The Meq Read online

  “Starstones,” she said quietly.

  9

  HERENEGUN

  (DAY BEFORE YESTERDAY)

  You are a child. All your life, inside, behind the clutter and refuse you must acquire to live in this world, there is a child. Everyone knows this, but rarely admits it. The child is too busy hiding and playing amid the clutter. Occasionally, usually after the clutter has been hoarded and stacked, moved from place to place, displayed and then forgotten, the child will tire of play and tell us to throw things away, clear the room, make things the way they were the day before yesterday. And therein lies the conundrum. We have spent our lives constructing gates and fences, protecting this clutter, preparing for the day after tomorrow. We cannot find the day before yesterday. Even the child cannot remember what we need to know . . . where it was . . . how it was. The gift of Time is time and it cannot be given back. The day before yesterday is a place of dreams where even children are strangers.

  T he departure of the Lotus was delayed a full twenty-four hours due to the “incident,” as the captain referred to it. During that time, Ray and I picked up our passports and other false documents that Owen Bramley had prearranged for us. He also bought coffins for Baju and Joseba and wired Solomon, telling him briefly of the events and the change in plans. He asked if we should try to wire Sailor and Geaxi said that would be impossible, because when Sailor traveled alone, he was virtually invisible. No one would find him on any passenger list.

  Of course, Ray wouldn’t need his passport anymore, except to reenter the United States. He and I talked a little about him joining us again soon somewhere in the Far East, but neither of us knew when or where that might be. Something in Ray had changed or maybe it had always been there and I was just now seeing it, but Ray took the death of Baju personally. I could see it in his eyes. For the first time, he had a sense of purpose that was, without a doubt, his own. We had been through a lot. We were true friends and I would miss him, but there is something odd and wonderful about true friends—farewells are easy. The feeling that true friends share is always in the present. Time in any direction is not the point.

  As we pulled out of the Burrard Inlet in patchy fog with broken clouds overhead, Ray was on the docks, standing between Owen Bramley and Pello, who was in a wheelchair. Pello waved meekly and Owen Bramley stood ramrod straight. Ray reached up to tip his bowler hat to us, but then remembered he’d thrown it to Nova. He tipped an invisible one anyway. I felt a hand tap me on the shoulder and turned around to see who it was. There was no one there and I had to remember . . . “it is common.” I was looking west toward the horizon and beyond, toward China. I had the same feeling I’d had so many years before on a pale cold winter morning when Carolina and I had been kids, real kids. An overwhelming sense of leaving and barely a trace of return.

  The voyage across the Pacific was long and made even longer by a series of storms off the coast of Japan. The Lotus eventually steamed into Yokahama, our first port of call, badly in need of supplies and repairs.

  Geaxi and I had stayed in our cabins for most of the trip—the less seen, the fewer questions—a lesson both of us had learned a long time ago. I did tell her what Baju had whispered: “This was not about theft.” We both had plenty of time to think about what had happened and what it meant. In Yokahama, we talked about it.

  The Lotus docked for three days, not only for repairs but also because she had to be thoroughly searched. The Japanese had been at war with China and any ship going there was suspected of carrying contraband. I thought we might be asked several questions that would be difficult to answer, but Geaxi spoke fluent Japanese and made it easy for us. She said she spoke an old dialect, but the official understood her perfectly and whatever lies she told him, he believed her and bowed to her with great respect. For some reason, I wasn’t even surprised.

  We went ashore and Geaxi found directions to a teahouse. Along the way, I kept thinking that two Western children on their own, one of them a girl in black leather leggings and a beret, would draw attention, but no one gave us a second look. We were merely two more strangers weaving their way through traffic. Geaxi said, “It will not be this way in China.”

  We arrived at the teahouse and were taken to a low table in the back that faced an open area with a small stone garden. The fence around it was old and rickety, but the garden itself was beautiful and well tended. Geaxi ordered for us and then caught me staring at the garden and the odd placement of stones with sand around them raked in perfect but natural lines, resembling waves.

