by D. J. Niko
Then, suddenly, faces. Covered with black cloth, all but the eyes. Marching somberly, without purpose, without direction. Strangers, one after another, appearing and vanishing like souls departing. Except for one woman, who stood motionless before him. A gust of wind ripped the veil from her face. She was pale, ghostlike. She lifted her eyes, and he came face-to-face with those sapphires he knew so well. The woman wore Calcedony’s face but had the detached demeanor of a wraith. She lifted a cloaked arm, pointing toward something.
A city on a mountain. A kingdom in the clouds. He walked toward it, knowing not where his feet took him. Treacherous steps led him up a vertical slope, and he clawed his way to the top. There he came to a stone gate, inscribed in the Bedouin dialect with these words: “Men’s fate is written in stone, but they have gouged out their eyes and cannot see.”
Everything went white.
Gabriel awoke in the fetal position, his skin burning and covered with sweat.
Hairan sat in lotus posture opposite him, his manner as calm as the sea on a summer day.
Gabriel wiped the sweat and blood-mud from his face, trying to make sense of what he had just experienced.
“You must go, my friend.” Hairan’s voice was like a velvet blanket, gentler and more peaceful than Gabriel had ever heard it.
“Go … where?” Gabriel began to fear he had done or said something in his trance state that had offended Hairan and the tribe.
“Go … to the city in the mountains.”
Gabriel looked at him wild-eyed. He could not utter a word. How did he know?
Hairan continued. “She calls you to the great kingdom. It is what you must do. What you carry inside, you must take there. And there you shall leave it.”
A violent sob left Gabriel’s throat. His face was twisted with the kind of pain no potion could heal. Hairan’s words hadn’t even registered on his consciousness. His thoughts were populated with images of his one true love.
“Is she there? Tell me, for the love of everything you hold dear. Where is she?”
“No,” Hairan whispered. “She is not there. She dwells in a different world, which you will never enter.”
The chief’s words cut to Gabriel’s core. He knew in his deepest heart it was true: he would never see Calcedony again. He dropped his head to his knees and sobbed.
Hairan was as unyielding as a hunk of stone. “Do not despair, Abyan. Your quest is bigger than her, bigger than you. You have been chosen to take the rare journey. Now is not the time for tears; it is the time for courage.” He repeated: “What you carry inside, you must take to the great kingdom. And there you shall leave it.”
Drained, Gabriel composed himself and let the weight of Hairan’s statement settle over him. “I don’t want to leave the tribe. My place is here now.”
“There is nothing left for you here. You must go. You must walk through the stone gate.”
“How do you know about the city in the mountains, the stone gate?”
“I have seen what you have seen. That is how I know this is your fate.”
The two men exchanged a lingering glance. There were no more secrets. Gabriel knew what he had to do. At last, he was at peace.
That night on the top of the dune, Gabriel slept alone under the stars.
By daybreak, he was gone.
Eleven
Translating the inscriptions using the Sheba Stone was a far more complicated business than Sarah had imagined. The obelisk-shaped monolith, which stood ten feet tall and six feet wide, was inscribed from top to bottom with writings that apparently praised the life and rule of the Queen of Sheba. Six different dialects from the region were used in the inscriptions, but they weren’t organized according to any method familiar to Sarah. A single passage might contain as many as four dialects, perhaps in an effort to encrypt the texts or to have parts of the passage read by certain tribes and not others. Whatever the motivation, the system was infuriating to Sarah, who, though more than two weeks into the process, was getting nowhere.
Day and night she sat next to the Sheba Stone, staring, bewildered, at the text and trying to ascertain some sort of pattern. She was far from a breakthrough and questioned what she was even doing there. For all her talent for language, she felt out of her league.
She stared at the stone blankly, debating whether to leave everything with the church and go back to London, maybe try to salvage what was left of her career. And if she couldn’t do that, she could always go to America, where blemishes on one’s reputation were far more easily forgiven.
As attractive as it sounded to be rid of this mess and start over, however, she couldn’t do it. The same force that had propelled her from the moment she’d found the tomb was still at work, pushing her to take the next step despite her trepidation.
She needed Apostolos’ help, but he was as elusive as a leopard in daylight. Whether he was purposely avoiding her or was consumed by his own work, she did not know. But she could not do this without him, so finally she decided to seek him out.
One morning she found him in the courtyard, filling the birdbaths with water and sprinkling crumbs from bread he had tucked into his robes. On a stone bench he sat so placidly Sarah could not bring herself to invade his peace. Instead, she watched him from the opposite corner of the courtyard. Under his fringed umbrella, he wrote into a notebook, periodically looking up as if for inspiration.
She waited a long while before finally approaching. ”Good day. I see you like to write.”
Flustered by her sudden presence, he hurriedly closed his notebook and slipped it into the folds of his garment. “It is nothing.”
She sat next to him. “I have been meaning to seek your counsel. You are the only one who holds the knowledge I need.”
He looked into the sun, squinting. “Others have sought this knowledge in the past. They were not to be trusted.”
“I am not them.”
