“Well, this place,” Birhan pointed to the star on the first plate, “this could be Adi Keyh, a market city, but if Mister is looking for something very old, this is more like to be Qohaito or Toconda.”
“What are they?”
“Places where there used to be cities. Very old. There is a dam and ruins and tombs.”
“What do you know about the people who lived in those old cities?”
“Not much. I mostly learned modern history in school. Why look back, eh?” Birhan had laughed. “But when doctor says Mister may go, I take you. Yes?”
“No. I’ll go alone.” Angelo had stopped talking then, unwilling to let anyone else get wrapped up in his trouble. He liked the boy. He had liked Khalid, too.
But when Abrihet had come to clean his room later in the day, she had also come to beg. Birhan was about to come of age and would be conscripted into the army—decades of difficult service and too often a death sentence. Hundreds of boys were fleeing Eritrea illegally, but they, too, faced the dangers of border crossings and human trafficking, only to find themselves, if they were lucky, in a refugee camp. Abrihet wanted Angelo to take Birhan with him, to help him get out of the country.
Angelo had refused, for the same reason he couldn’t commit to trying to rescue Mouse’s brother. In the deep parts of himself, the truth was coming to light. He didn’t mean to live past a confrontation with Mouse’s father. It wasn’t that he meant to fail; he just meant to die in the killing. He didn’t want to live in a world without Mouse.
But after their kindness to him, Angelo wanted to do something to help Abrihet and Birhan. He had asked the boy to be his guide; Angelo would pay well for his service. Then maybe Birhan could use the money to get out of the country, one way or another.
Angelo had told Abrihet this, but he’d said nothing to Birhan. He didn’t know what hopes the boy had hung on him. “Your mother said you don’t want to join the army?”
“No boys I know want to die at seventeen,” Birhan answered as the jeep twisted around a corner and the road opened up to the highlands of Eritrea.
Looking out at the jumbled peaks of the mountains, Angelo felt their great age sink into his soul as if he was being transported back in time. And then Birhan turned on the radio and a tinny blast of music broke the spell.
“Now what do we do?” Birhan asked. The sun was sinking lower against the mountains. They’d arrived at Adi Keyh in the middle of the morning and then trekked out to the ruins at Qohaito.
Angelo hadn’t expected them to be so spread out—it really had been an ancient city. And he didn’t know what he was looking for. The breath of God to guide him? What the hell did that mean?
He felt lost, stumbling over the expansive, stony ground from monument to monument, the heat of the day baking his back. He touched the stone walls, the pillars and their etchings, the flowered cross in the tomb, the paintings in the cave—but he felt and found nothing. No trace of power, no hidden compartments. Just nothing.
They’d finally walked to the north end of the plateau. Angelo’s legs were trembling and weak.
“Mister should rest.”
Angelo shook his head. “I see some pillars up ahead. Let’s try there, and then we’ll head back. Looks like there’s a storm coming in, anyway.”
Birhan looked out beyond the mountains. “No rain. Just clouds.”
They walked in silence, wind tearing over the plateau and carrying the intermittent sounds of the goats and cows that belonged to the small, scattered communities of Saho, who called Qohaito home. The last of the sun beamed down as Angelo and Birhan reached the four pillars built on a mound surrounded by a stone wall. Steel rods had been run into the ground around the site, but the wire between them, meant to keep people at a distance, had either broken away or been cut. Angelo made his way slowly toward the ruins.
“What is this place?” he asked.
“A temple I think,” Birhan answered.
“But how old?” Angelo meant the question for himself, though Birhan answered this one, too.
“I do not know, but he might.” He pointed at an old man herding goats. Birhan called out to him. The old man made his way to the would-be fence and stopped and yelled at them. Angelo didn’t need to know Saho to understand the old man was telling them they weren’t supposed to be there.
Birhan jogged over to him and put him at ease somehow. Angelo saw the man’s face light up. He caught snippets of animated words and watched the old man’s withered hands point and flail as they helped tell whatever story he spun.
