“There’s a good spot, a better’n farther on, there is,” a voice said matter-of-factly from somewhere behind us. “But this is a good one too, it is.”
Geaxi and I turned to find Tillman Fadle leaning on a walking stick. He was wearing a huge black slicker and he looked seven feet tall. We weren’t listening for him, but neither Geaxi nor I was aware of him standing there. It was unusual.
“It is a big sky, it is,” he said.
“Yes, it is,” Geaxi said and waited.
He stared at the sky a full minute before he addressed us again. “The big sky, the big picture,” he said enigmatically. “Same thing, though. all of it. same thing.”
“Do you often come here?” I asked him.
“Oh, most certainly, sir, as often as I can.” He took a step or two toward us, and as he did, he turned his head and spat in the darkness. “You know, sir,” he said, “I think there’s a young fella took a snapshot of the big picture.”
“What do you mean ‘a snapshot’?” I asked.
“They’ll be provin’ it ’fore long.” He spat again in the dark and reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t recall who. “You wait and see,” he went on. “The ancients knew it, knew it, they did. Couldn’t prove it, though, couldn’t prove it. Won’t be long, sir, you wait and see,” he said. “This Einstein fella is on the track.”
“On the track of what?” Geaxi asked.
Tillman looked up in the direction of the constellation Orion, then tilted his head to the side and peered out of the corner of his eye. He held his thumb and forefinger in front of him and peered through the space between them. He spat one last time and I remembered who he reminded me of — PoPo.
“That,” he said. “He’s after that.”
“What?” I asked.
“What gets through the cracks,” he said.
“You mean the light?” Geaxi asked.
“I mean that what turns on the light,” Tillman said and I think he smiled, but it was too dark to be sure.
Just then, we heard the sound of a car in the distance. It was coming toward Caitlin’s Ruby and it was not one of Daphne’s vehicles, I could tell from the constant backfiring of the engine. I turned and raised Kepa’s telescope in the direction of the sound, but there was nothing to see, no headlights, nothing.
“That’d be Cap’n Uld,” Tillman said. “Norwegian man. owns a few boats in the Scillys. owns the Falcon. He won’t drive a motor car with headlights. same as at sea. won’t have ’em, won’t use ’em.”
“Is he coming here?” Geaxi asked.
“Yes, I’d say he was, yes.”
“Did you say the Falcon?” I asked him, remembering something Willie had said.
“Yes, the Falcon. in Penzance, it is.”
“Would Mowsel be with him?”
“Yes, most likely. Comes and goes that way, he does, with Cap’n Uld.”
Geaxi and I glanced at each other and knew in an instant there would almost certainly be another passenger, another boy who came and went that way — Sailor.
I closed the telescope and Geaxi said we’d better go, then I turned back to Tillman leaning on his walking stick in the dark.
“What was that fella’s name again?” I asked. “The one looking for what turns on the light?”
“Einstein,” he said. “Albert Einstein.”
“Where is he looking?”
“Up there,” he said and looked at the sky, but pointed his finger to his head. “Up there and in here,” he added and smiled again, I think.
“It was a pleasure talking to you, sir,” I told him.
“And you, sir,” Tillman Fadle said. “And you.”
Geaxi led the way back without a word and we were there in no time. She was as swift as I’d ever seen her and only paused when we reached the gravel drive. Coming from the direction of the house, we could both hear the strain of Daphne trying to sing, accompanied by an accordion. She was singing “Auld Lang Syne” and there wasn’t a cat within fifty yards of the house.
Sailor was standing outside the house, on the drive next to the car with no headlights. He was standing in a swirling, rising cloud of exhaust from the car. I couldn’t see Mowsel, but Cap’n Uld was behind the wheel with one arm out of the window. He was smoking a pipe and didn’t seem to be getting in or out. Then a door slammed on the opposite side of the car and Cap’n Uld put the car in gear and lurched forward, driving away in the darkness.
We slowed to a walk and Sailor turned to greet us. Mowsel had his back to us and was walking toward the house and Daphne’s voice.
We stopped not three feet from Sailor. The cloud of exhaust had blown away and he was standing with his legs spread and his hands on his hips. It was then that I felt something I had not felt for so long I’d forgotten it; an inner warning and presence of fear — the net descending. It was powerful and tangible. I’d noticed it and felt it increase the closer we got to Sailor.
“Come with me,” he barked. “We must not wait. Geaxi, can you find Lullyon in the dark?”
“Of course,” Geaxi said.
“Lullyon?” I asked. “You mean ‘the slabs’? Now?”
“I mean we must not wait,” Sailor said. His breath became steam in the cold air. He took a step closer and stared hard in my eyes. His “ghost eye” was milky and bloodshot. “We must not wait, Zianno. Believe me.”
“Sailor,” Geaxi said. “There is something I think—”
“Not now, Geaxi!” Sailor screamed. I had never heard him raise his voice to that level, even in China. Slowly, with dark emphasis on each word, he said, “This. involves. us. all.” The night itself could have cracked, it was so brittle and silent, then Sailor whispered, “Please, Geaxi, do this. Take Zianno and I will bring Opari.”
Perhaps it was the shock of hearing him speak to her like that or perhaps it was some other knowledge of him that only she possessed. I do know Eder had called her his “dark” companion and I do know what she was trying to tell him. She was trying to tell him that his only sister, Eder, had passed. Whatever it was that stopped her, it stopped her. Geaxi turned to me without a glance at Sailor and said, “This way, Zezen.”
I’d been to “the slabs” once before, but not at night. Opari had taken me on a cold day with the wind coming straight off the North Atlantic. It was a long walk filled with switchbacks and false crossings — a path that I thought had to be seen to be followed. But that was me, not Geaxi.
From a distance, Lullyon Coit, or “the slab,” looked like the “stone boys” I’d seen the shepherds leave on the farthest reaches of Kepa’s land. They were a form of signpost or station for the Basque, both personal and professional. They were unique and each possessed a kind of power, a power of place and intelligence. Lullyon Coit possessed a similar power, only it was much older and much larger. The stones weren’t picked from a field, they were quarried and lifted, cut, arranged, and designed. There were four of them — three great slabs of granite standing upright in a triangular configuration and the fourth lying on top of the other three. The whole structure seemed to be pointing in a westerly direction. Ancient shelter? Burial site? Who knows? Caitlin never said what she believed, but leading away from Lullyon Coit, out of brick and stone and beaten earth, she left six different paths to get there.
In the dark, without ever taking a false step or a wrong turn, Geaxi and I arrived by one of them. The entire way, she never said a word.