The Meq

Geaxi picked up the candle and the light in the oval room danced and shifted. She and Opari walked over in silence and dropped to their knees alongside Sailor and me. I let go of Sailor’s hand and he continued to trace and retrace his finger over the old writing. I watched him closely. Over and over, he said the words to himself, moving his lips without speaking. I suddenly realized that in the heart and mind of an old one like Sailor, I had given him a gift as great and simple as the Meq could receive — connection with the past and hope for the future.

I told him of the other room I had found in the barren waste of the Tassili range and the script I had discovered there, along with the lines written by Trumoi-Meq.

“Yes,” he said, almost with a smile. “But you can read both. He cannot.”

“These things occur,” I said, but no one laughed. I looked at Sailor and he was staring back with an expression in his eyes I had never seen before. A look a prisoner might have after a sudden and unexpected release. Slowly, another realization dawned. What I had done was more than a gift — I had unlocked the door to his lifelong obsession, an “ability” far more significant than hyper-hearing, quickness, or silence. I could read the writing. I could do what no other Meq had ever done.

Opari took both my hands in hers. She was frowning and leaning forward to look at Sailor. “What does this mean?” she asked. “That Zianno is the one? That Zianno has the Gift?”

Sailor stared back. “It is time,” he whispered. “No one knew it would be Zianno. We might have hoped or wondered, but no one knew.” He paused and glanced at Geaxi. “We have less than a hundred years to find the Egongela, the Living Room, and prepare for the Gogorati. I long suspected someone would come in time, someone from among us I would least expect. Alas, someone comes and even he is unaware of the Gift he possesses. He reads the writing without study or preparation. It comes to him. He comes to us, the youngest child among the Children, and behold, it is Zianno.”

Geaxi took off her beret and tossed it to me. I caught it with one hand. “You have done well, Zianno,” she said. “Now that we know what it says, the real work begins. We must try and find out what this gibberish means.”

We all turned to the wall and gazed at the stained circle and the two handprints on either side. Geaxi had stuck the candle in the sand and it shifted suddenly, spilling melted wax over one side and snuffing out the flame.

“Everything has changed,” Sailor said and we sat very still in the silence and the dark. Over our heads, beyond the stone walls of the oval room, I knew there was a vast sea teeming with life, and beyond that, an even vaster sea of sky teeming with stars. Under all of that, inside all of that, I could hear all our hearts beating.

“Light the candle again,” I said. “Let’s tell our stories.”

There is a unique synergism that takes place when the Meq share their stories. There is little reference to time in the usual sense, only in terms of its relevance to an action and whether that action is positive or negative in its completion, no matter how long it takes to complete it. We assume survival. The connection and exchange is as discrete as the blood in our veins. The stories are shared like bread and wine, sweetly tasted and swallowed. Sorrow and joy are tossed like grapes across the table. One tale becomes many and many intertwine. Time becomes a passenger, a paying customer, someone along for the ride through the long, tangled here and now. This is our wonderful and terrible essence. This is our strength.

Sailor said, “Then you begin, Zianno.”

So I began and I covered it all, starting with Li Lien-ying handing me Carolina’s letter in the Forbidden City. From St. Louis to New Orleans to Africa, from Star’s abduction to Ray’s abduction, through ports, places, facts, faces, reasons, hunches, yearnings, visions, dreams, and obsessions — I took them with me. When I got to Emme and PoPo and the Dogon myths and their secret, singular knowledge of the Meq, Geaxi and Opari leaned forward like little girls at camp, eager for the next word. Sailor sat in silence, unmoving, and twisted the star sapphire on his forefinger. I told them of the Prophecy and the reason behind the Fleur-du-Mal’s obsession with Star, and Geaxi laughed out loud, while Opari seemed to withdraw and reflect on something deeply personal.

“He is beyond mad,” Geaxi said.

“Yes,” Sailor responded suddenly. “But not beyond dangerous.”

It was then that I asked Sailor about the star sapphire in his ring and the blue diamond that Usoa wore in her ear. I told him the story of the Ancient Pearl that PoPo had told me, how it had originally come from a Stone of the Meq. I told him what the Fleur-du-Mal believed, that they all came from a sixth Stone, and I asked him if it was true. All eyes turned to Sailor and he paused before he spoke.

“No one knows,” he said. Then he laughed bitterly to himself. “It is an odd irony. Geaxi does not believe it, nor Unai or Usoa. Trumoi-Meq does not and Eder does not.” He paused again and looked directly at me, then continued. “Your mother and father never believed it, never thought it possible. The only one other than the Fleur- du-Mal who believes this is so. is myself.” He laughed again. “Quite an irony, no? It is the only thing on earth, apart from being Meq, that I have in common with the Fleur-du-Mal.”

I let his words sink in and glanced into the eyes of Geaxi and Opari. Nothing in their dark eyes and beautiful, innocent faces would tell a stranger anything about the mysteries within.

“What would it mean?” I asked. “If there was a sixth Stone?”

“There have been theories,” he said, then shook his head slowly. “But no one knows.”

I noticed when Sailor shook his head that the braid behind his ear was coming loose at the end and I remembered the lapis lazuli.

“Why did you give Star’s baby the blue gem?” I asked him. “If you knew it was. if you believed it came from the sixth Stone?”

“Yes, Sailor,” Opari said. She squeezed my hand and leaned in closer. “I was wondering this also.”

“Because she is in this now. She and her child—” He paused and stared at me. “And Carolina and Nicholas and Jack, their son. And Owen Bramley. All of them. What is mine is theirs and theirs is. ours for sharing.”

“What? You can’t be serious,” I said. “Have we not caused that family enough grief? I have thought about this and I think once we have safely returned Star and her baby to Carolina, we should get out of their lives forever — and take care of our own — take care of the Fleur-du-Mal!”

“You can blame it on Solomon, if you like,” Geaxi said suddenly.

“Who?” I snapped. I stared at her and felt blood rushing to my face in anger. “What does that mean?”

“Calm down, Zianno,” Sailor said. “Geaxi meant nothing derogatory in her remark. In fact, it is a compliment. We can blame Solomon for having the foresight to know what we would need to survive in the twentieth century. There is much above us, above this oval room, that has changed since you have been in Africa. Solomon saw it coming and thought of what we would need — what you would need — to live on and thrive. Owen Bramley has made Solomon’s ‘vision’ a reality.”

He stopped and watched me, his “ghost eye” swirling gently. “Perhaps I should explain,” he said.

“Yes, perhaps,” I said as sharply as I could, but I’d lost my bite. I turned and looked at Opari. She was holding back a smile and I suddenly felt silly.

“No — perhaps I should explain,” Geaxi broke in. She picked up her beret and walked toward the center of the oval room. She turned to me. “I was mistaken to mention Solomon so casually, Zianno. It was careless. I know what he meant to you, nay, I should say means to you. I regret that I never knew him. Giza with real ‘vision’ are as rare as ourselves.”

I was curious now. I wondered what Solomon could have seen coming that Sailor had not. Even in death, my old partner loved surprising me. “Tell me what Solomon ‘saw,’ ” I said.

“A network,” Sailor interrupted. “A system of stations, places like this one, some remote and some anything but remote. ‘Bases,’ in Solomon’s words.”

“I thought you said no Giza knew of this place.”

“They do not, at least not what is underground — only what is above.” Sailor was excited. I could hear it in his voice. He looked at me and laughed out loud.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“Nothing. I suppose it must be the irony. Solomon’s words were so simple, yet so timely. Now that we know