Steve Cash - The Remembering

“Well, Zianno? Do you agree or disagree with this option?”

“I … I …”

“We shall be depending, of course, on an American sense of guilt, as well as good-heartedness.”

“I …”

Sailor’s eyes glanced up at Susheela the Ninth, then settled back on me. “Hawaii is where we need to be, Zianno.”

I had no idea what his “plan” was or what he’d said, but Hawaii sounded good to me. “Yes, I agree … Hawaii is where we need to be.”

Later that night the three of us were in our room, lying in the dark on our tatami mats. The light rain of the previous evening had given way to a steamy, big-city heat. Our three windows were wide open. I confessed to Sailor I had been daydreaming as he elaborated his “plan,” and I was completely ignorant of the whole thing. He assured me not to worry, I had plenty of time to hear it again. We would take no action until the Americans were in Japan and the occupation had begun. “Until then,” Sailor reminded us, “we should stay close to Katsuo’s home, only venturing outside at night to steal food or other necessities. For the sake of Katsuo and Ikuko, we must not be seen.”

“Steal food? Did you say ‘steal food’?” I asked.

“Yes,” Sailor answered. “If stealing is required, then we shall steal. We have no reason to extend Katsuo’s hospitality into providing sustenance for us.” Sailor waited a moment. “I say we should extend and provide his sustenance instead, particularly by pilfering an odd bit or two from the few remaining decent restaurants in Osaka.” He paused again. “This should be relatively easy for you, Zianno. I believe you were at one time a professional thief under Captain Woodget’s tutelage, no?”

I laughed once in the dark. “I think the good captain referred to it as smuggling .”

“Ah, yes, of course, I see my error,” Sailor said with great sarcasm. “A much more honorable position and higher moral ground … no doubt, no doubt.”

I laughed again and Susheela the Ninth, or Sheela, as even Sailor was calling her now, joined in the laughter. We continued talking and covered many subjects, including telekinesis, telepathy, and other phenomena. The talk was loose and open. Sailor did a lot of the speaking, but so did Sheela. Parts of a puzzle were revealed in reverse. She said when she beat us to the Octopus in Egypt, she knew Xanti and three others were also seeking it, but she assumed the others were working with Xanti, not against him. She had no idea one of the others was Umla-Meq. It wasn’t until she was captured and taken to Norway that she learned the truth.

“How long have you known of the Fleur-du-Mal?” I asked her.

“For centuries,” she answered. “I have always thought him to be a considerable nuisance.”

“ Nuisance! He is an assassin, a ruthless murderer and torturer!”

“Yes, I know, Z, and I do not mean to diminish his crimes or your abhorrence of them. However, in truth, Xanti is only a sad little boy. I do not think he can help himself.”

“Zeru-Meq once thought the same way,” I snapped back. Sheela said nothing. I took a deep breath and calmed down. “He has since changed his mind. If Xanti is a sad little boy, then he is the most dangerous one on earth.” Despite their longevity, or perhaps because of it, I felt both Sailor and Sheela were being complacent concerning the Fleur-du-Mal. For me, it was personal. With my own eyes I had seen him slit the throat of Carolina’s sister, Georgia, and that was no “little boy” who carved bloody roses into the backs of Mrs. Bennings and countless others. I decided to change the subject. “Sheela, why did you leave the papyrus in Salzburg, along with a note for Umla-Meq?”

Susheela the Ninth sat up suddenly. The lights of the city filtered through the windows and I could see her green eyes staring at me. “Papyrus! You know of the papyrus?”

I sat up. “Yes. I’ve seen it and read it.”

“How is this possible?” she asked.

“A friend of mine, Ray Ytuarte, became good friends with Baroness Matilde von Steichen. She showed him your room, the portraits by Vermeer and Botticelli, and the papyrus. He brought it to us.”

She turned to Sailor, who also sat up. “Umla-Meq, this is so? You have read the papyrus?”

“Yes,” Sailor answered. “Or I should say, Zianno read it to me. I cannot read the old script.”

“No one has ever been able to read the papyrus.”

“Yes, well,” Sailor said and paused, “Zianno Zezen can.”

“ Ta ifi dite ifsaah! Z, this ‘ability,’ is it true?”

“Yes,” I answered, “but I have never thought of it as an ‘ability.’ ”

“Oh, but it is, Z, it is … it is a magnificent ‘ability,’ and more fundamental and necessary to the Meq than either telekinesis or telepathy.” She paused a moment and seemed to catch her breath. “You must tell me what the writing says.”

“I will, and then we will discuss what it says and means, but first things first. Where did you get the papyrus, Sheela? Tell me its history.”

She sighed deeply. “Ah, yes … yes.” She waited another heartbeat. “After all this time …” she said, shaking her head and smiling. Her perfect, ancient teeth gleamed white in the faint light. It was late at night and the big port city was unusually dark and quiet. Even the crickets had surrendered.

I suppose I didn’t realize it at the time, yet Susheela the Ninth must have understood intuitively that when I asked about the papyrus, I was really asking about her. She talked softly for two hours that night and two more the next, and then on and off for the next two nights. During these “talks” she not only revealed the history of the papyrus, but she also gave Sailor and me a brief history of her own long and extraordinary life.

We learned that she left the papyrus in Salzburg in order to pursue the Octopus and the possibility of possessing what it was supposed to contain. Her tribe had long known of the five Stones, but their only interest was in the mythical Sixth Stone. Its power was believed to answer all mysteries behind the Meq and our existence. It was also thought to answer the riddle of the Remembering, an event they knew was coming, they just didn’t know when or where. The papyrus and its cryptic inscription had been copied from another papyrus, which was also said to have been copied from something much older — a solid, polished stone ball. The original “copy” had been carried by another Meq, a mysterious loner who dealt in precious metals and was known simply as the “Black Sea boy,” or sometimes as “the Thracian.” He was thought to have perished, along with his papyrus, when the island of Thera, now referred to as Santorini, disintegrated in a massive volcanic explosion. At that time, the second papyrus always traveled in the possession of Susheela the Ninth’s much older cousin, Tereksaa. He was the one other member of her tribe still living. He had been born in western Africa before the Sahara became a desert, when it was still a lush savanna. It was from Tereksaa that Susheela the Ninth first learned there were other Meq in the world, including light-skinned tribes to the north and west, across a great sea, living in the mountains and along the coast of another land, a land now known as the Pyrenees. They were the ones, she was told, who carried the five Stones.

She said she and Tereksaa wandered the Near East and the eastern Mediterranean for centuries until a mad Assyrian king in the city-state of Urak managed to capture Tereksaa. The practice of child sacrifice to gain favor from the gods was the king’s obsession, especially if the child happened to be one of the “Magic Children” he had heard the Phoenicians brag about. Just before Tereksaa was caught and beheaded, he transferred the papyrus to Susheela the Ninth with instructions to keep it safe until she could deliver it to one of the light-skinned Meq in the west — the one called Umla-Meq. And she kept it safe for century after century and a thousand tales of survival until late in 1921 when she first heard the rumor that the Octopus could exist and might be hidden in Tutankhamen’s tomb. A man named Howard Carter was going to excavate in the Valley of the Kings to search for the tomb. The temptation was too great for her. Find the Octopus — find the Sixth Stone! She left the papyrus in Salzburg, always planning to return. She was on her way back when the Fleur-du-Mal captured her in Istanbul, and together with Raza, the three of them made their way to Askenfada in Norway. We knew the rest.