The Remembering (31 page)

The Fleur-du-Mal frowned and rubbed his chin with his hand. He glanced at me. I knew he had understood what she had said because he had learned the “dream language,” but what her name meant was too complex to be a name in the same way that we use names. “Well,
mon petit?
” he asked. “How would you translate that?”

In a formal sense, the name meant “Traveler-All Spirits,” yet it was much more than that. Contained within her name were other names—the Finder of Souls, the Singer, the Far Seer, the Long Listener, the Retriever, the Returner, and many others, all connected with complicated emotional and psychological nuances.

“Yes,” the girl said to me, studying my eyes. “What would you have me called?”

“Fielder,” I answered immediately, thinking of baseball. A good fielder sees and catches everything, including souls.

“Fielder?” the Fleur-du-Mal said.

“Yes. Fielder. It’s as good as any.”

“I adore the name,” the girl said. “Fielder it is, then. I have had many names in the past, but never Fielder.” She exchanged looks with the Fleur-du-Mal, then looked at Geaxi and nodded once, as if introducing herself. She turned to West. “And your name is now ‘West’?”

“Yes, it is,” he said with a smile.

“Good. It suits you.” She paused, taking time to look into the eyes of each of us. “Now,” she said, motioning toward the couch and chairs, “let us sit and share the tea and scones and discuss the last thirty thousand years, shall we?”

Events were happening too quickly to calculate and yet time seemed to slow down in every way. The curtains were opened even wider and we gathered in chairs surrounding the coffee table and couch. The view through the windows to the south and west revealed the steep cliffs and ragged coastline only a few hundred yards away, and the sea below stretching all the way to the horizon. And Fielder was right. The blackberries were delicious. Larger than the ones that would ripen later, they tasted pure and intense. I nibbled on them and sipped my tea and listened. For the next hour and a half we all listened. The old ones among us, Susheela the Ninth, Sailor, Opari, Trumoi-Meq, each heard things they had never heard before, and we all learned things about the Meq we could never have imagined.

West let Fielder begin, saying she would answer the question the Fleur-du-Mal had asked because she
was
the answer. Fielder explained by starting with her birth, which was approximately thirty-four thousand years ago in what is now Croatia. Although she was born with the ability to be a “tracker” and “finder of souls,” she had to be nurtured and taught how to do it accurately and at greater and greater distances. Fielder’s teacher was her own mother, who also was the head of their tribe of sixty-three souls, or “Travelers,” as they referred to themselves. They were Meq, like us, but they were in the form of a human species we now erroneously term Neanderthal. And, like our unique and ancient relationship with the Basque, they traveled alongside several tribes of their “parent” species, who acted as protectors. And travel they did. Fielder told of some journeys lasting centuries and covering thousands of miles, which required much more mobility and technical skill than modern anthropologists attribute to them. During these travels, Fielder’s ability to “find” and “hear” others was a valuable and necessary tool for survival. In time, she became known as “Keeper of Souls” because of her expanding powers. Intuitively, at any given time, she knew where every living soul of her kind was on the planet. Then came the newcomers, the ones we now call Giza. She had heard of them, but she had never seen them. And along with the newcomers there were us. There were not many of us, but we were there. Fielder said, “I could feel your arrival and count your numbers on ten fingers … just as I do now.”

Though she was living far to the north, she followed the movements of our ancestors and the newcomers with her ability. Our numbers multiplied quickly, and our adaptation to the climate was just as rapid. Eventually, she heard rumors of trade and the exchange of gifts between the newcomers and her kind. At first, the reports were positive, and coexistence seemed to be evolving. But another wave of newcomers soon appeared, and their gift was something else entirely. It was not a tool or an animal skin or a beautiful string of beads and shells. It was silent, powerful, unknown, invisible, and no shaman could give it back.

“What was the gift?”

Fielder paused and West answered the question. “Virus,” he said.

