The Meq

“Yes,” I said, but my voice was a whisper, choked and barely audible. I cleared my throat and said, “We have time.”

She looked to my left and I followed her eyes as they met Sailor’s. They had not spoken in almost thirty centuries.

“You look well, Sailor,” she said.

“And you, Opari,” Sailor said quietly. Then the answer to the puzzle that had unnerved him spread across his face. “So it was you following me all these years,” he said. “And you let me think the other was the presence.”

“Yes,” Opari said, then waved for us to be quiet and pointed to a curved shelf of rock, exposed to the wind on one side and sheltered on the other. She wanted us away from Star and the baby.

We met her at the low shelf of rock and all huddled close together, out of the wind. Opari glanced at me once and looked over at Sailor to speak. I watched her lips as she formed the words and they moved out of her mouth. I could not believe I was where I was.

“There is no time to hear reasons,” she said. “Zuriaa and the eunuch have heard the baby being born. They will, how you say, ikertu?”

“Investigate,” Sailor answered.

“Yes, they will investigate.”

“I will not lose Star and the baby,” I told her.

Opari looked at me and reached up with the tips of her fingers and touched my lips. “This is the girl and the child they wait for, is it not?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, and took her fingers in my hand and felt her skin for the first time.

“What is this?” Sailor asked, dumbfounded. “No one told me of this,” he said, nodding his head toward my hand holding Opari’s fingers. “When did this happen? Is this why you left China, Zianno?”

“No, not quite.”

“Then why?”

“It is complicated.”

“And who is Zuriaa?” he asked.

“She is Ray’s sister.”

“Who is Ray?” Opari asked.

“He is my friend. I think Cheng might have—”

“Never mind,” Sailor broke in. “Opari is right that we have no time to hear reasons. We must save the girl and her baby. The Fleur-du-Mal and his obsessions have inadvertently created a good thing. I may be able to get us out of Africa tomorrow — all of us. Why all of us are here, now, is no longer important. The fact is, we are Meq. These things occur. Our reasons will be shared later.”

“How can you get us out?” I asked.

“You would not believe it.”

“From where?” Opari asked.

“From the old harbor,” Sailor said, and he looked at Opari, “near where the Topheth stood.”

Opari’s dark eyes narrowed and her eyebrows bunched together. Though Carolina was blue-eyed and blond, I had seen her do the same thing occasionally at the mention of Georgia’s name. Then I remembered the Topheth from Eder’s story. It was the place where they had sacrificed slaves and children, where Sailor had held his hands over Opari’s eyes to keep her from seeing her sister, his Ameq, slaughtered in front of them. Opari reached up with her other hand and circled Sailor’s “ghost eye” with her finger. At first, he flinched and backed off, then closed both eyes and went inside himself, letting her fingertip follow the outline of his eye and cheek.

“I still see her, Umla-Meq,” she said. “But only in my heart.”

Sailor opened his eyes and he and Opari looked at each other for several moments, resolving something that had taken almost three thousand years to burn out and blow away.

Then she turned to me and said, “It is because of you—” She paused and smiled. “It is, how you say, barre egin?”

“A laughing matter,” Sailor answered.

“Yes.” She smiled again and said, “I have never said the name out loud. It is because of you—” and she leaned over and kissed my cheek, then my lips. “Zianno,” she whispered.

Sailor smiled also. A rarity. “These things occur,” he said.

The moment passed as quickly as it came. There were voices coming around the hill and only seconds to get Star and the baby out of harm’s way. We all three ran to Star’s side and Opari said something to her in the ancient Berber dialect she understood. Star handed her baby weakly over to Opari. Sailor blew out the lamp and I kicked it over on its side along with Jisil’s saddle. I wanted it to look as if something violent had taken place, anything to confuse and delay Zuriaa and Cheng.

I threw Mama’s glove in my pack and Sailor and I helped Star to her feet. She was able to stand and even walk, though it was slow and the voices were getting nearer. Sailor and I picked her up between us and we all ran for the low shelf and just made it around and down the hill before Zuriaa and Cheng came into view.

Once we had descended a few hundred yards and were sure no one was following, Star wanted to be let down and we walked at her pace the rest of the way. She was pale from loss of blood and trauma of all kinds, but she never spoke out or complained. We followed Sailor through the darkness, winding back and forth down the slope and stopped at the place where he’d left his pack with the telescope and other things. A little farther on we stopped again and he picked up a second pack. From there, not fifty yards away in a grove of pine trees, we detoured and stopped to pick up Opari’s things.

“You were that close?” Sailor asked.

“Yes,” she said.

Opari rearranged her pack so that the baby could ride inside and strapped the pack on her shoulders. The baby was safe, tight, and warm between her shoulder blades. We started toward the old harbor and she took Star’s hand in hers. The way was long and tedious and mostly in the dark. We used no lamps or torches and stayed close to the sound of Sailor’s footsteps. Along the way the young mother and the ancient young girl never dropped hands. Our final stop was an old fisherman’s shack next to what had once been a deep water port and was now marsh and lagoon leading out to the sea and the breakers of the Mediterranean. There was a long wooden walkway extending from the shack far out past the lagoon into open water. I saw a light in the east, but it was only a glow, a false dawn. The real one was still an hour away. I had plenty of time to think about the next day and that thought gave me a strange realization. I knew the year was 1918, but I had no idea what month or day. For some reason, I thought about the enigmatic message I’d read on the wall in the cave—where time is under water, where water is under time. I realized that I had no idea how I’d got to where I was. Then I realized it didn’t matter. When I looked around, I saw Sailor, Opari, Star, and her baby. Then I remembered that I didn’t even know if Star’s baby was a boy or a girl and realized that didn’t matter either. It was the living who mattered.

Sailor stayed busy checking the walkway for missing planks and broken boards. Opari was looking after Star and the baby. She spoke to her softly in that old dialect and at one point Star’s eyes opened wide in a kind of shock, then accepted something. She turned her head to the side and calmly let Opari remove the rings and chains in her nose and ears. In a few minutes, I saw only the blond hair, the blue eyes, and the freckles. She looked down at the baby in her arms and smiled for the first time, then turned back to Opari. I could have sworn it was Carolina.

Just then, I heard the hooves of horses. Only seconds later, Opari heard them too, and outside the shack I saw Sailor looking up the rutted road that led back to the ruins.

I glanced at Opari. “Is it them?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “I would know Zuriaa’s presence from years away, and easily when she is filled with this much, how you say, gorroto?”

“Hate,” Sailor answered as he raced in from the walkway.

“Yes,” Opari said. “She is hating.”

What happened next, happened quickly. Opari made sure Star and the baby were safe and out of sight, then stood in the open doorway of the shack and told Sailor and me to stand behind her and wait. In moments, two horses approached down a short rise between the remnants of a gate and came to a halt ten feet from the shack. I saw the faces of the riders in the first few rays of real dawn. One was pathetic, paralyzed, sagging, dying, and empty. It was Cheng. The other wore no veil, looked exactly like Ray, and burned with fury behind her green eyes —