The Meq

indeed. I overheard and asked Owen Bramley to get his name and address. We wanted to see that photograph.

Later, when Ray, Geaxi, and I were alone, Ray said, “The Fleur-du-Mal?”

I shrugged and looked at Geaxi. She didn’t respond to that, but she reached into her vest and held out the two egg-shaped black rocks. “I do not think it matters any longer which is which,” she said. “Do you, Zianno?”

We looked at each other with a hard truth and new understanding of what we had seen.

“No, it does not,” I said.

“You know the Basque have always had the true name for these,” she said and tossed me one of the rocks. I caught it easily. She held hers in her fist with her arm pointed straight up.

“What is it?” Ray asked.

She brought her arm down and opened her hand, staring at the object she had been born to wear and had worn for so many centuries. Was it a blessing or a curse? She had always thought the “secret” to be in the gems. She looked at Ray with a sad smile.

“Starstones,” she said quietly.

9. HERENEGUN (DAY BEFORE YESTERDAY)

You are a child. All your life, inside, behind the clutter and refuse you must acquire to live in this world, there is a child. Everyone knows this, but rarely admits it. The child is too busy hiding and playing amid the clutter. Occasionally, usually after the clutter has been hoarded and stacked, moved from place to place, displayed and then forgotten, the child will tire of play and tell us to throw things away, clear the room, make things the way they were the day before yesterday. And therein lies the conundrum. We have spent our lives constructing gates and fences, protecting this clutter, preparing for the day after tomorrow. We cannot find the day before yesterday. Even the child cannot remember what we need to know. where it was. how it was. The gift of Time is time and it cannot be given back. The day before yesterday is a place of dreams where even children are strangers.

The departure of the Lotus was delayed a full twenty-four hours due to the “incident,” as the captain referred to it. During that time, Ray and I picked up our passports and other false documents that Owen Bramley had prearranged for us. He also bought coffins for Baju and Joseba and wired Solomon, telling him briefly of the events and the change in plans. He asked if we should try to wire Sailor and Geaxi said that would be impossible, because when Sailor traveled alone, he was virtually invisible. No one would find him on any passenger list.

Of course, Ray wouldn’t need his passport anymore, except to reenter the United States. He and I talked a little about him joining us again soon somewhere in the Far East, but neither of us knew when or where that might be. Something in Ray had changed or maybe it had always been there and I was just now seeing it, but Ray took the death of Baju personally. I could see it in his eyes. For the first time, he had a sense of purpose that was, without a doubt, his own. We had been through a lot. We were true friends and I would miss him, but there is something odd and wonderful about true friends — farewells are easy. The feeling that true friends share is always in the present. Time in any direction is not the point.

As we pulled out of the Burrard Inlet in patchy fog with broken clouds overhead, Ray was on the docks, standing between Owen Bramley and Pello, who was in a wheelchair. Pello waved meekly and Owen Bramley stood ramrod straight. Ray reached up to tip his bowler hat to us, but then remembered he’d thrown it to Nova. He tipped an invisible one anyway. I felt a hand tap me on the shoulder and turned around to see who it was. There was no one there and I had to remember. “it is common.” I was looking west toward the horizon and beyond, toward China. I had the same feeling I’d had so many years before on a pale cold winter morning when Carolina and I had been kids, real kids. An overwhelming sense of leaving and barely a trace of return.

The voyage across the Pacific was long and made even longer by a series of storms off the coast of Japan. The Lotus eventually steamed into Yokahama, our first port of call, badly in need of supplies and repairs.

Geaxi and I had stayed in our cabins for most of the trip — the less seen, the fewer questions — a lesson both of us had learned a long time ago. I did tell her what Baju had whispered: “This was not about theft.” We both had plenty of time to think about what had happened and what it meant. In Yokahama, we talked about it.

The Lotus docked for three days, not only for repairs but also because she had to be thoroughly searched. The Japanese had been at war with China and any ship going there was suspected of carrying contraband. I thought we might be asked several questions that would be difficult to answer, but Geaxi spoke fluent Japanese and made it easy for us. She said she spoke an old dialect, but the official understood her perfectly and whatever lies she told him, he believed her and bowed to her with great respect. For some reason, I wasn’t even surprised.

We went ashore and Geaxi found directions to a teahouse. Along the way, I kept thinking that two Western children on their own, one of them a girl in black leather leggings and a beret, would draw attention, but no one gave us a second look. We were merely two more strangers weaving their way through traffic. Geaxi said, “It will not be this way in China.”

We arrived at the teahouse and were taken to a low table in the back that faced an open area with a small stone garden. The fence around it was old and rickety, but the garden itself was beautiful and well tended. Geaxi ordered for us and then caught me staring at the garden and the odd placement of stones with sand around them raked in perfect but natural lines, resembling waves.

“Like islands in Time, no?” she said.

I looked at her, and even though she was in shadows, I could tell that something in Geaxi had changed since Vancouver, something subtle that softened her expression and came through her eyes.

“What do you think Baju meant?” I asked.

She looked out over the garden herself. “I do not know,” she said. “I only know that finally the Fleur-du-Mal has gone too far. This time, his obsessions have killed one of us.”

“Sailor told me he murdered my grandfather.”

“That is true, but that was personal.”

“So you think the Fleur-du-Mal is behind it?”

“It has all the hallmarks of his sick sense of humor. No one but he would know our movements or anything about the Window. However, one thing bothers me.”

She stared at me strangely, then looked away as the hostess brought our tea and silently poured out two cups. The girl was not much older than we appeared to be and Geaxi was extremely polite and respectful to her. As she left, bowing, I said, “What thing?”

Geaxi sipped her tea, holding the cup with both hands. “We will have to ask Sailor when we see him if he has been harassed or followed. If he has not, and what you said about seeing the man with the pistol in Denver is accurate, then there is only one conclusion.”

“What?”

“They were only following you.”

She looked at me for the first time since I had known her with an expression that said, “You tell me, Zianno, what do you know that I don’t?” But I didn’t know. I only had my Dreams and they came and went as they pleased. I looked at her and had no idea what she wanted of me.

Two Russian sailors sat down near us and loudly ordered sake. They were already drunk, but were obviously not ready to stop drinking. They looked our way and laughed at some inside joke between the two of them.

Geaxi said, “How did you know the Stone would work for you without the gems?”

“I didn’t.”

“But somehow you knew it would, you believed it would.”

“Yes, that much is true, but I don’t know how. There wasn’t time. I simply acted.”

One of the Russians spat out his sake and yelled something at the hostess. She bent down to wipe up the