by Steve Cash
“The China Clipper leaves for Hong Kong from San Francisco,” he said. “She makes her first stop in Honolulu.” Jack paused and looked at each of us one by one. “Why not me?”
No one said a word for a moment or two, and it wasn’t me, or Opari, or Geaxi, Ray, Nova, or even Sailor who answered. It was Mowsel. He grinned wide, exposing his gap and tilting his head in Jack’s general direction. “Why not, indeed!” he said.
The Egizahar Meq may be able to use and develop various forms of dealing with time and the passage of time, including the elegant, bewitching, difficult, and conscious/unconscious art of timedancing. Most if not all of these skills and “abilities” involve the illusion of time slowing down. According to Sailor, Mowsel, and Opari, this has always been so. In a similar, but external and practical manner, all Meq possess the ability to mobilize and simply leave—anytime, anywhere, and for whatever length of time is necessary. This is not illusion. The Meq can and must be able to move. Our survival depends upon it.
Jack wasted no time in wiring Carolina and telling her he was closing the big house and going on the road for several weeks, maybe months. He kept his destination vague and said he would stay in touch. Then he informed the Post-Dispatch that he would be unavailable and out of the country until further notification, bought our train tickets, and by the end of June we were leaving Union Station and heading west. In San Francisco, on the Fourth of July, along with the rest of America, we celebrated Ray’s birthday. We spent the whole day taking long taxi rides back and forth across the new and beautiful Golden Gate Bridge.
We had made reservations on the China Clipper before we left St. Louis. Our departure date was set for the sixth. On the fifth, Jack picked up our tickets and itineraries for the long flight and brought them back to the hotel. In the package along with the tickets, there was an unmarked envelope with a neatly typed, two-page letter inside. It was unsigned, although there was little doubt who wrote the letter. It was from “Cardinal” and included a short, but comprehensive dossier on the third son of Sangea Hiramura, the one who had supposedly disappeared years earlier in Alaska. His name was Tomizo, though he was often called Sak or “strong wind.” The dossier listed an address in Juneau where he had lived as recently as 1935. “Cardinal” suggested we begin our search there. Since this was more information than we had on the other sons or Shutratek, Sailor and I changed our plans. Instead of flying to Hong Kong and sailing to Japan, we were going to Alaska. Sailor welcomed the new information, saying “Cardinal” seemed to have exquisite timing, then he turned to Jack with a wry smile. “I cannot help wondering, Jack,” Sailor said, giving me a quick glance, “are we being led, followed, or simply anticipated?”
“I can’t answer that,” Jack said. “But I can stop this thing right now, Sailor…if you want. You tell me and I’ll tell him and it’ll be over.”
“I do not think it would be that easy at this point,” Sailor said. “No, we must play it out. We must find the castle. If ‘Cardinal’ can help us in this, then so be it. We have no choice.”
“We always have choice, Sailor,” Geaxi remarked.
Without looking at her, Sailor said, “Not this time, Geaxi.”
The morning of July 6 began cold and foggy. In our hotel room, Opari and I woke early and stayed in bed all morning, holding each other and talking, telling stories, and laughing. We had spent the last few years being together almost every day. I would miss her more in this parting than ever before and she felt the same. I was learning once again the Itxaron, the Wait, only intensifies with time. Any and all partings and farewells become more difficult as the Wait lengthens. Both of us were learning to spend the precious hours and moments before departure, not by sharing our thoughts of separation, but our dreams of return.
Just before noon, the seven of us, plus Jack, met for a quick meal and Sailor outlined his plan. He suggested we relay all information concerning the castle through Jack in St. Louis. Sailor seemed to think Jack would be home in weeks and none of us would be searching longer than six or seven months. Mowsel didn’t agree, but we all agreed to relay our information through Jack. By one o’clock, the skies had cleared. An hour later, Sailor and I watched from the dock as the giant, luxurious, and graceful seaplane, the China Clipper, lifted out of the water of San Francisco Bay, circled in a wide arc, and flew directly above the Golden Gate Bridge, then disappeared over the horizon. Before the big plane was out of sight, I thought I caught a glimpse of Ray tipping his beret to us through his passenger window.
