by D B Nielsen
‘So, St. John and that guy I just met–’
‘Gabriel,’ I responded.
‘Right, Gabriel,’ she continued, ‘are both ... what did you call them?’
‘Nephilim. Part angel, part mortal.’
‘Nephilim,’ she nodded distractedly. ‘And St. John’s like three thousand-years-old?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t believe it! Three thousand? Immortal? Like Edward Cullen? No way!’ Fi said pugnaciously, suddenly becoming very stubborn and practical. ‘That’s impossible! There’s no such thing!’
‘Oh, and you’d know, I suppose?’ I became angry, my voice laced with sarcasm, feeling the need to defend both myself and St. John. It was a similar response to the one I’d given but somehow coming from Fi’s mouth, it irked me. ‘You know everything, right? Everything that’s both possible and impossible? Like Tutankhamen’s Curse.’
She flushed, having the decency to look embarrassed. ‘Okay, okay. Calm down, Sage. Of course, I don’t know everything ... but you have to admit, it does sound ... well ... unbelievable.’
Her voice tapered off in confusion, wanting to believe me but finding it difficult.
‘Why? I mean, you of all people should accept what I’m saying! You love to watch those shows like True Blood and Supernatural!’ I challenged, becoming belligerent.
‘Yeah,’ she countered cynically, ‘but I don’t believe that they’re like Reality TV or something!’
I stormed on, ignoring her. ‘Did you know that there’s a type of jellyfish that lives forever? Its cells grow younger when it’s attacked or hurt and it becomes a polyp again, repeating the process over and over. Unbelievable, right? But true.’
I paused to draw breath and Fi cut in.
‘Oh God! Seriously? You’re not going to give me a biology or history lesson, are you?’ she exclaimed, shaking her head and holding her hands up in mock surrender. ‘I might as well give up now!’
I gave a dissatisfied humph.
‘Look, it’s not that I don’t believe you exactly...’ she offered on a more serious note.
‘But what? Exactly?’ I demanded.
‘Well, it’s like...’ Searching for an alternate word to “unbelievable” so as not to risk offending me, Fi continued, ‘um ... like ... strange.’
I sighed, knowing I was being unreasonable. I could almost hardly believe it myself – and yet I’d seen with my own eyes the truth!
‘I’m sorry,’ I apologised, ‘I know this sounds crazy. But you have to trust me here.’
‘Well, knowing you, I know you don’t know how to lie, so I guess it has to be true,’ she shrugged offhandedly, giving me the benefit of the doubt. ‘But still ... let’s just say that I’ll reserve judgement until...’ Her voice petered out.
‘Until you see it with your own eyes?’ I finished her sentence for her. ‘God, you’re such a Doubting Thomas. Why can’t you just trust me? But fine, you’ll see that I’m right.’
Fi absently nodded then, cocking her head to one side as if to indicate she’d had another thought, she asked, ‘So, these Nephilim, they can do like what? Shoot the wings off flies?’
I shot her a dirty look. Trust my sister!
‘They’re Nephilim, Fi. Not assassins. And this isn’t some movie,’ I protested.
‘Right,’ Fi stated sarcastically, ‘because if it were some movie there’d be a secret society of good guys protecting the world since before the time of Christ, receiving their orders from some mystical object like a crystal skull or a linen shroud or a code on the back of the Declaration of Independence or an artefact like ... like a Seed ... and embarking on a quest to find an ancient ruin or treasure or a mythical garden somewhere like in war-torn southern Iraq. Geez, how dumb of me to think it sounds like something out of National Treasure or Indiana Jones or Tomb Raider or–’
‘I get the point, Fi!’ I interrupted her tirade, wearily rubbing my eyes with the back of my hand. ‘I just meant that I don’t think the Nephilim have those kinds of super powers; at least, not that I’m aware of.’
‘But they’re immortal,’ she replied, still struggling to comprehend what I was telling her.
‘Yes, sort of,’ I said, ‘but they can be killed or injured by a seraph blade.’
Fi looked troubled. Her slightly more hazel coloured eyes were filled with a fierce concentration. I could almost see her inner battle.
‘Does St. John have a seraph blade?’ she asked finally.
