From Amazon
The Meq, subtitled "A Lyric Fantasy" is the first novel from American country-rock musician Steve Cash. The flavour is refreshingly unusual, with a secret race of childlike immortals--the Meq--groping after a lost heritage while decade after decade of human history ticks by.
The narrative of Zianno Zezen begins in 1881 America on his 12th birthday. It's the first of many 12th birthdays, since Meq age no further until they find love and consciously choose to go on through puberty. Z's parents, who made that choice, are soon killed in a tragic accident, leaving the boy with hints of Basque "but more than just Basque" descent, and a cryptic Meq contact name.
Befriended by a travelling Jewish entrepreneur and sort-of-adopted by a St Louis boarding-house keeper who moves into the more profitable trade of brothel madam, Z finds life full of violence, exotic colour and elusive magic. He dreams strange dreams and carries a talisman he doesn't understand. He meets other eternal 12-year-olds living among the dangerous "Giza" (mortal humans), surviving through special talents and centuries or sometimes millennia of experience.
Long and almost dreamlike searches recur. Through 12 years at sea, Z seeks an ancient fellow-Meq nicknamed Sailor. In New Orleans, with a friend, he tracks a Meq who has gone bad and wreaked atrocities on Z's adoptive family. Later hunting covers huge tracts of China, and then--for nine years more, in Tuareg disguise--the North African desert. "Do not think ahead, the Sahara will not allow it." In the background, the First World War is now being fought, and it's over before Z reaches a temporary stopping place.
All this makes for a remarkably charming and compelling read, with history and fantasy twining together--there are glimpses of Jesse James, Oscar Wilde, Scott Joplin and the young TS Eliot. The childlike immortals' leisurely attitude to time is imagined with some power. But as the 20th century wears on, they may be dying out...
Many mysteries remain, a hissable villain is still at large, and sequels to The Meq will follow. --David Langford
From Publishers Weekly
Anyone who can get past the trite opening scenes of country singer Cash's fantasy debut will be pleasantly surprised as the stilted prose becomes the accented speech of a fluent foreigner and the sketchy characters turn into solid people. As the orphan Zianno searches the world for the mysterious Sailor, he soon meets other Basque children who share his true heritage: they are the Meq, who stay 12 years old until they meet their soul mates and choose to attain mortality together. Zianno's almost-romance with the beautiful and mortal Carolina and his friendships with other Meq are described with a deep tenderness that plays up the brutality of the Fleur-du-Mal, an ancient renegade Meq who kills Carolina's sister and kidnaps her daughter. As Zianno, Sailor and their companions hunt the Fleur-du-Mal, the vividly painted landscape of the early 20th century unfolds around them, populated by many famous people (from T.S. Eliot to Scott Joplin) and events from the 1904 World's Fair to the 1918 influenza epidemic. Those expecting a conventional tale of immortality's woes or a coming-of-age story won't find either, but as light and engaging historical fiction with a fantasy twist, the novel works well. FYI:In the 1970s, the author was a member of the Ozark Mountain Devils band and composed the hit pop song "Jackie Blue."
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Cash's first novel is a surprisingly ingenious, lushly detailed story that turns fantasy on its head. Yes, it features a battle of good against evil, magic amulets, and a group on a quest to discover its long-forgotten heritage. But beyond that, it soars into new territory. The Meq is a race that has lived anonymously among humans throughout the centuries. But when Meq turn 12, they remain that age, in body if not in mind, until they each meet the one other Meq who is their soul mate. The day he turns 12 in 1881, Ziannio Zezen, known as Z, loses his parents in a tragic train wreck, knowing only that he must keep the baseball his father gave him and must find Umla-Meq and Sailor. As he embarks on the search, various humans as well as other Meq befriend him, and they unite in trying to stop the evil Meq known as the Fleur-du-Mal. As years pass, the plot encompasses the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, China's Boxer Rebellion, and other turn-of-the century events with a you-are-there flavor, and also dips back into antiquity through the memories of Meq who have been alive for centuries. The drama is intense, the characterizations are fully realized, and the very cadence of the language infuses a rich sense of time, place, and historical context that draws one in. Sally Estes
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Review
“An astonishing, inventive, and addictive book.”
–January Magazine
“An evocative portrayal of the dreamy, drifting rhythms of the Meq’s existence, their simultaneous involvement with and detachment from the stream of Time.”
–SF Site
“A deep and entertaining fantasy that promises to develop into a rewarding series.”
–BBC
“The dawn of the twentieth century, retold as a mystical picaresque dream of intuition and destiny by a unique new voice.”
