Chapter 8: The Girl with the Dreams

As we climbed towards the top of a hill she removed her shoes and socks to reveal perfectly-painted, rose water-colored toe-nails, and brushed them against the grass, carefully, as if not to disturb the universe of tiny living things which buzzed under her feet. And when she saw the plateau looming before us, she darted towards it, using boulders and rocks to give her speed. There was so much elegance and playfulness in this run that, as I was following in her track, I could only stop occasionally and lose myself in the picture of the dew-imbued print her bare feet had left on the hot patina of the rocks and how it was vanishing swiftly under the strike of the sun-rays.

And then she stopped briskly, right at the rim, and tiny pebbles rolled down the slope onto the opposite side of the mountain. She stood there, blocking the sun with the palm of her hand and looked deep at the horizon line across the immense vastness of the valleys of Sonoma County. There were no more towns or people; just an enormous, long-awaited encounter with tranquility. It seemed to say ' I have been here all this time - what about you?'

'Just please, don't say anything' Audrey told me clumsily as I joined her near the edge... I wasn't planning to, and I think she was expecting me to act either the way she, herself, did in the past or the way others behaved around her. We both stood there, in silence, and I, for once, was happy that this top of the mountain was not too steep and that I didn't have an abyss opening under my feet as I had imagined it would. I'm afraid of heights and I had a funny feeling Audrey liked them. But this, I could manage.

'Come, I'll show you some other stuff', she said with a giggle, pulling softly at my T-shirt.

'You come here often?' she asked and then lit a cigarette. 'I haven't been here in over ten years', I replied and I was ashamed I hadn't. 'Did you do that in New York then?' she went, looking me straight in the eye.

'What? Go out for walks in the wild?', I don't know why I stalled, repeating the question. That's clearly what she meant, but there I was, buying time to find a great answer; one that would make her laugh but that would also touch her soul. 'Relax, buddy', I say to myself. She only asked you if you took walks in nature. She doesn't want a joke.

'It's pretty hard to do that in New York. I suppose you can. It just takes longer to get in and out of the city.' In truth, I didn't do it because it required too much effort. I remember my granma' saying 'whenever you get the chance, even if it's for half a day, don't let a week pass without escaping your home and town and your folk. You need to reconnect with yourself and can only do that by making a small change from the usual.'

'Ah, ok', Audrey answered. I was hoping she would dig deeper and ask me more questions but she seemed more interested in a tree she loved than in New York.

'This is my favorite tree', she pointed to an isolated bristlecone pine, on the top of a heap. 'It's said to be the tree of an ancient Indian princess. She came here and wept after her father had banished her for refusing to marry a man he'd chosen for her. It is said she met her soul-mate while she was sitting right here under its shade.' she said, smelling the flowers off a lower branch.

'That old, huh?' - 'Yeap, three thousand years old.' she continued. It's true. Even I forgot California is home to the oldest trees in the world. 'And what happened, next?', I followed. 'Did she make peace with her dad?'

'Yeah, right. You try and explain the concept of "personal choice" three thousand years ago. "You know what, Dad? I'd rather do it my way. And while we're at it; no! I don't think girls should marry at 12"', she kept going and burst into a loud, belly laughter, letting her entire face feel the full blow of the joke. 'She probably ran away. How would I know?' - she said, stubbing her cigarette into the empty pack which she put back in the side-pocket of her bag. 'Would you like to try my apple pie?' she then asked, and all of a sudden she had a different tone to her voice, more high-pitched, which I noticed she takes when she tries to be polite. 'Yes, please', I replied, knowing I couldn't pass this time. The pie was one of the best I'd ever had. Why is this woman single? She cooks, she's pretty, she's smart. Balzac wrote 'Woman of Thirty' as a reflection of the angst women experience when they reach the age, but Audrey has always been like that, from what I could tell, slightly miscast and odd in a fascinating way. She brought napkins, home-made juice, fruit and even decorated the wrappings around some sandwiches. It's clear she's trying to make an impression but I don't know what end it serves. As it's usually the case I'm feeling awkward and unrelaxed.

'I knew a meteor would be hitting the Earth soon. Did I tell you that? I didn't, did I? I knew it would', she broke the silence as she started playing with the ants in the grass.

'No, you didn't tell me', came my reply, after checking swiftly with myself to see if she had mentioned it at any point the day before, when I'd been too tired to follow.

'Yes. I dreamt it. A couple of nights before it happened.' -'What?' I answered in disbelief.

'Yeah... Yeah... And it hit so close to home', she continued and I thought she was just messing with me now. 'It was very vivid. Like a ring of fire. And small, undefined particles of energy were riding on its mane. You couldn't see them but I could feel them... It's hard to explain; I just knew there was something there. Am I insane?', she broke the narrative, looking at me.

"Based on you what you're telling me now, no. Otherwise, maybe a bit", I was thinking. 'What happened after?', I asked. 'The waves of energy swept aside cities, lands and waters, and then I woke up', she went, as she slowly reclined her beautiful frame onto the grass. She tilted her head a bit as she did so, to let an isolated strand of hair that covered her eyes fall back behind her ear and then slowly sank more into herself.

'Did you have these sort of dreams before?', I asked, energized she was allowing me a small window into her soul. 'Yes, many times.' And she paused after that. 'When my parents died I dreamt it had happened. I was away on a school trip and nobody told me for a couple of days. A couple of nights after they passed away, I dreamt this vast funeral procession happening on the trails of these hills. The entire mood was filled with grief and the clouds covered the sun and shared the sorrow. And then this most incredible sound swept through the crowd, like the floodgates had been let open, and, from a distance, all kind of animals - cows, horses, sheep - came towards us, stomping and decimating everything in their path. People tried to run away.... but somehow the animals outran the procession and kept running even further, as if the crowd was not their goal... and that was about it,' she said, and released a sigh of relief. I felt the story wasn't finished. 'The day I had this dream was the day the funeral took place. A few moments later, I opened my eyes and my mother was sitting by my bed. This was two hundred miles away from home. I asked her if there was anything I could do to take her pain away. And she said: "You have to let the stream run its own course, along the rocks, through the deepest and darkest forests. And in the end it will flow into the open, calm seas and become one with its source; then all will be revealed and there will be no more pain and no more sorrow." I couldn't move a muscle. I felt I was tied to the bed, like I had sunk into myself and something had told me to just breathe and let go.'

'What was that something?' I asked. But I had a million other questions that hit me on these accounts. Her parents?? Her parents are well-alive.

'Instinct, I guess. I've lived my entire life on instinct - like there is something more powerful than me and that's the only reason to carry on'. She turned to me and smiled only with the corner of her mouth, lifting her upper lip' and in the process, her eye, as well, as if to say' I have no idea how I'm doing it'. 'It's kept me alive up until now', she continued. 'Otherwise it would have been .... (and she clanked her teeth while showing the sign for slitting own throat)' and released another laugh which meant 'c'est la vie'. 'That hard, huh?'I found myself empowered to ask and I could see how she was taking up a clumsy, tomboyish attitude, bringing her knees to the chin, trying to toughen up, but all the while looking like she was trying to protect herself or maybe giving herself a hug. 'Well, that is life. It's tough for everyone', and she sounded older than she was.