by Steve Cash
“No, no, Captain. I was just thinking of someone I once knew, a girl named Emme. She was special in many, many ways.”
“Oui, she is.”
I turned and looked at him, wondering what he meant. He was smiling. “She has a keen mind,” he said, “but her heart wanders.”
My mouth dropped and I was stunned. “That can only be one person, Captain. A man named PoPo told me the same thing about her.”
“And me, monsieur. I knew him well. It was I who wrote the letter informing her that he was dying.”
“Knew?”
“Oui. He passed on not long after she returned.”
I remembered the day she read that letter. We were deep in the Sahara in a desolate crossroads called In Salah. It was where we said good-bye. “You mean your ship is named after Emme Ya Ambala?”
“Oui, she is the same girl. Only her name is longer now, monsieur, by one name. Mine.”
“Emme is your wife?”
“Oui.” He paused, then went on. “I see we both have this secret from the other, though this thing does not surprise me. Emme is the one who taught me of your existence. She told me you have great abilities, monsieur. Because of Emme, when Mowsel approached me three years ago, I surprised him by recognizing him as, well, what he was…what you are. Now, I do this work when he needs me and Emme protests my absence.”
“Where is she?”
“Paris. We live in Paris, also Marseille and Corsica. My work makes it necessary to live many places. Emme wants me in Paris to live all the time, but this is still difficult for me. Do you understand this problem, monsieur?”
“Oui,” I said. “I think it might be universal, Captain.”
“I was waiting for the certain moment to tell you of my petit secret, monsieur. I hope I have not become untrustworthy. I never intended a deception.”
“No, Captain, I do not feel deceived. I feel enlightened. I am more than happy to discover that Emme is alive and well. And please, call me Z. Now tell me, how long have you known her, and where and how did you meet?”
“This answer is complicated…Z.”
“Believe me, Captain, I am familiar with complications.”
Glancing up at the sails every so often, Captain B began to tell me a brief history of his life. Born out of wedlock on the island of Martinique to a French sea captain and his mistress, a woman named Isabelle, he was raised in various ports until being removed from his mother’s care by his father because she had become addicted to absinthe. After that, he never saw her again. He was schooled in naval academies in France, then posted in Dakar and Saint-Louis, Senegal, where he met a young black student named Emme Ya Ambala.
They had a relationship for over a year, even discussing marriage, then for a reason Captain B did not explain, had a falling out and she left him on Christmas Day. That was the very same day she delivered the premature baby and rescued me. Many years later, in the middle of the Sahara, Emme said she had reconsidered her decision about leaving a man she only referred to as A.B. Suddenly, I remembered Pic’s whisper to Captain B. “Antoine,” he had called him. Captain B’s name was Antoine Boutrain. Then the full meaning of my dream came to me. The coincidence was astounding. Captain B was the son of Captain Antoine Boutrain, the man in my dream, the man who had lost a small fortune to Solomon and given him the contacts Solomon needed to start his own fortune. His mother was the same woman Captain Woodget had loved and watched over for years.
I let Captain B finish talking and said nothing for several moments. The Emme sliced through the dark water smooth as a blade and a faint glow began to appear over the horizon to the east. In a few more hours we would part ways with Captain B and his crew, but it would not be the last time we would see each other or share a secret.
“I knew your mother,” I said.
“No! Is this possible?”
“Yes. I didn’t know her well, but she was a good person, Captain. There was a night when she gave me hot tea, warm blankets, and shelter during the middle of a hurricane. That was in Louisiana. An old friend of mine loved her well there. He took care of her and gave her a fine funeral when she died.”
Captain B glanced up to check the wind in the sails, then scanned the horizon slowly. Minutes later, he said, “Merci, monsieur. Thank you, Z. I have always wondered this.”
Sailor, Ray, and I left Captain B and the Emme behind in the harbor of the old port of Alexandria, the city founded and built by the Greeks and the capital city of Cleopatra. Once a jewel of the Mediterranean, it was no longer. Alexandria needed both restoration and modernization. People and traffic kept it busy and crowded, but to me it seemed slightly abandoned and neglected.
