by Steve Cash
As he was handing the baby back to Star, the baby’s hands found Sailor’s single braid behind his ear, pulling Sailor’s head down and finally grasping in his little palm the piece of lapis lazuli that hung from the bottom of the braid. Without hesitating, Sailor untied the lapis lazuli and Star was carried away with the baby still holding the gem tight in his tiny hands. Star looked back at Sailor and smiled. Sailor waved. I had never seen him wave before to anyone, anywhere. I had no idea how long he had worn the lapis lazuli. I knew it meant something unique to him, and yet he had given it away in a moment to the child of a Giza, a complete stranger. While he was waving, I noticed that even Geaxi seemed to look twice. Perhaps it was because he had finally found Opari and their differences had been settled. Or it could have had something to do with his questions about Eder, Nova, and their relationship with Carolina. Whatever his reasons, the change was a dramatic surprise to everyone. As for me, I was so happy I was useless.
We had made our final landing a few miles west of Alexandria in a makeshift safe harbor, completely isolated and obviously not part of a British base. A man in uniform, which he wore as casually as Willie, helped tie the two planes to a dock covered with a tin roof and palm fronds on top of that. The man seemed as unconcerned about being around the Meq as did Willie. It was sunset. The air was cool and the light was golden.
Everything seemed slightly surreal. The landscape was barren and the point at which it met the sea was unremarkable, but I felt as if we had landed in paradise. As long as Opari was there, I was sure of it. I watched her as if she was in slow motion. I watched her help Star and the baby out of the plane, the way no movement was wasted and no touch in a place of pain or discomfort to Star. After Sailor took charge and Star and the baby had left with Willie and the other man, I watched her gather our things and help Geaxi with the planes. I watched her hands. I watched the way she knelt and stood up, the way she turned and smiled. I watched everything. Opari — my Ameq. I thought of Unai and Usoa and wondered how they could have waited so many centuries to cross in the Zeharkatu. As I watched Opari, I could not conceive of it. Now that she was with me, that we were free and together, the Itxaron — the Wait — seemed absurd and unnecessary. Opari was a rich and complex woman living in a girl’s body. I thought I knew everything about living in a boy’s body, but I was learning something by the moment that neither Papa nor Sailor nor anyone else had ever had a chance to tell me about being Meq, being male, and being in love. It was a feeling as old as time, but brand-new to me.
“She has become more than a ghost, no?”
I turned as if I’d been caught stealing. It was Sailor. He had been watching me watch Opari. His “ghost eye” actually winked at me.
Embarrassed at first, I relaxed, remembering his own connection with Opari. “Yes,” I said, then stammered, “she is. she has. ”
“Her sister was equally as lovely,” he said. He turned and watched Opari himself, and for a brief moment, I knew he was seeing Deza, then he turned back to me. His “ghost eye” narrowed and focused. He twirled the star sapphire on his finger and spoke in a low monotone. “You will, you must, become accustomed to this feeling, Zianno. There is so much still to be done. I will tell you more later, but remember, you are Meq, you are the Stone of Dreams. We will need you. You must dredge your dreams, conscious and unconscious, good and bad. In the muck of an ancient nightmare, you may find a diamond. In the bright blue of an imagined summer day, there may be a hornet you ignored. It would be your mistake to miss either through lack of curiosity.”
“What about Opari?” I asked. “Have you spoken to her?”
“No, but she must do the same. She must stay the same. She is the Stone of Blood. I am certain she thought of this before. before she found us.”
“Aha!” I said. “So you finally admit someone found you and not the other way around.”
Sailor laughed once, but that was his only response.
Darkness came quickly and a breeze picked up. It was warm compared to the night air in the deep desert, but still cool and it blew the salt air in from the Mediterranean. Geaxi led us to a low stone building with a newly rebuilt roof and most of one wall missing. She said the British had used a nearby site for target practice two years earlier. A stray shell had caught the side of the building. I was amazed at the size of the hole and couldn’t imagine the weapon that had produced it. Geaxi circled the one large room inside, lighting kerosene lamps along the way. There were only two windows at the top of one wall and none of the lamps was beneath them. There seemed to be no electricity and no running water. Several straw mats covered the floor and a few personal items lay around two of them. Another was off by itself, clean and sparse, with two blankets neatly folded on top and two black ballet slippers at one end. By looking at it, there was no way to tell if the occupant had been there a day, a year, or ten years. I smiled to myself at the almost invisible address of Geaxi. I turned to speak to her, but she and Opari were busy preparing a kind of nursery for Star and her baby. I found Sailor instead.
“What is this place?” I asked.
He looked around all four sides of the large room and up at the windows. His eyes moved to the roof, which was temporary at best, then to the blown-out hole in the wall facing away from the sea. He flared his nostrils and took a deep breath of the breeze that filled the room with the fresh and ancient scent of the Mediterranean. He closed his eyes a moment and stood still, holding the air in his lungs. Then gently, slowly, he let it slip through his mouth and lips and over his tongue, tasting it as it left his body. He knelt and felt the stones in the floor, tracing their outlines with the tips of his fingers.
