The Meq (45 page)

I followed Sailor down the slope only a few hundred yards to one of the old wall lines of ancient Carthage. Sailor had a pack hidden there with several things inside. He pulled something out and handed it to me.

“You left this in China,” he said. Then he glanced up at the moon and down to a distant point on the hill. “Take it out and I will tell you where to look.”

It was Papa’s telescope in the old cylindrical case that Kepa had given to me. The brass was polished and the two pieces locked solidly in place. Sailor told me to look downhill near an abandoned excavation where wooden shacks had been constructed during the dig, then left to the elements. All were missing windows and some had no roof. One had a gas lamp inside that was lit and casting light on a young girl in Arab dress and a sickly, yellow old man. He was not wearing a bowler. He was bald except for a few straggly gray hairs. His face was sunken and his body was hunched over and leaning to the side where he sat. His eyes, the eyes I had seen for so long in my mind, were no longer razor slits. They were swollen, dark, and sagging. It was Cheng. I swung the telescope over to the girl’s face and focused in on her eyes. Her green eyes. I had seen the face and the eyes once before.

“Do you see her?” Sailor asked.

“Yes, but that is not Opari.”

“What?” He grabbed the telescope and pointed it down the hill, focused in, then backed off. “Explain this to me, Zianno. I do not understand,” Sailor said very seriously.

“That is a girl named Zuriaa. Did you not look at her eyes? They are green.”

Sailor looked startled, unnerved, like something given had been inexplicably proven wrong. “No,” he said. “It was the presence. The presence was always too strong for me to doubt. She has the presence of a very old one. I can feel it now. Do you not, Zianno?”

“Yes,” I said. “More than ever.”

“Why is that?”

“I don’t know.” I looked at Sailor and he was deeply troubled. If anything, he knew what the Meq could and could not do. I wondered what he would say about the possibility of a sixth Stone. “I know the old man too,” I said. “His name is Cheng and . . . and . . .”

“And what? Why do you hesitate?”

I realized that Sailor had not put the two men together—the one he had been watching and the one who had murdered his good friend and brother-in-law.

“He is the same man, Sailor. The same evil whose presence we felt at the train station in Denver. And he’s done a few other things since.”

He never changed expression, but Sailor’s “ghost eye” began to swirl with clouds. He was Umla-Meq, the Stone of Memory, and he felt he had been betrayed by his own memory and instincts. It had been almost three millennia since he’d actually seen Opari, but how could he have mistaken her presence? I’m sure he felt he should have recognized Cheng also, though he’d never actually seen him before in his life.

Sailor closed the telescope and handed it to me. I was setting it back in its case when we both heard an agonized, guttural scream from up the slope and behind the hill. I knew it was Star.

Neither Sailor nor I hesitated. We turned and sprinted through the darkness, first up a winding trail, then to a shortcut between the brush and scree.

“You care greatly for this girl, this Star?” Sailor shouted as we climbed.

“Yes,” I shouted back.

“She is like family to you? Like blood?”

“Yes.”

I was getting winded and worried. I kept tripping over rocks and I hadn’t heard another sound from over the hill.

“Then you have found family?” Sailor yelled.

“Yes.”

“Do you think Eder and Nova have found this family? Do you think—”

“Yes,” I said and grabbed his sleeve to stop. We were near the crest of the hill and I wanted to go on quietly from there.

We caught our breath, then started a slow crawl to the very top of the rise, directly above the place I’d left Star. Sailor kept rambling on about the last time he had been in Carthage, the last time he had crawled to peer over a ledge in this city of the Phoenicians. It was unlike him to keep talking, especially under the circumstances. He asked if I knew the story, if I knew what had happened. I was only vaguely paying attention, but I said yes, Eder had told me. Then he asked if I knew who had been with him, but before I could answer we reached the lip of the rise and leaned over to witness something that neither of us ever expected. It changed my life forever, and Sailor’s too, no matter what he would like you to believe.