We were using visas Sailor had obtained while in Malta, making the three of us cousins and all Egyptian nationals whose parents lived on Maltese soil. Sailor spoke Arabic fluently and we passed into the country within minutes, legally, in a manner of speaking. We picked up some local clothing and light caftans, then walked to the train station and took the first available connection to Cairo. After a short time on board amid the heat and dust and sweat, we looked and felt as Egyptian as any other children in Egypt. By sunset, we were in the lobby of a small hotel Sailor knew well. The air was stifling. We were sipping tea and waiting for a man named Rais Hussein, who supposedly had information concerning the Octopus. He was late. We ordered mulukhis and kofta and sipped more tea. He never appeared. It had been a long day, but it was only the first of a thousand to come just like it, each seeming to end in some form of frustration or empty promise.
In Cairo, despite the heat, Sailor and Ray felt more in their element than any place we had been. Sailor because he had traveled through the city on many occasions over the centuries, staying once for a full year as a visitor in the court of Shagaretel-Dorr (Tree of Pearls), the Mameluke former slave and wife of Al-Saleh, the last Ayyubid Sultan. And Ray because he liked the way it was now—a den of thieves and a city where anything was for sale. All you had to know was who to ask.
We spent three sweltering weeks in Cairo. The “City of a Thousand Minarets” truly did appear to have a thousand of them. We combed the narrow streets and alleys, bazaars and markets, searching for any trace of Rais Hussein. There were tens of thousands of shops, from rugs, brass, and tambourines to teashops and smoke rooms. Finally, we were given a tip, more of a rumor, that Rais and his brother Gad Hussein had moved to Luxor in order to work under Rais Ahmed Gurger. He was the foreman for the British archaeologist, Howard Carter, who was resuming his dig in the Valley of the Kings. Carter was looking for intact tombs dating back to the Amarna period and the Eighteenth Dynasty. This, I learned, was the exact reason Giles Xuereb told Sailor to contact Rais Hussein. The Octopus could be in one of these tombs.
The assumption had been made by Giles based on an ancient legend only recently found on an inscription and translated, but not yet published, by Sir Alan Gardiner, a close friend of both Giles and Howard Carter. According to the legend, Nefertiti, the beautiful wife of Akhenaton, had once been presented with a special gift from a foreigner. Nefertiti received no other gift she treasured more. The gift was known as the Octopus. The legend says the foreigner came from Crete, but the origin of the Octopus was thought to be “near the source of the Great River, beyond the Great Convulsions.” When Akhenaton died, Nefertiti lost favor with the priests in Karnak, who wanted the rebellious Pharaoh erased in every aspect. The legend mentions two possible fates for Nefertiti. In one, she escapes with the Octopus and disappears into unknown lands to the south, beyond the cataracts of the Nile, never to be seen again. In the other, she secretly returns at the death of her son, the boy king, Tutankhamen, in order to place the Octopus in his tomb. Giles preferred the second version, saying Sir Alan Gardiner had concurred, then informed him that Carter was going back to the Valley of the Kings in search of tombs. Giles reminded Sailor that the tomb of King Tutankhamen had never been found. He convinced Sailor to find Rais. The inscription was legitimate and Howard Carter was a good arch
aeologist. Even if Carter was not looking for the Octopus, he could lead us to it. Rais and his brother Gad would be working directly on the site. Sailor wanted any news of all discoveries on the site to come from an inside man. Rais Hussein was his man.
We took the train to Luxor, the city of temples on the east bank of the Nile, just south of Karnak. Palm trees lined the river and the temperature was ten degrees hotter. On the trip, Ray and I had marveled at the landscape and the sight of toppled ruins that were often visible from the train. Sailor casually pointed out the ones he had seen while they were still standing and in use.
