The Meq (46 page)
Authors: Steve Cash
Tags: #Fantasy fiction, #General, #Fantasy, #Immortalism, #Historical, #Fiction, #Children
“Yes,” she said. “I would know Zuriaa’s presence from years away, and easily when she is filled with this much, how you say,
gorroto
?”
“Hate,” Sailor answered as he raced in from the walkway.
“Yes,” Opari said. “She is hating.”
What happened next, happened quickly. Opari made sure Star and the baby were safe and out of sight, then stood in the open doorway of the shack and told Sailor and me to stand behind her and wait. In moments, two horses approached down a short rise between the remnants of a gate and came to a halt ten feet from the shack. I saw the faces of the riders in the first few rays of real dawn. One was pathetic, paralyzed, sagging, dying, and empty. It was Cheng. The other wore no veil, looked exactly like Ray, and burned with fury behind her green eyes—Zuriaa.
She yelled something at Opari in Chinese. I had no idea what she was saying, but I could tell she was offended at Opari’s presence, as if Opari had no business being there. Opari remained calm and told her to speak in English.
“English?” Zuriaa shouted.
“Yes.”
“Why English?” she asked again and dropped her voice slightly, leaning forward in her saddle and finding me standing behind Opari.
“You,” she said, staring at me blankly.
Opari took a step forward. “You lied to me, Zuriaa.”
“No, I did not.”
“Yes, you said you would leave alone this business . . . this selling of the children.”
Zuriaa paused a moment, then she spat out the words, “I was made to do it.”
“By whom?”
“You know the one, the only one who would.”
“The Fleur-du-Mal?”
“Oui.”
Opari stood a moment in silence, then turned and glanced at me. “Why does he want this child, Zuriaa?” she asked over her shoulder.
“I do not know.”
I stepped forward next to Opari in the doorway. “But I do,” I said, “and you can tell him this will not happen.”
“I . . . I cannot do that,” she stammered. She had trouble speaking to me, then I realized she thought I must be the only one who knew who she really was.
“You will tell him that,” I said. And you will tell him who told you to tell him that.”
“Where is he, Zuriaa?” Opari asked. “Where is the Fleur-du-Mal now?”
Zuriaa glanced at Cheng, who was having trouble staying in the saddle, then together they spurred their horses to make a charge at the doorway. In the same instant their heels struck the horses, Opari and Sailor reached for the Stone that each wore around their necks, and held them out, tight in their fists, at arm’s length toward the horses. The horses snorted and stumbled, refusing to go forward, as if they sensed a cliff and a chasm and had the good sense to go no farther.
Opari and Sailor had reacted instinctively. I’m not sure at the time if they knew what they were doing or if it was going to succeed. But it did and it made me think of the loss of the last true gift my papa had given me—the Stone—and I remembered the one who had taken it.
“Zuriaa,” I shouted. “Does Opari know about the gems that Cheng stole from the Stones of Geaxi and me?”
“What?” Opari turned and asked.
“And that Baju was shot and killed by Cheng?”
“What?” Opari and Sailor said in unison.
“And do you know, Zuriaa, that Cheng stole the Stone from me in Senegal? . . . The same place he probably sold Ray to a German, like a slave.”
“What?” Zuriaa shouted from her horse.
She whirled in one motion and threw the gems that she kept in her pocket into the air in the direction of Opari and the doorway. She spurred her horse and raced by Cheng, stabbing him in the heart as she passed. I never saw her reach for the stiletto, but it hung and dangled from Cheng’s chest before he and the knife fell together and the knife was dislodged, along with something else that rolled out from under him like an ugly black egg—the Stone.
Opari bent down to pick up the gems. I watched Zuriaa disappear up the rise and back through the ruins, then I walked out to where Cheng lay dead and picked up the Stone. I tossed it to Sailor, who had to hold one hand up against the rising sun to catch it. Opari watched the black thing fly through the air and couldn’t believe it.
“These things occur,” Sailor shouted to me.
“Are you going to be saying that now, I mean, from now on?” I asked.
“Many times,” he said. “Many times.”
Then we all heard a strange sound that was growing louder by the second, coming in from the open sea toward the lagoon. A sound that made no sense to me, the sound of engines whining at full throttle over water.
Sailor said, “Look.”
