arm out of the window. He was smoking a pipe and didn’t seem to be getting in or out. Then a door slammed on the opposite side of the car and Cap’n Uld put the car in gear and lurched forward, driving away in the darkness.
We slowed to a walk and Sailor turned to greet us. Mowsel had his back to us and was walking toward the house and Daphne’s voice.
We stopped not three feet from Sailor. The cloud of exhaust had blown away and he was standing with his legs spread and his hands on his hips. It was then that I felt something I had not felt for so long I’d forgotten it; an inner warning and presence of fear — the net descending. It was powerful and tangible. I’d noticed it and felt it increase the closer we got to Sailor.
“Come with me,” he barked. “We must not wait. Geaxi, can you find Lullyon in the dark?”
“Of course,” Geaxi said.
“Lullyon?” I asked. “You mean ‘the slabs’? Now?”
“I mean we must not wait,” Sailor said. His breath became steam in the cold air. He took a step closer and stared hard in my eyes. His “ghost eye” was milky and bloodshot. “We must not wait, Zianno. Believe me.”
“Sailor,” Geaxi said. “There is something I think—”
“Not now, Geaxi!” Sailor screamed. I had never heard him raise his voice to that level, even in China. Slowly, with dark emphasis on each word, he said, “This. involves. us. all.” The night itself could have cracked, it was so brittle and silent, then Sailor whispered, “Please, Geaxi, do this. Take Zianno and I will bring Opari.”
Perhaps it was the shock of hearing him speak to her like that or perhaps it was some other knowledge of him that only she possessed. I do know Eder had called her his “dark” companion and I do know what she was trying to tell him. She was trying to tell him that his only sister, Eder, had passed. Whatever it was that stopped her, it stopped her. Geaxi turned to me without a glance at Sailor and said, “This way, Zezen.”
I’d been to “the slabs” once before, but not at night. Opari had taken me on a cold day with the wind coming straight off the North Atlantic. It was a long walk filled with switchbacks and false crossings — a path that I thought had to be seen to be followed. But that was me, not Geaxi.
From a distance, Lullyon Coit, or “the slab,” looked like the “stone boys” I’d seen the shepherds leave on the farthest reaches of Kepa’s land. They were a form of signpost or station for the Basque, both personal and professional. They were unique and each possessed a kind of power, a power of place and intelligence. Lullyon Coit possessed a similar power, only it was much older and much larger. The stones weren’t picked from a field, they were quarried and lifted, cut, arranged, and designed. There were four of them — three great slabs of granite standing upright in a triangular configuration and the fourth lying on top of the other three. The whole structure seemed to be pointing in a westerly direction. Ancient shelter? Burial site? Who knows? Caitlin never said what she believed, but leading away from Lullyon Coit, out of brick and stone and beaten earth, she left six different paths to get there.
In the dark, without ever taking a false step or a wrong turn, Geaxi and I arrived by one of them. The entire way, she never said a word.
The wind gusted and seemed to change direction at will. We were on the highest point of Caitlin’s Ruby and there were no trees or even brush around “the slabs.” They stood tall, black, and silent as they had for thousands of years in this place, in these exact positions. There was only starlight overhead. Orion was low and close to the horizon and Venus was far to the west.
While we waited, Geaxi paced and I sat against the base of one of the stones. Geaxi wore boots, a jacket, and her beret. I wore boots and a jacket, but my head was bare. The wind was relentless and neither of us was prepared to be where we were.
“Why does he want us here, now?” I asked. “Especially here in this place?”
Geaxi never stopped pacing. “The ‘now’ disturbs me,” she began. “The ‘here’ is because this place will have great meaning during the time of the Gogorati, the Remembering. We are certain of this, but we are not certain why. Sailor has always wanted this place to be the first place where all five Stones come together. He thinks. no, he is certain we will learn something.”
“What?”
“We will find out.”
“What about Eder? When will you tell him?”
“Later. Something is wrong, I am most certain of that.” She stopped pacing for a moment and looked at me. “We should find this out first, no?”
“Yes,” I said. I knew she was right. Sailor was more upset than I’d ever seen him and our news would only make it worse. The wind blew and I thought how long it might take them to climb the path, then I thought about where I’d last seen Opari, then I thought about where I’d last seen Nova. If Sailor walked in and saw Nova, then.
“There they are,” Geaxi said. “I can feel them.”
Sailor came out of the darkness first and Opari was immediately behind him, wearing a full cape and hood. Neither had made a sound. Opari walked over and knelt beside me. She smiled, but remained silent. I looked around for anyone else and there was no one. In the small space inside “the slabs” there was only Geaxi, Sailor, Opari, and me.
Sailor spoke almost at once, but he was hesitating, something I’d never heard him do.
“There has been a terrible. a multiple. an unexplainable tragedy, I am afraid. with possible consequences. I am not sure where to begin.”
“Then begin with Pello,” I said. We hadn’t heard from him since he’d left with Pello.
“I could begin there, Zianno, but the. tragedy does not. No, not there. ” Sailor trailed off a moment, then looked at Opari and back to me. “And the consequences. the consequences may affect you directly, Zianno. Believe me.”
“But—”
“Let me go on, please. I do not know what to make of this. It. it could mean. no, I am not sure what it could mean. That is why I wanted us all together — now, here, all five Stones together at last, in this place. to find out the meaning. ” He didn’t finish and began pacing.
“What has happened, Umla-Meq?” Opari asked in an even voice, a voice aware of Sailor’s fear. “Tell us what you know.”
“What do you mean ‘all five Stones’?” Geaxi interrupted. “I do not see Unai. There are only four of us present. Is he—”
“No,” Sailor said suddenly. “No, he is not dead. He is. in another state.”
“Another state?” I asked. “What does that mean?”
“Please,” Opari said to all of us at once. “Let Umla-Meq speak. He says there has been a tragedy. We are all. we are all Meq, first, last, and for all in between. we must remember this and listen, because in the end there will be no one else, no one. You Zianno, my love, you are too young to know this, and you Geaxi, you know a great deal, more than anyone, perhaps, but you too are young. You, both of you, do not yet know of. consequences. Now, please, let Sailor tell us what he knows.”
“This is what I know,” Sailor said. He continued to pace in a lopsided figure of eight pattern and spoke as if he’d thought it over many, many times and distilled it into a few drops of information that still would not break down and yield anything that made any sense. “I know Unai and Usoa crossed in the Zeharkatu several years ago. They came to Trumoi-Meq to help them do it, in the old way, and they went into the Pyrenees, where it was done. It was done and their blood became like Giza. They conceived a child not more than a year ago and moved to the Balearic Islands, awaiting the birth. There is a fishing village on the coast of Menorca that Unai wanted their child to experience in the years before the Itxaron, and learn the life there. The war in Europe had not affected this village in any manner. It was a good place, a safe place. a good choice.”
Opari took my hand in hers and held it tighter than usual. Sailor went on.
“Now Pello comes to Mowsel with disturbing news, at the very moment we are leaving Africa, he comes with news that Trumoi-Meq has never heard before, news that. ” Sailor stopped pacing and turned his back to all of us. “Pello told Trumoi-Meq. that the child of Unai and Usoa. had died of influenza.”
Opari began a low, rumbling growl that climbed octave after octave until it became a high, whining trill. Geaxi joined her, like another dog or wolf, and added a clicking sound with her tongue against her teeth. It was frightening. I looked at Sailor and he stood where he was, staring away in silence. For a moment, I thought the slab