In Luxor, we ate a quick meal in the train station, then made our way to the markets and shops south of Luxor Temple on Sharia al-Markez. Using various dialects, Sailor located Rais within two hours and concluded a deal between the two of them within one. Rais agreed to send Giles a letter once a month with news of how the dig was going. In return for each letter, he would receive a bank draft of twenty pounds sterling, regardless of whether any tombs were found. Sailor would contact Giles from wherever we happened to be. However, the season for any archaeological digs was still months away. None of us had even thought of that. Sailor then suggested something that neither Ray nor I could question. He thought we should immediately investigate the other possible ending to the legend. What if Nefertiti did disappear to the south, never to return, with the Octopus in her possession? Should we not do all we could do to see if it is true? The Fleur-du-Mal certainly would, and without delay. Ray and I agreed. We decided to go south, as far up the Nile as necessary, and find what we could find. Sailor still had a few contacts in various towns and villages and we could start with them. The decision must have had the same effect as breaking a small mirror, because after that our good luck vanished.
As usual, we traveled simply and often procured rides in small native boats called faluccas. We dressed the same as all boys along the Nile and tried to blend in with local populations as best we could. Near the small town of Dendur, Ray even replaced his beret with a white skullcap. We were delayed there for five weeks while waiting for a man we later found out had been dead for some time. Delay and detour became commonplace. Fifty-five miles south of Dendur, three months passed in a desolate village named Korosko, a place where caravans used to gather and prepare for the two-hundred-mile journey to Khartoum. South of Korosko, in Derr, we were held up again for six months, chasing leads and making trips by donkey to sites in the area. At every opportunity Sailor contacted Giles, only to hear the continuing news that nothing had been discovered in the Valley of the Kings. I wrote letters to Opari and sent them off with no return address. In Qasr Ibrim, the last stop before Abu Simbel, we thought we had found the information we needed and again headed south, into the Sudan and east to places not accurately mapped or recorded. Over a year had gone by before we found a village and a village elder who supposedly possessed an object that had passed down among his people for countless generations since the era of the Nubian kings. It took us three months to win his confidence because he did not trust children who wished to see such things. Finally, Ray gained the elder’s favor and he eventually let us look at the object. It was a beautiful piece of work, an alabaster vase with an Egyptian queen depicted in bas-relief. The image could have represented Nefertiti, but there was no way to know for sure. One thing was certain—it was not the Octopus. Three months later our search ended abruptly because something happened that none of us could have expected or predicted. It was profound and frightening and seemed utterly impossible. Ray Ytuarte got sick.
There was no warning and we were not doing anything we had not done many times in many places. Following another lead, we were deep in the Sudan crossing a shallow river on foot. The water was only a few feet deep and the riverbed was mostly mud. The sun was setting and the whole western sky burned red and orange. On the far bank of the river, Ray stopped to clean the caked mud from his shoes and was bitten on the back of his neck by a mosquito. By the time we reached the village of Wad Rasala, where we were staying the night, Ray was shaking with chills and experiencing severe pain from head to foot. I wasn’t sure what to do and neither was Sailor. I had never seen Ray even out of breath, let alone sick and in pain. He then developed a skin rash and a high fever and he began drifting in and out of consciousness. With no other alternative we sought out the local medicine man, who was a woman, a kind of shaman and midwife. She took one look at Ray and shouted something in a language I’d never heard.
Sailor spoke to her in a dialect she understood. He asked question after question and repeated one of them over and over. Each time the woman would nod and shout the word again.
I grabbed Sailor by the arm. “What are you asking her?”
“I am asking her if she is certain.”
“Certain of what?”
“Certain that Ray has contracted what she calls ‘Breakbone Fever,’ an often fatal disease.”
“That is impossible,” I said, shaking my head.
Sailor knelt next to where Ray was lying and waited a full minute before he spoke. He stared down at Ray, who was sweating from every pore. Then gently, almost with the touch of a father, he wiped Ray’s face and neck with a wet cloth. He looked up at me. His “ghost eye” swirled with clouds the same way it had that night in Cornwall when he told us about the death of Unai and Usoa’s baby. In a bitter whisper, he said, “Apparently nothing is impossible, Zianno.”
