The Meq (48 page)

“Quite,” I told him.

I liked Willie from the beginning. I knew he had been formally raised and educated, but his whole demeanor suggested exactly the opposite. His speech was a curious blend of formal and informal, and physically, he was simultaneously awkward and graceful. I never saw him bump into anything or break anything, but I always expected it at any moment. He had a quick mind, an honest smile, and most of all I trusted him. I still didn’t know the exact nature of the Daphne Croft Foundation and its relationship with the Meq, but I knew that I could trust Willie. I knew it because I had seen what was in his eyes when he returned from Alexandria with Star and her baby, only hours after the rest of us had returned from the oval room. I watched as he helped Star by holding her arm and elbow, though she hardly needed it. She looked radiant, even with a bandage on her shoulder, and beamed a smile across to Opari. Willie was grinning like a teenager and whether he knew it at the time or not, he was in love. It shone out from his heart straight through his eyes. Star wore a print dress he had found for her—a simple English dress. She had tied her old scarf around the waist and looped it through Mama’s baseball glove so that it hung at her waist like a purse. She carried her baby in her one good arm and her blond hair hung loose over her bandaged shoulder. I knew then that I would trust anyone who loved someone who looked so much like Carolina. Star was the image of her mother as I remembered her. To Willie, she was much more than that. All that day and night Willie kept one eye on Star and one eye on his job, which was to secure and cover the experimental planes and get all of us out to sea for our rendezvous with the
Scorpion.
He did that and we set sail for England at midnight. Willie made sure Star and her baby were safe and warm before he ever thought about rest for himself. He did it unconsciously and without asking, as only love compels us to do. He knew nothing of her past or what she’d been through. No one did except me and one other—the Fleur-du-Mal. What the Fleur-du-Mal had done to Star could never be corrected or taken back. Her life had been changed forever. The time she spent in Africa and at Jisil’s camp was now the core of who she was and would affect everything that came after. Jisil himself was in her memory and his child was in her arms. What that meant, no one but Star would ever know.

Two days later, standing in the rain and feeling resurrected, I wondered if Star would ever remember Carolina or Nicholas. She had not spoken to me, at least not in English, since I’d found her. She seemed to understand what Willie said to her, but only spoke to Opari in the old Berber dialect and even that was in whispers. She accepted the Meq intuitively and never addressed Opari as a child, but as an equal, a friend, the midwife of her own child. She had regained her spirit and strength completely. Willie had called it “simply remarkable” and it was, only I knew where it came from and I was not surprised. Opari had told me she would teach her English, that they would learn together. That was fine, I said, but what I really meant, what I did not say, was that I wanted her to remember not just her language or her name, but something much more elusive—her innocence.

For that to happen, the heart must allow the mind to remember and vice versa. It is tricky. It may never happen. When it does, if it does, who knows why? As Opari would say later, “All it takes is a crazy boy and a rainbow.” Perhaps. I only know that as I stood by the railing that morning off the coast of those ancient islands, laughing and spitting in the rain, I suddenly remembered that it had rained the morning Ray and I left St. Louis in search of Star. And for some reason, just as my mind focused on two large wooden crates that Ray or someone had left under the archway of Carolina’s big house, a rainbow appeared over our stern, stretching across the Mediterranean. Opari and Star had taken cover behind me and I heard Opari yell out, “You are crazy! You are crazy in the rain!” I turned toward her voice and I heard another one, softer, almost a whisper, coming from over Opari’s shoulder. It was Star. She was repeating something again and again, as if she had just discovered the sound of a stranger inside herself. “Fierce Whale,” she said. “Fierce Whale.” I walked toward her. Rain was dripping in my eyes, but I could hear her voice clearly, and in English. It was the same voice I had heard the morning of her birthday in 1904, the voice of a little girl who wanted to ride the Ferris Wheel at the World’s Fair—the voice of innocence.

