Time Dancers (32 page)

As Opari and I climbed into bed, she asked, “What does she look like?”

“Susheela the Ninth?”

“Yes.”

“Except for green eyes and black skin, she looks like you, Opari…she could be your twin.”

Early the next morning Svein left for Voss. He returned soon after with a full crew and they set to work immediately. The weather improved. The sky never cleared completely but snowfall was limited to occasional flurries. By the end of the day the crew had found and recovered Rune’s body. He had been caught on the second terrace down and buried under fifteen feet of snow. Svein and his crew also discovered how the Fleurdu-Mal escaped the avalanche. During his reconstruction of Askenfada, he had completed the abandoned tunnel Svein and Rune had played in as children. By extending and expanding the greenhouse, he disguised the entrance and the tunnel became his secret passageway, not through the mountain, but down the slope and exiting onto the terrace nearest the dock, just above the covered slip and the waiting speedboat.

I hated the Fleur-du-Mal. I hated him for many reasons, all of them personal and fundamental. He was an abomination and an aberration as a living being. He was a murderer, not merely an assassin, and he had nearly killed us all. He was complex, devious, and unpredictable. He was a psychopath with no boundaries and without moral conscience, and he was still a mystery to me. He seemed to have no weakness, no vulnerability, and he only acted with calculated malice. Did he have a Bihazanu, a heartfear? If so, what was it? I had questions for Zeru-Meq. I wanted to know what he meant when confronting the Fleurdu-Mal, he said, “You and I both know why you want the Sixth Stone” and “I saw what I saw.” But I was sick of the Fleur-du-Mal and decided I would ask these questions another time. Sailor, who had never personally pursued the Fleur-du-Mal before, announced that he and Zeru-Meq would leave immediately for India and attempt to find any information they could about Raza or his family. “We must find a way to stop the Fleurdu-Mal once and for all. There is too much at stake,” Sailor said. “And we must do it now. There is no other option. He has crossed a line I never thought he would cross. Zeru-Meq agrees. When we find him, we will send word.”

No one spoke much after that. Even Opari and I said little to each other. We sat together for hours by the kitchen window, drinking tea and watching Svein and his crew far across the cove and high up the hillside, digging in the snow. Once, without looking at me, she took my hand and wove her fingers through mine. In the softest voice in the world, she said, “We are Meq, my love. We go on.”

Later that night, long after Svein’s crew had gone, Opari and I walked outside and down the stone stairs to the small dock. Snow was still falling, but only in great, single, floating flakes. We walked to the end of the dock. Slowly, the sky began to clear. I saw a star, then two, then a three-quarter moon appeared, sending faint shafts of light across the cove. I turned to Opari. She was looking up. One of the last snowflakes in the sky spun down through the light and landed like a frozen butterfly on her cheek. Instantly, it became a tear.

PART III

Time is the reef on which all our frail mystic ships are wrecked.

—NOEL COWARD

7 Pixkanaka (Little by little)

According to a strange fable long told at sea by Basque whalers and fishermen, there was once an old man in the mountains who one day set out walking, along with a young boy who rarely spoke. The old man had lost much of his memory and nearly all of his eyesight, so he took the boy with him, but the boy had no idea where they were going. They kept climbing and climbing, walking on and on until they were nowhere really, halfway between heaven and earth, alone together and completely uncertain if they were anywhere at all. The old man rubbed and scrubbed his eyes, frantically trying to regain his vision. The boy seemed unconcerned. Finally, after finding nothing at all familiar or recognizable, the old man turned to the boy and asked, “How did we get here?” Without hesitation or even blinking an eye, the boy replied, “Little by little, sir…little by little.”