I looked at Fi thoughtfully. ‘I don’t know. Is there a reason why he should have?’
Fi looked well and truly astonished at my lack of perspicacity.
‘Well, if what you’re saying is true–’ and she held up a hand to shush me before I could protest, ‘we’re going to need one if we’re going to kill that Semyaza dude.’
‘Kill Semyaza?’ I questioned incredulously, watching the windscreen slowly fog up with condensation as the car sat idling by the side of the road, feeling isolated from the rest of the world as we sat in the vehicle, ‘I don’t know if that’s part of the plan. Besides, he isn’t a “dude” but a Grigori and a very dangerous one at that. And what do you mean by “we”, Fi?’
Fi shot me an irritated look. ‘Seriously, Sage, you are sometimes so naïve. Of course, we’re going to have to kill Semyaza eventually. It’s probably the only way to ensure that the Seed and the Garden of Eden remains inviolate. And, anyway, we’re in this together. I’m not backing out now just because I don’t fully believe in angels and demons. But yes, Sage, as your sister I refuse to sit back and watch while you throw yourself headlong into trouble without me. You’re more than likely to get yourself killed because you’re just too ... too trusting!’
‘Don’t think this is some kind of a game, Fi,’ I felt impelled to point out.
‘I don’t, but I’m as involved in this as you are,’ Fi exhaled in exasperation, ‘I’ve been doing my fair share of research while you’ve been away and I have a lot to tell you too.’
‘You? Been doing research?’ Now it was my turn to scoff, showing my scepticism.
‘Yes, me!’ she protested, swatting me lightly on the arm. ‘I may not be bookish like you but I can use a search engine!’
I laughed, amused at Fi’s words. It was a long-standing joke in our family – the Internet was Fi’s favourite research tool, and somehow she’d managed to make it through her Finals relying almost solely on it!
‘Do you remember what you told me ages ago,’ Fi was saying, ‘I mean about your theory that the artefact was a map that led to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon?’
I leaned forward in the car seat, alert now. ‘I remember.’
‘Well, I tried looking up the historians to find out more about the Hanging Gardens and didn’t find too much but there was some information starting with Berossus,’ Fi stated excitedly, ‘Sage, Berossus was a contemporary of Alexander the Great. Which is interesting don’t you think, in light of the fact that St. John claims that the other piece of the map was – or is – housed in the Library of Alexandria?’
I nodded, picking up on her enthusiasm. ‘That is interesting.’
‘So, Berossus was a priest of Bel or Marduk or whatever that god’s name was but later in his life he left Babylon and went to live on the island of Cos and about 280BC he produced the Babyloniaca. It was one of a pair of books – the other was concerned with Assyria – which he wrote in order to explain the culture of Mesopotamia to the Greeks. Like you said, the Wise Men kept much information to themselves in their concern to safeguard their knowledge, omitting to pass it on to their Aramaean and Greek colleagues, which brought about the disappearance of the entire Mesopotamian culture for nearly two thousand years. But what remains of Berossus’ work suggests he was familiar with the traditional cuneiform literature in Sumerian and Akkadian that had been handed down over millennia and was still current in the academies of Babylon.’
‘Yeah, St. John told me too, that the Babyloniaca doesn’t survive in its e
ntirety today. But that might also be because the Greeks thought of other nationalities as barbarians so it might not have been widely read or valued at the time,’ I agreed.
Fi nodded as she pulled some papers out of the pocket of her jeans. ‘Or it might not have been accessible to everyone but a select few. Think about this, among his notes Berossus ascribes the Hanging Gardens of Babylon to Nebuchadrezzar II. So we can pretty much accept that Nebuchadrezzar had a hand in all this. The passage by Berossus which survives is quoted by the writer, Josephus, twice.’
‘Do you have it here?’ I asked as Fi nodded in response.
