Steve Cash - The Meq

“Since then, Sailor has had an underlying hate for all Giza, no matter the language, race, or place. He will trust one occasionally, but never completely.

“Opari didn’t speak on the entire journey back to the Cape of Higuer. She stayed at the bow of the boat, holding on to the lines and staring at the sea. Once they were ashore, she turned to Sailor and told him she blamed the Meq and him for her sister’s death. She said they all could have escaped from the Phoenician ship — there was no reason to leave anyone behind. She said it had all been about the Stones instead of lives, including her sister’s, and if Sailor had truly been Deza’s Ameq, he wouldn’t have left her. She said these things and much more in a calm, dispassionate voice. Sailor said she had gone inside herself to somewhere cold, somewhere barren, where no one was welcome, especially the Meq.

“It was the time of Those-Who-Fled and Opari was one of them. She turned east and told Sailor never to follow, never to look for her. If he or any of the rest of us tried, she said we would only find the footprints of a ghost. We would not find her. She was no longer Meq, she said, only the ghost of one.

“And since that day, no one has seen her. Her presence has been rumored in many places at many times and, ironically, we think it was Opari who used the Stones the one and only time they have affected history. Giza history. It was when Attila the Hun had amassed his armies on the boundaries of the Roman Empire. He was ready to strike and at any moment could easily have taken the city in a bloodbath. But he didn’t. He suddenly changed his mind and his armies retreated. Christians said it was a miracle due to the divine presence of Pope Leo I. However, we now know it was Opari. Attila, though it is not widely known, was a dwarf. Opari traveled with him as an omen, a charm, a magic child with a bold sexual presence. He always kept her near. On that day, evidently after she had seen enough of his pillage and murder and knew what was to come, she withdrew the Stones from around her neck and used them on Attila, telling him to turn around and go home. We know this because, through the ages, Opari has kept with her and trained as courtesans orphaned Meq girls, usually Egipurdiko, and one of them, Aurkene, told us this occurred. Aurkene didn’t call her by the name Opari, but she described the Stones and what happened perfectly.

“After that, Opari continued traveling east, always protected by royalty; sheiks, sultans, maharajahs, and even emperors in China have hidden her, lied for her, even stolen from their own families to appease her and her unique ‘charms.’ She has never been found by us. She has power, perhaps because of her age and isolation, but if ever we get near, she is gone. She can sense our presence long before we sense hers. That is why your papa and his papa and all before have tried to use dreams to find her. It is the only way. We must catch her unaware or she will always be a step ahead.

“It is also said the Fleur-du-Mal might know where she is. We don’t know for certain, but we think he may have ‘found’ orphaned Meq girls for her in the past.

“It has been a long search, a long wait, and still we seek Opari. We do not even know if she still exists.”

She stopped talking and we both looked up at the sky. Night had fallen and there were ten million stars wheeling around us.

“She exists,” I said. “But I still don’t know why you need to find her.”

Eder looked over my shoulder toward something behind me and nodded. “Ask one of them,” she said.

I turned and sitting behind me as silent as stones themselves were Sailor, Geaxi, and Baju. I had not heard or felt them approach and had no idea how long they had been there.

Baju rose to speak. I could not get over how much he reminded me of Papa, especially under starlight.

“You look at me and think of Yaldi, no?”

“Yes, I do,” I said. “How did you know?”

“I did not know for sure, but it is good, because your papa would have told you this himself, someday.

“In a little over a hundred years from now, there will be a time, an occurrence, that is sacred and unique to the Meq. It is the reason your mama and papa crossed in the Zeharkatu when they did, so that you could be born in preparation for it. It is the same reason Eder and myself crossed and were blessed with Nova. We know of it through legend and story, but also through Sailor’s family and the Stone of Memory. It is even mentioned in fragments on a stone in the Pyrenees called the Idol of Mikeldi. The language is a transitional language between Meq and old Basque, but the name is the same. It is called the Gogorati, the Remembering.”

He paused and looked at the others, not sure how to continue.

“What is the Remembering?” I asked.

Geaxi rose from her squatting position and said, “We do not know. We only know that all five sets of Stones are to be together at a certain place and time. The place is called Egongela, or the Living Room. We also know it is a cave somewhere in the Pyrenees. The time is the time during the Bitxileiho, or the Strange Window. We know when that is and Baju will tell you what it is later. The important thing, nay, the imperative thing, is that we find Opari. Without her, we cannot know, we will never know. ”

“The truth,” Sailor finished.

He had circled behind me and stood opposite Geaxi. Baju and Eder stood together in front of me and slightly to the side. We almost formed the shape of a five-pointed star with one point missing. The configuration did not go unnoticed by Sailor. He said, “We must find her, Zianno. Geaxi is right. It is imperative. The Gogorati will come and go and we must be there with the five Stones or we may never know who and what we are.

“I will tell you that before I met Solomon and came to you, Geaxi and I were in the Far East on the trail of Opari. Through various and disparate contacts, we learned that someone of her ‘description’ was living outside Shanghai with another one like herself called the ‘Pearl.’ They were protected by a secret cadre sent from the Empress Dowager, or the ‘Old Buddha,’ as she is called by her enemies. But, as you heard Geaxi tell me earlier, she has vanished.

“And now that you know her story and ours, have you indeed. ‘seen’ her?”

“I don’t know where she is,” I said, “but if I could get close enough, and I don’t know why, she will not sense my presence, at least not in her usual way. I could find her then.”

“Then we shall go back to the Far East,” Sailor said. “And pick up her trail.”

I wasn’t sure I believed what I’d just said, not completely. I felt lost in what I’d heard, lost and small, like a grain of dust in a great wind, one star blurred by the Milky Way and Time itself. But I also felt a sense of family, blood, and connection to my own history that I had never felt before. They were Meq and now, finally, so was I.

I looked at Eder and suddenly thought of Nova. “Where is your daughter?” I asked.

She laughed and took my hand again. “We only have to find Ray to find Nova,” she said. “I am afraid my daughter is literally physically attached to Ray.”

We came down from the clearing and back to the cabin to discover just that. Ray and Nova were on the floor playing a game that mainly involved Nova sitting on Ray’s bowler hat and pulling on various parts of his face while giggling to herself.

Ray looked up at me in obvious pain and joy. “Damn, Z, where you been?”

We rested that night in Eder and Baju’s cabin and returned in the morning to Kepa’s camp. He welcomed us as if we’d never been gone and all that day and night the festivities continued. There was accordion music and dancing and roasted lamb and games of competition among the Basque like stone-lifting and wood-chopping. Old men played a card game called Mus and Ray played pelota, or handball, with the children.