“The Greeks built the floor,” he said without looking up. “But not the Greeks who lived down the coast, the ones who built the Lighthouse and the Great Library. These Greeks sailed in darkness and kept no books. These Greeks traded with the last of the Phoenicians.” He glanced up at me and his “ghost eye” was filled with clouds. “It was here,” he said, then paused. “It was here where the trades were made.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Geaxi and Opari had stopped what they were doing and were watching us.
“Trades in what?” I asked.
“Bones,” he said. “The bones of the Meq who were slaughtered in their temples.”
I turned to look at Opari and both she and Geaxi were now staring at me. Just as the question “why” was on my lips, Opari shook her head once and I understood. The “why” was irrelevant; it was the “where” that haunted this place for Sailor. I understood that we were probably standing on the floor in the room where Deza’s bones had been bought and sold, traded among the Giza like so many pieces of silver. Looking across the room into Opari’s living eyes, I wondered how many places were like this for him, how many times he ran into a past that haunted him, a past in which he was still a living presence.
“Young Willie Croft owns it now,” Geaxi said, then she started toward us. “Nay, I should say the Daphne Croft Foundation owns it in the proper and legal sense.” Her movements were liquid, graceful, almost weightless, and her voice brought Sailor out of the past.
“Yes,” he said, rising to his feet and breathing in deeply once more, “yes, that is correct. This place is merely a stage, Zianno. One of many we are acquiring.”
“We?” I asked.
Suddenly Geaxi burst into laughter. She was standing next to Sailor with her hands on her hips. She was wearing boots, not her ballet slippers, but she went into a pirouette, laughing hysterically and raising her arms, waving her beret like a drunken ballerina. Opari walked over and took my hand, smiling, but also asking me with her eyes what was going on. I had no idea. I looked at Sailor and he was staring at Geaxi, just as mystified.
“Is something funny?” he asked.
She stopped turning, but still laughing she said, “You must admit it is a bit absurd, Sailor.”
“What is absurd?”
“The Meq acquiring property.”
Opari and I looked at each other, both in the dark about everything.
Sailor said, “It is time to tell our stories. There is much to clarify.”
Geaxi nodded, but she was still smiling. “I will get the bread and cheese and those wonderful olives and meet you there.” She turned and walked away, but laughed once more to herself. Over her shoulder she added, “And boil some water for tea. This may be a long evening.”
Opari and I looked at Sailor. He was watching Geaxi’s back, shaking his head. There was a trace of a smile on his face, then it disappeared.
“Follow me,” he said. His “ghost eye” was clear and he spoke in an even voice.
“Where are we going?” I asked. “I thought we were here.”
“Under the sea,” he said. “Or at least under where it was and where it shall be. That was one of the pass phrases used by the Greeks. Clever people, the Greeks, even their pirates, but riddled with riddles.”
Opari squeezed my hand. “I know of this place from Zeru-Meq,” she said.
“Zeru-Meq?” Sailor asked and both eyebrows arched high on his head, then relaxed. “I should have guessed as much,” he said, nodding to himself.
“Yes,” she went on, “I believe he called it ‘The Shadow in the Shallows.’ ”
“He would know,” Sailor said, then motioned for us to follow. “We must make haste before the others return. Willie is not aware of where I am taking you. No Giza is.”
We left the way we had entered and then veered sharply to the west, away from the path leading to the dock. We walked in a line and followed Sailor through rock and brush and sand in a complicated zigzag pattern that eventually ended in a tiny spit of sand that would have been underwater had it been high tide. If it was a trail we had taken, only Sailor knew it.
In moments, Geaxi appeared from behind us, dressed in black and carrying a large candle in one hand and a netted sack stuffed with food in the other. I never heard her approach. She was as silent as a shadow come to life. Overhead there was only starlight. The moon was hidden behind a low bank of clouds. I glanced at Opari and then turned to Sailor.
“What now?” I asked.
“Look out to sea,” he said. “Not directly in front of you, but obliquely. Watch the water. Watch the light on the water. Try to look for—” He paused and smiled at Opari. “A Shadow in the Shallows.”
I turned and faced north, trying to see everything and nothing. The Mediterranean stretched into darkness, but suddenly, not a hundred yards out, I caught the outline of a form, a shadow darker than the sea around it and rectangular. It was just under the surface.
“Now you have it,” Geaxi said and splashed out in the water, stepping high and holding the candle and cache of food above her head. In seconds, she was standing on one end of the shadow, which caused the other end to rise up like a seesaw and Geaxi was underwater up to her chest.
The shadow was no shadow at all, but a single slab of stone, balanced and hinged, accessible only at low tide and weighted so that someone as light and small as Geaxi could easily make it move just by stepping on top of one end.
“Come!” she shouted. “Come quickly!”
Sailor walked into the water without a word. Opari and I glanced at each other and followed. When we got to the slab of stone, I could see that under the raised end there was actually an opening, a kind of trapdoor. The shallow water of low tide was disappearing down the opening in a descending spiral. Geaxi stepped off the stone and lit the candle with a match she had tucked behind her ear. In the flickering light, I could see steps, also descending in a spiral and a slightly diagonal direction.
“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 St
ones 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.