The Remembering

by Steve Cash

  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 th
e 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.”

  “No, we could not,” Fielder answered. “It must come from you. We cannot interfere. You must find your own way to us.” She paused and smiled at me. “And because of the Stone of Dreams, you did.”

  The Fleur-du-Mal asked, “What if Zezen had not been able to read the spheres?”

  “Yes,” Sailor added, “I was pondering the same thought. We have only forty-three years until the Remembering occurs and—”

  “Forty-three years?” West interrupted. He looked completely surprised. “No, no, not forty-three years, Umla-Meq.” He held up his hand and spread his fingers wide. “Five years—what you call the Remembering is in a little less than five years.”

  I said, “That was what you meant when you said we were ‘just in time.’ ”

  “Yes,” West replied, then grinned. “It seems that like a clock that has run on its own for a very long time, the Meq are a few seconds slow.”

  “But you have not answered my question,” the Fleur-du-Mal said. “What if Zezen had not shown us how to read the spheres in time? What would you have done?”

  “We would have continued waiting.”

  The Fleur-du-Mal raised one eyebrow. “For what … another Remembering? You have waited over thirteen thousand years for this one … and I assume for Geaxi and me. Is not this Remembering the only one for us? After what I have heard and what I have felt today, I am certain this Remembering was and is inevitable.”

  “Yes,” Sailor said, “is it coincidence or destiny that we are here?”

  “Both,” Fielder answered. “For us, the Meq and the Traveler, it is both.”

  Out the windows to the west there was only a faint glow where the sun had slipped below the horizon. Inside the big room, West turned on a few lamps and Fielder leaned over to gather the empty teacups onto the tray. Ray, who had not yet made a sound or moved a muscle, said, “I got just one question. Is this Remembering gonna tell us why we are the way we are?”

  No one said a word. No one had an answer.

  In the space of a single afternoon the Meq had changed forever—past, present, and future. Now we no longer were the only ones, we were simply the newer ones. What this meant and would mean was still not clear, but we were on a path of understanding and the path led straight to the Remembering.

  Fielder and West extended an open-ended invitation to stay at the manor and we accepted. Morgan Manor, as it had long been known in that part of South Wales, became our home for an indefinite period of time. Koldo said his farewells and drove the tour bus back to Cornwall and Caitlin’s Ruby. He had never asked what we were doing or why. He was just acting as his father and his father’s father would have acted. He was the last Aita of the tribe of Vardules, protectors of the Stone of Dreams.

  In the first few days at Morgan Manor, we learned its history and that Fielder and West had a relationship and connection to the Morgan family and their estate much like the Meq had at Caitlin’s Ruby. And the connection, or coincidence, went even deeper. It was rumored that an ancestor of the current Morgan family, Mr. John Dawes Morgan, had known Caitlin Fadle intimately and was possibly the father of her son, though it was never proven.

  Fielder and West had established similar relationships with the “newcomers” in the area going back in time to the end of the last ice age. West said they had also lived nearby but farther inland, twice for a period of time on the River Wye and for a few thousand years or so in the Lliw uplands. He spoke of whole millennia as if they were minutes or hours on a clock. In the months that followed, listening to West and Fielder was mesmerizing, exhilarating, and enlightening. We not only heard about times, places, and animals barely imaginable, but we learned the living history of the planet itself. Within their lifetimes, Fielder and West had seen and experienced entire geological and climatic epochs come and go. They had long known of the ecliptic path and had witnessed the entire twenty-six-thousand-year cycle of the precession of the equinoxes. They knew the causes and effects and they had endured and remembered it all. There were no living beings more connected to this Earth than the two long-living Travelers.

  Now they were connected to us in the deepest and most intimate ways, West to Geaxi and Fielder to the Fleur-du-Mal. During the first few months at Morgan Manor, I watched Fielder and the Fleur-du-Mal become closer, although they did not display the kind of physical closeness that Opari and I shared, as well as Nova and Ray and Sailor and Sheela. His arrogance would probably not allow it. Neither Opari nor I could fathom why they were each other’s Ameq. How could Fielder love a cruel and cold-blooded killer, and how could the Fleur-du-Mal love at all? Even in her presence, he never denied or regretted a single act, yet that did not seem to concern Fielder in the least. One of the contradictions in the Fleur-du-Mal is that he is as honest as he is evil. Maybe that was their connection. Both their natures were contradictory and unpredictable. She ignored his arrogance and he ignored their physical differences and each embraced the other’s intellect. Watching West and Geaxi interact was similar in that Geaxi’s personality did not seem to change—her droll wit and blunt manner remained—but in her eyes there was a brand-new understanding that was universal and joyous. In her heart, Geaxi had come home.

  Five years. For the Giza five years can prove to be a long stretch of time, even a lifetime for some. For the Meq five years is nothing. Sailor once told me that in the past it was not uncommon for the Meq to discuss the brightness of a single star for a hundred years or more. It was that way at Morgan Manor. With so many of us living in one place, long walks along the coast and treks inland among the barren and beautiful foothills of Black Mountain were common and frequent and usually filled with discussions that always led back to the Remembering. Seasons ran into seasons and time passed around us unnoticed and barely felt.

  Mowsel enjoyed his stay in South Wales perhaps more than any of us. He had always had a great desire for knowledge of all things Meq, especially our history and our secrets. Every day he learned from the
Travelers what was myth and what was reality. In his nearly five years at Morgan Manor, Mowsel probably spent more time in discussion with West and Fielder than did Geaxi or the Fleur-du-Mal. Zeru-Meq was equally intrigued and intoxicated with the Travelers and their stories. He asked them endless questions about ancient cultures and routes of travel that had only been fairy tales and fantasies to him until he learned the truth through their own histories and journeys. Zeru-Meq had once been indifferent about the Remembering and its importance, and he and Sailor had feuded about it for centuries. But now Zeru-Meq and Mowsel, along with Sailor, had become the true caretakers of the Meq and our destiny. Early on, it was Zeru-Meq who recognized that this Remembering, whatever else it might be, was all about the Zeharkatu. “It is self-evident,” he said. “The five Stones are here, as they must be, and the five are now here with their Ameq. It is no coincidence. The five are here to cross in the Zeharkatu during the Remembering.”

  “You are correct,” Fielder told him. She glanced at West, then looked hard into the eyes of the Fleur-du-Mal. “Those of us who have met our Ameq are meant to cross now. What is within us is within the Stones and must be returned and renewed. The five Stones must cross in this Bitxileiho during this Gogorati, this Remembering.”

  The Fleur-du-Mal did not move or give away his thoughts, but if anything when I looked at him, he seemed pleased with the idea. Ray muttered “Damn!” and grinned and winked at Nova. Geaxi turned her head and locked eyes with West. Sailor and Sheela didn’t make a sound or look at each other, but I saw her hand move closer to his. I glanced at Opari. She didn’t say a word. Her black eyes were bright and inscrutable.