The Remembering

by Steve Cash

  “But how did you escape? I thought you said your exit was entirely blocked with fallen stone.”

  “Yes … it was,” he said, then glanced at the pot of tea on the table in front of us. Without warning, the pot rose by itself into the air and sort of danced in a circle, then settled down gently on the table.

  I looked at Sailor. I said nothing, but understood immediately. Sailor smiled faintly, rubbing his star sapphire with his thumb. The mystical and astonishing power of telekinesis! “Have I never told you how I came to wear this ring, Zianno?” Sailor asked, slipping the brilliant blue star sapphire from his finger and holding it to the light, staring, admiring the six separate shafts of color that shot in all directions from its heart.

  I had always wondered and never asked. “No,” I said. “You have not.”

  “It was a gift,” Sailor whispered. “The last one … from Deza.”

  Just then I heard voices coming into the house. Susheela the Ninth was thanking Katsuo for showing her the family’s theater and teaching her about Bunraku and its history. Sailor and I only had a few more moments alone. Quickly I asked him what he did once he was above ground. He said he ran out of the city as fast as Geaxi, following the Urakami River northward. For the next forty-eight hours he wandered the countryside, dazed from what he had seen in Nagasaki.

  Katsuo and Ikuko were entering the kitchen, followed closely by Susheela the Ninth. Ikuko was laughing and talking and wearing her new earrings, which were older than Japan. In a whisper, I asked Sailor, “How did you know we were going to be at Urakami Station?”

  Sailor leaned forward in his chair. His “ghost eye” was clear and focused. “I received instructions and directions,” he whispered back.

  “Instructions? From where … from whom?”

  Sailor raised his head and nodded toward Susheela the Ninth, his eyes watching her every move. I had never seen him look at anyone in quite the same way. “From her,” he said.

  You, my priceless locksmith,

  all milk and lace, all new and

  untraceable.

  There are more mysteries in one heart and mind than can be counted. As Susheela the Ninth and Ikuko began peeling a few scrawny carrots and washing some celery sticks, Sailor started outlining his “plan” to Katsuo and me. I was listening, but thinking back to Norway and Askenfada when Sailor had first set eyes on Susheela the Ninth. We were searching for the Fleur-du-Mal and the Octopus. Sailor told me later her mind had spoken to his mind in the voice of Deza, his one and only Ameq. I didn’t give it much credence at the time, or at least thought he might have been exaggerating. Now I knew he had been telling the absolute truth. Once Susheela the Ninth and I had escaped the Fleur-du-Mal’s castle, she must have been “communicating” with Sailor, letting him know where she was and where to go. I know I kept heading toward Urakami Station without realizing why.

  It had never happened before, but could it be so? Could a Meq, could Sailor, have found his second Ameq?

  “We are all aware of the dangers in traveling together,” Sailor was saying. “However, with Katsuo’s consummate knowledge in theater and skills of expression …” he went on. But I was thinking back. I recalled the moment at Caitlin’s Ruby when Geaxi and I were using “the Voice” to awaken Charles Lindbergh as he flew across the Atlantic in the Spirit of St. Louis. We were joined by someone else, someone Meq. Nova was present, yet the other presence and voice did not belong to her or anyone else. It felt strong and intoxicating. Geaxi referred to it later as male, but whose voice was it? And from where had “he” come? I reminded myself to discuss this with Opari when I saw her next. I wondered where she was. What if—

  “Well, Zianno? Do you agree or disagree with this option?”

  “I … I …”

  “We shall be depending, of course, on an American sense of guilt, as well as good-heartedness.”

  “I …”

  Sailor’s eyes glanced up at Susheela the Ninth, then settled back on me. “Hawaii is where we need to be, Zianno.”

  I had no idea what his “plan” was or what he’d said, but Hawaii sounded good to me. “Yes, I agree … Hawaii is where we need to be.”

  Later that night the three of us were in our room, lying in the dark on our tatami mats. The light rain of the previous evening had given way to a steamy, big-city heat. Our three windows were wide open. I confessed to Sailor I had been daydreaming as he elaborated his “plan,” and I was completely ignorant of the whole thing. He assured me not to worry, I had plenty of time to hear it again. We would take no action until the Americans were in Japan and the occupation had begun. “Until then,” Sailor reminded us, “we should stay close to Katsuo’s home, only venturing outside at night to steal food or other necessities. For the sake of Katsuo and Ikuko, we must not be seen.”