I looked and what I saw came out of a dream, but was real. My dreams could never have been that rich. I saw two biplanes outfitted as seaplanes with wooden skids hanging underneath, the kind I had seen a photograph of in the desert. They were at a height of no more than two hundred feet over the water, approaching and descending.
Sailor said, “Come on.”
I grabbed all the packs and Opari helped Star and the baby. We followed Sailor out to the end of the walkway where the two seaplanes were landing in the lagoon. The big engines roared and the two planes fishtailed in the water as they slowed down and got their bearings. Then they pulled up one behind the other alongside the walkway.
When I tried to see the pilot of the leading plane, at first there seemed to be no one in the cockpit, then someone small leaped out and onto the walkway. She had short dark hair under a leather cap, which she yanked off with one hand. With the other hand, she removed her scarf and goggles. It was Geaxi.
“Hello, young Zezen,” she said. “I did not expect to see you here.”
“Well, these things occur, Geaxi,” I said. “Where did you learn to fly?”
“Canada, actually,” she said without hesitation. “But tell me, why are you here? Sailor said it would only be himself and possibly Opari.”
“He was right,” I said. “Only he had the wrong Opari in mind.”
“What?” Geaxi asked.
“Never mind,” Sailor interrupted.
Geaxi pulled her beret out of a vest and set it on her head, looking around for someone until she found her.
“You must be Opari,” she said and they exchanged a long look loaded with information.
“Yes, I am Opari.”
“You have been missing.”
“Yes, but no longer.”
Opari took my hand in hers and held it against her chest, near to where her heart beat underneath.
Geaxi looked at us both and smiled. “I see,” she said, “but that still does not explain—”
“Never mind,” Sailor said. “We will have time for this later. Time is not our problem. I need to know if we have too much weight for the planes to take off.”
“That should not be a problem,” Geaxi said, “but I will ask Willie.”
She waved over the second pilot. He was a tall man, about thirty years old with a boyish face. He wore a British uniform, but everything was slightly unbuttoned or fitted him oddly. He had sandy hair and, except for a broken nose, a handsome face. He seemed completely at ease with Geaxi and was not startled to see other Meq around. There was something vaguely familiar about him.
As he came close, Geaxi started laughing.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“I have just remembered something,” Geaxi said, and with a deep bow and a wave of her arm, she introduced him. “Willie Croft, I would like you to meet my good friend, the Buddha, also known as Zianno Zezen.”
Then the name and the face came together and rang a bell. He was the kid outside the train in China, the one Geaxi told I was the Buddha and he had believed it. The recognition was simultaneous and the tall man dropped his face, almost embarrassed.
“Hello, Zianno,” he said.
“Hello, Willie, but you can call me Z.”
“Well, then, hello, Z.”
“We’ve got a weak and wounded mother and a newborn baby, Willie. Will it be too rough for them?”
“No, I shouldn’t think so, just a bit long is all.”
“Good. How did you hook up with Geaxi?”
“Well, it’s a long story,” he said. “Would you want to hear it now?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”
“Do we have too much weight?” Sailor asked.
“No,” Willie said. “We’ll make it.”
“Where are we going?” I asked Sailor.
“Tripoli, then Alexandria and on to England by ship, if it’s safe.”
Geaxi took off her beret and slipped her leather cap back on. She fastened her goggles and wrapped her scarf around her neck. “Who flies with me?” she asked.
Opari sat in the other plane behind Willie Croft, keeping Star and her baby warm and calm. I looked at her once as we took off and every other minute after we were in the air. The two planes stayed close and climbed to almost a thousand feet. Geaxi seemed born to fly and handled the experimental plane with ease. For a moment, I thought about Ray and how much he would have loved to be with us. In my heart, I resolved to find him and free him. We headed south, hugging the coastline, then east into and under the sun as it rose in the sky.
Eventually, we flew over a strip of white sand that was scattered with the ruins of an old city. Broken stones and columns littered the area. The only structure I could identify was the remains of a Roman amphitheater. In the center, standing alone, was a small figure who looked up as we flew over. Even from a thousand feet, I could see the green ribbon and the white teeth.
“What is that place?” I yelled at Sailor. We were sitting close, but the noise of the engine and the wind made it difficult to hear.
“Sabratha,” Sailor yelled back. “The Fleur-du-Mal was born there.”
