by Steve Cash
I began sleeping in the tree. There was a crevice in a gnarled limb where I could stretch full-length and even watch Idris as he kept his watch in the pass. He did little. There was little to do. No one came through the pass in either direction for weeks. Idris said sometimes the sentry of the northern pass could live through the entire length of his watch and never see another human.
I waited, watched, and listened. My Meq “ability” to hear at great distance increased dramatically the first night I slept in the old cedar tree. I was learning to focus, turn it on and off, and even listen in my sleep. It was more than an increased intensity of a sense. It was more like another one.
It was during this strange sleep-listening on the night of a new moon that I first heard the horse of Jisil. Idris confirmed it for me the next day, nervously, because Jisil had been alone and this was never done. Somehow, I had known it was Jisil when I heard the hooves. He stopped for only a moment in the pass, so Idris could recognize him, then headed north at a full gallop. Three nights later he returned. He was alone again and charging hard back to his camp. I was worried. Something urgent was driving Jisil, but it was still weeks before the season Mulai’s camel driver had spoken of, the season the “bluebird” would be sold.
The next day I stayed close to Idris and the pass. Around sunset, I gave him the last of the dates and herded the goats back to my camp. I fed the donkey and the camels and climbed up into my perch in the coiled limb of the old cedar. As the Milky Way spread itself overhead, I watched Idris sit by his small fire. His silhouette was the only thing that moved in all directions. Then something began to happen. Something that proved forever what Sailor had told me years before. “Chase a whisper,” he’d said, “and you will find the wind.”
I heard a sigh. I turned my shoulders toward the source of the sound and I was staring into empty space. At first, it seemed to come from space itself, from somewhere near Sirius, the Dog Star. I waited and listened for it to come again, but it did not. My eyes drifted to the rock face opposite the cedar and just beyond the farthest outstretched limb. The moon cast light and shadow against the stone at precisely the right angles for me to see something I had never seen in the rock face before — an opening.
The sigh returned and doubled in strength, then tripled. It was as if one sigh had found a gap in the silence and the others were following, curious and crowded behind each other, anxious to come through and spill out from wherever they were. And they were all coming from the opening, which was forty feet up the rock face and fairly small, so that only a child could enter without difficulty.
I put some candles in my pocket, climbed down from the cedar, and made my way across the ancient riverbed. In the dark, scaling the sandstone cliffs would usually have been impossible, but once again, because of the angles of light and shadow, I was able to see footholds and handholds clearly. I climbed slowly and surely toward the opening. The sighs had become so numerous they seemed to flow like water from a spring or fountain.
I found a ledge that ran in front of the opening. It was very narrow and could have been invisible from the ground. I lit a candle. I peered into the black space of the opening. The air was dry, as dry and light as ashes. The opening itself was no more than three or four feet high and wide. I followed the sound and flow of the sighs.
The passage wound into the mountain and gradually increased in height, but remained narrow. The walls were smooth and as I ran my hand over the stone, I could feel engravings at different points along the way. I shone the light on several and they were all in languages and symbols I had never known or seen before. The sighs sounded more and more like water.
Abruptly the passage ended. There were no other ways in or out, only the one narrow passage that ended in a domed stone room in the natural shape of an oval. I set one candle down in the sand and lit another. The walls were covered with more engravings of symbols and animals, some of which I knew were extinct. At the narrow end of the oval there was a dark opening in the stone that was the source of the sighs. Water was flowing from it, clear and sparkling, disappearing into the sand where it fell.
I was suddenly thirsty. I had to drink from that water. There was no other thought as strong. I walked toward the dark space and the water and knelt down and bent forward, placing my palms against the stone on both sides of the fountain. I opened my mouth for the water, closed my eyes, and leaned into it.
But there was no water.
