Steve Cash: Time Dancers

“There it is!” Sailor almost shouted. “There is our answer and I should have known it. The Fleur-du-Mal first came to Japanese shores with the Portuguese ships in the sixteenth century. He is familiar with this coast and these ports. This is the place and Susheela the Ninth is in one of those castles.” Sailor paused and looked at me. He was more excited than I’d seen him in four years. “We have found her, Zianno.”

Taking the train south on the morning of the sixth, I asked Sailor if the Fleur-du-Mal was in Japan, where was Zeru-Meq? Sailor said there was no way to know, then he reminded me that the Meq assume survival and Zeru-Meq had seen many wars in many places and always survived.

“This war is different, Sailor.”

“I am aware of that, Zianno, but so is Zeru-Meq.”

Unknown to us, an hour earlier on the island of Shikoku, the city of Hiroshima and a hundred thousand lives had been obliterated in an instant by an atomic bomb nicknamed Little Boy.

Sak and Shutratek had only been given the districts where the castles were sold, not their exact locations. However, they were said to be so distinctive, neither could be missed—massive five-story structures of stone, wood, and tile, surrounded by moats and gardens and stone walls seven feet thick. It was Sailor’s plan to go to Nagasaki, then decide which castle to seek first. We stepped off the train in Nagasaki Station at three o’clock. The station was crowded as usual with soldiers. We walked through quickly and then out into a sprawling port city on a beautiful summer day. Finding a place to stay was difficult, but in an hour or so, Sak had found decent lodgings. It wasn’t until the next morning that the first full reports from Hiroshima began to surface. When we heard the number of estimated dead, we didn’t believe it. It was impossible, too many to imagine. A few reports mentioned a “super-bomb” and a “white light brighter than the sun.” None of us knew what that meant, but Sailor thought it was only the beginning.

“The invasion is upon us,” Sailor said. “This horrendous event means we must find the castles immediately.” The map of the entire Nagasaki prefecture was laid out on the table in front of him. Sailor looked down at the map, then at me. “We should divide into two parties,” he said. “Zianno, you and Shutratek search for the castle in the hills to the northeast of Oomura, while Sak and I search for the one in Nagasaki. Do not try to enter the castle if you find it.” Sailor looked hard at Sak and Shutratek and told them the Fleur-du-Mal was dangerous, extremely dangerous, and should never be taken on alone. “We shall meet back here in two days. If one of us has found the castle, then we return together. Agreed?” No one said a word, but we all agreed.

Shutratek and I left for Nagasaki Station and transferred to Oomura. From Oomura, we walked up sloping, winding streets to the district where the castle might be located. We passed dozens of Western-style buildings and residential areas, asking questions along the way, describing the castle as it was described to us. The day was warm and we walked miles without learning anything. The next day went the same and Shutratek and I both fell into a deep sleep not long after sunset and didn’t wake until after dawn. I had a dream just before waking and the sound I heard in the dream was one of the strangest I’d ever heard. I heard the sound of an entire forest falling.

On the morning of August 9, we dressed and left for a breakfast of rice cakes and miso, then began canvassing higher in the hills of the district. About ten o’clock, we stopped at a newspaper stand to read about Hiroshima. I mentioned the castle to the old vendor at the stand and asked if he knew its location. We got lucky. He told us where the castle was and how to get there. I had one 1906 double eagle American gold piece in my trousers that I’d always kept with me. I gave it to the vendor and Shutratek and I walked farther up into the hills toward the castle. After a long climb of nearly an hour, we rounded a corner and suddenly saw the ancient stone walls rising and the castle beyond the walls. A canopy of trees hung over the castle. There was only one gate and it was in the wall on the south side. It looked as if a drawbridge had been in its place at some time in the past. We crept closer to the gate. Shutratek looked at her watch. She was sweating heavily. The time was eleven o’clock and we were supposed to meet Sailor and Sak in Nagasaki at noon. But we couldn’t leave now. We had to get closer. About twenty feet from the gate, I noticed the gate was open slightly, maybe the width of a hand. I couldn’t resist; I had to look inside. I took a step.

Then it happened. A white light flashed everywhere at once for a split second. It was as if God had taken a snapshot with a flashbulb. Several seconds later, the ground rolled beneath us and we heard the distant blast. We turned to see something rising over Urakami Valley, a ball rising, changing colors from pink to purple to gold—a balloon! I saw Nova’s awful balloon rising over a city that Shutratek and I knew no longer existed.

Shutratek shouted, “Sak!” then fell at my feet unconscious and dying. She’d had a massive heart attack. I bent to pick her up. I held her head and tried to make her breathe in, but she never did. She never breathed and she never awoke. I closed her eyes with my hand and laid her down. I looked up again at the balloon, climbing ten thousand, twenty thousand feet in the sky and trailing a long tail of white and black smoke.

“Sailor,” I said, “Sailor.”

A moment later, from somewhere above and behind me on top of the stone wall, I heard a voice. I knew the voice well.

“Bonjour, mon petit,” he said.

STEVE CASH lives in Springfield, Missouri, where he was born and raised and educated. After an attempt at gaining a college degree, he lived on the west coast, in Berkeley, California, and elsewhere. He returned to Springfield to become an original member of the band the Ozark Mountain Daredevils. He is the co-author of the seventies pop hits “Jackie Blue” and “If You Wanna Get to Heaven.” For the last thirty-three years he has played harmonica, written songs, perfomed with the band, helped in the raising of his children, and read books. He is writing the final novel in the Meq trilogy.

Time Dancers is a work of historical fiction. Apart from the well-known actual people, events, and locales that figure in the narrative, all names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to current events or locales, or to living persons, is entirely coincidental.