Rune Balle was laid to rest on New Year’s Day. The air felt frigid but the sky was crystal clear and deep blue. Svein Stigen accompanied Penelope and Knut, along with Opari and me, to a small stone church and cemetery less than a mile from where Rune was born. We buried him in a grave adjacent to his father and grandfather. Penelope and Knut had taken Rune’s death hard. Opari and I promised to stay as long as we were needed or could be of some comfort. Also, I wired Owen Bramley and Carolina to send a substantial transfer of funds to Bergen in Penelope and Knut’s name. I felt extreme guilt about everything, even though it had been the Fleur-du-Mal who had done the killing. The truth of it is that Rune should not have died. Little by little, he had been drawn in and used, by all of us, not just the Fleur-du-Mal. We had to make it up to them in some way. Money would be a start. Long ago, Solomon had made sure we had it. We could do the same for Penelope and Knut.

Sailor and Zeru-Meq left Bergen almost as soon as we arrived. They bought tickets for the train to Oslo, and from there would begin their long trip to India. Sailor paused to remind me of what Susheela the Ninth had revealed. He said it meant we now knew something the Fleur-du-Mal did not—there is no Sixth Stone. We could use this against him. “It is a significant weakness,” Sailor whispered with a wink of his “ghost eye.” “And I shall exploit it.”

Mowsel stayed behind with the rest of us, but before Sailor and Zeru-Meq had gone, he suggested we all meet in Spain in ten years’ time, which they agreed to do. Zeru-Meq casually mentioned he had not been back to Spain in a thousand years. “Then it is time, my friend,” Sailor said. “The Gogorati is less than ninety years from now.” He turned and looked each of us in the eye. “All Meq should see Spain again.” Both Zeru-Meq and Sailor wore similar clothing, including leather boots laced to the knees. They were the same height and weight. Each had dark hair, though Sailor wore a braid behind his left ear and Zeru-Meq did not. As they walked away in close conversation, they looked like brothers, possibly twins, yet they had been antagonists to one another for centuries. The chase for the Fleur-du-Mal had something to do with bringing them together, but that couldn’t have been the sole reason. I asked Mowsel what happened, what brought about the change? He said, “I do not know what either of them would tell you; however, I believe the answer is quite simple. Sailor had to abandon the question, ‘Why us?’ and Zeru-Meq had to abandon his position, ‘Why anything?’”

Nova and Ray wanted to spend more time together, as did Opari and I. They had not been apart since the avalanche. Though he never said so, Ray had wanted to be with Nova for decades. She was Egizahar and he was Egipurdiko. Mowsel said a true union between the two had never taken place, but there was no doubt when I looked in their eyes they were each other’s Ameq and always had been. Ray said quietly, “I say we oughta get back to St. Louis, Z. Maybe spend a little time there. I don’t know what to do about Zuriaa. I’m gonna have to think on it awhile.”

Mowsel announced he was taking Geaxi to France. “There is a man in the Dordogne,” he said. “He wishes to show us a cave his son discovered. I am intrigued.”

“Do you think about the Remembering often, Mowsel?” I asked.

“Often?” He opened his mouth, displaying his gap. “Constantly, Zianno. Sailor is correct. We must all be vigilant for signs. We are running out of time, and we must never be as ignorant and vulnerable as we were here again. We cannot afford it.”

When he and Geaxi departed Bergen, I told him, “
Egibizirik bilatu,
Trumoi-Meq. And you, too, Geaxi. In ten years’ time,” I added.

Geaxi said, “Five winds, young Zezen.” She threw on her black beret and adjusted the angle.

“One direction,” I said back.

Mowsel raised the collar of his old and tattered navy coat and he and Geaxi disappeared up the ramp and onto a ship sailing south for the Mediterranean.

On January 3, Opari, Nova, Ray, and I said farewell to Penelope and Knut and boarded a Norwegian ship bound for Reykjavik, Halifax, and New York. It wasn’t necessary, but to be discreet we boarded separately. The crossing was cold and wet. It made no difference to me. One port at a time, I was going home again. I knew it for certain once we had passed through customs in New York. Ray said he wanted, in order, a roast beef sandwich, a root beer, a copy of
The New York Times,
and a shoeshine. Opari and Nova laughed, but he was serious and did all four. A kid about our size polished his boots, and Ray gave him pointers from start to finish, along with a short lecture on the various techniques of brushing and slapping the rag. Afterward, Ray tipped the boy a double eagle, leaped out of the chair, and shoved the sports page in my face. He jabbed at a picture and the caption underneath.