“The word of the tenth saint is sacred. It is not to fall into the wrong hands.”
She spoke softly and slowly. “I know how important he is to your faith. I respect that. But what if his message is important to all of mankind? Should the knowledge remain with few when it can help many?”
Apostolos fell silent. He looked down and fidgeted with the rosary beads wrapped around his bony wrist. Sarah recognized his unwillingness to take the conversation any further and decided to let him be. She could not push him, for she needed him to be an ally. She would have to find another way to gain his trust.
The rest of the day she scribbled thoughts in her notebook, but her mind was clouded. She hadn’t slept well in days, working from early morning until she could no longer stay awake. Exhausted, she rested her head on the table and fell asleep before suppertime.
She awoke before dawn the next morning, still in the same position but covered with a blanket. A bowl of millet rested on top of her papers. She looked for her notes, certain they had been under her hand when she’d fallen asleep. She found only a paper with two words written in English: Mother Sea.
The monk had left her a clue, and though it made no sense, she saw it as a good sign. He was trying to communicate with her, but clearly it had to be on his terms.
In the days that followed, Sarah wasted no more time. She set aside her Western notions of reasoning and negotiating and relied on her instincts instead. Apostolos’ distrust of people was painfully obvious. If it was solitude he needed in order to express himself, then she would give it to him. Instead of confronting him in person, she wrote him letters.
Most humble and wise mote,
Today I took a walk outside. The land seems parched, in need of rain. The red clay is brittle underfoot and the birds’ bath is dry but for a few drops. Still, a swallow persists, determined to escape the heat.
I feel like that swallow sometimes. Looking for drops in a barren place. Waiting for the deluge.
I bid you good day.
Sarah
At first the letters were part of the strategy.
If she showed vulnerability, perhaps he would be more likely to help. But as he replied, in perfectly eloquent English, Sarah found herself taken by the way he looked at the world.
The swallow is a restless bird. He is forever hunting for drops but never waits for the rain. He goes in search of it. His salvation is never at hand, tortured soul. It is always somewhere else, thousands of miles away, where the rooftops look different and day is night. Some say it is the fulfillment, others the curse, of his destiny.
And yet the flight of the swallow is a most wondrous thing. To look upon his black wings, lustrous as Oriental silk, in perfect harmony with the wind, is to know grace.
His words were like poetry—lyrical, raw, human, yet devoid of self. The letter didn’t contain a signature, not even so much as a name. It was merely an exchange of observations and ideas, none of which he needed to possess or claim as his own. Sarah was grateful for that window into the soul of the monk with emerald eyes, and for the first time she saw him as an individual rather than a pawn in this complicated game she was playing. She wasn’t accustomed to taking interest in the hearts of people. Her work and her pedigree didn’t make such allowances. There never was time for it. Maybe it was Apostolos’ gentle presence, maybe the safety of the stone womb that cradled her, or maybe the sweet solitude she hadn’t known since childhood, but she felt expanded, at peace. Though a sea of questions remained, her horizon was in focus. It was only a matter of navigating the waters.
Sitting on her cot in the cold stone chamber, Sarah reread the monk’s letter. How was it possible he had such insight without ever seeing the world outside of Lalibela? Surely wisdom didn’t come from books and introspection alone. She resisted the urge to define the man and allowed herself the luxury of forsaking rationale and letting things flow with the cosmic current. The feeling was unfamiliar and not altogether comfortable, but she forced herself to sit with it. By the waning light of her oil lamp, she wrote the next dispatch.
Most gentle monk,
I admire the swallow for the same reason I envy it: It is free. It knows no country. It carries its home in its breast. It comes and goes with the scent of the warm breeze. It is not the prisoner of expectations or convention or duty. How sweet it must be to know that freedom.
Humbly,
Sarah
Apostolos’ reply, delivered the next day, stunned Sarah.
Freedom cannot be labeled nor won nor envied. Only when one doesn’t realize what freedom is, is one truly free. The gift of the swallow is its ignorance. Men do not possess such a gift. They are indeed prisoners, but they have the ability to make their shackle their virtue.
But the more dazzling the shackle, the harder it is to escape. Only a pure heart can break free. Some search forever for the door to the golden cage that holds them captive without ever realizing that there is no door. But you have awakened to this. You now have only to step outside.
In spite of their short acquaintance and limited exchange, the monk had seen through to her core. Somehow he knew her quest was not for gain or glory but was a personal struggle to step out of the shadows of a gilded but empty world and embrace her own version of truth. She felt a tinge of shame for being so easy to read, an unacceptable trait for women of her class. The unspoken rule was to leave people guessing, to keep emotions in check and desires buried in the deep cavern of the heart. And yet being seen was a liberation of sorts: there was no more need for hiding.
She held the letter to her forehead, at once puzzled by and grateful for it. Though she had told herself to trust no one, she had no qualms about this man. In her eyes, he was goodness personified.
That night, as she was mulling her reply, another note was slipped under her door. It seemed that just as the monk had won her faith, she had won his.
The man whose writings you seek to interpret was not unlike you. His dying words were his turn at redemption from a heart made dark by the vices of men.