–ALEXANDER C. IRVINE, author of A Scattering of Jades and One King, One Soldier
--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
–January Magazine
“An evocative portrayal of the dreamy, drifting rhythms of the Meq’s existence, their simultaneous involvement with and detachment from the stream of Time.”
–SF Site
“A deep and entertaining fantasy that promises to develop into a rewarding series.”
–BBC
“The dawn of the twentieth century, retold as a mystical picaresque dream of intuition and destiny by a unique new voice.”
–ALEXANDER C. IRVINE, author of A Scattering of Jades and One King, One Soldier
--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Book Description
This is the first in a fantasy-adventure trilogy spanning continents and centuries. The Meq are a rare and ancient race who originated in the Pyrenees. They can live for hundreds, even thousands of years, yet they retain the physical appearance of 12-year-olds.
From the Back Cover
“An astonishing, inventive, and addictive book.”
–January Magazine
“An evocative portrayal of the dreamy, drifting rhythms of the Meq’s existence, their simultaneous involvement with and detachment from the stream of Time.”
–SF Site
“A deep and entertaining fantasy that promises to develop into a rewarding series.”
–BBC
“The dawn of the twentieth century, retold as a mystical picaresque dream of intuition and destiny by a unique new voice.”
–ALEXANDER C. IRVINE, author of A Scattering of Jades and One King, One Soldier
--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
–January Magazine
“An evocative portrayal of the dreamy, drifting rhythms of the Meq’s existence, their simultaneous involvement with and detachment from the stream of Time.”
–SF Site
“A deep and entertaining fantasy that promises to develop into a rewarding series.”
–BBC
“The dawn of the twentieth century, retold as a mystical picaresque dream of intuition and destiny by a unique new voice.”
–ALEXANDER C. IRVINE, author of A Scattering of Jades and One King, One Soldier
--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
About the Author
Steve Cash lives in Springfield, Missouri, where he was born and raised and educated. He lived on the West Coast: in Berkeley, California, and elsewhere. He returned to Springfield to become an original member of the American band, The Ozark Mountain Daredevils. Steve Cash is the co-author of the Seventies pop hits 'Jackie Blue' and 'If You Wanna Get to Heaven'. THE MEQ is his first novel.
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
1
—
EZEZAGUN (STRANGER)
—
The kindness of strangers. Is it true? Most often, probably not, but invariably in everyone’s life there is a moment, a window in time, where only a stranger will make sense of a senseless thing and pull you out or through or wherever you need to go and do not have the power to do so alone. It will feel as gentle and effortless as an angel’s touch. It will come unasked and unannounced. It will come from someone whose name you may or may not recall, whose face may blur with memory, but whose deed, in one way or another, saved you. It will be a stranger.
For me, that window was May 4, 1881. It was my twelfth birthday for the first time. I was traveling with my mama and papa on the last leg of a long journey west from St. Louis to Central City, a boom town in the mountains above Denver. We were jammed into a noisy, crowded train filled with people of all sorts and sizes. My papa was going to be the “lapur de urre,” the “thief of gold” in all the great Rocky Mountains. He knew nothing of mining, but he always liked to say he knew everything about gold. “The Basque,” he said, “will never steal your purse, they have the mountains.” My mama always laughed a little when he said these things, but she never disbelieved him. She loved him in a special way, a way as old and wise and silent as the mountains themselves. A way, as you will see, that is unique to them and to me.
My mama said, “Zianno, put that baseball glove down and leave it be. You make me crazy with the rubbing, the rubbing.” That’s my name—Zianno. My mama sometimes called me “Z” because her name was Xamurra and my papa’s name was Yaldi and he liked to think of us as “X,” “Y,” and “Z,” the three unknowns. My mama made the baseball glove by hand in St. Louis. It was my most treasured possession. It was crude and rudimentary, but in 1881, so was base- ball.
I kept that glove with me at all times on the trip west. I used it as a pillow at night and rubbed it constantly with my spit to “break it in.” My papa had made me a baseball—actually two, one I kept with me and tossed around and the other he kept with him. We never played with that one.
“Mama,” I said, “you know I’ve got to make it soft. The softer the better.”
“Soft is one thing, my child. Crazy with rubbing is another. But never mind, there is something much more important I want to talk about today.”
The train was inching its way through a mountain pass. Outside, there seemed to be hundreds of waterfalls, some small, some large; a result of heavy spring rains. Papa had made his way to the front of our car in order to listen to a fat man ramble on about recent gold strikes. I put my glove down and looked at Mama’s face. I loved to look at Mama’s face. She had creamy skin and her features were round and small. Round nose, mouth, and eyes that were coal black and always laughing. But not that day. She was serious and I knew it.