“It’s as I say, a temple,” Birhan said when he came back. “Old.”
Angelo waited for the rest, but when it was clear it wasn’t coming, he looked at Birhan’s face. He was waiting to be asked.
“What else did the old man say?”
Birhan smiled and nodded. “He says is very old. Not as old as the cave paintings or the houses underneath.” He stomped his foot on the ground and a hollow echo reverberated. “But older than most of the other places.”
“What kind of temple?”
“He does not say.”
The thick band of clouds had descended on the plateau, crawling like fog from the east and swallowing the sun.
“But he says we should not be here.”
Angelo was looking at the pillars—the ones still standing and the broken and fallen ones, too. His hands hovered over the faded etchings. “Did he say if the temple has a name?”
“He says his people have always called it Mariam Wakino.”
The mist rolled over them, bringing a touch of coolness in the air, and Angelo shivered. He walked between the remains of the pillars marking the entrance, and the hairs along his arms tickled and rose. The temple itself was gone, but there was no telling what artifacts might be hiding under the rubble. If the object marked on the map was here, it would be years before Angelo uncovered it.
He closed his eyes, his hand resting against one of the pillars. Some of the lettering seemed familiar; the script resembled the primitive Hebrew in the gold book. But it was blended with Ge’ez, the language scholars believed was common during the heyday of Qohaito.
Mariam Wakino. Angelo played with the name of the temple, something worming its way forward from the back of his mind. Mariam was a common name for Christians and Muslims alike in Eritrea. Some thought it meant “beloved.” A modern Hebrew interpretation was “rebellious.” But Mariam was a modernization of Miriam, an Old Testament Hebrew name, most notably the sister of Moses and Aaron. Among the earliest translations, miriam was often associated with water—strong waters, bitter sea.
“I may be wrong, Mister. There may be rain,” Birhan said.
Angelo looked over the boy’s shoulder to flashes of lightning in the steel-gray clouds moving swiftly over the mountains, but his mind was turned inward, putting pieces of a puzzle together.
One of the reasons the Israeli government had accepted the authenticity of the Ethiopian Jews was that they traced their lineage from the tribe of Dan, one of the lost tribes. The Danites were the only known Israelite seafarers. Biblical and apocryphal texts spoke of them making their homes in their ships, tethered to shore or out at sea. They loved the water. Once they were displaced with the other ten tribes and lost to history, the best oral traditions traced the tribe of Dan from Egypt down into the kingdom of Kush, in modern-day Sudan, and then farther still into Ethiopia. Pockets of the tribe had seemed to settle as others had moved on. Both modern-day archaeology and DNA testing supported these theories.
What if a splinter group had migrated into Eritrea? Settling in the landlocked mountains, they would surely have longed for the sea once more. If the ruins here at Qohaito were from a Jewish temple built by the fragments of the lost tribe of Dan, might they have named their temple after their hope to return to “strong waters” someday?
If this was an ancient Jewish temple belonging to the Danites, maybe the writer of the gold book had once crouched in the shade of this very spot and e
tched the star on the map.
Angelo looked up at the highest pillar. “What does Wakino mean, Birhan?”
“Is the name of the temple, like Mister.”
“Wakino doesn’t have any other meaning in Tigrinya or Saho?”
Birhan shrugged. “Maybe is old?”
Wakino, Wakin. What if it was a name like Miriam—Joaquin? But old Hebrew, Joachim. Raised by God.
His mouth went suddenly dry. I am beyond the waters raised by God in the land of the lost ones. Twisted through tongues and the ages, the name meant ‘Waters Raised by God.’
But the passage in the poem said “beyond the waters.” Angelo looked up and out across what was left of the mist-covered plateau. Of course they wouldn’t keep treasure in the temple. Temples got raided, especially in a stranger’s lands. The Danites would have hidden their valuables somewhere else. Somewhere beyond.
He began walking to the plateau’s edge.
“Wait, Mister,” Birhan said as he followed. “There is no more to see.”
“What about down there?” Angelo asked, pointing at a faint footpath descending steeply down the escarpment.