  “Steal food? Did you say ‘steal food’?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Sailor answered. “If stealing is required, then we shall steal. We have no reason to extend Katsuo’s hospitality into providing sustenance for us.” Sailor waited a moment. “I say we should extend and provide his sustenance instead, particularly by pilfering an odd bit or two from the few remaining decent restaurants in Osaka.” He paused again. “This should be relatively easy for you, Zianno. I believe you were at one time a professional thief under Captain Woodget’s tutelage, no?”

  I laughed once in the dark. “I think the good captain referred to it as smuggling.”

  “Ah, yes, of course, I see my error,” Sailor said with great sarcasm. “A much more honorable position and higher moral ground … no doubt, no doubt.”

  I laughed again and Susheela the Ninth, or Sheela, as even Sailor was calling her now, joined in the laughter. We continued talking and covered many subjects, including telekinesis, telepathy, and other phenomena. The talk was loose and open. Sailor did a lot of the speaking, but so did Sheela. Parts of a puzzle were revealed in reverse. She said when she beat us to the Octopus in Egypt, she knew Xanti and three others were also seeking it, but she assumed the others were working with Xanti, not against him. She had no idea one of the others was Umla-Meq. It wasn’t until she was captured and taken to Norway that she learned the truth.

  “How long have you known of the Fleur-du-Mal?” I asked her.

  “For centuries,” she answered. “I have always thought him to be a considerable nuisance.”

  “Nuisance! He is an assassin, a ruthless murderer and torturer!”

  “Yes, I know, Z, and I do not mean to diminish his crimes or your abhorrence of them. However, in truth, Xanti is only a sad little boy. I do not think he can help himself.”

  “Zeru-Meq once thought the same way,” I snapped back. Sheela said nothing. I took a deep breath and calmed down. “He has since changed his mind. If Xanti is a sad little boy, then he is the most dangerous one on earth.” Despite their longevity, or perhaps because of it, I felt both Sailor and Sheela were being complacent concerning the Fleur-du-Mal. For me, it was personal. With my own eyes I had seen him slit the throat of Carolina’s sister, Georgia, and that was no “little boy” who carved bloody roses into the backs of Mrs. Bennings and countless others. I decided to change the subject. “Sheela, why did you leave the papyrus in Salzburg, along with a note for Umla-Meq?”

  Susheela the Ninth sat up suddenly. The lights of the city filtered through the windows and I could see her green eyes staring at me. “Papyrus! You know of the papyrus?”

  I sat up. “Yes. I’ve seen it and read it.”

  “How is this possible?” she asked.

  “A friend of mine, Ray Ytuarte, became good friends with Baroness Matilde von Steichen. She showed him your room, the portraits by Vermeer and Botticelli, and the papyrus. He brought it to us.”

  She turned to Sailor, who also sat up. “Umla-Meq, this is so? You have read the papyrus?”

  “Yes,” Sailor answered. “Or I should say, Zianno read it to me. I cannot read the old script.”

  “No one has ever been able to read the pa
pyrus.”

  “Yes, well,” Sailor said and paused, “Zianno Zezen can.”

  “Ta ifi dite ifsaah! Z, this ‘ability,’ is it true?”

  “Yes,” I answered, “but I have never thought of it as an ‘ability.’ ”

  “Oh, but it is, Z, it is … it is a magnificent ‘ability,’ and more fundamental and necessary to the Meq than either telekinesis or telepathy.” She paused a moment and seemed to catch her breath. “You must tell me what the writing says.”

  “I will, and then we will discuss what it says and means, but first things first. Where did you get the papyrus, Sheela? Tell me its history.”

  She sighed deeply. “Ah, yes … yes.” She waited another heartbeat. “After all this time …” she said, shaking her head and smiling. Her perfect, ancient teeth gleamed white in the faint light. It was late at night and the big port city was unusually dark and quiet. Even the crickets had surrendered.

  I suppose I didn’t realize it at the time, yet Susheela the Ninth must have understood intuitively that when I asked about the papyrus, I was really asking about her. She talked softly for two hours that night and two more the next, and then on and off for the next two nights. During these “talks” she not only revealed the history of the papyrus, but she also gave Sailor and me a brief history of her own long and extraordinary life.