She was watching the rainbow. I turned to look and the colors were actually dancing in an arc over the sea. I turned back and Opari was staring at me, asking me what this meant with her eyes. I couldn’t answer. I knew this was the tricky moment, the one where the heart and mind awaken and discover themselves alone and together in one soul. What they decide is never certain and in Star’s case I could only guess what she would see and what she would remember. I took another step toward her. She was out of the rain and standing partially in darkness. Slowly, her eyes looked down at me and I could see the same blue-gray with flecks of gold as in Carolina’s eyes. A smile appeared, then a look of recognition and acceptance. Her freckles danced on her face with her smile. Softly, in slightly accented English, she said, “We ride the Fierce Whale, ZeeZee.”

Just then, Willie came lurching down the stairs that led up to the captain’s quarters. His shirt was drenched and his red hair was matted flat against his forehead. Before he could speak I said, “What day is this, Willie? What’s the date?” I wanted to think of it as a new birthday for her, a new beginning.

“What? That’s odd,” Willie said. “The date is precisely what I ran down to tell you. Turns out it’s become rather significant.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“November 11, 1918. An armistice has been declared in Europe. The ‘war to end all wars’ has ended.”

I looked at Opari and then Star. Their expressions were as blank as mine must have been. I had forgotten there even was a “war to end all wars.” I continued to stand there, happy, empty, somehow unimpressed by the end of a world war. Then Sailor and Geaxi made a sudden appearance from their cabins inside. They squeezed by Star and stood next to Opari.

“You are standing in the rain, young Zezen,” Geaxi said.

“Yes—yes, I am,” I said.

Willie laughed to himself and scrambled back up the stairs, leaning down to catch a last glimpse of Star. From inside her cabin, Star’s baby awoke and cried out for breakfast. Opari and Star both turned to leave and answer his call. Geaxi followed and Sailor and I were left staring at each other. I hadn’t moved an inch. The rain had slackened, but I was still soaking wet.

“Are you all right, Zianno?” he asked without a trace of irony.

“Yes,” I said, then added, “quite.” I felt a smile just beginning at the corners of my mouth.

“I sent word to St. Louis,” he said, pausing for a response, then going on. “I told them you had done it, you had found Star and we were on our way to England.”

“Good,” I said.

He turned to go back inside and waited for me. It took a moment, but I finally moved and came in out of the rain. As he opened the door to the cabins, Sailor nodded toward the sky behind us and winked.

In a whisper he said, “You conjured a beautiful rainbow, Zianno.”

“Thank you,” I said, walking in behind him and grinning like an idiot. Return. I had to laugh at the word and its meaning. It should feel like completion, game over, the end. But it always—always feels like beginning.

The news of the end of the Great War instantly changed the mood of every man in the crew and even changed the course of the
Scorpion.
We had been charting an unpredictable, evasive course and generally heading west, but with the news of the Armistice, we sailed straight for Gibraltar and England.

The days became mild and sunny and we made good time. In the evenings, Willie insisted we share our meals in the captain’s quarters, though the captain himself was never present. We sat in a tight circle and Willie always, at the last possible second, managed to sit next to Star and her baby, whose name I learned that first evening after the Armistice was Caine. Caine Abel Croft. I found out Willie had a hand in that too. Geaxi held the baby as we ate that night and during the meal told me the story. She agreed that Willie must truly be in love because she had never known him to act so impulsively and get everything wrong while doing it.

In Alexandria, Geaxi said that while we had been in the oval room he had taken Star directly to Sailor’s contact, who escorted them all to a British doctor the man said would look after Star and the baby and then look the other way. Star still spoke no English and Willie was nervous about leaving her alone, but he had another man to see about passports and identities for Opari and me. The plan was for all of us to be of the same family when we reached England. Star was now the fair peach among the basket of cherries. He had no idea what to do about her or the baby until he returned to the doctor’s and was asked his son’s name for the birth certificate. Willie looked at Star who seemed to understand and she whispered, “Kahin al-Jisil.” Willie misunderstood her, but he did not want to hesitate, and he anglicized what he heard, writing down “Caine Abel,” and then adding “Croft” without blinking, making him a father and husband on the spot. The doctor never mentioned the baby’s dark eyes and tufts of dark curly hair, nor did Willie. The rest of Star’s papers were filled in accordingly and she left for England, on paper at least, as Mrs. Willie Croft.