I said, “What, Mama? What’s important?”
Mama looked hard into my eyes and reached up with her hands to touch my face. She ran her fingers over my eyebrows and down the line of my cheekbone and traced the outline of my lips. I sat dead still. She touched me often with much love, but not often in this way. It was as if she was trying to remember me with her fingers. The train lurched suddenly from side to side. We were beginning the descent from the pass and picking up speed. It startled Mama, but she wasn’t scared and neither was I. We were sick of trains. She put her hands back in her lap.
“You must listen to me, Zianno. This is your birthday, your twelfth birthday.”
“I know that, Mama, and when we get to—”
She cut me off with a hand gently placed on my mouth. “Now listen, my son. Your birthday is different, this birthday, this one today is different, just as we are different; you, me, and your papa.”
“Different? How are we different, Mama? Because we are Basque?”
“We are Basque, yes, that is true, Z, but we are more than just Basque, we are . . . older.”
“Older?” I was confused. “You mean you are older. I am twelve, Mama.”
She let out a long sigh and her eyes glanced out of the window, then back to me.
“I mean our . . . our people are older, different, not like the Giza, the other people. Your papa will tell you everything you need to know, everything about us when we get to Central City.”
“Mama,” I said, “I don’t know what you are talking about.”
She leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead, then sat back in her seat. “I know, my child, I know. I said the same thing to my mama a long time ago, a very long time ago.”
The train was gaining speed. The men gathered at the front of our car were laughing loudly at something the fat man had said, my papa included.
Through the window, the space between our train and the mountain wall opposite was widening. I could clearly see the river racing beside us, swollen from the runoffs and waterfalls I had seen at every turn higher up the mountain. I was trying to make sense of what Mama had said and I wanted her to tell me more, but she was staring out of the window at the rushing water. I started rubbing the pocket of my glove and leaned my head closer to the window. Up ahead, we were coming to a low bridge over a narrow section of the river. Then I saw something very strange.
“Mama, look!”
“What, Z? What?”
“Look up there, Mama, by the bridge. There’s a scarecrow waving his arms.”
She moved closer to me and followed my finger to where I was pointing. Up ahead, next to the bridge on the embankment, someone or something in an enormous black coat was waving like crazy at the train.
“It’s a scarecrow, Mama.”
“That’s no scarecrow,” Mama said. Her voice was low and even, as if she were talking to herself. She rose slightly out of her seat and stared harder at the scarecrow. He was getting larger as we were getting closer. In a blink, we were passing him and I could see that he was not a scarecrow at all. He was a man, a tall man with a beard and a small, round cap on his head. His long arms in the great black coat dropped to his sides as we passed. I saw his eyes, which were wide open, and his mouth in the shape of an O. So did Mama. She grabbed my hand, jumped up out of her seat, and screamed, “Yaldi, Yaldi!”
The train was already on the bridge. Through the noise of the train and the men laughing, my papa heard Mama’s voice and turned toward the back of the car. I saw him catch her eye and I turned to look at Mama too. Her eyes were a bonfire of black, but without panic. I turned back to look at Papa. His eyes were the same. Their eyes were locked on each other, and for an instant, there was no sound in my world. No voices, no laughter, no metal screeching as the train tried to brake and avoid the washed-out track on the other side of the bridge.
I felt something pass through me, something that can only be described as Time. The weight of Time. Years upon years, people, places, joys, sorrows, and journeys, endless journeys. I was weightless, empty, and they were filling me, telling me. My mama held my hand, and she stared at my papa and he stared back, in that instant they gave me the weight of their lives.
All the cars of the train were uncoupling and falling from the tracks. There was nothing we could do. Bodies were being tossed around and Mama and I were flung through the window on our side of the car. I never saw Papa. He was somewhere in the middle of a tumbling mass of arms and legs and screams.
I saw the waterfalls. Hundreds, thousands of them; spinning, shining, falling upside down, trailing diamonds and gold, they were like comets. I watched how they spun and fell. I tried to reach out and touch them, but my arms wouldn’t move. I felt cold somewhere. Then there was only one waterfall and it was warm. I opened my eyes.
I was wedged between two boulders and Mama was above me, face down on the rocks with one arm dangling over my face. The waterfall was blood, blood that was gushing out of her neck where a large piece of glass was embedded, and running down her arm into my eyes. She was moaning and trying to speak. I forced myself to move and, in moving, felt the pain in my right arm. It was bent at a crazy angle and pieces of glass were sticking out everywhere like darts in a dartboard. But I could only think of Mama. I crawled up to her and gently rolled her over. It was easy, too easy. She was no more than a rag doll broken on the rocks. The blood was pouring out of her neck. She tried to speak, but it was low and hoarse. I leaned down closer.
