The Meq (47 page)

“The water only follows the spiral for two fathoms,” Geaxi said. “Watch your step and stay close,” she added, then walked into the darkness under the stone and beneath the sea.

The light from the candle was weak and Opari held my hand as we tried to keep pace with Geaxi. Sailor pointed out niches in the walls that had once held oil lamps. I asked him who had carved the steps and niches and he waved us on, remaining silent. I felt as though we were winding our way down and through the empty shell of a giant nautilus, the mollusk I had first seen in the Indian Ocean.

After twenty steps or so, the passage began to level out and the water that had been descending with us gathered and swirled in a pool. The carved steps wound around the pool and beyond, ascending slightly. The pool served as a drain and collection point for another passage whose opening was triggered by the weight and volume of the water above it. That passage, Sailor said, connected with another, then another, and so on until all water was returned to the Mediterranean. Gravity determined its course, but I still had no idea where ours was leading.

“We are nearly there,” Sailor said, reading my eyes.

Geaxi had stopped and was waiting for us only a few more steps up the incline. She was standing where the steps ended and the passage became completely level. The carved stone gave way to sand underfoot—old sand, dry and crystalline, reflecting the candlelight and leading to something ahead in the dark. The entrance to the corridor had been enlarged and bordered with huge, perfectly beveled, square-cut stones.

“The Greeks did this,” Sailor said and he ran his fingers along the edge of one of the stones. “They discovered this place and thought it too small, so they carved away, thinking as always it was somehow meant for them. I am afraid they were mistaken. It was here long before they brought their chisels. Still, one must admire their attention to detail.”

Geaxi led us on. Arcane signs and symbols appeared on the walls. Animals and birds and fish, real and imaginary, overlapped and joined, all drawn at different times and ages. A single Greek word was engraved over one of the drawings, an outline of a hand exactly my size. The word was “KTEMAESAEI.” I pointed it out to Sailor.

“What does it mean?” I asked.

Without slowing down or glancing back, he laughed bitterly and said, “A possession forever.”

Suddenly Geaxi’s candle flared and I realized we had reached the end of the corridor and entered a higher, broader chamber. There was no other entrance or exit. It was a room, an oval room, and it was instantly familiar.

In the candlelight, I saw two wooden planks, roughly sawn and set on stones in the center of the room as a kind of table. Around the planks, resting on the sand, there were several mats like the ones in the bombed-out building above. Geaxi placed the candle on one of the planks and emptied the bread, cheese, olives, and what appeared to be two wineskins on the other plank. She smiled and removed her beret with one hand, waving it over the table, as if welcoming us to a feast. But it was Sailor who spoke first.

“Sit down,” he said. “And let us speak of the Meq.”

We sat down facing each other, all of us cross-legged on the mats. Geaxi began to split the bread and reached into her vest for a knife to slice the cheese. Opari and I held each other’s hands. Behind Sailor, in the background at the deep end of the oval room, I caught a glimpse of a black-stained, indented circle in the stone wall. There were shadows of two small handprints on either side. There was something written in the stone in a circle around the circle.

“This—this place,” Sailor began and he raised his forefinger and traced the circumference of the room in the air. His star sapphire shot back brilliant blues and greens as it passed through the candlelight. “This place is Meq. It is very old, from before the time of ‘Those-Who-Fled,’ possibly and probably from before the ‘Time of Ice.’ ” He paused and glanced at Geaxi, then stared hard at Opari and me. “We are not sure of its purpose. We . . . we speculated that this place and others like it will lead us to the next Remembering. The Gogorati.” He stopped again and made sure he had Opari’s attention. “This was why we searched for you, Opari. This place is reason enough for proof that the Gogorati is not a myth. It will occur . . . no matter what Zeru-Meq believes. And since this place does exist, we must unite. Those who carry the Stone must be of one mind if we are to solve the riddle that is here, now, in this place. All five Stones are required at the Remembering. All five Stones will be required even to find it.”

“I am here because of Zianno,” Opari said softly. “But my heart has . . .
esnatu
?”

“Awakened,” Geaxi translated and leaned over, offering us both an olive.

“Yes, awakened,” Opari said, then she looked each of us in the eyes, ending with Sailor. “I have been sleeping, Umla-Meq. You must forgive me. Now, tell me of your riddle.”

“I wish I could,” Sailor said. “But, alas, we cannot read it, let alone determine its meaning.”

“Who is ‘we’?” I asked. “You mean Geaxi?”

“No. Another. The one who found this place long ago and two others like it in all the years since. He knows more about these oval rooms than any other.”

“Who is he?” Opari asked.

Sailor smiled and almost laughed under his breath. “He has used the name ‘Mowsel’ for centuries, but his
deitura
is Trumoi-Meq.”