“The shepherds come and go to take their goats down to the river for water in the dry season. Mister cannot climb down there.”
“We have to.” Angelo’s blood was jumping with discovery. “It’s down there.” He stiffly lowered himself to the ground.
“Stop, Mister, please.” Birhan sounded scared.
Angelo eased himself over the edge, his feet dangling just a few inches above the top of the footpath, his thick arms bulging with his weight.
“Angelo, please.” It was the first time Birhan had used his name, and it made Angelo stop. “Let me go first. I catch you if you fall.” He jumped down to the footpath and turned with his hand outstretched. “Give me your bag. I carry.”
Angelo hesitated a moment, but he knew Birhan was right. It would be a miracle if Angelo’s legs didn’t buckle and send him tumbling down to the river below. Carrying the extra weight of the satchel would make it almost certain to happen. “There are very valuable things in that bag,” he said as he handed it over.
“Maybe I should carry Mister, too?”
Angelo shook his head. He didn’t think his pride could handle feeling any more helpless than he already did. But he did take Birhan’s hand to steady himself as he dropped the rest of the way onto the footpath. As they inched their way down the escarpment, he kept envisioning the goatherd creeping his way along the path—if the old man could do it, so could Angelo.
The heavy clouds seemed to sink down the mountain with them. Angelo’s legs were trembling violently, and his arms were burning with the work of moving his crutches and balancing. The path started to level out and then twisted to the right of an outcropping and dropped sharply down again, but there was another, narrower path that led to the left, as if the rock had erupted from the mountain and split the path in two.
“Let’s try left,” Angelo panted, not sure he could keep going down and certain he would never be able to go back up. As he took a first step onto the path, which was covered with some kind of wiry grass, he knew. “Yes,” he whispered. “This is the way.”
He had to remind himself to take deep breaths as they moved through the narrow passageway onto a leveled terrace hidden under a shelf of rock that jutted out from the side of the escarpment like an awning. Excitement fluttered in his chest—an obelisk stood at the far end of the terrace. It was not as large as many up on the plateau, but it was carved more elaborately. It looked like a model tower—foundation blocks and then windows chiseled into the stone all the way up to the top, where it rounded into a half-circle, like the sun or moon rising. At the base was a set of carved stone doors, marked with the perfect details of a frame, doorjamb, handle, and even a lock, as if they were meant to allow tiny people to come and go out of the tower. But the doors appeared to be solid rock.
Angelo stepped closer and then circled the obelisk.
“This stone is not like the others, right, Mister?”
Angelo looked up as he heard the awe in the boy’s voice. Birhan felt the power of the place, too. “This is different.”
After running his hands along the sides of the obelisk, pushing on the doors and pressing against the indentations of the carved windows, Angelo was at a loss as to what to do next. He could see no words on the stone.
A fine mist had started to fall. “We must go soon, Mister,” Birhan said. “We cannot go up if the path is very wet.”
Angelo glanced up at the sky and nodded. “Can I have my bag?”
He lowered the satchel to the ground, little plumes of dust rising up around it, and reached in to pull out first the Petra statue and then, from its back, the stone box. Angelo hesitated before opening it. He remembered when Mouse had lifted words of a spell from an old text, how those words had to be said as they had been originally scripted in order for the magic to happen. The words themselves didn’t really matter. It was the intention, the energy put into them by the writer, that made the spell work.
He wiggled the top off the box, but before he could even lift the gold plates from the ashes, a wisp of wind whipped around the obelisk and lifted a finger of the fine ash up and out of the box. It twisted as it snaked toward the door carved into the obelisk.
Birhan muttered something Angelo didn’t understand. Angelo was trying to stay as still as possible, to hold the box steady, to do nothing that might break the flow of air that drove the tendril of ash into the sculpted lock on the door. He thought he heard a click. The ash shot back into the box, the air now completely still. And the doors opened.