Ray survived the night, but his condition did not improve. For three days and nights he remained delirious, often breaking into cold sweats and mumbling in strange languages I had never heard, either from Ray or anyone else. The medicine woman, Dejik, said most children, if they lived, sometimes took weeks to recover. Adults could take months of recuperation and would likely suffer repeated bouts of extreme exhaustion. Sailor and I both thought of what that could mean for Ray. If it was that bad for the Giza, what would it be like for the Meq?
On the fourth night, Ray regained full consciousness, though he was so weak he could barely speak. Even the deep green of his eyes seemed pale in the candlelight. “Where are we, Z?” he asked. “In Veracruz?”
“No, Ray, we’re still in Africa.”
“What happened to me? I never been so damn tired and sore in my life.”
“You got bit by a mosquito.”
Ray looked at me without understanding, as if I had told him a joke he didn’t quite catch. “What do you mean by that?”
“You got sick. You are sick. The mosquito gave you a virus, a bad one.”
“I been bit before, Z.”
“I know.”
Sailor was standing behind me and he stepped closer, so Ray could see him. “We shall get you through this, Ray. Sleep, rest, and try to eat when you are able. Zianno, Dejik, and I shall get you well.”
Ray stared back at Sailor, then turned his head and tried to focus on Dejik, who leaned forward and offered him a small amount of broth in a bowl. He turned back to me. “This don’t make sense, Z.”
“I know, Ray. I can’t explain it. Let’s just get you well, then we’ll figure out why.”
Ray was rapidly losing consciousness again. As his eyes were closing he asked, “What about the Fleur-du-Mal?” He fell asleep before Sailor or I said a word in reply.
After Dejik made sure Ray was comfortable, I asked Sailor to follow me outside. Ray’s question could not be ignored. In the open air, under the stars, I looked over at Sailor. I was suddenly angry at the fact Ray had only contracted the virus because we were on a wild goose chase after an object that may or may not exist, for the reason that it might help us trap a madman and assassin called the Fleur-du-Mal. It made no sense. It all seemed futile and pointless. “Why does the Fleur-du-Mal want the Octopus and the Sixth Stone, if there is one? Especially when he has never wanted any of the other five. Why, Sailor, why is it important?”
“Because we are aging, Zianno. Not individually, but together as a whole, the Meq are aging. I am certain of this, as is the Fleur-du-Mal. Zeru-
Meq has told me so. He believes the Sixth Stone will have different…characteristics, shall we say, than the ones you and I carry. He believes it may have a power over the others and will enable him to do whatever he pleases, including telekinesis. He could be right. We must find it first.”
“We? Or do you mean you?”
“Zianno, please. You are upset and confused about what has happened to Ray. Calm down and you will realize there was no way to have foreseen this. Ray’s life and health are sacred to me. We must stay here as long as it takes for him to recover. We shall worry about the Fleur-du-Mal and the Octopus once Ray regains his strength, and only then, not one day sooner.” Sailor twirled the blue sapphire on his finger. “Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I said, “and once again, Sailor, I apologize. I was wrong.”
“Unnecessary,” he answered, “and remember, Zianno, Ray is under two hundred years old. Perhaps that shall help speed his recovery.”
I looked at Sailor and smiled. Only Umla-Meq and a very few other beings on the planet would consider “under two hundred years” as being young.
Dejik took meticulous care of Ray, keeping him clean, cool, and fed the best she could. She massaged his limbs daily, sang songs, and recited incantations during rough periods when he slipped back into unconsciousness. In return, Sailor and I made frequent trips to larger villages and trading centers, bringing back simple medicines such as sulphate of zinc, quinine, and carbolic acid to aid in the care of her own people. In six months, Ray was able to stand, but he was too weak to travel. A few minutes of walking would bring on total exhaustion and pain. Ray told me once, “I feel like there’s nothin’ but sand and grit in my joints, Z, and it’s all rubbin’ together every time I move.”
Two more months passed with little improvement. I knew he was starting to feel better, however, when he asked Dejik for second and third helpings of a simple dish consisting mainly of broad beans cooked in oil.