‘In Jewish Antiquities X, Josephus claims from Berossus of Nebuchadrezzar II,’ Fi began to read from the papers in her hand, ‘that “At his palace he had knolls made of stone which he shaped like mountains and planted with all kinds of trees. Furthermore, he had a so-called pensile paradise planted because his wife, who came from Media, longed for such, which was the custom in her homeland.” Then later in Contra Apionem 1, he wrote again, “within this palace he erected lofty stone terraces, in which he closely produced mountain scenery, completing the resemblance by planting them with all manner of trees and constructing the so-called Hanging Garden; because his wife, having been brought up in Media, had a passion for mountain surroundings.” Now after this, we have the accounts of Diodorus Siculus. Academics think that the descriptions of Diodorus derive from the lost History of Alexander written by Cleitarchus of Alexandria who was born around the time of Alexander’s defeat of the Persians under Darius III. Even if he never visited Babylon himself, it’s likely that Siculus would have had the opportunity to speak to soldiers serving under Alexander the Great who had seen the city for themselves. The same sources probably lie behind the report of Quintus Curtius Rufus. And later, Strabo wrote about the Hanging Gardens, his account believed to be sourced from the lost text by Onesicritus who also wrote during the reign of–’
‘Don’t tell me, let me guess. That would be Alexander the Great?’ I concluded.
‘You guessed it,’ Fi confirmed. ‘And finally we have Philo of Byzantium whose list of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World is the one that gained the most focus and currency in history. He lived, it’s said, about 250BC and didn’t even have a good second-hand account of the Hanging Gardens. But the Palace of Nebuchadrezzar II was sufficiently well preserved for Alexander to die there in 323BC while mourning his lover, Hephaestion. So even though they were quite a few years apart, there’s a lot to tie both Nebuchadrezzar II and later Alexander the Great to the mystery of the Hanging Gardens.’
‘It seems that way. St. John said that the ancient Mesopotamians and later the Greeks under Nebuchadrezzar II and Alexander the Great felt the need to hide the Garden of Eden behind the legend of the Hanging Gardens, but I wonder what it all means?’ I acknowledged, taking the notes from Fi’s hands.
‘Do you want to know what I think?’ Fi asked and, not waiting for my response, forged ahead, ‘I think that the Wise Men sought to safeguard the knowledge of the Hanging Gardens and, in turn, safeguard the knowledge of the Garden of Eden. That’s why there’s an absence of references to it in the cuneiform texts. I think that it’s deliberate – not just that these texts were simply lost in time but that they were deliberately hidden or left out of historians’ accounts of Babylon. Think about this, graver still is its deliberate omission in Herodotus’ description of Babylon and he was like the “Father of History”, wasn’t he? It’s like the greatest cover up ever. After all, if you find the one garden, you find the other.’
‘You could be right,’ I conceded, ‘and what happened to the Library of Alexandria, its destruction–’
‘–don’t forget all those papyri, scrolls, and tablets–’ Fi added.
‘–is also a mystery,’ I concluded.
‘Mysteries within mysteries. Typical!’ Fi stated.
‘Hey,’ I protested, ‘that’s my line!’
We shared our amusement at the way the link between identical twins worked.
‘I can’t believe that you got all of this off the net!’ I shook my head, bemused, as Fi revved the engine and pulled out onto the road again.
‘I told you,’ she chided me, repeating her words of long ago, ‘don’t dis the net! And don’t dis me!’
Once again, after Fi’s efforts to assist me in my quest, I was reminded that there was no way I could accept that my family would betray me. On the other hand, I realised as I watched the road slip away in a black blur beyond the window, that Fi’s driving could get me killed.
Fi had a tendency to drive way too fast for my liking and, though I had to admit her reflexes were good, I had no desire to test Newton’s Laws or, at least, the bit that stated that a body in motion would be compelled to change its state by force. I was glad though that my parents had exerted restraint and bought us a hybrid car and not something along the lines of Gabriel’s Ferrari because my sister was enough of a speed demon as it was.
‘So, tell me,’ Fi began, her tone suspiciously innocent, as we approached the familiar turn off to the Manor House, ‘does St. John have wings like an angel?’
‘Mmm,’ I replied noncommittally.
‘But, presumably, he has all the vital bits of the male anatomy?’ Fi quizzed me, a wicked smile hovering at the corners of her lips.
‘Fi!’ I hit her left arm with the papers in my hand, ‘Do you mind?’
‘What?’ Fi protested as she accelerated down the driveway to the Manor House, ‘I’m just curious, that’s all! Besides, Sage Rose Woods, you can’t tell me that you haven’t thought about it yourself!’