“He lives?”

“Yes,” Sailor said. “He lives.”

“Ayii,” Opari said, then she made a high-pitched trilling sound with her tongue against her teeth, a sound I had only heard made by women in the deep desert. I pressed her hand and she glanced at me, then turned to Sailor and spoke in her softest voice. “He was a ghost, a myth to us as children. We were never thinking he was real. Can this be true?”

“Yes, but I see him rarely,” Sailor said. “And speak to him only when necessary. He found me almost two thousand years ago.”

“To help you find Opari?” I asked.

“No. That was incidental to him. He has always sought something else, something a bit more difficult to find.”

“What?”

“Who we are. The answer to the question all of us carry and never ask—why are we here? Why do the Meq exist at all? But even he cannot read the old script. He can read an altered version and even write in a later, transitional script, but not the old one—the original. No one can.”

“Like the one behind you?” I asked. “In the circle around the dark circle in the wall?”

Opari looked at me while Sailor and Geaxi stared blankly at each other, then turned to me. It was Sailor who said, “Yes, exactly like that.”

I walked to the far end of the room and knelt in the sand in front of the dark, indented circle. I put my two hands on the wall and let my palms and outspread fingers press into the spaces that fitted them perfectly, that were made by someone long, long ago. Someone with hands exactly my size, exactly
our
size. Then I ran one of my fingers around the circle and over the script. Without turning away, I said, “I can read it.”

A good joke is always difficult to predict, but somehow easy to follow. It is the same with the truth. As I was kneeling in the sand, I thought back to the cold day in St. Louis when Ray had held Papa’s baseball and drawn a circle within a circle on the frozen glass of my bedroom window at Mrs. Bennings’s House. I remembered how I felt when he told me what it was to be Meq. I don’t know how my eyes looked to Ray, but as I turned and looked at Sailor, Geaxi, and even Opari, I saw in their eyes a mirror image of how I had felt watching Ray draw his circles on the glass and listening to his simple, powerful truth.

I motioned for Sailor to come and kneel next to me. I took his hand and the finger with the star sapphire and translated for him as I traced the characters and lines in the script with his finger. It read as follows:

Geaxi picked up the candle and the light in the oval room danced and shifted. She and Opari walked over in silence and dropped to their knees alongside Sailor and me. I let go of Sailor’s hand and he continued to trace and retrace his finger over the old writing. I watched him closely. Over and over, he said the words to himself, moving his lips without speaking. I suddenly realized that in the heart and mind of an old one like Sailor, I had given him a gift as great and simple as the Meq could receive—connection with the past and hope for the future.

I told him of the other room I had found in the barren waste of the Tassili range and the script I had discovered there, along with the lines written by Trumoi-Meq.

“Yes,” he said, almost with a smile. “But you can read both. He cannot.”

“These things occur,” I said, but no one laughed. I looked at Sailor and he was staring back with an expression in his eyes I had never seen before. A look a prisoner might have after a sudden and unexpected release. Slowly, another realization dawned. What I had done was more than a gift—I had unlocked the door to his lifelong obsession, an “ability” far more significant than hyper-hearing, quickness, or silence. I could
read
the writing. I could do what no other Meq had ever done.

Opari took both my hands in hers. She was frowning and leaning forward to look at Sailor. “What does this mean?” she asked. “That Zianno is the one? That Zianno has the Gift?”

Sailor stared back. “It is time,” he whispered. “No one knew it would be Zianno. We might have hoped or wondered, but no one knew.” He paused and glanced at Geaxi. “We have less than a hundred years to find the Egongela, the Living Room, and prepare for the Gogorati. I long suspected someone would come in time, someone from among us I would least expect. Alas, someone comes and even he is unaware of the Gift he possesses. He reads the writing without study or preparation. It comes to him. He comes to us, the youngest child among the Children, and behold, it is Zianno.”

Geaxi took off her beret and tossed it to me. I caught it with one hand. “You have done well, Zianno,” she said. “Now that we know what it says, the real work begins. We must try and find out what this gibberish means.”

We all turned to the wall and gazed at the stained circle and the two handprints on either side. Geaxi had stuck the candle in the sand and it shifted suddenly, spilling melted wax over one side and snuffing out the flame.

“Everything has changed,” Sailor said and we sat very still in the silence and the dark. Over our heads, beyond the stone walls of the oval room, I knew there was a vast sea teeming with life, and beyond that, an even vaster sea of sky teeming with stars. Under all of that, inside all of that, I could hear all our hearts beating.

“Light the candle again,” I said. “Let’s tell our stories.”