I opened my eyes and the dark opening that had been the source of the water and the sighs was actually a circle in the stone, indented and stained black, and my palms were not in some random resting place against the stone. I had unknowingly put them in handprints exactly my size that had been there for millennia, carved or worn into the stone in exactly those positions. I leaned back and looked at the wall. Around the black circle and engraved in a language I had never seen written, but understood intuitively, were two intersecting lines. They were written in Meq. The script Eder told me we had lost, the script that had been scrawled into the bone barrettes she wore in her hair. Translated, they read like this:
I looked around for more. There was absolutely nothing else in the room. No pottery, no tools, no remnants of any kind. I scanned the walls again and something caught my eye to the left of the black circle in a small and tight script. I held the candle close to the wall. It read:
Dream of light
We are
Silence of water
We are
Blood of time
We are
Will of stone
We are
Memory of truth
We are
And it was signed. The name was Trumoi-Meq.
I don’t know why, but I suddenly thought of Mama and the train ride to Central City. When I had asked her how we were different, she had said, “We are more than just Basque, we are older.” I hadn’t understood and I remembered how she had looked out of the window and let out a long sigh. Was that what I heard coming first from the skies, then the cave, and now from a nonexistent fountain? Was it the sighs of a whole species trying to explain itself?
I sat in the sand of the ancient room and listened. I tried to feel a connection with what I’d discovered, but I’d never felt so distant, so lost and alone in my life.
I rose and walked back through the passage, leaving the lit candles in the room. I followed the faint shafts of moonlight to the opening and stepped outside on the ledge. The sky over the Sahara seemed to be blazing with stars. I wondered if all the others before me, the old ones, had stepped out of the cave and onto this ledge and felt the same sense of relief and loneliness. I took a deep breath of air and let it out slowly. It was a paradox of awe and despair.
I turned and looked toward the pass and beyond. Idris was in his place by the fire, still eating dates. What teeth he had left were stained and the rest were missing because of his love of dates. The trail to the north sloped down and away from his lookout, but was visible for at least a mile in the moonlight.
Then I heard the hooves. They were coming from the south, at a trot, not a gallop, but I knew the sound. It was Jisil. And he was not alone. There was a voice saying his name, speaking in another language, but a voice I knew well, a voice that sounded as if it could be Carolina’s twin, only Georgia was dead. It was Star and she was very frightened.
I tried to find them in the darkness and couldn’t. From the sound of the hooves, I knew they were near and both riding the same horse. I had to make a decision whether to start climbing down the rock face or wait and watch them ride through the pass. I decided to wait.
Idris eventually heard the sound of the horse and recognized it also. He stood up slowly and walked to the edge of his lookout.
Jisil and Star appeared almost at the same moment. His horse was a solid gray Arab stallion and they were only slowing down, not stopping. My pulse quickened and my heart pounded. Finally, she was flesh and blood, alive and right in front of me. So many times I had doubted this would eve
r happen. I could not see her face and she never spoke, but I knew it was her. She rode on the saddle in front of Jisil and wore simple white robes and a turban with a veil. Under the veil, she was breathing rapidly. I could hear her easily with my “ability.”
Jisil wore a dark turban and veil that seemed to sparkle in the faint light. Gold strands had been sewn in with the cloth. He glanced up at Idris as they passed and waved his arm once in an arc. I couldn’t tell whether it was a greeting or a farewell. They disappeared down the north slope as quickly as they had arrived and Idris went back to his fire and his dates.
For a moment I was frozen on the ledge. I don’t know why. In the same moment I heard the hooves of another horse, far to the south, but approaching fast and in full gallop. This time I didn’t wait. I started for the end of the ledge and began my climb down the rock face. I had only gone a few feet before the rider from the south was already in the pass. Clinging to the rocks, I glanced at Idris as he rose from his seat by the fire to greet the rider, then dropped his bowl of dates where he stood, and pointed north. The man wore a dark turban and veil like Jisil and his horse was the same color gray, only mottled slightly with whites and darker grays. He carried something on his back, which he slung around in one motion and held to his shoulder. I couldn’t quite make it out, but the motion was familiar. It was a rifle and he was aiming down the north slope, down the trail that led to Ghadames, down toward Jisil and Star.