Within four thousand years the Travelers were virtually extinct. No one could withstand the effects of the virus, and distance between tribes was the only factor that kept it from spreading faster. The ones who were Meq, like Fielder, had always been immune to toxins of any kind, but this strain of virus brought by the newcomers infected everyone with equally lethal results. Fielder was the only Traveler to remain healthy and alive, or so she thought. For this reason she spent twelve years quarrying and carving the first of her granite spheres, telling her story in the
Language of the Long Dream
and leaving it behind. After living on her own for another two thousand years and exploring lands farther to the east, always staying south of the ice, she suddenly “heard” the souls of six Travelers. Five were old souls and extremely weak, and one was that of a young soul, a boy. All six were in severe distress.

She made her way south until she found the boy sitting alone outside the mouth of a large limestone cave. The cave overlooked a slow-moving river that emptied into what is now the Black Sea. The boy was watching the river and he was crying. Instinctively, Fielder could tell he had only recently had his twelfth birthday and begun what the Meq would later name the Itxaron, the Wait. He looked up as she approached and showed no surprise. Fielder thought that perhaps he was in a trance or in shock.

“Why am I not sick like the others?” he asked.

Fielder glanced around and saw no one. “Where are the others?” she replied.

“Inside,” he said, pointing to the mouth of the cave. “They are too sick and weak to continue. They have decided to lie down and enter the Long Dream.”

“When?” she asked.

“Tonight,” he answered, then glanced at the pale, setting sun on the horizon.

Fielder turned and walked into the cave. There was a fire pit with a fire still burning, although it was down to coals. Beyond the fire pit she saw five Travelers sprawled out on animal hides. They were lying on their backs in a circle with their hands joined and their eyes closed. She could barely “hear” them. Their hearts were already beating as one, and their spirits were deep into the waters of the Long Dream. Resting on each of their chests was a pitted, egg-shaped, black rock that was attached to a leather strap, which they wore around their necks. Fielder knelt down next to one of them, a female with reddish hair like her own. She inhaled and filled her lungs with the girl’s scent. It was different than any essence of her kind she had ever encountered, and it was ancient. Then, without opening her eyes or making a sound, the girl began to speak to Fielder telepathically. “Welcome, Traveler,” she said. “We are the Ancestors. Take care of the boy. He is the last of us. Teach him the ways of a Traveler. Endure and survive. And take these five stones we carry. Live long and listen and understanding will come to you. In time, the stones will reveal their purpose, and the boy’s, and yours.” The girl’s telepathic “voice” became a faint and broken whisper. She was far from shore. Her last words to Fielder were, “Endure, Traveler … endure.”

Fielder and the boy, who would become the one Geaxi has named “West,” stayed in the Caucasus long enough to shape, smooth, and carve a sphere, bearing witness to who and what they were, where they were, and where they were going. They then gathered the five stones and began their endless journey west across all terrain, interacting with the newcomers only when it was unavoidable, and never staying anywhere longer than a season or two. Millennia after millennia passed and they endured and survived, and along the way discovered the powerful effects the stones had on the consciousness of the newcomers, who were now spread throughout every land. West told Fielder his mother had once used a term for how long the tribe of the Ancestors had carried the stones. The term translated as a unit of time equaling two hundred and ten thousand years. With her ability, Fielder could also “hear” and “feel” us, the new Travelers, the ones who looked like the newcomers and called ourselves Meq, growing in numbers and concentrating in the Iberian Peninsula and northern Africa. And as the Ancestor predicted, gradually, almost like recalling a long-forgotten dream or having an old memory unfold with new meaning, Fielder and West came to a clear understanding of their true purpose and destiny. It was the opposite of everything they had imagined. How could it be, and why? If there was a reason, it made no sense to them at that time. Yet it was so, and with this strange, unexpected understanding came another realization. If all events were to transpire as they had been revealed, then everything depended on the new Travelers’ survival far into the future for more than thirteen millennia. To do that, Fielder and West agreed the new Travelers would need assistance. They would need the unique and ancient power of the five stones.

