Steve Cash - The Remembering

“What was the gift?”

Fielder paused and West answered the question. “Virus,” he said.

Within four thousand years the Travelers were virtually extinct. No one could withstand the effects of the virus, and distance between tribes was the only factor that kept it from spreading faster. The ones who were Meq, like Fielder, had always been immune to toxins of any kind, but this strain of virus brought by the newcomers infected everyone with equally lethal results. Fielder was the only Traveler to remain healthy and alive, or so she thought. For this reason she spent twelve years quarrying and carving the first of her granite spheres, telling her story in the Language of the Long Dream and leaving it behind. After living on her own for another two thousand years and exploring lands farther to the east, always staying south of the ice, she suddenly “heard” the souls of six Travelers. Five were old souls and extremely weak, and one was that of a young soul, a boy. All six were in severe distress.

She made her way south until she found the boy sitting alone outside the mouth of a large limestone cave. The cave overlooked a slow-moving river that emptied into what is now the Black Sea. The boy was watching the river and he was crying. Instinctively, Fielder could tell he had only recently had his twelfth birthday and begun what the Meq would later name the Itxaron, the Wait. He looked up as she approached and showed no surprise. Fielder thought that perhaps he was in a trance or in shock.

“Why am I not sick like the others?” he asked.

Fielder glanced around and saw no one. “Where are the others?” she replied.

“Inside,” he said, pointing to the mouth of the cave. “They are too sick and weak to continue. They have decided to lie down and enter the Long Dream.”

“When?” she asked.

“Tonight,” he answered, then glanced at the pale, setting sun on the horizon.

Fielder turned and walked into the cave. There was a fire pit with a fire still burning, although it was down to coals. Beyond the fire pit she saw five Travelers sprawled out on animal hides. They were lying on their backs in a circle with their hands joined and their eyes closed. She could barely “hear” them. Their hearts were already beating as one, and their spirits were deep into the waters of the Long Dream. Resting on each of their chests was a pitted, egg-shaped, black rock that was attached to a leather strap, which they wore around their necks. Fielder knelt down next to one of them, a female with reddish hair like her own. She inhaled and filled her lungs with the girl’s scent. It was different than any essence of her kind she had ever encountered, and it was ancient. Then, without opening her eyes or making a sound, the girl began to speak to Fielder telepathically. “Welcome, Traveler,” she said. “We are the Ancestors. Take care of the boy. He is the last of us. Teach him the ways of a Traveler. Endure and survive. And take these five stones we carry. Live long and listen and understanding will come to you. In time, the stones will reveal their purpose, and the boy’s, and yours.” The girl’s telepathic “voice” became a faint and broken whisper. She was far from shore. Her last words to Fielder were, “Endure, Traveler … endure.”

Fielder and the boy, who would become the one Geaxi has named “West,” stayed in the Caucasus long enough to shape, smooth, and carve a sphere, bearing witness to who and what they were, where they were, and where they were going. They then gathered the five stones and began their endless journey west across all terrain, interacting with the newcomers only when it was unavoidable, and never staying anywhere longer than a season or two. Millennia after millennia passed and they endured and survived, and along the way discovered the powerful effects the stones had on the consciousness of the newcomers, who were now spread throughout every land. West told Fielder his mother had once used a term for how long the tribe of the Ancestors had carried the stones. The term translated as a unit of time equaling two hundred and ten thousand years. With her ability, Fielder could also “hear” and “feel” us, the new Travelers, the ones who looked like the newcomers and called ourselves Meq, growing in numbers and concentrating in the Iberian Peninsula and northern Africa. And as the Ancestor predicted, gradually, almost like recalling a long-forgotten dream or having an old memory unfold with new meaning, Fielder and West came to a clear understanding of their true purpose and destiny. It was the opposite of everything they had imagined. How could it be, and why? If there was a reason, it made no sense to them at that time. Yet it was so, and with this strange, unexpected understanding came another realization. If all events were to transpire as they had been revealed, then everything depended on the new Travelers’ survival far into the future for more than thirteen millennia. To do that, Fielder and West agreed the new Travelers would need assistance. They would need the unique and ancient power of the five stones.

Before they could act, however, Fielder and West would have to wait another two hundred years for the right time to occur. The transfer of the stones had to be in conjunction with a crossing, or the Zeharkatu, and a crossing can only take place during what the Travelers called the “Empty Ring” and the Meq call the Bitxileiho, or Strange Window. The Bitxileiho is the peculiar and mystical celestial event known as a total solar eclipse. Similar to birds that know instinctively when to migrate, the Meq know in advance when and where these events are going to take place. Whatever magic there is in being Meq is crystallized, energized, and reborn during this timeless phenomenon of cosmic geometry. To the Meq, a total solar eclipse is terrifying, wondrous, paralyzing, and transforming all at once, and only during the precious few seconds and minutes of totality can the mutual metamorphosis of a Meq crossing and marriage take place. This was essential for what Fielder and West had in mind.

Following traditional routes from valley to valley and river to river, they walked south until they reached the foothills of the Pyrenees. From there, Fielder “counted” the number of Meq living in the mountains among the Basque. The Meq totaled one hundred eighty-four souls who were in the Wait. There were no children under the age of twelve because there had not been a crossing in six hundred years. Fielder’s ability also enabled her to locate the leaders within every tribe and she focused on one Meq in particular. At this point in her story, Fielder looked directly at Sailor. Calling him by his true name, she said, “It was your ancestor, Umla-Meq. He was the one we went to see.”

There is no future without memory. Fielder chose the oldest Meq with the longest memory to distribute the five stones and give them names. Surprisingly, he welcomed Fielder and West without question, and their physical appearance seemed to inspire a mild curiosity rather than hesitation or fear. Their kind had long disappeared from the landscape and it simply made no difference to him or the rest of his tribe how Fielder and West appeared. He was far more interested in what they had to show him — the stones. And when he found out what each stone could do, he welcomed them for as long as they wished to stay. Fielder told him they had only come to present the stones as a gift and witness the Bitxileiho, which was about to occur over the Pyrenees and across the great sea to the south. Fielder knew she could tell him how to use the stones, but little else. That was the way it had to be. The inexplicable future event that had been revealed to Fielder and West could not be revealed to the Meq. The length of time involved was too great to comprehend, even for the Meq, and it had to happen on its own, if it happened at all.