“I know, I saw it. I can’t keep this, you know. Even if it was my father’s, it must mean too much to Kepa for me to accept it.”
“You must accept it. It would be an insult not to. It is because it does mean so much to him that he gives it to you.”
I walked to Sailor’s window and gazed out at the same view I had from my own. It was getting dark and light at the same time. The full moon was rising. Something basic and fundamental occurred to me. I suddenly felt light, almost weightless, as if I were a piece of paper no bigger than Kepa’s note and I might, at any second, fly out of the window, over the stream, up the face of the mesa, and disappear in the western sky. I turned to Sailor.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do here,” I said.
“Do? You are not supposed to do anything. In time, you will have a dream, we hope. A dream your father and his father and his father never had.”
“Why do you think I will have the dream?”
“I do not think it — I hope. There is no way to know, but there is also no reason for you to worry and doubt. Besides, tomorrow you meet Eder-Meq, my sister, and her Ameq, Baju Gaztelu, and their daughter, Nova. Nova is newly born and I have only seen her once myself. Kepa is planning a feast that will last all day and night. Do not worry, Zianno. You have time. You are Meq, remember? You have all the time in the world, so enjoy it.”
“You have a sister?”
“Yes, it is strange to see her aging, but always good to see her, nevertheless.”
“Was that her singing we heard? From the wagon?”
“Yes.”
I remembered the melody, the ancient melody, and the way the notes rose and fell, hanging on to each other like hands across an abyss, lifting and swaying, never letting go.
“The song’s about return, isn’t it?”
Sailor had long since finished lacing his boots and he stood up, motioning toward the door for us to leave.
“Yes,” he said.
“Return to where?”
“We do not know.”
That night, we had what I’m sure was, for Kepa’s clan, a quiet meal. There were but fourteen people at the table and it only lasted two hours. During the meal, I noticed Pello watching me; not in a menacing way or even staring — just watching.
Kepa talked about the problems the Basque sheepmen were having. More and more grazing land and forest were being federalized and made into reserves where the itinerant Basque and his sheep were not welcome. Some were called “tramp farmers” and discriminated against like the Chinese had been. No one wanted to do the work of the Basque, but no one wanted the Basque to do it either.
Afterward, I walked with Kepa to a low stone wall overlooking the long valley and the stream. The water was shining in the moonlight.
“The stream looks magic tonight,” I said.
“Yes, it does,” he said, then stepped up on the wall, looking back at me. “It is a small stream, but a good stream. A small stream that flows into another that flows into the Bruneau that flows into the Snake. not unlike ourselves, no?”
I told him I wanted to know more about my papa, about their times together, and he promised many stories and tales to come. He told me I was welcome here as long as I liked and would be for the rest of his life and his son’s and his son’s sons’. We said good night and I walked back to my room, thinking the long day was over.
There was a lamp already lit on the nightstand next to the bed. I spread the blanket out and sat down, dead tired and ready for sleep. I took the telescope out of its case, just to see it once more before I slept. I thought about my papa holding it, using it. I thought about where he might have used it and wondered if he kept notes and if he did where they would be and who might have them, and then I thought about Kepa and I opened his note and read it again—“Good for wonder, good for wolves!”—and I thought about the Fleur-du-Mal and I thought about Carolina and I wondered, wondered. then I fell asleep, for how long I don’t know, but the telescope had rolled off the bed and hit the floor, waking me, opening the door to a Walking Dream.
I pick up the telescope and walk out of the room. I walk outside and back to the stone wall. I step up and over the wall and I land on four legs. I am heavy, but graceful. I am grazing, making my way down the slope toward the stream. I know my way, I have been here before, but this time there is something different, something new, something that has never been here before. I take a different path to the stream. I see the wolf ahead of time. He is surprised. The ritual is well known and understood. He is alarmed and I see it in his eyes. He starts upstream, loping through the rocks in the shallow water by the shore. I follow easily. He takes the familiar path, but this time I close the gap. I pick up speed and so does he. We run for miles and I see the jewels and dead bodies strewn among the rocks. I pay no attention. I close the gap even more. We ascend, climbing the mountain, toward the source of the stream and the place I cannot follow, the place I have never been allowed. I change shape and walk upright on two legs, but I continue to climb and gain ground. The wolf stops and turns and stares. He has never seen me, not this me. I start to cry out. The wolf turns and runs to where the stream pours out of the mountain; the dark pool and spring where I cannot go. He does not look back and leaps into the swirling abyss. I stop at the edge and look down. There is a trail of stars where he has disappeared. I remember the telescope. I take it out and extend it, looking through the veil of water and stars until I find the wolf retreating, changing; form became feeling and feeling became beauty and she was revealed. naked. innocent. and wearing the Stones. Then something else happened — something so outrageous, unknown, and unexpected that I woke up.
I was alone on a slab of rock jutting out over a four-hundred-foot drop. The sun was just rising over the mesa. I had no idea where I was or how I got there. The telescope was in my hand. From behind me I heard a voice.
“Do not move, señor. Before you stand, let me help you.” It was Pello. He said he had followed me all night and watched me, keeping his distance, but at some point he lost me and didn’t find me until that moment when I cried out. I asked him where we were and he said we were far to the south, miles from camp.
He helped me up and we started back along a narrow ledge, then down through brush and scrub cedar until we found a trail he knew by heart.
It took five hours to walk back to Kepa’s camp and when we finally stepped over the low stone wall and were in the compound itself, no one seemed to notice. Most were gathered by the veranda of the central building, children especially.
They were surrounding a tall man with red hair and a bristly red mustache, wearing wire-rimmed glasses and showing everyone how to assemble a Chinese kite. Some other men were preparing several lambs for an open-pit cookout. I asked one of them who the red-haired man was and he said his name was Owen Bramley and he and someone I might know had arrived by train in Boise the night before and made their way here this morning. I looked at Pello and he shrugged.
I walked toward my room, and just before I went in, I saw Sailor talking to someone, someone our size. Neither one of them saw me approach. They were deep in discussion about something. Then I saw two things I hadn’t seen in a long time, but they were still familiar — a black beret and black ballet slippers. It was Geaxi, and as I got nearer, I could just hear the end of her sentence “. but she is no longer there, she has vanished.”
From behind them, I said, “I know who you seek.”
They both turned at once and stared at me.