  “Like islands in Time, no?” she said.

  I looked at her, and even though she was in shadows, I could tell that something in Geaxi had changed since Vancouver, something subtle that softened her expression and came through her eyes.

  “What do you think Baju meant?” I asked.

  She looked out over the garden herself. “I do not know,” she said. “I only know that finally the Fleur-du-Mal has gone too far. This time, his obsessions have killed one of us.”

  “Sailor told me he murdered my grandfather.”

  “That is true, but that was personal.”

  “So you think the Fleur-du-Mal is behind it?”

  “It has all the hallmarks of his sick sense of humor. No one but he would know our movements or anything about the Window. However, one thing bothers me.”

  She stared at me strangely, then looked away as the hostess brought our tea and silently poured out two cups. The girl was not much older than we appeared to be and Geaxi was extremely polite and respectful to her. As she left, bowing, I said, “What thing?”

  Geaxi sipped her tea, holding the cup with both hands. “We will have to ask Sailor when we see him if he has been harassed or followed. If he has not, and what you said about seeing the man with the pistol in Denver is accurate, then there is only one conclusion.”

  “What?”

  “They were only following you.”

  She looked at me for the first time since I had known her with an expression that said, “You tell me, Zianno, what do you know that I don’t?” But I didn’t know. I only had my Dreams and they came and went as they pleased. I looked at her and had no idea what she wanted of me.

  Two Russian sailors sat down near us and loudly ordered sake. They were already drunk, but were obviously not ready to stop drinking. They looked our way and laughed at some inside joke between the two of them.

  Geaxi said, “How did you know the Stone would work for you without the gems?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “But somehow you knew it would, you believed it would.”

  “Yes, that much is true, but I don’t know how. There wasn’t time. I simply acted.”

  One of the Russians spat out his sake and yelled something at the hostess. She bent down to wipe up the sake and he threw his cup at her, kicking it when it bounced off the floor. She crawled on the floor to retrieve the cup and he yelled something else at her in Russian.

  “There is still so much we do not know about ourselves,” Geaxi said and she reached in her vest and pulled out the Stone, clenching it in her fist. She started to turn toward the Russians and I stopped her, putting my hand over hers and holding it to the table.

  “Not here, not now,” I said. “We must find Opari. We can’t take chances. Even you said it was imperative.”

  Her hand loosened under mine and her eyes looked away toward the stones in the garden. Then she smiled. “You are too young to sound so wise, Zianno. Shall we leave?”

  “Yes,” I said, and as we rose to leave, Geaxi helped the girl up and out of the drunken presence of the Russians. Walking past them she whispered, “Alu hori!” and then out loud in Russian with a smile, “Das vadanya.” She’d told them in her tongue and in theirs that they were assholes and to go with God. Only Geaxi could do that.

  The Lotus finally made it to the Whangpoo River and then docked in Shanghai after three more weeks’ delay due to two more unscheduled stops for reasons that were never fully e
xplained. I was beginning to learn the ways of the Far East and I hadn’t even entered China. One step forward and two steps back seemed to be the rule.

  The delays did give me more time to spend with Geaxi. I found out when and where she was born (51 BC on the island of Malta) and when she met Sailor (AD 480 after the Fall of Rome). I learned her parents had died naturally after living long lives among their friends in Malta, tending a large olive grove where she had practiced her climbing skills as a real child. I found out little else about her personal history, but still enjoyed her company.

  I asked her many questions about the Fleur-du-Mal. She answered some, but admitted that, until recently, she had considered him irrelevant. She told me that Unai and Usoa were the experts on the Fleur-du-Mal and one other whom we might or might not meet, Zeru-Meq, his uncle. When I heard the names Unai and Usoa, I immediately asked how and where they were. I had often wondered, but never inquired. Geaxi said they were in New Orleans, or had been, following the movements of the Fleur-du-Mal. Then she corrected herself and said they had been following the “rumors” of his movements. She said the Fleur-du-Mal was often harder to track and find than Sailor. He was unpredictable, completely unpredictable. But he could be a connection to Opari and so they persisted, as they had for centuries. Geaxi said she doubted he was a connection, but now, after Baju, he might be capable of anything. I had my own memories to verify that.