Sailor and I left the next day. On an impulse, we went shopping for new clothes. We packed them in our suitcases along with our Brazilian passports and boarded a train for Seattle. Though we didn’t know it at the time, that same day on the other side of the Pacific, Japanese forces were invading China at the Battle of Lugou Bridge, also known as Marco Polo Bridge. Once we were in Seattle, we booked passage on a small passenger ship, the Sophia, whose course north, according to their itinerary, “followed the whales to Alaska.” To Sailor and me, that sounded good enough.
On the beautiful trip up the coast, the weather held and most passengers roamed the decks of the ship constantly. Sailing inside Queen Charlotte Sound, the Sophia followed Hecate Strait, staying on the inside passages, stopping in Ketchikan, then on to Petersburg and beyond to Stephens Passage. The rugged, green coastline was visible nearly every day of the voyage. As Sailor and I became a common presence on deck, several of the women passengers commented on our comportment and good manners. They were impressed with Sailor’s English and the fact that two children could be traveling alone and without a chaperone. Sailor usually answered, “Brazil is very far away, madam. We have learned quickly.” Our story was a simple one: we were on our way to visit our uncle for a year. No one ever doubted the story and we raised no suspicions with the captain or crew. Ten days after leaving Seattle, the Sophia anchored in Juneau on the only bad weather day of the journey. The captain said he’d never seen such good weather hold for so long. In Juneau, a steady rain was falling, and it continued to fall. During the next four months, there were three clear days in Juneau.
On the first day there, we found the address “Cardinal” had given us. It was a boardinghouse a half mile up the hill from the docks on the north end of town. The tenants seemed to be mainly fishermen and longshoremen. Tomizo Hiramura was nowhere to be found, but he was remembered affectionately by the landlord, who even showed us a unique piece of sculpture he once received from Tomizo in lieu of rent. He handed the piece to Sailor for him to examine. It was part of an antler, hand-carved and sculpted into the shape of a hunter at sea, alone in his kayak. Tiny geometric shapes and symbols were etched into the kayak, and the whole piece was polished to a high sheen. Sailor ran his finger lightly over the shapes and glanced at me. “Ainu,” he said. The bottom of the kayak had been flattened so the piece could sit on a mantel or table. Sailor turned it over and carved into the base was the name Sak. The landlord said he’d heard the odd man was still in Juneau; however, he hadn’t seen him.
A little over four months later, we were still in Juneau ourselves, searching, asking questions, and coming up empty. It occurred to me that every time Sailor and I had ever gone searching for something or someone, they always became impossible to find. In December, another worry clouded my mind. We learned from the newspapers that the Japanese had taken over Nanking and a massacre of the civilian population was rumored to be taking place. My singular thought and worry was Opari. I knew she was in extreme danger and I could do nothing about it. Sailor reminded me Opari was much more acquainted than were the Japanese with the people and landscape around Nanking. She would be able to intuit who to see and where to go well ahead of the Japanese. “And do not forget, Zianno, she carries one of these,” Sailor said. He reached inside his shirt and slowly extracted the Stone, which hung from a leather necklace. I knew he was right, and tried to put it out of my mind, but my dreams became continually more restless and filled with horrific images for weeks.
On a tip from a salmon fisherman, we flew by bush plane to the town of Sitka, where we spent the rest of the winter. The days were short, wet, cold, and dark. We traveled on to Valdez on another tip, but found no current or reliable information on Tomizo Hiramura, though many people had recollections of him. From Valdez, we followed leads to several small coastal towns and a few villages. By the end of summer, we were staying in Seward. We had no luck in Seward either; however, they did have an excellent local semipro baseball team and I went to every home game. We lived the better part of the next year on, in, and around Kodiak Island, one of the most beautiful and isolated places we’d been. We met fishermen from all over the world, including Russians, Norwegians, Japanese, and native Aleuts. Tomizo was not among them.
Moving around Alaska at that time was not too difficult for two twelve-year-olds on their own. Alaska was still a territory and not yet a state, which meant most things were a little more wide open. Sailor and I often drew stares, but never a question. Most Alaskans had seen stranger things than the two of us.