There is a unique synergism that takes place when the Meq share their stories. There is little reference to time in the usual sense, only in terms of its relevance to an action and whether that action is positive or negative in its completion, no matter how long it takes to complete it. We assume survival. The connection and exchange is as discrete as the blood in our veins. The stories are shared like bread and wine, sweetly tasted and swallowed. Sorrow and joy are tossed like grapes across the table. One tale becomes many and many intertwine. Time becomes a passenger, a paying customer, someone along for the ride through the long, tangled here and now. This is our wonderful and terrible essence. This is our strength.

Sailor said, “Then you begin, Zianno.”

So I began and I covered it all, starting with Li Lien-ying handing me Carolina’s letter in the Forbidden City. From St. Louis to New Orleans to Africa, from Star’s abduction to Ray’s abduction, through ports, places, facts, faces, reasons, hunches, yearnings, visions, dreams, and obsessions—I took them with me. When I got to Emme and PoPo and the Dogon myths and their secret, singular knowledge of the Meq, Geaxi and Opari leaned forward like little girls at camp, eager for the next word. Sailor sat in silence, unmoving, and twisted the star sapphire on his forefinger. I told them of the Prophecy and the reason behind the Fleur-du-Mal’s obsession with Star, and Geaxi laughed out loud, while Opari seemed to withdraw and reflect on something deeply personal.

“He is beyond mad,” Geaxi said.

“Yes,” Sailor responded suddenly. “But not beyond dangerous.”

It was then that I asked Sailor about the star sapphire in his ring and the blue diamond that Usoa wore in her ear. I told him the story of the Ancient Pearl that PoPo had told me, how it had originally come from a Stone of the Meq. I told him what the Fleur-du-Mal believed, that they all came from a sixth Stone, and I asked him if it was true. All eyes turned to Sailor and he paused before he spoke.

“No one knows,” he said. Then he laughed bitterly to himself. “It is an odd irony. Geaxi does not believe it, nor Unai or Usoa. Trumoi-Meq does not and Eder does not.” He paused again and looked directly at me, then continued. “Your mother and father never believed it, never thought it possible. The only one other than the Fleur-du-Mal who believes this is so . . . is myself.” He laughed again. “Quite an irony, no? It is the only thing on earth, apart from being Meq, that I have in common with the Fleur-du-Mal.”

I let his words sink in and glanced into the eyes of Geaxi and Opari. Nothing in their dark eyes and beautiful, innocent faces would tell a stranger anything about the mysteries within.

“What would it mean?” I asked. “If there was a sixth Stone?”

“There have been theories,” he said, then shook his head slowly. “But no one knows.”

I noticed when Sailor shook his head that the braid behind his ear was coming loose at the end and I remembered the lapis lazuli.

“Why did you give Star’s baby the blue gem?” I asked him. “If you knew it was . . . if you believed it came from the sixth Stone?”

“Yes, Sailor,” Opari said. She squeezed my hand and leaned in closer. “I was wondering this also.”

“Because she is in this now. She and her child—” He paused and stared at me. “And Carolina and Nicholas and Jack, their son. And Owen Bramley. All of them. What is mine is theirs and theirs is . . . ours for sharing.”

“What? You can’t be serious,” I said. “Have we not caused that family enough grief? I have thought about this and I think once we have safely returned Star and her baby to Carolina, we should get out of their lives forever—and take care of our own—take care of the Fleur-du-Mal!”

“You can blame it on Solomon, if you like,” Geaxi said suddenly.

“Who?” I snapped. I stared at her and felt blood rushing to my face in anger. “What does that mean?”

“Calm down, Zianno,” Sailor said. “Geaxi meant nothing derogatory in her remark. In fact, it is a compliment. We can
blame
Solomon for having the foresight to know what we would need to survive in the twentieth century. There is much above us, above this oval room, that has changed since you have been in Africa. Solomon saw it coming and thought of what we would need—what
you
would need—to live on and thrive. Owen Bramley has made Solomon’s ‘vision’ a reality.”

He stopped and watched me, his “ghost eye” swirling gently. “Perhaps I should explain,” he said.

“Yes, perhaps,” I said as sharply as I could, but I’d lost my bite. I turned and looked at Opari. She was holding back a smile and I suddenly felt silly.

“No—perhaps I should explain,” Geaxi broke in. She picked up her beret and walked toward the center of the oval room. She turned to me. “I was mistaken to mention Solomon so casually, Zianno. It was careless. I know what he meant to you, nay, I should say
means
to you. I regret that I never knew him. Giza with real ‘vision’ are as rare as ourselves.”

I was curious now. I wondered what Solomon could have seen coming that Sailor had not. Even in death, my old partner loved surprising me. “Tell me what Solomon ‘saw,’ ” I said.