  We disembarked, secured what little luggage we had, and made it through customs easily. After that, it was a madhouse. All China and half the rest of the world seemed to have docked in Shanghai. There were ships of every size and shape coming and going. The docks and wharves were filled with anything and everything that could be bought or traded. I heard languages I’d never heard, saw faces I’d never seen. This was Shanghai, the true gateway to China, and it was chaos.

  We looked for Sailor and would never have seen him, even though he stood just fifty yards away, except he was the only thing not moving. He was standing next to a rickshaw and staring at us. He wore a bright red and gold robe with wheels or circles embroidered around the edge and a round straw hat with a flat top and a drawstring pulled tight under his chin. He looked like a circus puppet. I glanced at Geaxi and she didn’t seem to think it odd in any way.

  We made our way over to Sailor, dodging through the maze of people and goods, and without a greeting except to look in our eyes, he said, “This way.” A man with the thinnest shoulders I’d ever seen loaded our luggage on the back of the rickshaw and then pulled the three of us to a section of Shanghai known as the Chinese City, the oldest part. We were almost twenty-five days overdue and I wondered if Sailor knew about Baju and what had happened.

  We stopped in front of a shop crowded next to a hundred others on a street crowded next to another street just like it. There were a thousand sounds and smells, a few of which made you want to know the source, but most of which didn’t. It was a shop that sold nothing but funeral trappings. And far from being grim and somber, it was bright with color everywhere. Crimson satin coverings for coffins hung aloft and around on the shelves or under glass cases there was apparel for the dead; richly embroidered robes, slippers, and headgear. There were priests’ robes and white cotton raiment for the mourners. Somewhere in the shop there was everything for a proper and glorious Chinese funeral.

  Sailor led us quickly to the back of the shop and through a door to the private living quarters. It was cramped but fairly clean, with a single window that opened onto a narrow alley and very little light. He took off his straw hat, laying it carefully on a nightstand, and without being asked, gave me answers to the questions I had been pondering.

  “There was a cable waiting for me when I arrived,” he said, “from Owen Bramley. It was good that I had not let Kepa’s son, Gotzon, sail with me.”

  “Were you assaulted?” Geaxi asked.

  “No,” he said and looked at her strangely. “I was thinking of Gotzon and how he would have felt if he had heard the news of his brothers here, so far from home. It has been a long time since I have lost someone as close as Baju. I know Gotzon would have felt helpless, as I have.” He fell silent and stared at the sapphire on his finger, rubbing it with his thumb and turning it around and around. Then he looked up at Geaxi. “Did they get the Stones?”

  Geaxi glanced at me before she answered. “Yes and no,” she said.

  Sailor looked puzzled. “I do not understand,” he said and looked over at me.

  Geaxi told him the whole story, leaving nothing out except the few moments we were in the Bitxileiho, for which Sailor needed no explanation. She slowed down when she told him about me and the Stone with no gems and the man with thin eyes dropping the pistol. Sailor did not react and she went on until she got to the part about Baju. She took her beret off and clenched it in her hands. She started to speak again and then stopped, looking away from both of us toward the single, airless window.

  I let a moment pass and then told Sailor what Baju had whispered to me as he was dying. Sailor’s puzzled expression returned, but he said nothing. He walked the few steps over to Geaxi and took her hand in his. Then he spoke to me.

  “I have often suspected this about the Stones,” he said. “Your father and Baju and I used to discuss it, but we would never have defiled a sacred trust merely to satisfy our curiosity. It is ironic, no? That we have solved this mystery in such a horrid manner and for such an empty purpose.”