I blushed hotly, betraying myself in the process.
‘Ah ha!’ Fi exclaimed, ‘I knew it! Now that’s something they don’t teach you in Phys Ed!’
I was saved from having to respond to Fi’s teasing as, at the end of the driveway, I saw my Mum coming out from the Manor House to welcome me home. She looked the same as when I’d left for Paris, a sight for sore eyes. Though, on closer inspection, perhaps she was a touch more frazzled than usual which I suspected was due to my younger siblings running her ragged. Her azure blue knee-length wrap billowed in the wind like a banner unfurling, revealing her paint-splattered overalls underneath and her oldest pair of hiking boots caked with oil paint at the toes.
Fi slowed the car to a stop in front of the Manor House so I could jump out while she continued round the back to park in the garage. I found myself caught in a fast embrace and I yielded to my mother’s petite but wiry frame, returning her hug enthusiastically, despite the unfortunate smell of a blend of oil paints and turpentine with her favourite floral-scented perfume and eucalyptus and menthol medication that assaulted my nostrils.
She brushed the hair out of my eyes where the wind had blown it and said, ‘Sage, honey, you’ve grown.’
I shook my head in denial but looking at my mother’s weary face I could tell that she was right. I had grown. I would not have normally noticed the little signs of fatigue that hovered around her eyes nor that I had lost some of the innocence of childhood and some of the brashness of adolescence.
‘Come on. Let’s get you in out of this weather. I’ve just put the kettle on and I’m dying to hear all your adventures,’ she announced, drawing me towards the welcoming warmth of the Manor House.
In the kitchen, Mum removed her wrap and, hanging it over the back of a chair, prepared a pot of steaming hot Earl Grey tea and brought out a homemade dark, sticky cake from a tin, placing generous slices on a plate. It was the perfect combination for a cold day. The tea, strained into mugs, and the moist cake, spiced with ginger, almond and nutmeg, was exactly the panacea I needed.
Indy’s head was on my lap as I sat at the breakfast table, his tail thumping out an excited rhythm in response to my arrival, while Jasmine and Alex were watching TV upstairs, purposely kept away from me by Mum who was afraid that they would give me their flu. Fi came in with my suitcase, leaving it in the corner of the room where I would fetch it later,
and helped herself to a slice of Mum’s sticky cake, taking a seat beside me. I was pleasantly surprised – it seemed that, perhaps, becoming involved in the quest was doing some good; at least Fi was getting her appetite back!
Before Mum had an opportunity to bombard me with questions, I launched into a tale of my journey that was as close to the truth as I could possibly make it. I told her of the train trip to Paris and St. John’s lecture given at the Sorbonne, taking tea at Mariage Frères and our private visit to the Louvre, and my shopping expedition with Gabriel whose girlfriend worked at Armani. I embellished the details of my meetings with St. John’s “father” and “brother”, and of my late night visit to the Crypt next to Notre-Dame Cathedral, pretending that I visited the Crypt during the day to see the excavations. Of course, I omitted the journey to Rome with St. John and my stay at St. John’s apartment – I had no wish to give my mother a heart attack.
Although Mum had given both Fi and me the necessary mother-daughter talk about the birds and the bees when we were twelve, for an artist, she was singularly opposed to being liberal-minded where it concerned her daughters. I think if she could now have renamed us, I would have been called “Patience” and Fi might have been named “Chastity” – neither of which would have suited our personalities, but I don’t think Mum would have cared too much about that little detail.
At the end of my detailed explanations, wishing to avoid further questions where I might have had to bend the truth a little more than I would have liked, I deliberately changed the subject by thanking Mum for the gift of the car.
‘Oh, I’m just so proud of you both. Your dad and I were worried that you wouldn’t be able to concentrate if you knew we were moving to London,’ Mum said, her eyes lighting with a smile, ‘but it’s all worked out so well. Of course, Safie has always wanted to attend Oxford to study Art History, but have you thought about which university you’ll accept? It would be nice if you two could stay together but the decision is up to you.’
I expelled a sigh. ‘Sorry, Mum, I just haven’t given it much thought yet.’