“A network,” Sailor interrupted. “A system of stations, places like this one, some remote and some anything but remote. ‘Bases,’ in Solomon’s words.”

“I thought you said no Giza knew of this place.”

“They do not, at least not what is underground—only what is above.” Sailor was excited. I could hear it in his voice. He looked at me and laughed out loud.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“Nothing. I suppose it must be the irony. Solomon’s words were so simple, yet so timely. Now that we know you are able to read the old writing—”

“What words? You keep saying Solomon’s words.”

Sailor glanced at Geaxi and Opari and dropped his smile. “He saw two things you and the rest of us will need—communications and safe passage. He saw a home base with satellite bases throughout the world, run by Giza, owned by Giza, and protected from the prying eyes and ears of Giza less enlightened than himself. He called it ‘the Diamond.’ A reference, I believe, to your game of baseball.” Sailor paused a moment, then added, “It was in his will, Zianno. A codicil, all prepared and ready for Owen Bramley to set in motion. Owen Bramley himself will have to tell you how it all fits together. At this point, I am afraid he knows more about how it will work than I, but—” He paused again, breathing in slowly and gathering himself, then continued. “The old man cared about you very deeply, Zianno, enough to know you could not survive on your own and keep going. You, we, us—the Meq need a strategy to survive, to last in this world, this ‘game’ Solomon called it, a ‘game’ with no time limit. He even added a prophecy, a warning, of sorts. He said the Children of the Mountains will be sought more than ever before because of man’s fear and confusion with himself and his own mortality. Soon, communication and safe passage will be the only protection from man’s ravenous pursuit of the miraculous, which he already sees in himself, but cannot prove. His fear is great. His hunt will be relentless. The Children of the Mountains will be his prey and proof.”

“Solomon said that?” I asked.

“Yes, well . . . something like that.”

“Who is Solomon?” It was Opari. Her voice was soft and her eyes looked into mine. I stared back. The question was innocent enough, but the answer was not.

Inside, in an instant, I felt as if I had missed a step or a beat in some unseen rhythm. A simple question, an honest question that anyone might have asked on any given day and I would have answered—splat!—suddenly became unanswerable and lay like a stone in a still pond. “Who is Solomon?” I saw the ripples, not the stone. I heard Solomon’s voice, something among his last words, “I will leave a trail. Will you be able to find it, Zianno?”
Will you be able to find it, Zianno?
I heard the words like a gong, a silent repetition I had been asking myself my whole life—
Will you be able to find it, Zianno?
The oval room became airless, suffocating. Even the shape itself became something else—octagonal or hexagonal—I couldn’t tell. Everyone in the room seemed extremely large, much too large for the cramped space of the oval room.

Opari saw it in my eyes.

“We must tell our stories another time,” she said, looking first at me, then at Sailor. It was the same look we had both seen in Carthage when she finally turned around after delivering Star’s baby.

It was and is the softest sword I have ever felt.

Geaxi couldn’t see Opari from where she was standing, but she could hear her and it was the same thing. She walked over to the rest of us and knelt in the sand. “In England,” she said. “We shall leave this until England.”

Without a word, without an outward or obvious sign from anyone, we all held our hands in the air, fingers spread and palms facing out toward each other, fingers and palms all the same size. In the candlelight, Sailor smiled. Our hands were casting shadows that exactly matched the ones stained into the wall.

“Zis is good business,” he said.

Three days out to sea off the coast of the tiny island of Gozo, just north of the slightly larger island of Malta, it rained. I had almost forgotten the feeling of getting wet from the sky. I held my face up to it and let the liquid darts sting my eyelids, cheeks, and mouth. I opened my mouth and drank it straight from the sky, laughing and spitting. Rain. Africa and the Sahara had taught me never, ever to take it for granted. I thought back to Emme’s words at the edge of the deep desert—“Do not think ahead. The Sahara will not allow it”—and standing there in it, feeling the rain again as only a scattered shower, as one among many to come, it was more than relief. It was return. But with return came an anxious, familiar habit—thinking ahead and looking ahead.

The ship was cruising west, ignoring the sudden squall and sailing through it. Star, Opari, and I were at the railing in the stern, facing east where the sun still shone. We were aboard HMS
Scorpion,
a frigate that was currently decommissioned and flying an Egyptian flag. It was a worthy ship that had been rigged and rerigged several times for transporting everything from troops and munitions to potatoes and raincoats. The first day at sea I had asked Willie Croft if he knew who owned the ship and he said, “Technically, an Egyptian from Cairo bought it for scrap from the British Navy. In reality me, my mother, and the Croft Foundation own it and we, in turn, lease it to the British Navy for . . . unofficial operations.”

“Such as this one?” I asked.

“Quite. Rather neat and tidy, isn’t it?”