His hands shaking, Angelo put the lid back on the stone box and then inched toward the obelisk on his knees, like a penitent come to pray at the altar. Fat raindrops now fell intermittently around him. He could see nothing in the interior of the stone tower, and so he blindly slid his hand through the open doors, groping in the darkness. All was smooth, dusty stone. His mind kept playing images of lurking scorpions or spiders as he pushed his neck and shoulder hard against the monument, stretching his arm inside as far as he could.
Leaning his face against the stone, his lips muttering a silent prayer remembered from seminary, Angelo’s fingers brushed against something hard and long and round. He closed his fingers around the thing and dragged it into the light.
Birhan took a step closer and bent down over Angelo’s shoulder. “We came all this way for a stick?”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
It certainly looked like a stick, Angelo thought bitterly as he rolled it between his hands back at the hotel in Adi Keyh a couple of hours later.
Birhan had gone to get them supper—Angelo was too tired to move. His arms were weak from carrying most of his weight all day, marks from the crutches deep and red on his forearms. His legs and back spasmed with sharp, hot pain. Even a warm shower had offered little relief. But it was really his spirit that was pulling Angelo down. He’d had to let Birhan carry him most of the way back up the path to the plateau. He’d had to stop several times to rest. He had pushed his body far beyond its limits, and for what?
It was about as long as his forearm and as wide around as a child’s wrist, though it tapered slightly from one end to the other. It was knotty but smooth, with gentle hills and valleys running along its length. It was made of wood, but Angelo couldn’t tell what kind. It seemed to have been sheared of its bark, but the grain itself was dark with tints of red and gold playing in the light.
With a sigh, he shoved it back in the bag. He could only hope that when they found the next X on the map it gave them some answers. If they found the next place. He threw himself back on the bed and picked up his journal, pulling out his rubbing of the map. The next marked star came from the middle panel and rested close to the left-hand edge, just a little higher and a finger’s width away from the first. They needed to be looking south, but not far, and a little east, closer to the coast.
And deep in the mountain,
bitter with loss, the writer had said. Assuming that the poem was meant as a guide and the lines drafted to move the searcher from one point to the next, Angelo believed he was looking for a cave. He rolled over and pulled a crinkled map of Eritrea out of his bag. He was hunched over it when Birhan came back, carrying a large plate of food.
“The woman in the kitchen, she knows my mother,” he said, smiling. “She cooked for us. Smells good.” He set the platter down on the bed and knelt beside it.
“Yes, it does,” Angelo said as he sat up. He tore at the flatbread and dipped it in one of the stews piled on the plate. In between bites, he asked, “Do you know the mountains southeast of here?”
“Some. Is that where we go to look next?”
Angelo nodded, chewing. “Are there caves?”
Birhan shrugged. “Caves have bad bugs in them. What would I be wanting with them?”
Angelo swallowed at the sudden tightness in his chest and the memory of Mouse saying nearly the same thing, of him teasing her as they explored the cave that took them to the bone shard of the Seven Sisters. He wasn’t hungry anymore. He laid his head back against the wall.
“Mister?”
“I’m just tired. But I need to know if there are any caves around here—particularly south and east, like this.” He pointed to the rubbing of the map. “The book says we should look deep in the mountains bitter with loss. I don’t understand the last part, but I’m pretty sure the first means a cave.”
Birhan took another chunk of flatbread to scoop up a heap of stew and shoved it in his mouth as he stood again. “Cave in the bitter mountains. I find someone. Be back like the Flash.” He smiled over his shoulder—he’d been trying out English slang and idiom. “Yes?”
“Almost. ‘Back in a flash,’” Angelo answered.
“Not superhero?”
“No.” Angelo cocked his head. “But now that I think about it, I like yours better.”
Birhan shrugged and closed the door.
Angelo took out the piece of wood again. His memory of Mouse and the bone shard had him wondering. The shard had been lost with Mouse. According to Kitty, there’d been nothing left of her, not even her clothes or backpack. Was this piece of wood supposed to be a replacement, sent by whatever had sent the bone? So that he could finish what he and Mouse had started?
Book of the Just Page 22
