Time Dancers

they had been moments earlier. Now there was only a giant swirling cloud of snow rising in the silence. The Fleur- du-Mal destroyed his own creation in order to destroy all of us. Except for Rune Balle, his plan failed. But where was the Fleur-du-Mal? It was too late in the day to find the answer or search for Rune’s body. We had been fooled, trapped, and nearly killed. I was the only one with broken bones, but everyone was bruised or bleeding somewhere. We got our bearings and Sailor led the way down to the dock. We found the fishing boat and climbed on board. Ray started the engines. As we pulled out in the cove, I looked down to the covered slip where the speedboat had been anchored when we arrived. The slip was empty.

As we stepped from the boat onto Svein’s dock, Sailor grabbed my arm and pulled me aside. His “ghost eye” was filled with clouds. “She spoke to me, Zianno,” he whispered.

I said nothing at first, then I understood.

“Did she speak to you, Zianno?”

“No, she was bound and gagged,” I said. “How did she speak?”

“From inside with a voice I recognized in my heart of hearts. I heard her clearly.”

Sailor looked across the cove. It was nearly dark. He squinted and stared up the slope to where the greenhouse had been. Then he shook his head back and forth.

“What?” I asked.

“She told me over and over there is no Sixth Stone—the Octopus is an empty box! She remains alive only because the Fleurdu-Mal thinks she has hidden it from him.”

I followed Sailor’s gaze across the cove. I thought about what he said. I had no doubt Susheela the Ninth was capable of speaking with her mind. I knew the instant I looked in her eyes she was older than all of us beyond measure. “Do you believe her?”

“Yes.”

I turned and looked at Sailor. As he stared up the slope his “ghost eye” cleared. He seemed frozen again, detached, more listening than watching. “It was Deza’s voice I heard.” He turned his head and looked deep in my eyes. “She spoke in Deza’s voice, Zianno.” Deza, Sailor’s Ameq, had been decapitated by the Phoenicians in Carthage almost three thousand years earlier. Sailor never imagined he would hear her voice again, but Susheela the Ninth had somehow found what was deepest in his heart and mind and spoken to him in the same voice.

An hour later, after we changed clothes and warmed ourselves around Svein’s roaring fire, we gathered in the kitchen to discuss how we might recover Rune’s body. Svein said he could hire a crew in Voss the next day. The snow must be removed before it built up on the ridge again. Mowsel suggested the rest of us stay out of sight until the crew finished the job, in order to avoid any unnecessary questions. I kept thinking of Penelope and Knut. I knew how this would break their hearts, but I also knew I must be the one to tell them. We would find Rune’s body and I would take him home to them. Opari sensed what I was thinking and held my hand in hers. Together, all of us decided not to discuss anything further that evening. We each knew how lucky we were to be alive. It was time to rest.

As Opari and I climbed into bed, she asked, “What does she look like?”

“Susheela the Ninth?”

“Yes.”

“Except for green eyes and black skin, she looks like you, Opari…she could be your twin.”

Early the next morning Svein left for Voss. He returned soon after with a full crew and they set to work immediately. The weather improved. The sky never cleared completely but snowfall was limited to occasional flurries. By the end of the day the crew had found and recovered Rune’s body. He had been caught on the second terrace down and buried under fifteen feet of snow. Svein and his crew also discovered how the Fleurdu-Mal escaped the avalanche. During his reconstruction of Askenfada, he had completed the abandoned tunnel Svein and Rune had played in as children. By extending and expanding the greenhouse, he disguised the entrance and the tunnel became his secret passageway, not through the mountain, but down the slope and exiting onto the terrace nearest the dock, just above the covered slip and the waiting speedboat.

I hated the Fleur-du-Mal. I hated him for many reasons, all of them personal and fundamental. He was an abomination and an aberration as a living being. He was a murderer, not merely an assassin, and he had nearly killed us all. He was complex, devious, and unpredictable. He was a psychopath with no boundaries and without moral conscience, and he was still a mystery to me. He seemed to have no weakness, no vulnerability, and he only acted with calculated malice. Did he have a Bihazanu, a heartfear? If so, what was it? I had questions for Zeru- Meq. I wanted to know what he meant when confronting the Fleurdu-Mal, he said, “You and I both know why you want the Sixth Stone” and “I saw what I saw.” But I was sick of the Fleur-du-Mal and decided I would ask these questions another time. Sailor, who had never personally pursued the Fleur-du-Mal before, announced that he and Zeru-Meq would leave immediately for India and attempt to find any information they could about Raza or his family. “We must find a way to stop the Fleurdu-Mal once and for all. There is too much at stake,” Sailor said. “And we must do it now. There is no other option. He has crossed a line I never thought he would cross. Zeru-Meq agrees. When we find him, we will send word.”

No one spoke much after that. Even Opari and I said little to each other. We sat together for hours by the kitchen window, drinking tea and watching Svein and his crew far across the cove and high up the hillside, digging in the snow. Once, without looking at me, she took my hand and wove her fingers through mine. In the softest voice in the world, she said, “We are Meq, my love. We go on.”

Later that night, long after Svein’s crew had gone, Opari and I walked outside and down the stone stairs to the small dock. Snow was still falling, but only in great, single, floating flakes. We walked to the end of the dock. Slowly, the sky began to clear. I saw a star, then two, then a three-quarter moon appeared, sending faint shafts of light across the cove. I turned to Opari. She was looking up. One of the last snowflakes in the sky spun down through the light and landed like a frozen butterfly on her cheek. Instantly, it became a tear.

PART III

Time is the reef on which all our frail mystic ships are wrecked.

—Noel Coward

7. Pixkanaka (Little by little)

According to a strange fable long told at sea by Basque whalers and fishermen, there was once an old man in the mountains who one day set out walking, along with a young boy who rarely spoke. The old man had lost much of his memory and nearly all of his eyesight, so he took the boy with him, but the boy had no idea where they were going. They kept climbing and climbing, walking on and on until they were nowhere really, halfway between heaven and earth, alone together and completely uncertain if they were anywhere at all. The old man rubbed and scrubbed his eyes, frantically trying to regain his vision. The boy seemed unconcerned. Finally, after finding nothing at all familiar or recognizable, the old man turned to the boy and asked, “How did we get here?” Without hesitation or even blinking an eye, the boy replied, “Little by little, sir…little by little.”

Rune Balle was laid to rest on New Year’s Day. The air felt frigid but the sky was crystal clear and deep blue. Svein Stigen accompanied Penelope and Knut, along with Opari and me, to a small stone church and cemetery less than a mile from where Rune was born. We buried him in a grave adjacent to his father and grandfather. Penelope and Knut had taken Rune’s death hard. Opari and I promised to stay as long as we were needed or could be of some comfort. Also, I wired Owen Bramley and Carolina to send a substantial transfer of funds to Bergen in Penelope and Knut’s name. I felt extreme guilt about everything, even though it had been the Fleur-du-Mal who had done the killing. The truth of it is that Rune should not have died. Little by little, he had been drawn in and used, by all of us, not just the Fleur-du-Mal. We had to make it up to them in some way. Money would be a start. Long ago, Solomon had made sure we had it. We could do the same for Penelope and Knut.