  I watched him. I watched him look inside himself and I could almost see him sitting with Baju and my papa and others on a cliff somewhere in a remote part of the world, talking of the mysteries of Life, and the Stones, and of being Meq. I could see them all sitting there, knowing so much, sharing so much, and being careful with each other and the Truth. Now, another one from that circle, another friend, was gone.

  “Tomorrow we begin our search,” he said. “This news, more than any other, tells us who we seek first. We must find Zeru-Meq. It will be difficult, yes. He is unpredictable, completely unpredictable, but I know he is in China.”

  “That’s what Geaxi said about the Fleur-du-Mal,” I said.

  “It is true. That is where he learned his unpredictability, from his rather unusual uncle. Fortunately, his uncle is not ‘aberrant.’ There is a difference. If the Fleur-du-Mal is responsible for Baju’s death, he will tell Zeru-Meq about it. He will be compelled to do so.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You will have to ask Zeru-Meq the source of that. It has always been so. When the Fleur-du-Mal has acted ‘badly’ and is proud of himself, he always finds his uncle to boast and brag of it. It is a mystery.”

  “What about Opari?”

  “We have exhausted every lead, rumor, and trace of her in Asia. If she is still in China, Zeru-Meq is the only one who will know it. There is a problem, however.”

  “What is that?”

  “Zeru-Meq is nearly as difficult to find as Opari herself.”

  I looked at Geaxi. She was not despondent, but as close to it as she had ever been. Sailor let go of her hand and sat down on a bed that was really no more than a bench. As he did, the sash holding the red and gold robe came undone and the robe opened. Underneath, he was wearing a cotton shirt, trousers, and his leather boots laced to the knees. I said, “What are you supposed to be in that robe and that straw hat?”

  “The same thing you will be starting tomorrow. A Tibetan Buddhist monk. It is not unusual for their monks to be children. We will say, if we are asked, that we are from some obscure sect, which could also explain our Western features, and we are traveling together on a sacred pilgrimage.

  “We are on our own now, as it should be. We must use our wits, skills, and powers in a controlled and muted fashion. I will cable Unai and Usoa tomorrow before we leave and tell them who we seek and why. They will need this news of the Stones. I will tell them to watch for any appearance of the gems in the purlieu and underground world of the Fleur-du-Mal. We will find Opari and then turn our attention to the F
leur-du-Mal.” He paused a moment, looking back and forth between Geaxi and me. “Do you both agree?”

  We agreed and told him so, but inside I wished the order of our search could be reversed.

  The next day, our journey began. It was the fall of 1896. Sailor had secured passage with an old Chinese man from the south, Ling Kai, and his even older Chinese junk to take us up the Yangtze River as far as we needed to go. Ling Kai considered it an honor, saying he had long been a devout Buddhist and mystic himself. He also smoked three bowls of opium a day.

  Our long Buddhist robes were uncomfortable at first and we now looked like three puppets instead of one, but in time we all adapted to wearing them. And they served us well. Before we had gone a hundred miles upriver, we were stopped or boarded four times by Chinese and British officials. I wondered if this was the way it was going to be, but within another hundred miles, we were just another vessel sailing upstream and back in time on a river that was once known as the “River at the Center of the World.” And I believed it when Geaxi translated a poem for me. It was carved into a five-foot stone pillar that served as a bollard for securing boats on one of the little docks in one of the endless villages along the Yangtze. It seemed to be centuries old and I asked Geaxi if the author had signed it. She said no. The inscription read, “Upriver, downriver—it is nothing to disappear in China.”

  Our destination was the sacred Taoist mountain of Hua Shan in the province of Shensi. Sailor said it was a good place to start because of its inaccessibility. Zeru-Meq loved impossible places, he said, especially places as contradictory as Hua Shan. The mountain had been held sacred in China since very early times and often appeared as a backdrop in scrolls because of its spirituality and isolation. It was a trip which by junk, train, and donkey should have taken no more than a month. It took us three. One step forward, two steps back. China.