The Meq (31 page)

I looked out of the window of the train and tried not to think of what that meant. Thoughts only of each other, only of your beloved. I could not let myself think that way, not if I wanted to find Star. I looked at the live oaks and cypresses, some thick with moss, and the tangle of rotted logs and brush beyond. We were approaching New Orleans from the west, skirting the edge of Lake Pontchartrain. Suddenly the image of Captain Woodget came to mind and I remembered that Usoa had said he was living there, somewhere across the lake. I promised myself to try to find him, if and when I could.

We wound through the outskirts and finally stepped off the train well after midnight. Ray had not been to his “town” in over forty years and New Orleans, in the fall of 1904, was no longer anybody’s “town.” It was a wide-open and well-lit city with an international port and a legalized red-light district. However, it didn’t take Ray long to adapt. Within twenty minutes of me telling him I knew only that Unai and Usoa lived somewhere near the Vieux Carré, in a house owned by a man named Antoine Boutrain, we were in the French Quarter and he was asking all the right questions in just the right way, streetwise and elusive, vague and straight to the point. He was a master at it and within another twenty minutes we had a description and an address.

The house was less than two miles away on a street just off St. Charles Avenue. The street was dark and claustrophobic with heavy, overhanging limbs on both sides. “Orange trees,” Ray said. “The Creoles loved ’em.” The house itself was stuccoed brick and set back from the street. It had a wide front door and four sets of long, rectangular windows, floor to ceiling. There was a single gas lamp burning faintly by the front door and in the pale light I could see the house had once been painted yellow, but the bricks were now chipped and weatherworn and the color was mostly a memory. Ray said, “Your move.”

I took a step toward the house and stopped. I was certain I heard singing. I looked at Ray and could tell he had heard nothing. I listened harder and even though there was melody, the singing wasn’t really singing, it was more like breathing. Then it stopped abruptly.

I nodded to Ray and he followed me along a brick path around the house and through a trellised arbor of bougainvillea to an open courtyard. In the middle there was a circular, tiled fountain and pond and lying near it, either unconscious or dead, was the woman Isabelle.

“What the . . .” Ray said and started toward her.

“She prefers to fall asleep and wake up in the same place, monsieur.” It was Usoa and she appeared out of the blackness like a ghost. “Most often, that place is her own boudoir, but other times, as is now the case, she finds somewhere else to run from her dreams. We always make sure she is safe and wait for her to wake.”

She turned to me and smiled. From behind me, a shadow moved and another voice said, “
Bonsoir,
Zianno. Again, you surprise us.”

Unai walked over to Usoa silent and barefoot. Indeed, they were both barefoot and wearing long, beaded tunics made of muslin, which looked to be simple nightshirts, but I knew they were more than that and probably from somewhere I’d never been. Usoa reached into a pocket hidden in the folds of her tunic and then took Ray’s hand, placing the traditional cube of salt in his palm.
“Egibizirik bilatu,”
she said.

Ray glanced at me, then mumbled, “Uh . . . well . . .”

“You are Ray Ytuarte,” Usoa said softly. “We have heard of you through Eder and we welcome you. I am Usoa Ijitu—”

“And I am Unai Txori,” Unai finished.

I noticed they introduced themselves informally. It was unusual for old ones and their whole demeanor seemed more relaxed. Their names together meant “Gypsy/Bird” and standing there barefoot in muslin tunics they seemed just that.

Ray glanced again at Isabelle, who was snoring peacefully on the ground. Usoa smiled at him. “Damn,” he said.

She turned and took Unai’s hand in hers, then lifted it to her lips and held it there, nodding once.

“We have something to tell you,” Unai said. “You will be the first to know.”

“What is that?” I asked.

He paused for only a moment, then said, “We have decided to cross in the Zeharkatu. For eleven hundred years, we have waited and soon the Wait shall end. Next year, in Spain, there will be a Bitxileiho. It is near our home, our ancestral home, and we will use the circumstances to cross. It is right. It is time.”

My mind raced. I had question after question, but I only asked the first one. “Why now?”

Unai laughed and Usoa kept his hand tight against her lips. He said,
“Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point.”
Usoa looked up and translated. “The heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of.”

