Free The Remembering by Steve Cash

papyrus, I was really asking about her. She talked softly for two hours that night and two more the next, and then on and off for the next two nights. During these “talks” she not only revealed the history of the papyrus, but she also gave Sailor and me a brief history of her own long and extraordinary life.
    We learned that she left the papyrus in Salzburg in order to pursue the Octopus and the possibility of possessing what it was supposed to contain. Her tribe had long known of the five Stones, but their only interest was in the mythical Sixth Stone. Its power was believed to answer all mysteries behind the Meq and our existence. It was also thought to answer the riddle of the Remembering, an event they knew was coming, they just didn’t know when or where. The papyrus and its cryptic inscription had been copied from another papyrus, which was also said to have been copied from something much older—a solid, polished stone ball. The original “copy” had been carried by another Meq, a mysterious loner who dealt in precious metals and was known simply as the “Black Sea boy,” or sometimes as “the Thracian.” He was thought to have perished, along with his papyrus, when the island of Thera, now referred to as Santorini, disintegrated in a massive volcanic explosion. At that time, the second papyrus always traveled in the possession of Susheela the Ninth’s much older cousin, Tereksaa. He was the one other member of her tribe still living. He had been born in western Africa before the Sahara became a desert, when it was still a lush savanna. It was from Tereksaa that Susheela the Ninth first learned there were other Meq in the world, including light-skinned tribes to the north and west, across a great sea, living in the mountains and along the coast of another land, a land now known as the Pyrenees. They were the ones, she was told, who carried the five Stones.
    She said she and Tereksaa wandered the Near East and the eastern Mediterranean for centuries until a mad Assyrian king in the city-state of Urak managed to capture Tereksaa. The practice of child sacrifice to gain favor from the gods was the king’s obsession, especially if the child happened to be one of the “Magic Children” he had heard the Phoenicians brag about. Just before Tereksaa was caught and beheaded, he transferred the papyrus to Susheela the Ninth with instructions to keep it safe until she could deliver it to one of the light-skinned Meq in the west—the one called Umla-Meq. And she kept it safe for century after century and a thousand tales of survival until late in 1921 when she first heard the rumor that the Octopus could exist and might be hidden in Tutankhamen’s tomb. A man named Howard Carter was going to excavate in the Valley of the Kings to search for the tomb. The temptation was too great for her. Find the Octopus—find the Sixth Stone! She left the papyrus in Salzburg, always planning to return. She was on her way back when the Fleur-du-Mal captured her in Istanbul, and together with Raza, the three of them made their way to Askenfada in Norway. We knew the rest.
    “Now the irony is complete,” she said, lying back in the dark and laughing to herself.
    “Irony?” I asked.
    “I found the Octopus only to discover that it was empty, and after all my efforts at safeguarding, it seems the papyrus found its way to Umla-Meq quite easily … and without me.”
    I laughed once along with her and thought about Ray and his good fortune in finding the papyrus. Or did luck really have anything to do with it? Before I could answer myself, Susheela the Ninth said, “You must now tell me what the papyrus says, Z. I have pondered this mystery for too long.”
    I thought back to the first time I saw the papyrus on board the Iona in the Canary Islands. I understood its meaning now no more than I did then. “If my memory serves,” I said, “it began with a title, ‘ Nine Steps of the Six ,’ then nine lines followed in a