In the moonlight and because of the distance, it was a difficult shot, but he only fired twice. The two cracks were close together and were quickly swallowed by silence. His horse never moved. The man rested the rifle on his thigh and watched the darkness to the north. Nothing moved, not the horse, the horseman, Idris or me. A full minute passed, then he slowly turned his horse and addressed Idris in that archaic dialect I did not understand. The only words I did understand were names—“Mulai” and “Allah.”
Then he raised his rifle and shot Idris between the eyes. Idris fell and toppled along with the dates over the rocks and into the pass. The horseman looked back to the north once more, then turned south and rode back the way he had come, this time in a slow and arrogant trot, the trot of a chief and the arrogance of an assassin.
I scrambled down the rock face, slipping, losing balance, going much too fast. I ran across the riverbed and found my packs. I untied all the animals and wished them well, then ran and stumbled my way up to where Idris had pastured his horse. I secured the packs and saddle, fumbling with every buckle and strap. I tried to calm myself and slow down. As I rode north, away from the pass and down the slope, I held the horse to a trot. At a gallop, I would never see them, dead or alive.
I found Jisil’s horse first. He wasn’t far off the trail and he was pacing nervously. As I slowed to a walk, he bent his head and nudged something, then backed away, shaking his reins and snorting. When I got close enough, I looked down. It was Jisil. He was sprawled facedown in the sand. He had been shot through the spine and heart. I never saw his face. His dark turban had wrapped around him and whipped in the wind above his head. I was watching it when something broke loose from his hand and flew up like a handkerchief. I reached out and caught it. I couldn’t tell what it was, but there were drawn lines and words in Arabic and it seemed to be a map. I tucked it away and listened, as hard and focused as I ever had, I listened.
I let my “ability” spread and deepen. The two horses shuffling and snorting sounded like a stampede. I concentrated and narrowed myself, centered myself like the small black circle in the oval room of the cave. The wind was raging. I could hear it scraping the rocks clean. I had to go under it, underwater, under time, under the wind, to find her.
I heard a sigh.
I turned and ran toward the source. It came from the opposite side of the trail in a mass of brush and sand. I looked down and saw the white muslin veil. The sigh came from behind it. I pulled the veil back slowly and stared down at the face, the mouth, that had made the sigh. In the moonlight, I could see enough of her features to tell that her eyes were closed, but her lips were parted and she was alive and breathing. There was a ring in her nose, a gold ring in the center attached by a chain to another smaller ring in her left nostril. That was attached by another chain to another, larger ring in her left ear. But it was not the rings or chains that caught my attention, it was the freckles. Carolina’s freckles, all across her nose and cheeks. I was certain that under her closed lids, the eyes were blue.
I lifted her head gently and she sighed again. She had been shot through the shoulder, probably knocked from the horse by the impact and then rolled into the brush. I wasn’t sure if she was conscious and less sure what to say to her. I had never thought about it in all the years I had been looking for her.
“Star?” I whispered.
Her eyes fluttered and opened about halfway, then found mine and opened wide. She tried to speak, saying something in Jisil’s archaic dialect, then fell back into unconsciousness, either from the sight of me or the pain of her wound, or both.
I dragged her out of the brush roughly. There was no other way. I pulled back her robe and looked at her shoulder. It was still bleeding, but I knew it would stop. The bullet had not lodged and the wound was clean. I bound it tightly with her veil and mine, then stood up and looked for Jisil’s horse. There was no chance of getting out to the south because of Mulai’s camp. The east and west only promised more desert. The only way of getting out was to the north and that would take a good horse.
