The Remembering by Steve Cash Page B

were leaving the Fleur-du-Mal’s castle. Ikuko was barely able to speak. I think she wore them to bed that night, much to Katsuo’s amusement. He told Sailor he hadn’t seen her smile in over a year.
    At last, the long and complicated day was coming to an end. I felt bone-tired and longed for sleep. I still had questions, but my curiosity was outweighed by my fatigue. As Sailor and I were stretching out on our tatami mats, Susheela the Ninth, without any inhibitions, began removing her black pajamas and putting on the clean pair given to her by Ikuko. Instinctively, I averted my eyes. Sailor saw me look away and asked, “What is the matter, Zianno? Have you never seen a girl naked? After all, she is only in the body of a child.”
    Before I could respond, Susheela the Ninth laughed and said, “A very old child, I might add.”
    I was embarrassed and tried to cover it up with a question. “Exactly how old are you, Sheela?”
    “ ‘Sheela’?” Sailor interjected. “You address her as ‘Sheela’?”
    “Yes. I was told to do so.”
    “That is correct,” she said, buttoning her pajama top and sitting down cross-legged on her mat. “I informed Z he should call me by my childhood name, and so should you … Umla-Meq.” Sailor nodded once, but said nothing and Sheela turned to me. “I am older than the earrings, much older.”
    “The earrings?” I asked.
    “Yes, the earrings I gave to Ikuko. They were presented to me three thousand two hundred eighty-eight years ago in Amarna by a handmaiden of Queen Nefertiti. By that year, I had experienced one thousand seven hundred eighteen birthdays, including my first eleven. This year, in your month of October, I will have my next.”
    At first, I was dumbfounded and blinked rapidly several times, trying to calculate the numbers in my mind. “That would mean you are going to be …”
    With no trace of wonder or emotion, Susheela the Ninth said, “I will be five thousand and six years old on the day you Americans call ‘Halloween.’ ”
    I couldn’t say a word. I couldn’t even conceive of a life that long, particularly without the aid of the Stones. Sailor said calmly, “Trumoi-Meq and Zeru-Meq would be impressed.”
    “Would they?” she asked, looking directly at Sailor. Her voice had a slight edge of irony and melancholy. “It has not been easy, Umla-Meq … and it has been lonely.”
    I thought of Mama and Papa and their endless journeys, and I realized their travels and travails were nothing compared to what Susheela the Ninth must have seen and done in order to survive so long. I now had many more questions for her; however, I was simply too tired to ask them. Outside, a light rain began to fall. Sailor turned off the single lamp in the room and we all lay down on our mats to wait for sleep. For some reason, I recalled a poem Zeru-Meq had carved into a tree years earlier when we were searching for him in China. It was titled “The Quiet Rain” and went like this:
In the back of our lives, steady and soft, a rain falls .
We sleep through it, then wake at the sound of a distant train .
Just in time to hear the quiet rain .
Behind that, deep in darkness ,
The grinding crickets .
    When I awoke in the morning I was alone in the room. After rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I found Sailor standing in the kitchen brewing tea. Katsuo, Ikuko, and Susheela the Ninth were not in the house.
    Sailor had his back to me, but felt my presence. “I have a plan,” he said.
    “I don’t want to hear it,” I said quickly. “Not yet. I want you to tell me what happened in Nagasaki. How did you survive, and what about Zuriaa?”
    Sailor sighed and poured tea for both of us, then turned to face me. “Very well, Zianno, though I have already told you it was sheer luck. Sit down and I shall give you the facts.” I sat down and Sailor stirred his tea before beginning. “By the evening of August 8, after leaving you and Shutratek that morning, Sak and I had found the