I told him who Star was and the condition she was in. I told him of her connection with Jisil, the Fleur-du- Mal, and the Prophecy. And I told him of the promise I had made to Carolina, a promise I would keep. I told him whoever was trying to buy Star and her unborn baby was either doing it behind the Fleur-du-Mal’s back or he was behind it all. He was obsessed with breeding his own assassin.
“The Fleur-du-Mal believes this?” Sailor asked.
“Yes.”
“I always thought his aberrance did not affect his intelligence. I was wrong.”
I didn’t respond. I was struggling to try to make sense of everything. One thing did not make sense at all and went against everything I felt in my heart. Opari. How could she be doing this? Even in that one moment we shared, I learned enough to know that she would never have had anything to do with someone like Cheng. Or would she? The heart is not a predictor of anything to come or a lie detector for what has been. Love can make mistakes. If Opari was doing this, then I would do what I had to do to keep Star free. Star was the truth. All I had to do was follow the lies.
“Where did you see them, Sailor. this eunuch and Opari?”
“Come with me. We must be cautious, but there is something odd.”
“What?”
“She seems not to be aware of my presence, and yet I can feel hers even now.”
I didn’t say so, but I felt it as well, strong and catlike, somewhere around the walls of everything else, on the move, watching.
I followed Sailor down the slope only a few hundred yards to one of the old wall lines of ancient Carthage. Sailor had a pack hidden there with several things inside. He pulled something out and handed it to me.
“You left this in China,” he said. Then he glanced up at the moon and down to a distant point on the hill. “Take it out and I will tell you where to look.”
It was Papa’s telescope in the old cylindrical case that Kepa had given to me. The brass was polished and the two pieces locked solidly in place. Sailor told me to look downhill near an abandoned excavation where wooden shacks had been constructed during the dig, then left to the elements. All were missing windows and some had no roof. One had a gas lamp inside that was lit and casting light on a young girl in Arab dress and a sickly, yellow old man. He was not wearing a bowler. He was bald except for a few straggly gray hairs. His face was sunken and his body was hunched over and leaning to the side where he sat. His eyes, the eyes I had seen for so long in my mind, were no longer razor slits. They were swollen, dark, and sagging. It was Cheng. I swung the telescope over to the girl’s face and focused in on her eyes. Her green eyes. I had seen the face and the eyes once before.
“Do you see her?” Sailor asked.
“Yes, but that is not Opari.”
“What?” He grabbed the telescope and pointed it down the hill, focused in, then backed off. “Explain this to me, Zianno. I do not understand,” Sailor said very seriously.
“That is a girl named Zuriaa. Did you not look at her eyes? They are green.”
Sailor looked startled, unnerved, like something given had been inexplicably proven wrong. “No,” he said. “It was the presence. The presence was always too strong for me to doubt. She has the presence of a very old one. I can feel it now. Do you not, Zianno?”
“Yes,” I said. “More than ever.”
“Why is that?”
“I don’t know.” I looked at Sailor and he was deeply troubled. If anything, he knew what the Meq could and could not do. I wondered what he would say about the possibility of a sixth Stone. “I know the old man too,” I said. “His name is Cheng and. and. ”
“And what? Why do you hesitate?”
I realized that Sailor had not put the two men together — the one he had been watching and the one who had murdered his good friend and brother-in-law.
“He is the same man, Sailor. The same evil whose presence we felt at the train station in Denver. And he’s done a few other things since.”
He never changed expression, but Sailor’s “ghost eye” began to swirl with clouds. He was Umla-Meq, the Stone of Memory, and he felt he had been betrayed by his own memory and instincts. It had been almost three millennia since he’d actually seen Opari, but how could he have mistaken her presence? I’m sure he felt he should have recognized Cheng also, though he’d never actually seen him before in his life.
Sailor closed the telescope and handed it to me. I was setting it back in its case when we both heard an agonized, guttural scream from up the slope and behind the hill. I knew it was Star.
Neither Sailor nor I hesitated. We turned and sprinted through the darkness, first up a winding trail, then to a shortcut between the brush and scree.
“You care greatly for this girl, this Star?” Sailor shouted as we climbed.
“Yes,” I shouted back.
“She is like family to you? Like blood?”
“Yes.”
I was getting winded and worried. I kept tripping over rocks and I hadn’t heard another sound from over the hill.
“Then you have found family?” Sailor yelled.
“Yes.”
“Do you think Eder and Nova have found this family? Do you think—”
“Yes,” I said and grabbed his sleeve to stop. We were near the crest of the hill and I wanted to go on quietly from there.
We caught our breath, then started a slow crawl to the very top of the rise, directly above the place I’d left Star. Sailor kept rambling on about the last time he had been in Carthage, the last time he had crawled to peer over a ledge in this city of the Phoenicians. It was unlike him to keep talking, especially under the circumstances. He asked if I knew the story, if I knew what had happened. I was only vaguely paying attention, but I said yes, Eder had told me. Then he asked if I knew who had been with him, but before I could answer we reached the lip of the rise and leaned over to witness something that neither of us ever expected. It changed my life forever, and Sailor’s too, no matter what he would like you to believe.
Below us, my one and only oil lamp was lit and secured in the sand, and protected from the wind by Jisil’s saddle, which had been propped on its side. Jisil’s horse was nowhere in sight. The saddle was being used as a backboard for Star to lean against and hold on to for support. Star was lying on her back with her head and shoulders leaning forward. She was dripping in sweat. Her eyes were open and glazed. She was staring between her legs at a young girl who was bent over a naked, motionless baby, born premature and not breathing, just like the one I’d seen born in the alley in Saint-Louis. The young girl was performing the same cleansing of the baby’s mouth and throat that Emme had. She moved rapidly and with great expertise until she had cleared a passage, then she leaned down and carefully, purposely, breathed life into the child. Within sixty seconds, the baby let out three fierce and tiny cries. The young girl wet her little finger and gently wiped the baby’s eyes, nose, and mouth. Then she wrapped the baby in Star’s old scarf with the drowning Chinamen and helped her lean back against the saddle, placing the baby in Star’s arms. She bunched several blankets around them to keep out all wind and drifting sand, then sat cross-legged in front of them, waiting for the new life to take comfort and take hold.
She never looked up at us, even though she was aware of our presence. I watched with a fascination that only began there and has never since ceased. It was Opari.
I couldn’t see her face, but her hair was shining black and still cut straight at the shoulders. She wore loose, white cotton trousers that were tied at the ankles with the straps of her sandals and at the waist with a wide leather belt. Her arms were bare and hung from something resembling a shawl, but heavier and covered in designs I had never seen anywhere.
After several minutes, Star and the baby were breathing evenly, sleeping and possibly even dreaming. Opari turned slowly in the sand and looked directly into my eyes. It felt as though I had been struck in the center of my chest and every atom in my being had been charged with light and grace.
“Hello, my beloved,” she said, as simply as life itself. She had an accent, but it only seemed to soften the language, not confuse it. “You must forgive me,” she said. “It is berri, no, I mean new to me, the English. I will learn well, in time.”