I found him near Jisil’s body, still skittish and watching me as I approached. The wind tore at Jisil’s turban and stung my face and eyes with sand and grit. The animal was a chief’s horse and ignored the wind. To him, the wind had never been an enemy, only an ally, and that gave me an idea. I tore off the part of Jisil’s turban that was loose and blowing. I started walking toward the horse, deliberately, and wrapping the cloth around my own head at the same time, slowly. I stopped within five feet and waited. After a cautious snort and whiff of me, he lowered his head and shook his reins. I turned and walked back toward Star, not looking once over my shoulder. When I had almost reached her, I heard his hooves crossing the trail of crushed stones behind me. It was a gamble and I had been lucky, but Jisil’s horse, one of the finest Arabs I had ever seen, never questioned it.
I loaded and strapped my things on first, then with great difficulty, I managed to get Star on the horse and in the saddle behind me. I literally tied her to my back, even though she was taller and heavier. It was not her weight that gave me problems or concern. It was what I discovered when I first picked her up. It changed the way I touched her, moved her, and it had probably changed everything for Jisil.
Star was pregnant, very pregnant.
We traveled at a steady pace along the trail to Ghadames and the oldest of the caravan routes. Jisil’s horse knew the way when I didn’t. Star remained in a semiconscious state and only took water with the aid of my fingers.
Somewhere outside Ghadames, we rested near a grove of palms. It was midday. There were mounted and motorized patrols in the distance. What army for which country, I couldn’t tell. I found water and traded for biscuits, helped Star to a place in the shade, then sat by her and took out what I’d caught in the wind from Jisil, what I hoped was a map.
It was a map and a little more. Jisil had outlined the north coast of Africa from Tripoli to Tunis. He had marked two places on the coast by name and symbol. The one to the east was named Sabratha and marked with an X. I had never heard of this place. He also had a trail of arrows that headed west, avoiding Sabratha and ending in the other place, which he had marked with a circle. The name was Carthage. In the margins he had scribbled notes and several names, all in Arabic, except one—“Cheng.”
I looked over at Star and it came to me. I remembered Jisil’s two midnight rides a few days before. He had been making a deal. The new pieces fitted into the old puzzle. Jisil had fallen in love with a slave — Star — and was trying to save her and the baby
from a deal that had been sealed long ago, a deal that Mulai would not break, a deal with the Fleur-du-Mal. I figured Cheng would be working for the Fleur-du-Mal or against him. Either way, he could lead me to him.
I had heard of Carthage and I definitely knew of Cheng. There was no choice but to take Star there. She needed to be free and safe to have her baby. Her shoulder I knew would heal. I could end the madness there, in Carthage, because Cheng would be expecting Jisil, not me.
I followed the map generally and asked directions occasionally. Sometimes I spoke in my rough Berber, sometimes in French, and once in English. I no longer cared about any pretense or disguise. Star continued to drift in and out of consciousness. I tried to stay behind her when she woke, so my presence wouldn’t startle her. She drank more water, but she was weak from the loss of blood. Without being aware of it, she often held her belly when she slept.
South of Gàbes, a day and a half later, we came out of the desert and the mountains. Birds circled overhead, and even though we couldn’t see it yet, we could smell the salt and the sea air of the Mediterranean.
We camped that night near a rocky outcrop on the high plain between Gàbes and Sousse. Star was pale and drawn and I couldn’t seem to make her comfortable. Her sleep was more delusional. I tried to think of what Emme would do. Sirius was as bright as a streetlight in the sky. Star opened her eyes once and stared at it, then mumbled something in the old Berber dialect and fell back into her restless sleep.
Then, as if someone had whispered it to me, I remembered something, something that had once been a pillow of dreams for this daughter of Carolina, something I still carried with me — my mama’s glove. I reached in my pack and pulled it out. Carolina had said she would never forget it. I unwrapped the old scarf with the drowning Chinamen and held it in my hand. I put my other hand inside the glove and pounded the pocket with my fist. Everything worked, everything felt good. I slipped my hand out of the glove and placed it under Star’s head. I put the scarf in her hands and covered her with a blanket. The rest would have to be magic. It was the only medicine I had. I had already decided that if she didn’t improve by morning, I was going to find a town and a doctor.