  We learned that she left the papyrus in Salzburg in order to pursue the Octopus and the possibility of possessing what it was supposed to contain. Her tribe had long known of the five Stones, but their only interest was in the mythical Sixth Stone. Its power was believed to answer all mysteries behind the Meq and our existence. It was also thought to answer the riddle of the Remembering, an event they knew was coming, they just didn’t know when or where. The papyrus and its cryptic inscription had been copied from another papyrus, which was also said to have been copied from something much older—a solid, polished stone ball. The original “copy” had been carried by another Meq, a mysterious loner who dealt in precious metals and was known simply as the “Black Sea boy,” or sometimes as “the Thracian.” He was thought to have perished, along with his papyrus, when the island of Thera, now referred to as Santorini, disintegrated in a massive volcanic explosion. At that time, the second papyrus always traveled in the possession of Susheela the Ninth’s much older cousin, Tereksaa. He was the one other member of her tribe still living. He had been born in western Africa before the Sahara became a desert, when it was still a lush savanna. It was from Tereksaa that Susheela the Ninth first learned there were other Meq in the world, including light-skinned tribes to the north and west, across a great sea, living in the mountains and along the coast of another land, a land now known as the Pyrenees. They were the ones, she was told, who carried the five Stones.

  She said she and Tereksaa wandered the Near East and the eastern Mediterranean for centuries until a mad Assyrian king in the city-state of Urak managed to capture Tereksaa. The practice of child sacrifice to gain favor from the gods was the king’s obsession, especially if the child happened to be one of the “Magic Children” he had heard the Phoenicians brag about. Just before Tereksaa was caught and beheaded, he transferred the papyrus to Susheela the Ninth with instructions to keep it safe until she could deliver it to one of the light-skinned Meq in the west—the one called Umla-Meq. And she kept it safe for century after century and a thousand tales of survival until late in 1921 when she first heard the rumor that the Octopus could exist and might be hidden in Tutankhamen’s tomb. A man named Howard Carter was going to excavate in the Valley of the Kings to search for the tomb. The temptation was too great for her. Find the Octopus—find the Sixth Stone! She left the papyrus in Salzburg, always planning to return. She was on her way back when the Fleur-du-Mal captured her in Istanbul, and together with Raza, the three of them made their way to Askenfada in Norway. We knew the rest.

  “Now the irony is complete,” she said, lying back in the dark and laughing to herself.

  “Irony?” I asked.

  “I found the Octopus only to discover that it was empty, and after all my efforts at safeguarding, it seems the papyrus found its way to Umla-Meq quite easily … and without me.”

  I laughed once along with her and thought about Ray and his good fortune in finding the papyrus. Or did luck really have anything to do with it? Before I could answer myself, Susheela the Ninth said, “You must now tell me what the papyrus says, Z. I have pondered this mystery for too long.”

  I thought back to the first time I saw the papyrus on board the Iona in the Canary Islands. I understood its meaning now no more than I did then. “If my memory serves,” I said, “it began with a title, ‘Nine Steps of the Six,’ then nine lines followed in a spiral—‘The First One shall not know. The Second One shall not know. The Third One shall not know. The Fourth One shall not know. The Fifth One shall not know. The Living Change shall live within the Sixth One. The Five shall be drawn unto the Source Stone. The Living Change shall be Revealed. The Five shall be Extinguished.’ ”

  There was a moment of silence. Susheela the Ninth said, “Please repeat the last four lines, Zianno.” I did. We were lying on our tatami mats as usual. I felt her lean toward Sailor in the darkness. She whispered, “Whatever the true meaning of these ancient words, a Sixth Stone exists. It must, Umla-Meq, … it must.”

  “I agree,” Sailor said. “But we should ask ourselves if these words are instruction, direction, or a warning, perhaps? The last line, ‘The Five shall be Extinguished,’ is both ominous and perplexing.”

  “Like moths to a flame, we are,” Sheela said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Just as ‘The Five shall be drawn unto the Source Stone,’ the Meq are drawn unto the Remembering.”

  “Seventy-two years?” Sailor said.

  “Seventy-two years?” I asked, then realized what he meant.