“Yaldi . . . Yaldi,” she whispered.
“No, Mama, it is Z.”
She opened her eyes for a moment, those beautiful coal black eyes. She stared straight at me the same way she had been staring at Papa in that last instant on the train.
“You must find Papa, Z. You must find him now.” Her voice was weak, but clear and determined.
“No, Mama, no. You’re bleeding. You’re . . . you’re . . .”
“I am dying, Z. But I will not die yet. You must be strong. You must go and find Papa and come back to me.” Her voice was so calm and I was shaking, trembling from head to foot.
“Go, now. Go, my son.”
Somehow, I did what she said and got up from beside her and made my way through the rocks and boulders, stumbling, crying, yelling, “Papa! Papa!” I was lost in a dead world, a world of broken glass, twisted metal, splintered wood, and bodies, dead bodie... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
—
EZEZAGUN (STRANGER)
—
The kindness of strangers. Is it true? Most often, probably not, but invariably in everyone’s life there is a moment, a window in time, where only a stranger will make sense of a senseless thing and pull you out or through or wherever you need to go and do not have the power to do so alone. It will feel as gentle and effortless as an angel’s touch. It will come unasked and unannounced. It will come from someone whose name you may or may not recall, whose face may blur with memory, but whose deed, in one way or another, saved you. It will be a stranger.
For me, that window was May 4, 1881. It was my twelfth birthday for the first time. I was traveling with my mama and papa on the last leg of a long journey west from St. Louis to Central City, a boom town in the mountains above Denver. We were jammed into a noisy, crowded train filled with people of all sorts and sizes. My papa was going to be the “lapur de urre,” the “thief of gold” in all the great Rocky Mountains. He knew nothing of mining, but he always liked to say he knew everything about gold. “The Basque,” he said, “will never steal your purse, they have the mountains.” My mama always laughed a little when he said these things, but she never disbelieved him. She loved him in a special way, a way as old and wise and silent as the mountains themselves. A way, as you will see, that is unique to them and to me.
My mama said, “Zianno, put that baseball glove down and leave it be. You make me crazy with the rubbing, the rubbing.” That’s my name—Zianno. My mama sometimes called me “Z” because her name was Xamurra and my papa’s name was Yaldi and he liked to think of us as “X,” “Y,” and “Z,” the three unknowns. My mama made the baseball glove by hand in St. Louis. It was my most treasured possession. It was crude and rudimentary, but in 1881, so was base- ball.
I kept that glove with me at all times on the trip west. I used it as a pillow at night and rubbed it constantly with my spit to “break it in.” My papa had made me a baseball—actually two, one I kept with me and tossed around and the other he kept with him. We never played with that one.
“Mama,” I said, “you know I’ve got to make it soft. The softer the better.”
“Soft is one thing, my child. Crazy with rubbing is another. But never mind, there is something much more important I want to talk about today.”
The train was inching its way through a mountain pass. Outside, there seemed to be hundreds of waterfalls, some small, some large; a result of heavy spring rains. Papa had made his way to the front of our car in order to listen to a fat man ramble on about recent gold strikes. I put my glove down and looked at Mama’s face. I loved to look at Mama’s face. She had creamy skin and her features were round and small. Round nose, mouth, and eyes that were coal black and always laughing. But not that day. She was serious and I knew it.
I said, “What, Mama? What’s important?”
Mama looked hard into my eyes and reached up with her hands to touch my face. She ran her fingers over my eyebrows and down the line of my cheekbone and traced the outline of my lips. I sat dead still. She touched me often with much love, but not often in this way. It was as if she was trying to remember me with her fingers. The train lurched suddenly from side to side. We were beginning the descent from the pass and picking up speed. It startled Mama, but she wasn’t scared and neither was I. We were sick of trains. She put her hands back in her lap.
“You must listen to me, Zianno. This is your birthday, your twelfth birthday.”
“I know that, Mama, and when we get to—”
She cut me off with a hand gently placed on my mouth. “Now listen, my son. Your birthday is different, this birthday, this one today is different, just as we are different; you, me, and your papa.”
“Different? How are we different, Mama? Because we are Basque?”
“We are Basque, yes, that is true, Z, but we are more than just Basque, we are . . . older.”
“Older?” I was confused. “You mean you are older. I am twelve, Mama.”