Geaxi said the ironic fact was that “Kahin” really did mean “Cain” in old Berber. It was one of the few biblical names that crossed into the Sahara. She doubted, however, that Willie or Star would ever care, but Daphne, Willie’s mother, would definitely want an explanation for Star’s third name—Croft—and the Mrs. in front of it.

I remember laughing along with Geaxi about Willie and thinking how wonderful it was and how close we were to returning Star to Carolina and Nicholas. They had waited long enough. Whatever had gone before and whatever lay ahead would be worth it. Their daughter was coming home and their grandson with her. Names, false or otherwise, would make no difference. Nothing would make a difference.

Three nights later, we rounded the big rock at Gibraltar and turned north by northwest into the Atlantic. Opari and I again stood by the railing in the stern. She wore her shawl with the unusual and exotic designs. It was well past midnight and cold. The temperature had dropped considerably since we’d left the Mediterranean. I tried to urge her back inside, but she wanted to stay out.

“I feel like a stranger,” she said.

I held her close and told her, “That’s impossible. We’re together now.”

“No,” she said, “I mean a stranger to this ocean. I have not seen it or breathed its air in twenty-eight hundred years.”

“Is that all?” I asked. “It seems like only yesterday.”

She groaned at my sad attempt at humor, but continued to hold me close. She took my hand and put it to her lips, then held it against her cheek. The Atlantic rolled and swelled around us.

“Will it be a good life from now on, Zianno?”

“We’ll make it so.”

“Then breathe, my love . . . breathe.”

I did and the air itself seemed to taste and smell of rebirth and new life. What neither of us knew was that at that very moment the air throughout the world was carrying something else—a killer—a deadly microscopic guest that traveled everywhere at once from who knows where, finding humans as hosts, hosts who rarely survived the visit. It still had no name, but it would have one soon, and it affected all of us, Giza and Meq, forever. It was later nicknamed “the Spanish Lady.” I pray that she never visits again. Unfortunately, I am afraid she will. Beware if she does. Most warnings are fiction, jokes, or bluffs. This one is not—beware of “the Spanish Lady.”

We arrived in the busy port of Southampton by midafternoon and had to wait until the next day to find a berth. Troop ships by the dozen were returning and all had the right of way. Most of the men I saw disembarking were jubilant and singing or wailing to loved ones waiting ashore, but others had a distant, vacant gaze in their eyes, as if “return” was no longer a word with any meaning.

Willie handled our pass through customs and immigration with great efficiency, considering the chaos around us. In the past, Sailor and Geaxi might have entered on their own in secret, in disguise, or both. The trust Sailor had in this new “network” of Giza and Meq was a mystery to me, especially since there were four of us together carrying the Stones. Then I thought of Solomon himself, and even Owen Bramley. They had both proved their willingness to help the Meq many times over. This new situation was only an extension of that trust. If Sailor had harbored any mistrust of Willie, or thought he couldn’t manage the situation, we wouldn’t have been there.

Our papers declared Sailor, Geaxi, Opari, and I were all of one family. With our dark hair and eyes, and our slightly exotic dress, we passed easily as a French family orphaned by the war and being taken in by the Crofts. Willie said he was working on a better idea for the future—diplomatic passports. I still wore my money belt and a considerable sum hung around my waist under my shirt. Fortunately, they weren’t checking children for gold.

The weather had changed drastically overnight. The temperature dropped twenty degrees and clear skies gave way to English fog. It was wet, cold, thick as smoke, and Star was fascinated by it—as she was by everything. She had gone through the entire process of customs carrying Caine at her breast, asking Opari questions, who in turn was asking me questions. They were both speaking English at all times, even to each other. Star was learning the language in great leaps and bounds and Opari had a natural ear for all languages.