Below us, my one and only oil lamp was lit and secured in the sand, and protected from the wind by Jisil’s saddle, which had been propped on its side. Jisil’s horse was nowhere in sight. The saddle was being used as a backboard for Star to lean against and hold on to for support. Star was lying on her back with her head and shoulders leaning forward. She was dripping in sweat. Her eyes were open and glazed. She was staring between her legs at a young girl who was bent over a naked, motionless baby, born premature and not breathing, just like the one I’d seen born in the alley in Saint-Louis. The young girl was performing the same cleansing of the baby’s mouth and throat that Emme had. She moved rapidly and with great expertise until she had cleared a passage, then she leaned down and carefully, purposely, breathed life into the child. Within sixty seconds, the baby let out three fierce and tiny cries. The young girl wet her little finger and gently wiped the baby’s eyes, nose, and mouth. Then she wrapped the baby in Star’s old scarf with the drowning Chinamen and helped her lean back against the saddle, placing the baby in Star’s arms. She bunched several blankets around them to keep out all wind and drifting sand, then sat cross-legged in front of them, waiting for the new life to take comfort and take hold.

She never looked up at us, even though she was aware of our presence. I watched with a fascination that only began there and has never since ceased. It was Opari.

I couldn’t see her face, but her hair was shining black and still cut straight at the shoulders. She wore loose, white cotton trousers that were tied at the ankles with the straps of her sandals and at the waist with a wide leather belt. Her arms were bare and hung from something resembling a shawl, but heavier and covered in designs I had never seen anywhere.

After several minutes, Star and the baby were breathing evenly, sleeping and possibly even dreaming. Opari turned slowly in the sand and looked directly into my eyes. It felt as though I had been struck in the center of my chest and every atom in my being had been charged with light and grace.

“Hello, my beloved,” she said, as simply as life itself. She had an accent, but it only seemed to soften the language, not confuse it. “You must forgive me,” she said. “It is berri, no, I mean new to me, the English. I will learn well, in time.”

“Yes,” I said, but my voice was a whisper, choked and barely audible. I cleared my throat and said, “We have time.”

She looked to my left and I followed her eyes as they met Sailor’s. They had not spoken in almost thirty centuries.

“You look well, Sailor,” she said.

“And you, Opari,” Sailor said quietly. Then the answer to the puzzle that had unnerved him spread across his face. “So it was you following me all these years,” he said. “And you let me think the other was the presence.”

“Yes,” Opari said, then waved for us to be quiet and pointed to a curved shelf of rock, exposed to the wind on one side and sheltered on the other. She wanted us away from Star and the baby.

We met her at the low shelf of rock and all huddled close together, out of the wind. Opari glanced at me once and looked over at Sailor to speak. I watched her lips as she formed the words and they moved out of her mouth. I could not believe I was where I was.

“There is no time to hear reasons,” she said. “Zuriaa and the eunuch have heard the baby being born. They will, how you say,
ikertu?
”

“Investigate,” Sailor answered.

“Yes, they will investigate.”

“I will not lose Star and the baby,” I told her.

Opari looked at me and reached up with the tips of her fingers and touched my lips. “This is the girl and the child they wait for, is it not?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, and took her fingers in my hand and felt her skin for the first time.

“What is this?” Sailor asked, dumbfounded. “No one told me of this,” he said, nodding his head toward my hand holding Opari’s fingers. “When did this happen? Is this why you left China, Zianno?”

“No, not quite.”

“Then why?”

“It is complicated.”

“And who is Zuriaa?” he asked.

“She is Ray’s sister.”

“Who is Ray?” Opari asked.

“He is my friend. I think Cheng might have—”

“Never mind,” Sailor broke in. “Opari is right that we have no time to hear reasons. We must save the girl and her baby. The Fleur-du-Mal and his obsessions have inadvertently created a good thing. I may be able to get us out of Africa tomorrow—all of us. Why all of us are here, now, is no longer important. The fact is, we are Meq. These things occur. Our reasons will be shared later.”

“How can you get us out?” I asked.

“You would not believe it.”

“From where?” Opari asked.

“From the old harbor,” Sailor said, and he looked at Opari, “near where the Topheth stood.”