The country is so big and so wild it is difficult to describe in any language. It must be experienced. Mountains and coast, coast and mountains, Alaska seems to never end. From Kodiak Island we went to Kenai, based on a conversation we had with a potter. He showed us a beautiful bowl he had been given. It was decorated in an ancient style the potter called jomon. I turned to Sailor and asked, “Ainu?” Sailor nodded yes. The bowl also had “Sak” etched into the base.
That same night, there was a display in the skies over Kenai like I had never seen before, even in Norway. The northern lights shimmered and danced above us in five, six, seven shades of blue and no other color—only infinite folding curtains of blue, opening and closing all night long across the sky. Sailor and I walked along the shoreline, watching and talking about the Meq. Sailor spoke at length of missing friends and family. He shared memories of Eder, Baju, Unai, Usoa, and also related several adventures he’d had with my own mama and papa, Xamurra and Yaldi. We discussed Nova’s dreams and Sailor showed deep concern for Nova. We talked again about the stone spheres and Sailor asked a few questions about where they’d been found and by whom. At some point, I brought up the Fleur-du-Mal.
“Why does he do it, Sailor?”
“Do what, Zianno?”
“All of it…every despicable act! Murder, torture—name it. Why does he hate so much and so many? What happened to him? And why is he so obsessed with the Sixth Stone? Why doesn’t he believe Susheela the Ninth and just let her go?”
“Firstly, he cannot let anything go. There lies his true problem. Secondly, you have asked two questions, Zianno. It is ironic both questions seem to have the identical answer.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Do you recall in Norway when Zeru-Meq confronted his nephew?”
“Yes. Zeru-Meq told him he knew why Xanti wanted the Sixth Stone and he ‘saw what he saw.’ I have always wondered what he meant and what it was Zeru-Meq ‘saw.’”
Sailor paused and looked up again at the northern lights. He turned his star sapphire between his thumb and forefinger. “I also wondered these things. Once we left Norway, I confronted him directly and asked him to tell me what he had ‘seen.’ If Zeru-Meq had not been the one to tell me, I never would have believed it. But, alas, Zeru-Meq never lies.”
“What did he see?”
“And Xanti was only twenty-two months old at the time.”
“Sailor, what did Zeru-Meq see?”
“In my opinion, he saw nothing less than the birth of the Fleur-du-Mal!”
I looked at Sailor dumbfounded. “I’m lost. Please…start at the beginning.”
“Yes, of course,” he said, glancing up at the sky once more. Dawn was at least an hour away and the northern lights still danced above us, but we both knew a fog bank would soon be creeping into Cook Inlet and within thirty minutes everything would be obscured. “I suggest we return to the hotel room,” Sailor said. “I shall relate exactly what Zeru-Meq witnessed and then you divine its meaning. I tell you, Zianno, this incident explains everything.”
An hour later, Sailor had finished talking. He was sitting in the one chair the room had to offer and I sat on the edge of my bed. Like Sailor when he had heard the story, I could barely believe it. It sounded impossible, especially for a twenty-two-month-old Xanti Otso. The incident had occurred 2,128 years ago in Sabratha, Xanti’s birthplace. His father’s name was Matai and he was on the run from the invading Romans. Matai was Meq, but he had also been a known assassin for Hannibal and other Carthaginian generals. Hilargi, Xanti’s mother and Zeru-Meq’s sister, had asked to leave Sabratha and escape to Spain as soon as possible. Zeru-Meq was to assist them down the coast to a small village where he had arranged a clandestine crossing to Spain with a Basque fisherman. Hoping to surprise his sister, he arrived in Sabratha a day earlier than expected. As he approached the small house, he heard a woman screaming. It was Hilargi. Zeru-Meq rushed inside to see Matai standing over Hilargi, who was on the floor, bleeding and dying with a knife plunged deep in her throat. Rose stems and rose petals were scattered around her. Matai’s face and hands were covered with scratches. Xanti sat on the floor ten feet away. In his hands, he held two wooden toy blocks Zeru-Meq had made for him. He was staring without emotion at Matai. In the next instant, a kitchen knife came flying through the air and plunged into Matai’s throat. He fell to his knees, then looked once at Xanti and collapsed on top of Hilargi, rolling over and gagging. He died within seconds. Zeru-Meq glanced down at his nephew, but Xanti said nothing and did nothing. He simply stared at Matai. No one had thrown the knife. Zeru-Meq is confident there is only one explanation—Xanti did it with his mind. For what reason, he never found out. The boy never said a word then and he has never used telekinesis again, but Zeru-Meq thinks Xanti has been driven ever since by an insatiable desire to regain this ability and power. Zeru-Meq says Xanti believes the Sixth Stone will give it to him.
