Apocalypse of Jude

Caul stands on the lone mountain grove’s alter, unsure what to feel after his dance with Mae, but grateful for the momentary lightness of being.

“Thank you.”

Mae smiles in her impish way.

“It’s my pleasure.”

He looks at the spent candles.

“Think we should head on down?”

She nods her assent. Slowly he extinguishes the remaining candles bar one, which he uses to guide himself and then her from the rock and over exposed roots of trees onto the narrow pathway that leads out of the grove to where above them, the firmament is turning with a white moon edging towards its half full state, and to where below them twinkles a confetti expanse of lights. The air is warm with the earth radiating what it has received from the day’s sun. They trundle in silence for a few steps, but the question burning in Mae refuses to remain silent.

“Caul, why did you stop dancing?”

A few steps ahead of her, he stops short.

“Because of the car accident Mae. I thought that was obvious.”

He resumes with her alongside him, their footsteps crunching graded dust.

“But you healed. You were so fortunate. Bones were broken, but you healed.”

“Did I?”

“I would have thought that you would be dying to return. Let it help you deal with your parents’ death the way you always used dancing to deal with life. But you didn’t.”

“I hated them. If it wasn’t for her screwing around and his spineless faith, I would never have had to be born and suffer this crap life.”

“Caul…”

“Spare me the lecture on who we’re meant to be Mae. That’s true and you know it. I was seventeen when the accident happened, and feeling very awkward in my body. The sexuality of dancing was driving me insane. Your sexuality was driving me insane. There was suddenly no secret garden left to go to and escape. So I closed the gates to you and started becoming the self-righteous bastard you ended up hating enough to go marry Gary—and that’s not a slur against you, before you have a go at me.”

With his hands, Caul shifts the shoulders of the pack on his back as if to justify himself.

“That’s just the truth. Until that night you and Gary separated that is. Your garden opened to me again that night. And tonight I entered it, though I’m not so sure I should have.”

She stops abruptly on the stiff downward path and looks at him shocked.

“You were in love with me as well?”

He comes to a halt a few steps ahead of her and looks back over his shoulder.

“Consumed by you rather. Consumed by someone I was forbidden to touch until the time was right.”

Caul turns his head back to the path again and continues the descent, bitterness in his heart. She follows a few steps off the pace, listening to his voice guide her through the darkness.

“I remember coming back with you one evening from the lake we used to go to, just before the accident. You had picked some hyacinths and your hair was wet. My eyes failed me for your beauty, and I could not speak. In that silence, it was like I was completely overwhelmed by the fullest intensity of what love could be. It was like I no longer existed, either as a person alive or dead. I knew nothing. I was just looking into this heart of light. And it scared me to death.”

They walk in silence for a while, Mae internalising his confession. Then she suddenly skips forward with a hint of joy to draw abreast of him.

“Why don’t you start over with me again now? Our time is almost nigh.”

He looks mournfully at her.

“I can’t.”

“Why not? You danced with me in my garden tonight.”

“Oh Mae, I really appreciated dancing again with you tonight, but I realise it was just symbolic of something else I want; am searching for.”

Mae throws her hands up to her sweat-beaded brow in exasperation.

“There we go. Another man off after the holy grail trying to heal some wounded need inside nobody can define. Sorry to throw your words back in your face, but the fisher king cannot heal himself.”

Their feet plunge steeply downwards, holding back from the impulse to let go and run their bodies headlong into the oncoming darkness. Caul’s sudden transformation by Mae’s words from quester to fisher king inspires him.

“So I’m fighting a fruitless fight?”

“Yes. And in the process wounding yourself deeper.”

“And yet you cannot heal me either, for you are not whole.”

“Oh Caul. Come on…”

But she is silent for she knows not how to answer. He carries on.

“I know I can’t heal myself Mae, or anyone else for that matter. But I’ve also realised that neither you nor anyone else can effect total healing either. That includes the one who was wounded, but then was healed only to be wounded again and again.”

“So who can heal then Caul?”

But here Caul’s voice drifts to silence and he shrugs his shoulders, not yet willing to confide in Mae that he thinks only God can heal, not yet willing to confess to her that he is no longer waiting for her, but searching for God.

Wasteland Mix: Fragment 18