Steve Cash - The Meq

There was a lamp already lit on the nightstand next to the bed. I spread the blanket out and sat down, dead tired and ready for sleep. I took the telescope out of its case, just to see it once more before I slept. I thought about my papa holding it, using it. I thought about where he might have used it and wondered if he kept notes and if he did where they would be and who might have them, and then I thought about Kepa and I opened his note and read it again—“Good for wonder, good for wolves!”—and I thought about the Fleur-du-Mal and I thought about Carolina and I wondered, wondered. then I fell asleep, for how long I don’t know, but the telescope had rolled off the bed and hit the floor, waking me, opening the door to a Walking Dream.

I pick up the telescope and walk out of the room. I walk outside and back to the stone wall. I step up and over the wall and I land on four legs. I am heavy, but graceful. I am grazing, making my way down the slope toward the stream. I know my way, I have been here before, but this time there is something different, something new, something that has never been here before. I take a different path to the stream. I see the wolf ahead of time. He is surprised. The ritual is well known and understood. He is alarmed and I see it in his eyes. He starts upstream, loping through the rocks in the shallow water by the shore. I follow easily. He takes the familiar path, but this time I close the gap. I pick up speed and so does he. We run for miles and I see the jewels and dead bodies strewn among the rocks. I pay no attention. I close the gap even more. We ascend, climbing the mountain, toward the source of the stream and the place I cannot follow, the place I have never been allowed. I change shape and walk upright on two legs, but I continue to climb and gain ground. The wolf stops and turns and stares. He has never seen me, not this me. I start to cry out. The wolf turns and runs to where the stream pours out of the mountain; the dark pool and spring where I cannot go. He does not look back and leaps into the swirling abyss. I stop at the edge and look down. There is a trail of stars where he has disappeared. I remember the telescope. I take it out and extend it, looking through the veil of water and stars until I find the wolf retreating, changing; form became feeling and feeling became beauty and she was revealed. naked. innocent. and wearing the Stones. Then something else happened — something so outrageous, unknown, and unexpected that I woke up.

I was alone on a slab of rock jutting out over a four-hundred-foot drop. The sun was just rising over the mesa. I had no idea where I was or how I got there. The telescope was in my hand. From behind me I heard a voice.

“Do not move, señor. Before you stand, let me help you.” It was Pello. He said he had followed me all night and watched me, keeping his distance, but at some point he lost me and didn’t find me until that moment when I cried out. I asked him where we were and he said we were far to the south, miles from camp.

He helped me up and we started back along a narrow ledge, then down through brush and scrub cedar until we found a trail he knew by heart.

It took five hours to walk back to Kepa’s camp and when we finally stepped over the low stone wall and were in the compound itself, no one seemed to notice. Most were gathered by the veranda of the central building, children especially.

They were surrounding a tall man with red hair and a bristly red mustache, wearing wire-rimmed glasses and showing everyone how to assemble a Chinese kite. Some other men were preparing several lambs for an open-pit cookout. I asked one of them who the red-haired man was and he said his name was Owen Bramley and he and someone I might know had arrived by train in Boise the night before and made their way here this morning. I looked at Pello and he shrugged.

I walked toward my room, and just before I went in, I saw Sailor talking to someone, someone our size. Neither one of them saw me approach. They were deep in discussion about something. Then I saw two things I hadn’t seen in a long time, but they were still familiar — a black beret and black ballet slippers. It was Geaxi, and as I got nearer, I could just hear the end of her sentence “. but she is no longer there, she has vanished.”

From behind them, I said, “I know who you seek.”

They both turned at once and stared at me.

“You seek Opari,” I said.

They both showed no surprise, but they continued to stare.

“And I know her Bihazanu, her heartfear.”

“What is it?” Geaxi asked.

“Me.”

“Follow your Star.”

The words are simple, but the real thing is a little tricky. Does it mean direction? Is it Destiny?

If you could chart the movement of the largest, farthest, fastest supernova and still find the smallest grain of interstellar matter — stardust — would it answer the why, the where, the who? Would it finally connect you in a line of time and circumstance to a singular continuum like the drawn lines of a five-pointed star?

If only it were that simple.

The trick in chasing Destiny is to feel it as a rider, a rider on a spinning ball waiting for a rare chance in time. Those few moments of balance between darkness and light where the Infinite is in motion and the motion is felt as a dance, as a solution that dissolves the question.

You are suspended, and yet, you have met Destiny. You have been eclipsed.

Sailor and Geaxi kept staring at me. They could have been two strange children, perhaps brother and sister, dropped off suddenly by someone and left without a ride. Their looks were a mixture of disbelief, bewilderment, and wonder.

Sailor walked over to me. He looked at my torn clothes, the caked mud on my face and hands, and the blood-crusted scratches on my arms that were healing and disappearing as he looked.

“You have had the Dream?” he asked, almost in a whisper.

“I have had a dream,” I said. “Something — someone — was revealed to me. I know that her name is Opari. She has great strength, power, and cunning. She knows that you seek her and in her heart of hearts, somehow, for some reason, fears me. She doesn’t know me, but she fears I will find her.”

Sailor turned for a moment and glanced at Geaxi. Silently, gracefully, she closed the few paces between us.

He turned back to me and said, “Your father and your father’s fathers never had anything revealed to them. They had to be told her name, and even then, she never revealed herself to them.”

“I think I surprised her and I think I know why, but I can’t be sure until I see her.”

Once again, Sailor and Geaxi looked at me and smiled. I hadn’t seen that smile since being surprised by her so long ago on that hot afternoon down that dark alley in St. Louis.

“Hello, young Zezen,” she said and she reached in her vest and took out a cube of salt, placing it in my hand and closing my fingers.

“ Egibizirik bilatu, ” I said.

“Five fingers — one hand,” she answered.

“I haven’t heard that one.”

“There are a million of them,” she said. “Sailor probably knows two million. I cannot keep track. Now, tell me, can you find Opari?”

As tired and weary as I was, I still almost laughed. Nice, blunt, and right to the point — that was Geaxi. I did manage a smile and turned to look around me before I answered. It was midafternoon and the whole camp was alive. I caught sight of Ray standing among the Basque children watching Owen Bramley and his Chinese kites. Kepa was watching too, sitting in his chair with one of his grandchildren on his knee. Miren was standing next to him, her hand on his shoulder. Dogs barked everywhere from the excitement and activity. This was a day of celebration and feast for the Basque, all on account of us. But who were we? What were we?