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I thought a fire goddess might hear my prayers.
I have a heart of fire.
Fury and rage and a lust to live burn so brightly in me despite my broken body.
The temple is also beautiful, in a more elaborate way than the church. It is filled with pilgrims in beautiful colors, and the flames dance as brightly as foretold.
I stayed there two weeks, hoping my persistent vigil might sway a goddess’s heart. But then I saw others around me, who had waited many months, years even, for the goddess to touch and heal them. And in the end, I decided, if there are miracles to be doled out there, those waiting deserve them more than I do.
But I am not done with my quest.
I still have one more spot left to visit. One last hope.
Because what I hadn’t told my family or Drew when I broke off our engagement one week before I left is that I know in my heart this might be a one-way journey for me.
Time is running out, whether they wanted to admit it or not. I have these last few mobile years left, and then I’ll be in a wheelchair. That’s not the bad part. I’ll make a wheelchair my sexy bitch… it’s just that the other risk factors go up at that point.
That I’ve had this long on my feet is lucky, considering my condition.
But I still might not live past forty. And my survival rate past that is discussed in percentage points.
So, I returned to my own continent to visit the last place, a holy site in Mexico thronged with worshippers. I was so overwhelmed with bodies I could barely stand without being knocked against. And while I was standing there, waiting for a third day to enter the sacred place, another seeker who had also been waiting for many days spoke to me.
“Where you headed after this?” She only had a cane. Many around me were in wheelchairs pushed by other family members waiting to get in—a familiar sight by then.
I just blinked at her. I had made friends with strangers while waiting at different places I’d traveled. But usually I was the first to speak.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, you look like you’ve been traveling awhile. You’re on the hunt, like me.”
“The hunt?” I wasn’t quite following.
“For a miracle.” She smiled up at the church in front of us, the hope obvious in her face. “I’m hoping this will be the one but doubt…” She looked to the ground. “It’s a tricky thing. If I let doubt in my heart, will the holy Mother know and not give me my miracle because I lack faith?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think it works that way.”
She gave my unsteady legs the once-over. “No offence, but I’m not sure you’re really one to say.”
Ouch. But maybe fair. I hadn’t got my miracle yet, after all.
“This is my last stop,” I confided. If this didn’t work then I’d… do what? Go back home, accept my fate, and try to pick up the broken pieces with my fiancé if he’d even talk to me? I sighed. The thought was exhausting.
The woman merely nodded knowingly. “Many turn back from the path.”
I frowned at her. “What about you? Where are you going after this?”
She smiled at me, a peaceful, calm smile I envied. And then she rattled off a list of locations, many I’d read about online. Her eyes gained a faraway, slightly worried look. “At the end, if nothing has worked, then I’ll try the nuclear option.”
I straightened, alarmed. “What’s the nuclear option?”
“Well, there’s rumors of this place in Alaska. Deep, deep up in Alaska. A little boy who’d been deformed since birth came down from a mountain completely healed.”
I blinked at her and swiped sweat from my brow underneath the cap I was wearing to shade my face from the blistering sun. We were all baking out here. “And that’s it? Just a rumor? Has anyone else gone to check it out?”
She regarded me again, solemn. “They have. None came back alive.”
I laughed out loud.
Of course, I assumed she was joking. A magic mountain deep in the Alaskan wilderness? Who wouldn’t laugh?
But she just kept staring at me, dead serious.
“Well you can’t really be thinking about going there, can you?” I asked.
She tilted her head. “Why not? Maybe all these places”—she waved her hand at the church—“are out of miracles. Maybe the mountain gods in Alaska will only bless the pure of heart, like the little boy. Maybe others went with bad intentions.”
She inhaled, and as exhaled out, the peaceful smile settled back on her face. “But I believe.”
Neither of us was healed by the weeping statue inside the church.
But I remembered her words.
And even though I knew I should have booked my flight home back to safe San Jose, California… on a whim at the airport I asked for the earliest flight to Anchorage.