Apostolos knew a lot more than he let on. She needed to confront him to confirm her suspicions. It was late, and the other inhabitants of the monastery were surely asleep, but she could not let this go until morning.
She grabbed a flashlight, threw on her Barbour coat, and started toward the reading room on the other side of the monastery, where Apostolos typically lingered until the late hours. If she hurried, maybe she could catch him before he locked himself in for the night.
The halls were frigid and eerily quiet. Sarah’s heart pounded with anticipation, warming her so that she hardly noticed the cold. She hurried through the narrow passageways and mentally constructed the upcoming conversation with the monk. She feared the shy man would shut down and avoid her questions, so she had to approach him with the right words and tone. She could not afford any mistakes.
The twisting corridor looked even more unfamiliar by the feeble lamplight. Damn the interminable darkness. She wished her eyes were more accustomed to the shadows, like the monks’ were. They could find their way around the halls without so much as a candle flame. She stumbled on a hard surface and, walking too fast to correct her gait, fell to her hands and knees. The ground was wet, apparently from the humid night air.
She fumbled around for her flashlight. The impact must have shut it off or, worse, broken it. She located it and tried to switch it on, to no avail. She reached for the penlight in her jacket pocket and cast a wan light on her surroundings.
In the distance, she spotted what looked like the great wooden door to the labyrinth.
Her left hand stung from the fall. Turning the light on it to check the extent of the damage, she gasped. The wetness she’d felt when she’d fallen was not humidity at all. It was blood. “Oh, dear God.”
She shone the tiny light about her, hands shaking. A pool of blood lay not five feet from where she’d fallen, and the stone floor was streaked with red as far as the entrance to another corridor.
Sarah tried to convince herself there was an innocuous explanation—a wolf, say, had mauled a dog and dragged it into a dark corner to feast on its flesh. But she feared the worst.
Could someone know she was there? Could they know about the stone?
Her lips trembled as she inched toward the wall, crouching in a corner. She searched her pockets for anything to use as a weapon but found nothing. Her heart pounded violently. She drew a few deep breaths and looked for the easiest escape route.
To her right was the labyrinth. Not an option. She’d be a sitting duck in that impossible maze. To her left was the corridor leading to the courtyard. With a bit of luck, she could make her way out and to the jeep.
She crawled in that direction. The place was silent. For a moment, she found herself believing that maybe it was just animals, that she was overreacting.
Then she heard footsteps. The sound was amplified and distorted as it bounced off7 the stone. She couldn’t tell which direction they were coming from, but she was sure they were getting closer.
Before anyone came near enough to see her, she bolted across the dark corridor, focusing on a distant moonbeam shining through a tiny opening in the stone. The outside was not so far away—a couple hundred feet at most. She was running at full stride now, glancing behind periodically to make sure she was not followed. She was getting closer—but not close enough.
Someone jumped out of the shadows in an impact so violent it sent her tumbling. A man whose face she could not see straddled her and twisted her arms as she struggled like a frenzied animal to free herself from his grip.
“Tell me where it is.” He spoke in English with a heavy Ethiopian accent. “This is not a game you are qualified to play. Hand the translation over, or you will suffer the same fate as that idiot monk.”
Had she landed in a pool of Apostolos’ blood? Anger welled, granting her strength she had never known.
“Get off me, you animal,” she yelled as she wriggled her trapped knee loose and drove it into his groin. Her attacker fell, groaning, and she seized the opportunity to get away. She ran as fast as she cou
ld in the direction of the light, her heart thumping wildly, sweat falling into her eyes.
When she looked behind her, she could see the man’s shadow moving in her direction. At the end of the passageway, she turned left, recalling the nearby door leading to the courtyard.
The Ethiopian’s footsteps came faster, louder.
She finally located the door, lunged toward it, and twisted the heavy iron handle.
It was locked.
”Damn it!” Hyperventilating, she futilely searched for the keys or another way out.
The footsteps grew even louder.
She stood motionless, almost catatonic, until a hand sealed her mouth.
“Don’t say a word,” a man’s voice whispered. “You must follow me. This is our only hope.”
Sarah nodded.
The man released his grip.
She turned to see the outline of a familiar face in the faint moonlight. “Thank heavens you’re alive.” She wanted to throw her arms around Apostolos, but there was no time. They had seconds to make their escape.
As ever, the monk wasted no words. With a steady hand, he slipped the key into the lock and pushed open the old wooden door. They spilled out into the darkness.
Sarah had never been so glad to breathe the Ethiopian air.
Her joy lasted no more than a few seconds. By the time they had made it to the other end of the courtyard, they were surrounded.
Sarah counted six, maybe seven, men standing in various parts of the courtyard. At least one was armed. A long blade gleamed in the ghostlight. Apostolos was so calm she wondered if he had any notion of the danger facing them.
“There’s an opening on the north side,” she whispered without taking her eyes off the dark figures. “If we run like mad, we can make it out of here.”
“It won’t work. You must trust me.” He grabbed Sarah’s arm and pulled her inside the monastery.
Two of the men launched after them.
