Steve Cash - The Meq

“Do you see her?” Sailor asked.

“Yes, but that is not Opari.”

“What?” He grabbed the telescope and pointed it down the hill, focused in, then backed off. “Explain this to me, Zianno. I do not understand,” Sailor said very seriously.

“That is a girl named Zuriaa. Did you not look at her eyes? They are green.”

Sailor looked startled, unnerved, like something given had been inexplicably proven wrong. “No,” he said. “It was the presence. The presence was always too strong for me to doubt. She has the presence of a very old one. I can feel it now. Do you not, Zianno?”

“Yes,” I said. “More than ever.”

“Why is that?”

“I don’t know.” I looked at Sailor and he was deeply troubled. If anything, he knew what the Meq could and could not do. I wondered what he would say about the possibility of a sixth Stone. “I know the old man too,” I said. “His name is Cheng and. and. ”

“And what? Why do you hesitate?”

I realized that Sailor had not put the two men together — the one he had been watching and the one who had murdered his good friend and brother-in-law.

“He is the same man, Sailor. The same evil whose presence we felt at the train station in Denver. And he’s done a few other things since.”

He never changed expression, but Sailor’s “ghost eye” began to swirl with clouds. He was Umla-Meq, the Stone of Memory, and he felt he had been betrayed by his own memory and instincts. It had been almost three millennia since he’d actually seen Opari, but how could he have mistaken her presence? I’m sure he felt he should have recognized Cheng also, though he’d never actually seen him before in his life.

Sailor closed the telescope and handed it to me. I was setting it back in its case when we both heard an agonized, guttural scream from up the slope and behind the hill. I knew it was Star.

Neither Sailor nor I hesitated. We turned and sprinted through the darkness, first up a winding trail, then to a shortcut between the brush and scree.

“You care greatly for this girl, this Star?” Sailor shouted as we climbed.

“Yes,” I shouted back.

“She is like family to you? Like blood?”

“Yes.”

I was getting winded and worried. I kept tripping over rocks and I hadn’t heard another sound from over the hill.

“Then you have found family?” Sailor yelled.

“Yes.”

“Do you think Eder and Nova have found this family? Do you think—”

“Yes,” I said and grabbed his sleeve to stop. We were near the crest of the hill and I wanted to go on quietly from there.

We caught our breath, then started a slow crawl to the very top of the rise, directly above the place I’d left Star. Sailor kept rambling on about the last time he had been in Carthage, the last time he had crawled to peer over a ledge in this city of the Phoenicians. It was unlike him to keep talking, especially under the circumstances. He asked if I knew the story, if I knew what had happened. I was only vaguely paying attention, but I said yes, Eder had told me. Then he asked if I knew who had been with him, but before I could answer we reached the lip of the rise and leaned over to witness something that neither of us ever expected. It changed my life forever, and Sailor’s too, no matter what he would like you to believe.

Below us, my one and only oil lamp was lit and secured in the sand, and protected from the wind by Jisil’s saddle, which had been propped on its side. Jisil’s horse was nowhere in sight. The saddle was being used as a backboard for Star to lean against and hold on to for support. Star was lying on her back with her head and shoulders leaning forward. She was dripping in sweat. Her eyes were open and glazed. She was staring between her legs at a young girl who was bent over a naked, motionless baby, born premature and not breathing, just like the one I’d seen born in the alley in Saint-Louis. The young girl was performing the same cleansing of the baby’s mouth and throat that Emme had. She moved rapidly and with great expertise until she had cleared a passage, then she leaned down and carefully, purposely, breathed life into the child. Within sixty seconds, the baby let out three fierce and tiny cries. The young girl wet her little finger and gently wiped the baby’s eyes, nose, and mouth. Then she wrapped the baby in Star’s old scarf with the drowning Chinamen and helped her lean back against the saddle, placing the baby in Star’s arms. She bunched several blankets around them to keep out all wind and drifting sand, then sat cross-legged in front of them, waiting for the new life to take comfort and take hold.

She never looked up at us, even though she was aware of our presence. I watched with a fascination that only began there and has never since ceased. It was Opari.

I couldn’t see her face, but her hair was shining black and still cut straight at the shoulders. She wore loose, white cotton trousers that were tied at the ankles with the straps of her sandals and at the waist with a wide leather belt. Her arms were bare and hung from something resembling a shawl, but heavier and covered in designs I had never seen anywhere.

After several minutes, Star and the baby were breathing evenly, sleeping and possibly even dreaming. Opari turned slowly in the sand and looked directly into my eyes. It felt as though I had been struck in the center of my chest and every atom in my being had been charged with light and grace.

“Hello, my beloved,” she said, as simply as life itself. She had an accent, but it only seemed to soften the language, not confuse it. “You must forgive me,” she said. “It is berri, no, I mean new to me, the English. I will learn well, in time.”

“Yes,” I said, but my voice was a whisper, choked and barely audible. I cleared my throat and said, “We have time.”

She looked to my left and I followed her eyes as they met Sailor’s. They had not spoken in almost thirty centuries.

“You look well, Sailor,” she said.

“And you, Opari,” Sailor said quietly. Then the answer to the puzzle that had unnerved him spread across his face. “So it was you following me all these years,” he said. “And you let me think the other was the presence.”

“Yes,” Opari said, then waved for us to be quiet and pointed to a curved shelf of rock, exposed to the wind on one side and sheltered on the other. She wanted us away from Star and the baby.

We met her at the low shelf of rock and all huddled close together, out of the wind. Opari glanced at me once and looked over at Sailor to speak. I watched her lips as she formed the words and they moved out of her mouth. I could not believe I was where I was.

“There is no time to hear reasons,” she said. “Zuriaa and the eunuch have heard the baby being born. They will, how you say, ikertu? ”

“Investigate,” Sailor answered.

“Yes, they will investigate.”

“I will not lose Star and the baby,” I told her.

Opari looked at me and reached up with the tips of her fingers and touched my lips. “This is the girl and the child they wait for, is it not?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, and took her fingers in my hand and felt her skin for the first time.

“What is this?” Sailor asked, dumbfounded. “No one told me of this,” he said, nodding his head toward my hand holding Opari’s fingers. “When did this happen? Is this why you left China, Zianno?”

“No, not quite.”

“Then why?”

“It is complicated.”

“And who is Zuriaa?” he asked.

“She is Ray’s sister.”

“Who is Ray?” Opari asked.

“He is my friend. I think Cheng might have—”

“Never mind,” Sailor broke in. “Opari is right that we have no time to hear reasons. We must save the girl and her baby. The Fleur-du-Mal and his obsessions have inadvertently created a good thing. I may be able to get us out of Africa tomorrow — all of us. Why all of us are here, now, is no longer important. The fact is, we are Meq. These things occur. Our reasons will be shared later.”