Opari’s dark eyes narrowed and her eyebrows bunched together. Though Carolina was blue-eyed and blond, I had seen her do the same thing occasionally at the mention of Georgia’s name. Then I remembered the Topheth from Eder’s story. It was the place where they had sacrificed slaves and children, where Sailor had held his hands over Opari’s eyes to keep her from seeing her sister, his Ameq, slaughtered in front of them. Opari reached up with her other hand and circled Sailor’s “ghost eye” with her finger. At first, he flinched and backed off, then closed both eyes and went inside himself, letting her fingertip follow the outline of his eye and cheek.

“I still see her, Umla-Meq,” she said. “But only in my heart.”

Sailor opened his eyes and he and Opari looked at each other for several moments, resolving something that had taken almost three thousand years to burn out and blow away.

Then she turned to me and said, “It is because of you—” She paused and smiled. “It is, how you say,
barre egin
?”

“A laughing matter,” Sailor answered.

“Yes.” She smiled again and said, “I have never said the name out loud. It is because of you—” and she leaned over and kissed my cheek, then my lips. “Zianno,” she whispered.

Sailor smiled also. A rarity. “These things occur,” he said.

The moment passed as quickly as it came. There were voices coming around the hill and only seconds to get Star and the baby out of harm’s way. We all three ran to Star’s side and Opari said something to her in the ancient Berber dialect she understood. Star handed her baby weakly over to Opari. Sailor blew out the lamp and I kicked it over on its side along with Jisil’s saddle. I wanted it to look as if something violent had taken place, anything to confuse and delay Zuriaa and Cheng.

I threw Mama’s glove in my pack and Sailor and I helped Star to her feet. She was able to stand and even walk, though it was slow and the voices were getting nearer. Sailor and I picked her up between us and we all ran for the low shelf and just made it around and down the hill before Zuriaa and Cheng came into view.

Once we had descended a few hundred yards and were sure no one was following, Star wanted to be let down and we walked at her pace the rest of the way. She was pale from loss of blood and trauma of all kinds, but she never spoke out or complained. We followed Sailor through the darkness, winding back and forth down the slope and stopped at the place where he’d left his pack with the telescope and other things. A little farther on we stopped again and he picked up a second pack. From there, not fifty yards away in a grove of pine trees, we detoured and stopped to pick up Opari’s things.

“You were that close?” Sailor asked.

“Yes,” she said.

Opari rearranged her pack so that the baby could ride inside and strapped the pack on her shoulders. The baby was safe, tight, and warm between her shoulder blades. We started toward the old harbor and she took Star’s hand in hers. The way was long and tedious and mostly in the dark. We used no lamps or torches and stayed close to the sound of Sailor’s footsteps. Along the way the young mother and the ancient young girl never dropped hands. Our final stop was an old fisherman’s shack next to what had once been a deep water port and was now marsh and lagoon leading out to the sea and the breakers of the Mediterranean. There was a long wooden walkway extending from the shack far out past the lagoon into open water. I saw a light in the east, but it was only a glow, a false dawn. The real one was still an hour away. I had plenty of time to think about the next day and that thought gave me a strange realization. I knew the year was 1918, but I had no idea what month or day. For some reason, I thought about the enigmatic message I’d read on the wall in the cave—
where time is under water, where water is under time.
I realized that I had no idea how I’d got to where I was. Then I realized it didn’t matter. When I looked around, I saw Sailor, Opari, Star, and her baby. Then I remembered that I didn’t even know if Star’s baby was a boy or a girl and realized that didn’t matter either. It was the living who mattered.

Sailor stayed busy checking the walkway for missing planks and broken boards. Opari was looking after Star and the baby. She spoke to her softly in that old dialect and at one point Star’s eyes opened wide in a kind of shock, then accepted something. She turned her head to the side and calmly let Opari remove the rings and chains in her nose and ears. In a few minutes, I saw only the blond hair, the blue eyes, and the freckles. She looked down at the baby in her arms and smiled for the first time, then turned back to Opari. I could have sworn it was Carolina.

Just then, I heard the hooves of horses. Only seconds later, Opari heard them too, and outside the shack I saw Sailor looking up the rutted road that led back to the ruins.

I glanced at Opari. “Is it them?” I asked.