Before they could act, however, Fielder and West would have to wait another two hundred years for the right time to occur. The transfer of the stones had to be in conjunction with a crossing, or the Zeharkatu, and a crossing can only take place during what the Travelers called the “Empty Ring” and the Meq call the Bitxileiho, or Strange Window. The Bitxileiho is the peculiar and mystical celestial event known as a total solar eclipse. Similar to birds that know instinctively when to migrate, the Meq know in advance when and where these events are going to take place. Whatever magic there is in being Meq is crystallized, energized, and reborn during this timeless phenomenon of cosmic geometry. To the Meq, a total solar eclipse is terrifying, wondrous, paralyzing, and transforming all at once, and only during the precious few seconds and minutes of totality can the mutual metamorphosis of a Meq crossing and marriage take place. This was essential for what Fielder and West had in mind.

Following traditional routes from valley to valley and river to river, they walked south until they reached the foothills of the Pyrenees. From there, Fielder “counted” the number of Meq living in the mountains among the Basque. The Meq totaled one hundred eighty-four souls who were in the Wait. There were no children under the age of twelve because there had not been a crossing in six hundred years. Fielder’s ability also enabled her to locate the leaders within every tribe and she focused on one Meq in particular. At this point in her story, Fielder looked directly at Sailor. Calling him by his true name, she said, “It was your ancestor, Umla-Meq. He was the one we went to see.”

There is no future without memory. Fielder chose the oldest Meq with the longest memory to distribute the five stones and give them names. Surprisingly, he welcomed Fielder and West without question, and their physical appearance seemed to inspire a mild curiosity rather than hesitation or fear. Their kind had long disappeared from the landscape and it simply made no difference to him or the rest of his tribe how Fielder and West appeared. He was far more interested in what they had to show him—the stones. And when he found out what each stone could do, he welcomed them for as long as they wished to stay. Fielder told him they had only come to present the stones as a gift and witness the Bitxileiho, which was about to occur over the Pyrenees and across the great sea to the south. Fielder knew she could tell him how to use the stones, but little else. That was the way it had to be. The inexplicable future event that had been revealed to Fielder and West could not be revealed to the Meq. The length of time involved was too great to comprehend, even for the Meq, and it had to happen on its own, if it happened at all.

Two days later under clear skies and shortly before midday, every Meq and Giza in the Pyrenees experienced a total solar eclipse. The smooth disc of the moon slid gracefully into place in front of the sun, and for the next two minutes and thirteen seconds a wheel of fire burned in the center of a black sky, while five Meq couples, who by coincidence were all Egizahar, crossed in the Zeharkatu. Sailor’s ancestor and his Ameq were among them.

During the crossing, Fielder and West concentrated as one spirit and used the “Voice” to implant and imprint a future time and place in the collective unconscious of the five couples. This information would resonate forward in the minds and memories of every generation of Meq to come, even into Africa, and though the profound nature of this information would remain, the reason for it would elude them all. Eventually, this information would become the central mystery and sacred destination in Time for every Meq on the planet. It would be called the Gogorati, the Remembering.

After the crossing, the five stones were distributed to the five couples and given names: Blood, Will, Silence, Dreams, and Memory. Sailor’s ancestor became the first Stone of Memory. Fielder and West stayed another day, then bid the Meq farewell and headed west. They wandered for months before they settled on a lonely and remote spot along the coast of what is now Portugal. Fish were fat and plentiful, as well as wild berries and greens, and though they were isolated, they felt at home. Twelve centuries later, West carved the last of the spheres and they left it behind, hoping for the best. Traveling north, they finally ended their journey on the beautiful coast of South Wales. There they would endure and learn to live among the newcomers, and wait, and wait, and wait, while Fielder “listened” and “followed” the lives of the Meq.

When Fielder finished her story, she looked each of us in the eyes, ending with the Fleur-du-Mal. “West is correct, Xanti. I am the reason we know so much about you while you know nothing of us. I have ‘felt’ you since you were born. I have ‘followed’ all of you.”

“Why did you not simply come to us?” Geaxi asked. “You could have come to us. You could have … revealed this long ago.”