“Remember him?” Ray asked.

I recognized the big man in the picture immediately. Anybody would, though the last time I had actually seen him play was in St. Louis as a lanky pitcher with the Boston Red Sox. That day he hit a grand slam to win the ball game. His name was Babe Ruth. Now he was the most famous baseball player in America.

“He hit sixty home runs last season, Z. Sixty!” Ray shook his head, rolled the newspaper in his hands, turned, and took an imaginary swing for the fences. “Damn,” he said. “Welcome home.”

Early in the morning just before arriving in St. Louis, I had an unusual dream. The dream was strange throughout, though it began in a familiar place—Sportsman’s Park. I was standing on the pitching mound. The field and the grandstands were completely empty, except for Mama and Papa, who sat together with faint smiles on their faces. The odd thing was that I could see them at all. It was night and huge, bright lights attached to standards rose over the ballpark, lighting the whole field and grandstands. But lights, light standards, and night games had not yet occurred in reality. They were several years away. I didn’t have time to ponder it because, one by one, they began going out. Opari stood next to me. She wore Mama’s glove on one hand. In the other, she held Papa’s baseball with the Stone of Dreams still stitched inside. She turned and handed me the ball. The lights kept going out—right field, center field, left field. I looked to home plate. There was no hitter, no catcher, only the umpire. He took one step toward me and stopped. He removed his mask. I could see his eyes. I knew what was inside them. It is what I see when I look in the eyes of all Meq. The umpire’s eyes were Meq, but there was something not quite the same, something…more than Meq. “Throw the ball,” my papa yelled from the stands. “Throw the ball, Zianno.” I hesitated for a split second, then turned and threw the ball to the umpire. I couldn’t see him catch it, but I heard it hit his bare hand and knew he had. Then he spoke, or tried to speak. His voice was unlike any Meq I had ever known. All I could understand was the word “union.” What did it mean?

“Union Station.”

“What?” I asked, rubbing my eyes.

“Union Station,” Opari said. “We are in St. Louis. Wake up, my love.”

The Meq, especially old ones, begin to notice change in the world and in the Giza, change in the way they look at life and live it, long before the Giza recognize it in themselves. Old ones also are acutely aware of populations, migrations, and population growth. For Opari, in just a few short years of the twentieth century, the Giza had changed the world dramatically and irreversibly, and they were everywhere. It was no longer the world she had known for three thousand years and never would be again. Yet, she lived in the moment completely, as do all old ones, letting each day appear and disappear equally.

“This city looks beautiful in the fog,” Opari said. “I have always loved cities in the fog.”

The four of us were in a taxi on Lindell Boulevard, headed for Carolina’s house. Patches of snow from a recent snowfall covered rooftops, sidewalks, tree limbs, and in the early morning light, buildings and people seemed ghostlike as we passed. Traffic was sparse because of the hour, but I could tell St. Louis had grown and thrived in our absence. And Opari was right—it was beautiful in the fog.

Ray tipped the driver and we walked up the long drive and under the stone arch to the kitchen entrance of Carolina’s big house. We hadn’t telephoned or sent word ahead that we were on the way, so I expected to surprise someone. I knocked lightly on the door, but there was no response. I heard noises inside and turned the doorknob. It was open.

Star stood at the kitchen counter. She was in her late twenties and looked to be the exact replica of Carolina at her age—strawberry blond hair pulled back, loose strands hanging in her face, blue-gray eyes flecked with gold, and freckles across her cheeks and nose. She wore a long robe and slippers and was furiously scrambling eggs in a large bowl. Behind her, Caine was standing at the stove frying bacon. He was almost ten years old with dark hair and piercing dark eyes. He had already grown to my height and was beginning to resemble his father, Jisil al-Sadi. Star smiled wide when she saw me and dropped her whisk in the bowl when she saw Nova. Years earlier, they had become friends as close as sisters and both ran to embrace the other. Caine didn’t know quite what to do. He seemed startled and mumbled, “Hey, Z.”