I leaned forward and tapped Geaxi on the shoulder, pointing down at the ruins and the figure standing among them. Geaxi recognized him and couldn’t resist circling and waggling her wings. After one full circle, the figure knew who it was above him and what it meant. It was the first time I had seen his brilliant teeth bared in a grimace and not a smile.
We flew on toward Tripoli and I forgot about the Fleur-du-Mal within minutes. Flying does that. The Mediterranean seemed as blue as Sailor’s star sapphire and the sky was bright and light. I looked over at Opari in the other plane and she was staring back, silently mouthing the first word she had ever spoken to me . . . “beloved.”
I turned to Sailor and yelled, “By the way, do you know what day it is?”
“Yes,” he yelled back. “It is your birthday.”
He was trying to put on his goggles and having trouble with it. He finally tossed them over the side and let the wind hit him full face.
“That can’t be true,” I said. Then I looked over at him and whether he was laughing or crying from the wind, I couldn’t tell, but his eyes were full of tears.
“It is not true,” he said. “It just sounded good.”
Then we both started laughing and he added, “I have no idea what day it is.”
13
PAR
(LAUGH)
Think of it like the two miners who were trapped and realized, once the dust had settled, there was no hope of escape. After countless confessions and a thousand tales of pointless regret, they decided instead to tell each other jokes until the very end . . . just to see who got the last laugh. The two miners were never found, but the others, the saved ones, remembered the echoes of that laughter for the rest of their lives. They all agreed it was the most genuine and contagious laughter they had ever heard.
W
e stopped five times on our flight to Alexandria—three times for fuel and twice for Opari to look after Star and the baby. Opari said the bullet wound was healing and the loss of blood was a concern, but both mother and son were doing well under the circumstances.
“Son?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, then looked at me strangely. “Did you not know?”
“No!”
She laughed out loud and shook her head, then kissed me while she was still laughing. It was a rich, full laugh—not a giggle—and I laughed with her. I couldn’t help it even though I was the source of the joke. She was beautiful. Her dark eyes sparkled and danced. Her mouth opened and I almost wanted to count her teeth, they were so white and perfectly shaped. The sound of her laugh was free and spontaneous and I was jealous of all the others before me who had heard it. Much later, Opari would tell me it was the first time she had laughed in over a thousand years.
Sailor took charge as I expected and I was grateful for it. He had a plan, which he and Geaxi had already set in motion, and he merely fitted Star, the baby, and me into it. It was unclear what he had in mind, but Sailor was the one who made sure Star got immediate medical attention after we arrived, not Opari or Geaxi. He told Willie Croft where to take her in Alexandria and even held the baby while she was helped onto a stretcher. Star could have made the trip under her own steam, but Sailor insisted on taking every precaution. I had never known him to put the welfare of the Giza before that of the Meq. It seemed very unusual, and even more strange, it seemed genuine.
As he was handing the baby back to Star, the baby’s hands found Sailor’s single braid behind his ear, pulling Sailor’s head down and finally grasping in his little palm the piece of lapis lazuli that hung from the bottom of the braid. Without hesitating, Sailor untied the lapis lazuli and Star was carried away with the baby still holding the gem tight in his tiny hands. Star looked back at Sailor and smiled. Sailor waved. I had never seen him wave before to anyone, anywhere. I had no idea how long he had worn the lapis lazuli. I knew it meant something unique to him, and yet he had given it away in a moment to the child of a Giza, a complete stranger. While he was waving, I noticed that even Geaxi seemed to look twice. Perhaps it was because he had finally found Opari and their differences had been settled. Or it could have had something to do with his questions about Eder, Nova, and their relationship with Carolina. Whatever his reasons, the change was a dramatic surprise to everyone. As for me, I was so happy I was useless.
We had made our final landing a few miles west of Alexandria in a makeshift safe harbor, completely isolated and obviously not part of a British base. A man in uniform, which he wore as casually as Willie, helped tie the two planes to a dock covered with a tin roof and palm fronds on top of that. The man seemed as unconcerned about being around the Meq as did Willie. It was sunset. The air was cool and the light was golden.