She let out a long sigh and her eyes glanced out of the window, then back to me.
“I mean our . . . our people are older, different, not like the Giza, the other people. Your papa will tell you everything you need to know, everything about us when we get to Central City.”
“Mama,” I said, “I don’t know what you are talking about.”
She leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead, then sat back in her seat. “I know, my child, I know. I said the same thing to my mama a long time ago, a very long time ago.”
The train was gaining speed. The men gathered at the front of our car were laughing loudly at something the fat man had said, my papa included.
Through the window, the space between our train and the mountain wall opposite was widening. I could clearly see the river racing beside us, swollen from the runoffs and waterfalls I had seen at every turn higher up the mountain. I was trying to make sense of what Mama had said and I wanted her to tell me more, but she was staring out of the window at the rushing water. I started rubbing the pocket of my glove and leaned my head closer to the window. Up ahead, we were coming to a low bridge over a narrow section of the river. Then I saw something very strange.
“Mama, look!”
“What, Z? What?”
“Look up there, Mama, by the bridge. There’s a scarecrow waving his arms.”
She moved closer to me and followed my finger to where I was pointing. Up ahead, next to the bridge on the embankment, someone or something in an enormous black coat was waving like crazy at the train.
“It’s a scarecrow, Mama.”
“That’s no scarecrow,” Mama said. Her voice was low and even, as if she were talking to herself. She rose slightly out of her seat and stared harder at the scarecrow. He was getting larger as we were getting closer. In a blink, we were passing him and I could see that he was not a scarecrow at all. He was a man, a tall man with a beard and a small, round cap on his head. His long arms in the great black coat dropped to his sides as we passed. I saw his eyes, which were wide open, and his mouth in the shape of an O. So did Mama. She grabbed my hand, jumped up out of her seat, and screamed, “Yaldi, Yaldi!”
The train was already on the bridge. Through the noise of the train and the men laughing, my papa heard Mama’s voice and turned toward the back of the car. I saw him catch her eye and I turned to look at Mama too. Her eyes were a bonfire of black, but without panic. I turned back to look at Papa. His eyes were the same. Their eyes were locked on each other, and for an instant, there was no sound in my world. No voices, no laughter, no metal screeching as the train tried to brake and avoid the washed-out track on the other side of the bridge.
I felt something pass through me, something that can only be described as Time. The weight of Time. Years upon years, people, places, joys, sorrows, and journeys, endless journeys. I was weightless, empty, and they were filling me, telling me. My mama held my hand, and she stared at my papa and he stared back, in that instant they gave me the weight of their lives.
All the cars of the train were uncoupling and falling from the tracks. There was nothing we could do. Bodies were being tossed around and Mama and I were flung through the window on our side of the car. I never saw Papa. He was somewhere in the middle of a tumbling mass of arms and legs and screams.
I saw the waterfalls. Hundreds, thousands of them; spinning, shining, falling upside down, trailing diamonds and gold, they were like comets. I watched how they spun and fell. I tried to reach out and touch them, but my arms wouldn’t move. I felt cold somewhere. Then there was only one waterfall and it was warm. I opened my eyes.
I was wedged between two boulders and Mama was above me, face down on the rocks with one arm dangling over my face. The waterfall was blood, blood that was gushing out of her neck where a large piece of glass was embedded, and running down her arm into my eyes. She was moaning and trying to speak. I forced myself to move and, in moving, felt the pain in my right arm. It was bent at a crazy angle and pieces of glass were sticking out everywhere like darts in a dartboard. But I could only think of Mama. I crawled up to her and gently rolled her over. It was easy, too easy. She was no more than a rag doll broken on the rocks. The blood was pouring out of her neck. She tried to speak, but it was low and hoarse. I leaned down closer.
“Yaldi . . . Yaldi,” she whispered.
“No, Mama, it is Z.”
She opened her eyes for a moment, those beautiful coal black eyes. She stared straight at me the same way she had been staring at Papa in that last instant on the train.
“You must find Papa, Z. You must find him now.” Her voice was weak, but clear and determined.
“No, Mama, no. You’re bleeding. You’re . . . you’re . . .”
“I am dying, Z. But I will not die yet. You must be strong. You must go and find Papa and come back to me.” Her voice was so calm and I was shaking, trembling from head to foot.
“Go, now. Go, my son.”
Somehow, I did what she said and got up from beside her and made my way through the rocks and boulders, stumbling, crying, yelling, “Papa! Papa!” I was lost in a dead world, a world of broken glass, twisted metal, splintered wood, and bodies, dead bodie... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