“Do you not see the pattern, Zianno?” Sailor asked. “The Fleur-du-Mal seeks dominion over everything and everyone. He has developed acute abilities and skills which no other Egipurdiko Meq has ever possessed, before or since. He flaunts all things Meq simply because he can, as well as curses and spells, such as the one in Mali—the ‘Lie’ and the ‘Prophesy.’ However, all this aberrant and perverse ambition is driven by his true desire and obsession for the one ‘ability’ he craves more than all others—telekinesis. It is because he has lost this ‘ability’ and cannot regain it that his madness was born, thus the Fleur-du-Mal.”
I let a moment or two pass and thought about what Zeru-Meq had seen and Sailor’s theory about what it meant. I wasn’t sure if the theory was the correct one or not. There were so many contradictory facts concerning the Fleur-du-Mal. Sailor’s theory seemed too simple and predictable for Xanti Otso. I’d looked in his green eyes many times and each time there were more heads than one on the beast inside.
“Did you know Matai Otso, Sailor?”
“No, I did not. He had an unsavory reputation to say the least, yet he was never said to be unstable or particularly vicious. He was merely known as a reliable and efficient killer.”
“Did you know Hilargi?”
“Yes, I knew her well. She and Zeru-Meq had a bond as close as twins although she was five years his junior. Hilargi had a pure heart, a warm smile, and a quick wit. I shall never understand why she crossed in the Zeharkatu, nor shall Zeru-Meq.” Sailor paused and sat forward in his chair. “Zianno, regardless of the Fleur-du-Mal’s motives, we must free Susheela the Ninth. This is imperative!” Sailor’s “ghost eye” cleared instantly.
I hadn’t heard him mention Susheela the Ninth in some time. “Have you heard…the voice recently? In your dreams?”
“Do you mean Deza or Susheela the Ninth?” Sailor asked, raising one eyebrow.
“Either…both.”
Sailor remained silent for a full ten seconds. “No,” he said finally.
Sailor and I left Kenai for Anchorage soon after, where we lived through the winter and spring, the “long season” I called it because of the many short days and long, dark nights. In Anchorage, I was able to contact St. Louis. I was surprised but pleased to hear Carolina’s voice. She had returned to St. Louis earlier in the year when Jack told her he would be away from St. Louis for an extended length of time. I asked if she knew where he was going. Carolina said Jack told her he was “on assignment.” “For whom, the Post-Dispatch?” I asked. “He never said,” Carolina answered. She also mentioned she had been in touch with Star, Willie, and Caine in Cornwall, and Mitch in Paris. They all feared war was inevitable in Europe. Caine was in his second year at Cambridge and Carolina was worried. I asked if she’d heard anything from one of us. “Not a word,” she said, then added, “Z, are you all right?” I assured her I was fine and so was Sailor and I promised to write a long letter. It would be over two years before I did, and under much different circumstances.
During that spring in Anchorage, Sailor found and befriended a local taxidermist who had met with Tomizo Hiramura the previous year concerning various methods of mounting large birds of prey, such as hawks and eagles. This was puzzling information, but it was our first lead in months. The taxidermist believed Tomizo had relocated to the interior, possibly to Fairbanks.
After paying too much for a bush pilot and a flight to Fairbanks, our frustrations only began to multiply. Not one person we spoke with had ever heard of Tomizo, and life for two boys traveling alone became more difficult daily. It was much harder to remain anonymous in Fairbanks. We left two months later with nothing but a piece of advice, which Sailor construed to be a good clue—the best place to watch eagles. An old man in Fairbanks had told him to go to Homer where the eagles were “thick as crows.” We reached the little town of Homer at the far end of the Kenai Peninsula in six days, one day after war had been declared in Europe.
