by August Arrea
“And I take it you must be the reason for this unexpected return after such a long absence,” he said in a friendly, yet inquisitive manner. “I’m Damiel, Angel of the Sword.”
With slight timidity, Jacob took hold of the hand extended his way and the warmth that greeted his palm and spread through him was no longer strange and surprising, but familiar. Yet as soothing as the angel’s embrace was, Jacob noticed a look slowly make its way across the angel’s face. It was the same look he had seen on Johiel’s face when the old man first laid eyes on him—a startled look. One that brought with it a slight recoil. One Jacob thought he had imagined.
“I’m Jacob. Jacob Parrish,” he said with an awkward smile.
The angel was studying him much harder now.
“Something wrong?” asked Jacob.
“It’s the strangest thing,” muttered Damiel with a slight cock of his head.
“What, my name?”
The angel continued to study the boy, and the more he did the more his eyes narrowed as if in an attempt to burrow their way under Jacob’s skin.
“It can’t be,” Jacob thought he heard Damiel mumble under his breath as if arguing against some unheard voice suddenly whispering inside his head. And then as if sensing the growing discomfort which came from the piercing way his eyes were carefully studying the boy, Damiel’s face softened with a friendly if not completely authentic smile.
“Jacob is it?” said Damiel. “I am pleased to make your acquaintance.”
He then looked to Gotham as did Jacob, each one carrying quizzical expressions on their faces but for different reasons.
“I guess we should probably get going,” suggested Gotham, doing his best to avoid the eyes of both.
“Yes, the others will be most interested to learn of your arrival,” said Damiel as though awakening from a brief trance. “Your timing is perfect. The last of the new group of Fledglings arrived just yesterday.”
“Fledglings?” inquired Jacob curiously.
“Young Nephilim such as yourself who have come here to train,” explained Gotham.
“Yes,” said Damiel, giving Jacob a strange glance out of the corner of his eye. “A special dinner to welcome the new brood is being held this evening.”
Then unfurling his wings in preparation to take to the sky, Damiel said, “Shall we go?”
Gotham’s wings remained tight to his back.
“I think we shall walk, at least part of the way,” he replied. “I want to give the boy here a chance to fully experience this new place.”
“Of course,” said Damiel with an unsure smile. “It is without doubt infinitely more breath-taking in scope on foot than by wing. Perhaps I will join you, if you don’t mind. It will give us a chance to catch up over these long years.”
Jacob thought he caught a brief moment of hesitation in the glance Gotham exchanged with Damiel, yet he nodded approvingly.
“Lead the way, old friend,” said Gotham.
The anxious feeling that had held its grip on Jacob eased somewhat, though not completely, as he was guided along the beach, an angel on each side, toward the unknown resting beyond the looming mountains.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Paradise Found
J
acob soon found his feet tracing the narrow pathway leading the way up a great rock of a mountain just beyond the beach’s white sands, with two angels in tow as his guide. Below them the great Dilmun Sea glistened peacefully, and the thunderous growls from the encroaching waves breaking upon the shore was replaced with the whistling of wind moving through the caverns and crevices of the mountain. Halfway up, the path came to an abrupt end offering no means to continue on unless one was a lizard with the ability to scamper with ease up the remaining stretch of cliffs, which appeared almost like the walls of some undiscovered fortress by the sheer vertical nature in which they rose to greater heights.
“Looks like a dead end,,” observed Jacob.
“The Emmaus Corridor is the only way to enter Eden by foot,” answered Damiel.
Taking note of the confused look on the boy’s face, Damiel placed his hand on the mountain wall and whispered a phrase of words too quiet for Jacob’s ears to hear. There followed a loud rumbling and the crumbling sound of rock, and the ground beneath quivered sharply, as if the mountain was shifting itself. Then, to Jacob’s amazement, he saw a fractured break reveal itself in the rock where Damiel had placed his hand. The break grew bigger, splitting the side of the cliff in two before slowly separating and widening. When the rumbling finally stopped, a dark, narrow passage leading deep into the bowels of the mighty mountain was revealed. One by one they entered with Damiel leading the way, his sword once more drawn and its blade, somehow containing the dancing light of the blazing sun even where sunlight was denied entry, cutting back the darkness that met them.
The passageway was extremely tight, claustrophobically so, allowing no more than the width of a single man to pass at a time between the smooth, cold rock that seemed to rise up indefinitely. Jacob’s alert eyes darted amongst the strange silhouetted images that appeared to take shape and come to life from the flickering shadows cast upon the smothering walls of rock by the light coming from Damiel’s sword. Higher above, where the blackness loomed out of reach of the beacon, the wind sweeping through the corridor howled loudly. And from within the wind and the darkness emerged a wave of deep ominous moans. It was not the wind, however, but rather it seemed to resonate from within the walls of rock, as though the mountain itself was alive.