He turned her head slightly and kissed her on the lips. I saw the blue diamond in her ear flash in the low light as she turned. Another question I had was being answered. I was envious of their openness and tenderness but realized those very things had made them lose their vigilance. Eder was right—their only thoughts were for each other. They had not lied to me or given me any false indications. They had simply been fooled.

“What about the Fleur-du-Mal?” I asked.

“What about him?” Unai answered. “We are weary of the Fleur-du-Mal, as were Yaldi and Xamurra. He has
’nostalgie de la boue,’
a homesickness for the gutter. We are tired of watching. Besides, you say you have found Opari. The Fleur-du-Mal is irrelevant and obsolete.”

“What if he is stealing children?”

Usoa let go of Unai’s hand and took a step toward me. “He has stolen children before,” she said. “You know that, so why do you ask, Zianno?”

“What if he stole Carolina’s daughter?”

She was standing directly in front of me. She reached up and touched my cheek with her hand. “This is why you come, is it not? This is what has happened?”

I hesitated. I saw so many things in her eyes at once. She looked back at Unai and I followed her. I saw the same things in him. They had survived so long, living with the seed of a powerful, rare, and almost supernatural love, keeping it hidden and suppressed, waiting for the time to let it germinate and live, and then at that moment that same love somehow betrayed them and made them weak, vulnerable. Love, guilt, risk, consequence.

“Yes,” I said.

On the ground, Isabelle groaned and rolled over onto her back, leaving her mouth open and slack. There was saliva running out of the corner of her mouth and the angle of her head made her look as if she was snarling. Everyone looked down at her and for some reason Ray said, “She ain’t no Queen of Hearts, is she?”

Usoa knelt down and gently rolled Isabelle back on her side and replaced a small silk pillow under her head.

“What will he do with her?” I asked.

“If he lets her live, he could do many things. He has in the past,” Usoa said, rising. “But I think this may be personal and, therefore, he may take his time. He is unpredictable, but this is his favorite game of all.”

“What? What is?”

“The corruption of innocence. And pulling your heart out by the roots.”

Unai stepped up beside Usoa and put his arm around her waist. “Our watch is over, Zianno,” he said. “This information only proves it. We have made mistakes before, but none this egregious and untimely. We regret it and pledge on your mama and papa’s memory to help you any way we can. If I could change the way events have transpired, I would.
Tout de même,
we owe you, Zianno. We owe you.”

“You owe me nothing,” I said. “The Fleur-du-Mal owes me the return of a little girl who has nothing to do with this. And in return for her, I will take his life.”

“What can we do?” Usoa asked.

“We begin tomorrow. Ray and I will need your insight and knowledge, your memories and maps of his haunts and habits. We are no longer watching. We are after him like dogs.”

Unai clutched the Stone beneath his tunic. I looked down at Isabelle sleeping, dreaming there on the ground. She smacked her lips once and made me think of a doll, a dreaming doll being kept by two children older than any place her dreams could ever go.

Ray said, “Dogs?”

We checked in to a hotel that same night. It was an old hotel well past its prime, but centrally located and still run with discretion and an emphasis on privacy. There was cast-iron grillwork all around with thick vines weaving in and out. Ray and I liked the old place and the fact it was called the St. Louis made it a good fit.

I gave them my real name at the desk but registered under Owen Bramley’s and told the management he was the executor of my grandfather’s estate. There was no problem and the date of our departure was left open.

The next day, at about noon, Ray and I began a ritual that was to last much longer than either of us had anticipated. I awoke before him to the overpowering smell of fresh-baked bread and pastries coming from a bakery below our windows and not half a block away. Our rooms in the suite were separated by a sitting room, but each opened through louvered shutters onto a balcony that ran the length of the suite. I dressed and made my way downstairs and to the bakery, where I picked up a dozen assorted croissants and rolls with fresh butter and jam. When I returned, Ray was awake and waiting for me on the balcony, drinking chicory coffee that he’d ordered from room service. That in itself, a twelve-year-old kid ordering coffee, would have been out of the ordinary anywhere but in New Orleans, where the unusual becomes the ordinary. We sat on the balcony sharing the rolls and coffee, speaking little and watching the street life of New Orleans pass around and below us. Eventually, we planned our strategy for the day. We were searching for the Fleur-du-Mal, who was referred to by several names in countless countries, but whatever name was used, he was actually known to only a few. Ray, in his manner, decided to start in the French Quarter, then make his way to the far side of the Quarter and Storyville, the red-light district. My plans were slightly less practical and a lot more vague. Ray said, “Where you goin’, Z?”

