Chapter 10

Zuri slowly sucked on a fruit as he watched Leniz bind together bundles of stiff brown stalks. When Leniz was satisfied with the number of bundles, he shoved the long stick between Zuri’s knees, telling him to hold still. Leniz stood up and began tying the bundles to the end of the stick using a ball of cord that he called twine. “Works for temporary fences, too,” Leniz said when he was explaining. “Grogan are stupid.”

Satisfied with his work, Leniz bade Zuri to rise and presented him with the broom. “What? You don’t expect an old man to clean up this mess, do you?”

Zuri shook his head and took the broom. He started in the back of the room and slowly swept the dirt and detritus into piles. Leniz found him some peeled tree bark to use as a dust bin. Thusly, Zuri spent the morning sweeping and hauling out mounds of dirt. His companion was nowhere in sight and as far as Zuri was concerned, that was a good place for the man to be.

He was working up a good stew when the clouds broke, and the sunbeams streamed into the building. Zuri was looking out the window when something caught his eye, which he feared was a snake. He jumped back only to recognize the snake as a curly line within a mosaic on the floor. Zuri brushed furiously but he could not remove the fine layer of grit that obscured the tiles.

Dropping the broom, he ran out of the building and sprinted to the fountain. He snatched a bucket from the shelf and scooped up a pailful. Walking as fast as he could without spilling, he rushed into room and threw the water across the floor. A tantalizing block of tiles was revealed. He ran for more water and splashed its load as well. More tiles appeared.

“What are you doing?” Leniz asked at the doorway.

“We have a mosaic floor,” Zuri said, pointing to where he threw the water. “We need a mop to clean off the last layer.”

“Fundazioa continues to astound us,” Leniz said, pulling his machete from the sheath across his back. “We need a longer stick and one of us will have to sacrifice a piece of clothing.”

“You get the stick and I’ll offer up one of my shirts,” Zuri said. After retrieving his shirt, he continued to scoop water out of the fountain and throw water on the floor. By mid-afternoon, the floor was clean and drying while his shirt was irredeemable.

“There must be a thousand squares across this floor,” Leniz said.

“Twelve hundred plus a border encircling the entire mosaic,” Zuri said.

“Close enough,” Leniz said with a shrug as he walked slowly across the floor. “Hey, look at this square. It’s like a box and if you look at it one way, it’s facing up to the left, but if you look at from the other way, it’s facing down to the right.”

“Geometry,” Zuri said. “Mathematics, botany, physics and who knows what else is here. This is one huge floor of related symbols laid out with mathematical precision. The Seminary has nothing close to this and I’ll bet the palaces of Lewa Ilu have nothing in comparison either. See how the lines here form an eight-pointed star? The design is a mathematical equation. Don’t ask me what equation it is but I know one when I see one.”

“The power, the wealth,” Leniz said.

“The knowledge,” Zuri said. “The Anointing Chair confirms for us this is a temple, but I’ve never heard of or seen a temple with this floor. Our temple floors are covered with pews or with benches in the poor districts. This temple belongs to the ancestors of the Guras, and the Guras of today are children by comparison. Or idiots; definitely idiots.”

“We have an answer,” Leniz said, slapping Zuri on the arm. “I knew bringing Gura to Fundazioa was the answer. We happen to be piling up a mound of more questions that we cannot solve yet, but we are only a few days on the Plain. The questions are remarkable by themselves.”

“I want to study this floor, but the light is fading,’ Zuri said, checking the western windows.

“Do you realize I traveled this land for three months when I was younger than you, a rambunctious kid who was not old enough to marry, and I found nothing,” Leniz said. “Nothing. Every year, men and women make pilgrimage and those who return bring reports of nothing found. Yet here I stand with you and proof of our great past is under our feet. If I went back tomorrow and told of our find, Qirin would be uprising within weeks, if not days.”

“We don’t want an uprising yet,” Zuri said with a pinched face. “I don’t think I want to be an instigator of a crusade fresh out of Seminary, although the idea is intriguing. Let’s make some dinner and return to this puzzle tomorrow.”

The night was quiet, and Zuri slept well. He was up at first light, doing his exercises with the staff across the mosaic floor. Inspired by the glyphs on the back wall, he felt an overwhelming confirmation of his choices at Seminary. He still wanted to say “fuck those pricks” with every other breath, but the free breaths were filling with pride of accomplishment. His regrets had receded a step or two.

“Study your footprints in the sand but only step forward, ” he recited as the proverb popped into his thoughts. He positioned himself for the sixth movement. For the tenth movement, he picked up his staff and tried moving with it in hand. He completed the movement without tripping himself or banging his shins although he was not graceful about it.

After breaking bread with Leniz, they began studying the floor.

“These squares look like a box step,” Leniz said, pointing to the left corner by door. “Look, I’m stepping left first, right together and then right first then left together. Each time, my right foot lands on the square with a flower in it. If I complete the box step, my right foot still hits a flower each time.”

“Box step?”

“The simplest of dance steps with a partner,” Leniz said. “One, two, three, one, two, three, and you complete a square or a box.”

“You think this floor could be about dancing,” Zuri said.