n May 4, 1881, Zianno Zezen is traveling west by train with his parents, bound for the Colorado gold fields. Zianno believes himself a normal, baseball-loving American boy. Then his mother tells him that today—his 12th birthday—is different from his previous birthdays, because they are different. He and his family, she says, are older than other people. Before she can explain further, their train plunges over a washed-out mountain bridge. Zianno's father gives him a baseball and tells him never to lose it. His dying parents speak inexplicable last words—"We are ... the Dreams." Then Zianno falls unconscious.
Zianno wakes to find himself being tended by a stranger, an itinerant gambler named Solomon J. Birnbaum. Zianno also discovers his wounds have mysteriously healed. Solomon becomes Zianno's surrogate father as they journey to St. Louis, where Zianno also finds a surrogate mother and sisters. When a pack of street kids assault Solomon, Zianno finds himself raising his father's baseball and ordering the assailants to leave—and they do. A new boy appears from the darkness—a boy who looks 12 and resembles Zianno. Seeing Zianno, he says, "You are Meq."
The Meq, Zianno learns, are not human, but an ancient, near-immortal race of unknown origin. When a Meq reaches his 12th birthday, he stops growing—stops aging. He won't resume aging until he finds his one soul mate among the Meq—a search that may take centuries. In addition to this and rapid healing, the Meq have other strange powers—and a few Meq carry Stones that grant them even greater powers. Zianno's father's baseball hides the Stone of Dreams, which gives Zianno odd, possibly visionary dreams.
However, the Stone cannot prevent a mysterious assassin—the deranged Meq known as the Fleur-du-Mal, the Flower of Evil—from killing Zianno's surrogate mother and sister, and kidnapping a little girl. Years and decades pass as Zianno seeks the girl, the Fleur-du-Mal, and more knowledge of the Meq. He crosses America, Asia and Africa—never aging, and never knowing if he'll find his soul mate among the few remaining Meq.
Forever young may be a curse
Steve Cash's first novel, The Meq, is an impressive accomplishment. He avoids fantasy's usual non-human races (elves, dwarves, etc.) to create one of the most remarkable parahuman races to grace the field. He also avoids the standard settings (ancient Ireland, pseudo-Middle-earth, etc.) in favor of regions rarely visited in turn-of-the-millennium fantasy: 1890s St. Louis, Vancouver, China, Mali, the Sahara. And, while The Meq belongs to the populous rite-of-passage genre, Zianno Zezen's coming of age may last longer than that of any other character in fiction; as the novel ends, some four decades later, he's still 12, and a sequel is forthcoming.
Description of The Meq's plot may lead readers to expect an action-packed quest as Zianno and his sometime companions journey from one exotic locale to another. However, while there's no shortage of events or trauma, the narrative is low-key. Cash's style leans a little too heavily on the expository; as a result, characterization and setting aren't fully developed, and emotions are muted. Readers expecting lushly detailed descriptions of China, the West African coast, New Orleans or the Colorado Rockies will be disappointed. Readers will leave these settings with little idea how they look.
Still, the central idea of a people who freeze in physical immaturity until they meet their one true soul mate is a powerful metaphor for love ... for monogamous heterosexual readers, anyway. Others may not be so thrilled. Nonetheless, the parahuman Meq give their creator a powerful tool for examining human nature.