I said, “Everywhere. Nowhere.”

Ray found out more that first day, on his own, than he ever did following any name or place that Unai and Usoa gave him later. It was not their fault, really. Ray had known the underworld, especially the kind of vice, deceit, and shifty deals that was New Orleans, most of his life. Unai and Usoa’s life, until they had been watching the Fleur-du-Mal, had been quite different. That evening, I found out some of it.

We met at Isabelle’s, as we would many, many nights thereafter. I only saw Isabelle herself infrequently. As usual, she was in her boudoir preparing for a grand ball that didn’t exist, and when I did see her, she was in a panic and yelling to Usoa that they would be too late, she would have to cancel. She was quite mad and Usoa always told her they had more than enough time and not to worry, she looked lovely. I asked Unai how long she had been this way and he said it had been a gradual but increasing decline, probably due to her love of absinthe. He said he had seen it before, the Giza destroying themselves from the inside out, as had most Meq. At the mention of the Meq, I thought of Sailor and Geaxi and asked if he had heard from them. He said no, but that was normal, he had once gone a century without hearing from Sailor. Impulsively, I asked him when and how he had met Usoa. He laughed out loud and sat down in a beautiful wicker chair with broad armrests and a wide, fanned back. He looked so tiny in the chair. A child in high leather boots and yet, when he spoke, when I looked in his eyes, I knew he spoke from twenty lifetimes before the chair was even made.

“I owe it to Charlemagne,
de bonne grâce,
” he said. “And his ignorance of the Basque. But I also owe Adelric, the great Basque chieftain, and his ignorance of love.”

“Was it sudden?”

“Was what sudden?”

“Your realization of it, your . . . connection.”

“Ah, I see,” he said. “No, no, Zianno. Our realization and our connection were
à tort et à travers,
or rather wrong and crosswise.”

I sat down in a wicker chair opposite him and leaned forward. I caught a glimpse of Ray moving in the shadows, finding a place on the ledge of the fountain, and I thought of Opari, appearing out of the shadows and into my life, changing everything in an instant. “Tell me the story, Unai. Please.”

He looked at me strangely and asked, “Where should I begin?”

“At the moment you knew she was your Ameq.”

He turned his head and stared into the darkness of the courtyard and then looked up, focusing his black eyes on the night sky above us. “You want to know of the Isilikutu, the silent touch, the Whisper, only our hearts can hear.”

“Yes,” I said.

“All right,” he said. “I shall begin there, but first, I must tell you where ‘there’ was.

“I was staring at the sky as I am now. I was in the Pyrenees, hiding among the boulders above a narrow pass called Roncesvalles. The year was AD 778. It was the first time I had been back to the Pyrenees in over two hundred years. I was summoned, or more properly, Sailor was summoned in North Africa by his Aita and I was traveling with Sailor at the time, so we decided to return together, more out of curiosity than anything else. Charlemagne was in retreat across the Pyrenees, making his way to the safety of his Frankish kingdom. He had discovered that the Basque, even most of the Christian Basque, did not want his presence in their homeland, and he was about to suffer the worst defeat and humiliating military campaign of his entire career. He would be ambushed in the narrow pass and cut off from his rearguard and supplies, all of whom would be killed and the supplies scattered in ravines by the time his massive army and entourage were able to turn and bring relief. He had underestimated the Basque and their ability to join separate, fiercely independent tribes into a cohesive fighting force. And in the Pyrenees, with their heavy weapons and armor, Charlemagne and his men would be no match for the Basque. In the mountains, the Basque could become ghosts.

“Sailor’s Aita, Bidun, had summoned him to witness the occasion and very possibly, in case something went wrong, use the Stones, though he must have also known Sailor would never do such a thing.