Everything seemed slightly surreal. The landscape was barren and the point at which it met the sea was unremarkable, but I felt as if we had landed in paradise. As long as Opari was there, I was sure of it. I watched her as if she was in slow motion. I watched her help Star and the baby out of the plane, the way no movement was wasted and no touch in a place of pain or discomfort to Star. After Sailor took charge and Star and the baby had left with Willie and the other man, I watched her gather our things and help Geaxi with the planes. I watched her hands. I watched the way she knelt and stood up, the way she turned and smiled. I watched everything. Opari—my Ameq. I thought of Unai and Usoa and wondered how they could have waited so many centuries to cross in the Zeharkatu. As I watched Opari, I could not conceive of it. Now that she was with me, that we were free and together, the Itxaron—the Wait—seemed absurd and unnecessary. Opari was a rich and complex woman living in a girl’s body. I thought I knew everything about living in a boy’s body, but I was learning something by the moment that neither Papa nor Sailor nor anyone else had ever had a chance to tell me about being Meq, being male, and being in love. It was a feeling as old as time, but brand-new to me.
“She has become more than a ghost, no?”
I turned as if I’d been caught stealing. It was Sailor. He had been watching me watch Opari. His “ghost eye” actually winked at me.
Embarrassed at first, I relaxed, remembering his own connection with Opari. “Yes,” I said, then stammered, “she is . . . she has . . .”
“Her sister was equally as lovely,” he said. He turned and watched Opari himself, and for a brief moment, I knew he was seeing Deza, then he turned back to me. His “ghost eye” narrowed and focused. He twirled the star sapphire on his finger and spoke in a low monotone. “You will, you must, become accustomed to this feeling, Zianno. There is so much still to be done. I will tell you more later, but remember, you are Meq, you are the Stone of Dreams. We will need you. You must dredge your dreams, conscious and unconscious, good and bad. In the muck of an ancient nightmare, you may find a diamond. In the bright blue of an imagined summer day, there may be a hornet you ignored. It would be your mistake to miss either through lack of curiosity.”
“What about Opari?” I asked. “Have you spoken to her?”
“No, but she must do the same. She must stay the same. She is the Stone of Blood. I am certain she thought of this before . . . before she found us.”
“Aha!” I said. “So you finally admit someone found you and not the other way around.”
Sailor laughed once, but that was his only response.
Darkness came quickly and a breeze picked up. It was warm compared to the night air in the deep desert, but still cool and it blew the salt air in from the Mediterranean. Geaxi led us to a low stone building with a newly rebuilt roof and most of one wall missing. She said the British had used a nearby site for target practice two years earlier. A stray shell had caught the side of the building. I was amazed at the size of the hole and couldn’t imagine the weapon that had produced it. Geaxi circled the one large room inside, lighting kerosene lamps along the way. There were only two windows at the top of one wall and none of the lamps was beneath them. There seemed to be no electricity and no running water. Several straw mats covered the floor and a few personal items lay around two of them. Another was off by itself, clean and sparse, with two blankets neatly folded on top and two black ballet slippers at one end. By looking at it, there was no way to tell if the occupant had been there a day, a year, or ten years. I smiled to myself at the almost invisible address of Geaxi. I turned to speak to her, but she and Opari were busy preparing a kind of nursery for Star and her baby. I found Sailor instead.
“What is this place?” I asked.
He looked around all four sides of the large room and up at the windows. His eyes moved to the roof, which was temporary at best, then to the blown-out hole in the wall facing away from the sea. He flared his nostrils and took a deep breath of the breeze that filled the room with the fresh and ancient scent of the Mediterranean. He closed his eyes a moment and stood still, holding the air in his lungs. Then gently, slowly, he let it slip through his mouth and lips and over his tongue, tasting it as it left his body. He knelt and felt the stones in the floor, tracing their outlines with the tips of his fingers.
“The Greeks built the floor,” he said without looking up. “But not the Greeks who lived down the coast, the ones who built the Lighthouse and the Great Library. These Greeks sailed in darkness and kept no books. These Greeks traded with the last of the Phoenicians.” He glanced up at me and his “ghost eye” was filled with clouds. “It was here,” he said, then paused. “It was here where the trades were made.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Geaxi and Opari had stopped what they were doing and were watching us.
“Trades in what?” I asked.
“Bones,” he said. “The bones of the Meq who were slaughtered in their temples.”
I turned to look at Opari and both she and Geaxi were now staring at me. Just as the question “why” was on my lips, Opari shook her head once and I understood. The “why” was irrelevant; it was the “where” that haunted this place for Sailor. I understood that we were probably standing on the floor in the room where Deza’s bones had been bought and sold, traded among the Giza like so many pieces of silver. Looking across the room into Opari’s living eyes, I wondered how many places were like this for him, how many times he ran into a past that haunted him, a past in which he was still a living presence.
