you have filled these pages with. All these little
things have built you, are still building you, into something, something wild and beautiful. Something that is worthy of the things that you desire.”
She stares at the pages, those wretched pages, and then looks back at him. “Then
why won’t you let me go? Why are you still making me wait?” she demanded, pitch
rising with her frustration.
Wisp of paper and the file closes and is
set it out of sight, fingers creating a steeple over which he looks at her with
that maddening patience. His eyes spark and she wonders what he could be
thinking of her, a broken, angry, crying mess. One he called beautiful.
“Let me tell you
something,” he says again, “I know you think I have been making you wait
because of all the things you do not deserve and are not worthy of. I know you
have worked hard to prepare yourself to go and still are. So know this, my
wanderer,” he looks at her carefully and she sits up straight, breath clogged
in throat, as he says, “I am not making you wait because you are not ready to
go or not deserving to go. You are. I’ve been making you wait because I know
you are strong enough.”
She almost starts to weep
again with the unfairness of the statement but he holds his hands up gently to
stop her and says, “You are strong enough to wait for the things I have been
preparing for you, the places I will send you. And, oh, they are such places…”
Images dance in her head,
images of fire and dancing and danger and adventure. Her heart kicks up a beat
or two and she tries not to get dizzingly lost in them. She is, after all,
still here in this cold stark room, pouring out tears and craziness and hope in rapid succession. “When will I get to go?” she asks
breathlessly. Daring herself that it might be true. It might be.
He smiles, that same
patient, knowing smile that has been driving her and driving her crazy for so
long. “You have already begun,” he gestures towards the door, “in there.”
The press of voices, the
murmur of latent activity, the oppressive patience swell through the door and
seep into this small room…
“The waiting room?”
How she should have known that she would
never be free of it. Waiting, she is always waiting. Her hopes wrap a tight
fist around her throat and she is overcome. “In there is my journey?”
“It is the beginning. I
know it doesn’t seem like much but it is important, just as important. And the
longer you are there, the stronger you are, the more prepared you are for the
great things I am giving to you.” He reproduces her file and opens it again. He
draws a blood-red pen and signs the pages, her life and her redemption written out on them, in
red, every single one.
Tears blur the images,
soften their edges, as he slips her life out of sight again, payment for the
things she gambled with all those hard-spent chances. All the ones she missed.
Warm fingers gently slip
into hers and drop a cool, heavy round object into her palm. She stares. “What
is it?”
“Your token.”