  “Yes, Zianno, since the Time of Ice, those of us from the Pyrenees have believed we know the date of the Remembering, and it arrives in a mere seventy-two years. This amount of time will pass in the blink of an eye for us, yet still we chase the essential nature and purpose of the Remembering. Even its location continues to elude us.”

  The lights of Osaka glowed no brighter than starlight through the open windows. I could hear traffic sounds and horns in the distance, but not many. We talked until dawn about the papyrus, the Remembering, and the stone balls Geaxi and I had discovered, as well as the one from which the papyrus had been copied. Why could I read the entire script of the papyrus carried by Susheela the Ninth and yet be unable to decipher no more than a single word on the stone ball Opari and I had seen in Cuba? There were many theories discussed, but no conclusions were reached. Two more weeks of late-night conversations and waiting followed. In the meantime, General Douglas MacArthur and his staff took up residence in Tokyo, while the U.S. Army gradually and peacefully occupied other parts of Japan. On September 15, Sailor finally thought the time was right to put his “plan” into action, though in reality it became more like performing an impromptu one-act play than executing a “plan.”

  The day was unusually hot and bright and without a hint of autumn in the air. Susheela the Ninth, Sailor, and I stood alongside Katsuo in the grass courtyard of the white-walled American Embassy in Tokyo. Ikuko was standing nearby, but she would wait for us outside. Katsuo wore the long, formal robes of a Shinto priest, and they were causing the big man to sweat profusely.

  “This should not take long, Katsuo,” Sailor said. He was staring up at the enormous American flag flying over the embassy. “Our story shall command the immediate attention of the Americans, and I would not be surprised if we were on our way to Hawaii within a day, two days at most.”

  “How can you be so certain?” I asked. I’d had my doubts ever since I first understood Sailor’s “plan.” “What if it goes differently, what then? What is our alternate ‘plan’?”

  Sailor smiled. “Zianno, please, you should know better,” he said, motioning Katsu
o forward. We all began walking toward the entrance to the embassy. Sailor looked over and gave me a quick wink of his “ghost eye,” which was still perfectly clear.

  Climbing the steps leading into the embassy, I felt the stares and heard the hushed comments from everyone coming or going. Katsuo paid little attention and led us inside and directly up to an Army lieutenant sitting behind a long desk labeled “INFORMATION” in English and Japanese. The lieutenant seemed surprised by Katsuo’s formal dress and height, but his eyes widened and his mouth dropped open when he saw us. Children with Western features, including one with black skin, were simply not supposed to be in Japan.

  “What the hell …?” the man said.

  Katsuo ignored the comment. Bowing once with great dignity and speaking Japanese, he calmly asked to see whoever was in charge of “missing persons.”

  The lieutenant turned quickly to a Japanese man in civilian dress standing off to one side of the desk “Ichiro,” he commanded, “tell this man … tell these children … to wait here. Just tell them to wait here. I’ll be back shortly. Don’t let them leave the embassy, Ichiro. Just tell them to wait a few minutes.” The lieutenant rose from his seat and glanced once more at Sheela, Sailor, and me. He shook his head back and forth and walked away at a rapid pace. Ichiro and Katsuo had a short conversation. Katsuo feigned anger in response, dismissing Ichiro with a wave of his hand, but glancing at Sailor with a trace of a smile. Things were going well.

  While we waited, Sailor unconsciously twirled an imaginary star sapphire around his forefinger. He had removed the real one, keeping it hidden inside his pants pocket. We both carried our Stones. In less than three minutes, the lieutenant returned and told Ichiro to instruct us we were all to follow him, and Ichiro was to accompany us. Katsuo grunted approval and we were led down a wide hall until we came to a door labeled “CAPTAIN BLAINE HARRINGTON.”

  The door was open, but the lieutenant stopped and knocked twice before entering. Captain Blaine Harrington sat behind his desk, which was spotless and almost bare, as was the rest of his office. He was leaning forward with his elbows resting on the desk and his hands folded together. He seemed young for a captain, maybe mid-twenties, and his unsmiling, stern demeanor did not match his boyish looks. His hair was cropped short in a military crew cut and he wore wire-rimmed glasses, which were too small for his large blue eyes. He motioned Katsuo to sit, then waved his hand in a circle, indicating for Katsuo to explain himself and tell his story.