“Young Willie Croft owns it now,” Geaxi said, then she started toward us. “Nay, I should say the Daphne Croft Foundation owns it in the proper and legal sense.” Her movements were liquid, graceful, almost weightless, and her voice brought Sailor out of the past.
“Yes,” he said, rising to his feet and breathing in deeply once more, “yes, that is correct. This place is merely a stage, Zianno. One of many we are acquiring.”
“We?” I asked.
Suddenly Geaxi burst into laughter. She was standing next to Sailor with her hands on her hips. She was wearing boots, not her ballet slippers, but she went into a pirouette, laughing hysterically and raising her arms, waving her beret like a drunken ballerina. Opari walked over and took my hand, smiling, but also asking me with her eyes what was going on. I had no idea. I looked at Sailor and he was staring at Geaxi, just as mystified.
“Is something funny?” he asked.
She stopped turning, but still laughing she said, “You must admit it is a bit absurd, Sailor.”
“What is absurd?”
“The Meq acquiring property.”
Opari and I looked at each other, both in the dark about everything.
Sailor said, “It is time to tell our stories. There is much to clarify.”
Geaxi nodded, but she was still smiling. “I will get the bread and cheese and those wonderful olives and meet you there.” She turned and walked away, but laughed once more to herself. Over her shoulder she added, “And boil some water for tea. This may be a long evening.”
Opari and I looked at Sailor. He was watching Geaxi’s back, shaking his head. There was a trace of a smile on his face, then it disappeared.
“Follow me,” he said. His “ghost eye” was clear and he spoke in an even voice.
“Where are we going?” I asked. “I thought we were here.”
“Under the sea,” he said. “Or at least under where it was and where it shall be. That was one of the pass phrases used by the Greeks. Clever people, the Greeks, even their pirates, but riddled with riddles.”
Opari squeezed my hand. “I know of this place from Zeru-Meq,” she said.
“Zeru-Meq?” Sailor asked and both eyebrows arched high on his head, then relaxed. “I should have guessed as much,” he said, nodding to himself.
“Yes,” she went on, “I believe he called it ‘The Shadow in the Shallows.’ ”
“He would know,” Sailor said, then motioned for us to follow. “We must make haste before the others return. Willie is not aware of where I am taking you. No Giza is.”
We left the way we had entered and then veered sharply to the west, away from the path leading to the dock. We walked in a line and followed Sailor through rock and brush and sand in a complicated zigzag pattern that eventually ended in a tiny spit of sand that would have been underwater had it been high tide. If it was a trail we had taken, only Sailor knew it.
In moments, Geaxi appeared from behind us, dressed in black and carrying a large candle in one hand and a netted sack stuffed with food in the other. I never heard her approach. She was as silent as a shadow come to life. Overhead there was only starlight. The moon was hidden behind a low bank of clouds. I glanced at Opari and then turned to Sailor.
“What now?” I asked.
“Look out to sea,” he said. “Not directly in front of you, but obliquely. Watch the water. Watch the light on the water. Try to look for—” He paused and smiled at Opari. “A Shadow in the Shallows.”
I turned and faced north, trying to see everything and nothing. The Mediterranean stretched into darkness, but suddenly, not a hundred yards out, I caught the outline of a form, a shadow darker than the sea around it and rectangular. It was just under the surface.
“Now you have it,” Geaxi said and splashed out in the water, stepping high and holding the candle and cache of food above her head. In seconds, she was standing on one end of the shadow, which caused the other end to rise up like a seesaw and Geaxi was underwater up to her chest.
The shadow was no shadow at all, but a single slab of stone, balanced and hinged, accessible only at low tide and weighted so that someone as light and small as Geaxi could easily make it move just by stepping on top of one end.
“Come!” she shouted. “Come quickly!”
Sailor walked into the water without a word. Opari and I glanced at each other and followed. When we got to the slab of stone, I could see that under the raised end there was actually an opening, a kind of trapdoor. The shallow water of low tide was disappearing down the opening in a descending spiral. Geaxi stepped off the stone and lit the candle with a match she had tucked behind her ear. In the flickering light, I could see steps, also descending in a spiral and a slightly diagonal direction.