I turned as if I’d been caught stealing. It was Sailor. He had been watching me watch Opari. His “ghost eye” actually winked at me.
Embarrassed at first, I relaxed, remembering his own connection with Opari. “Yes,” I said, then stammered, “she is. she has. ”
“Her sister was equally as lovely,” he said. He turned and watched Opari himself, and for a brief moment, I knew he was seeing Deza, then he turned back to me. His “ghost eye” narrowed and focused. He twirled the star sapphire on his finger and spoke in a low monotone. “You will, you must, become accustomed to this feeling, Zianno. There is so much still to be done. I will tell you more later, but remember, you are Meq, you are the Stone of Dreams. We will need you. You must dredge your dreams, conscious and unconscious, good and bad. In the muck of an ancient nightmare, you may find a diamond. In the bright blue of an imagined summer day, there may be a hornet you ignored. It would be your mistake to miss either through lack of curiosity.”
“What about Opari?” I asked. “Have you spoken to her?”
“No, but she must do the same. She must stay the same. She is the Stone of Blood. I am certain she thought of this before. before she found us.”
“Aha!” I said. “So you finally admit someone found you and not the other way around.”
Sailor laughed once, but that was his only response.
Darkness came quickly and a breeze picked up. It was warm compared to the night air in the deep desert, but still cool and it blew the salt air in from the Mediterranean. Geaxi led us to a low stone building with a newly rebuilt roof and most of one wall missing. She said the British had used a nearby site for target practice two years earlier. A stray shell had caught the side of the building. I was amazed at the size of the hole and couldn’t imagine the weapon that had produced it. Geaxi circled the one large room inside, lighting kerosene lamps along the way. There were only two windows at the top of one wall and none of the lamps was beneath them. There seemed to be no electricity and no running water. Several straw mats covered the floor and a few personal items lay around two of them. Another was off by itself, clean and sparse, with two blankets neatly folded on top and two black ballet slippers at one end. By looking at it, there was no way to tell if the occupant had been there a day, a year, or ten years. I smiled to myself at the almost invisible address of Geaxi. I turned to speak to her, but she and Opari were busy preparing a kind of nursery for Star and her baby. I found Sailor instead.
“What is this place?” I asked.
He looked around all four sides of the large room and up at the windows. His eyes moved to the roof, which was temporary at best, then to the blown-out hole in the wall facing away from the sea. He flared his nostrils and took a deep breath of the breeze that filled the room with the fresh and ancient scent of the Mediterranean. He closed his eyes a moment and stood still, holding the air in his lungs. Then gently, slowly, he let it slip through his mouth and lips and over his tongue, tasting it as it left his body. He knelt and felt the stones in the floor, tracing their outlines with the tips of his fingers.
“The Greeks built the floor,” he said without looking up. “But not the Greeks who lived down the coast, the ones who built the Lighthouse and the Great Library. These Greeks sailed in darkness and kept no books. These Greeks traded with the last of the Phoenicians.” He glanced up at me and his “ghost eye” was filled with clouds. “It was here,” he said, then paused. “It was here where the trades were made.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Geaxi and Opari had stopped what they were doing and were watching us.
“Trades in what?” I asked.
“Bones,” he said. “The bones of the Meq who were slaughtered in their temples.”
I turned to look at Opari and both she and Geaxi were now staring at me. Just as the question “why” was on my lips, Opari shook her head once and I understood. The “why” was irrelevant; it was the “where” that haunted this place for Sailor. I understood that we were probably standing on the floor in the room where Deza’s bones had been bought and sold, traded among the Giza like so many pieces of silver. Looking across the room into Opari’s living eyes, I wondered how many places were like this for him, how many times he ran into a past that haunted him, a past in which he was still a living presence.
“Young Willie Croft owns it now,” Geaxi said, then she started toward us. “Nay, I should say the Daphne Croft Foundation owns it in the proper and legal sense.” Her movements were liquid, graceful, almost weightless, and her voice brought Sailor out of the past.
“Yes,” he said, rising to his feet and breathing in deeply once more, “yes, that is correct. This place is merely a stage, Zianno. One of many we are acquiring.”
“We?” I asked.
Suddenly Geaxi burst into laughter. She was standing next to Sailor with her hands on her hips. She was wearing boots, not her ballet slippers, but she went into a pirouette, laughing hysterically and raising her arms, waving her beret like a drunken ballerina. Opari walked over and took my hand, smiling, but also asking me with her eyes what was going on. I had no idea. I looked at Sailor and he was staring at Geaxi, just as mystified.
“Is something funny?” he asked.
She stopped turning, but still laughing she said, “You must admit it is a bit absurd, Sailor.”
“What is absurd?”
“The Meq acquiring property.”
Opari and I looked at each other, both in the dark about everything.
Sailor said, “It is time to tell our stories. There is much to clarify.”
Geaxi nodded, but she was still smiling. “I will get the bread and cheese and those wonderful olives and meet you there.” She turned and walked away, but laughed once more to herself. Over her shoulder she added, “And boil some water for tea. This may be a long evening.”
Opari and I looked at Sailor. He was watching Geaxi’s back, shaking his head. There was a trace of a smile on his face, then it disappeared.
“Follow me,” he said. His “ghost eye” was clear and he spoke in an even voice.
“Where are we going?” I asked. “I thought we were here.”
“Under the sea,” he said. “Or at least under where it was and where it shall be. That was one of the pass phrases used by the Greeks. Clever people, the Greeks, even their pirates, but riddled with riddles.”
Opari squeezed my hand. “I know of this place from Zeru-Meq,” she said.
“Zeru-Meq?” Sailor asked and both eyebrows arched high on his head, then relaxed. “I should have guessed as much,” he said, nodding to himself.
“Yes,” she went on, “I believe he called it ‘The Shadow in the Shallows.’ ”
“He would know,” Sailor said, then motioned for us to follow. “We must make haste before the others return. Willie is not aware of where I am taking you. No Giza is.”
We left the way we had entered and then veered sharply to the west, away from the path leading to the dock. We walked in a line and followed Sailor through rock and brush and sand in a complicated zigzag pattern that eventually ended in a tiny spit of sand that would have been underwater had it been high tide. If it was a trail we had taken, only Sailor knew it.
In moments, Geaxi appeared from behind us, dressed in black and carrying a large candle in one hand and a netted sack stuffed with food in the other. I never heard her approach. She was as silent as a shadow come to life. Overhead there was only starlight. The moon was hidden behind a low bank of clouds. I glanced at Opari and then turned to Sailor.
“What now?” I asked.
“Look out to sea,” he said. “Not directly in front of you, but obliquely. Watch the water. Watch the light on the water. Try to look for—” He paused and smiled at Opari. “A Shadow in the Shallows.”
I turned and faced north, trying to see everything and nothing. The Mediterranean stretched into darkness, but suddenly, not a hundred yards out, I caught the outline of a form, a shadow darker than the sea around it and rectangular. It was just under the surface.
“Now you have it,” Geaxi said and splashed out in the water, stepping high and holding the candle and cache of food above her head. In seconds, she was standing on one end of the shadow, which caused the other end to rise up like a seesaw and Geaxi was underwater up to her chest.
The shadow was no shadow at all, but a single slab of stone, balanced and hinged, accessible only at low tide and weighted so that someone as light and small as Geaxi could easily make it move just by stepping on top of one end.