“She is welcoming us,” Gotham’s whispering voice came from behind to meet Jacob’s ear.
“I’d hate to hear what she sounds like if she wasn’t,” answered Jacob.
~~~
When they finally reached the end of the passageway, the familiar loud rumbling sounded once more and again the ground trembled, and when Jacob turned to look, the corridor from which they had passed through had vanished from sight leaving visible only an impregnable solid gray wall.
“Angels. Shadowy demons. Moving mountains. Can’t wait to see what’s next to challenge my sense of reality,” said Jacob.
“Perhaps you might consider a different tact as you move forward from here and allow yourself to accept something other than the finite realm of the world you’ve left behind. Only then will you be able to see Eden as it truly is,” offered Gotham, who like Damiel appeared to find the mountain’s movements nothing less than normal.
“I know it will be a difficult, if not impossible task for a bridge-jumping realist such as yourself,” Gotham was quick to add dryly with a measured sigh.
Jacob shot Gotham a sideways glare, pausing to determine from the expressionless look on the angel’s face whether the sarcastic quip was meant as a backhanded dig or more light-hearted joking first observed down at the beach.
“Well then? For what are you waiting? I would think you would be anxious to finally satiate that skeptical curiosity of yours and see where this journey has brought you,” pressed Gotham, directing the boy’s attention with a nod to an overlook jutting from the mountain’s side a short distance from where they stood.
Since the moment he learned of Eden’s unlikely existence on the island of Akdamar, Jacob had silently spent his time wondering what it might look like, rummaging through visions of wondrous beauty inside his head conjured up from the wildest spectrum of his imagination. Back home in Cain’s Corner, Penuel Point had proven to be the most beautiful place on earth, and against which he judged everything else touched by nature’s hand. Yet nothing, not even the majesty of Penuel Point, could compare to the celestial magnificence that unfolded into view when Jacob walked to the edge of the plateau. An audible gasp escaped his lips, and his eyes grew large when they gazed out upon the greenest of forests he’d ever seen stretching for countless leagues as far as the eyes could follow beneath his feet. From numerous gray mountains of rock greened with clumps of clinging trees and shrubs spilled magnificent waterfalls. And slithering pea
cefully along a path long laid through the center of the forest was a massive, majestic river. Its bluest of water flowed serpentine-like through the forests like a vein pumping with life-giving blood on its way to the Dilmun Sea. It felt to Jacob as though he was watching an episode on the National Geographic Channel about some undiscovered jungle found in some remote part of the world impossibly untouched by human presence. Except high-definition television couldn’t begin to do justice to what Jacob was now seeing.
“I certainly didn’t expect anything like this,” Jacob fawned with awe. “It’s so…so…”
“Beautiful?” said Damiel, offering up a simplistic word the boy struggled to find to describe the most grandiose of things he’d ever seen.
“Big,” answered Jacob.
And, yes, beautiful. Abundantly so. The colors alone were beyond the spectrum of anything Jacob knew. It was almost dreamlike. And the air. It was alive with pleasant scents gathered up in the arms of the gentle breeze from blooming flowers seen and unseen. Jacob closed his eyes and breathed deeply, and a smile of contentment stretched itself across his face. Pure heaven.
Literally.
“God’s garden,” came Damiel’s voice from over the boy’s left shoulder where the angel now stood. “It’s hard to fathom its existence even when that existence stands before your very eyes. It holds a beauty that even I, myself, have not become fully accustomed to in all my many centuries spent here—this place where all life was birthed.”
“As well as death.”
Jacob turned toward the sound of Gotham’s voice and found the angel standing nearby where he had been silently gazing down at the scenery in which they were all sharing.
“It may not catch your eye from where we stand, but it is there, trust me,” said Gotham. “Even the abundance of so much beauty cannot conceal its presence entirely.”
His face, almost statuesque in its profile, was barren of any expression. Yet his eyes could not fully hide a pained sadness lingering amid a brewing contempt that Jacob spied holding court deep within Gotham’s smoldering golden gaze. And feeling the boy’s gaze upon him, Gotham suddenly turned away from the vista.
“We should be moving. We’ve a long walk ahead of us,” he said, avoiding eye contact with both Jacob and Damiel as he moved briskly past them.
~~~
They continued along a terrace of rock winding its way through gullies and caverns as it led a path down the side of the mountain. In short time, the path guided them down the steep cliffs and brought them to the thicket of the Forest. There they came upon two trees of centurion size standing like fortress guards at the foot of the mountain where their gnarled roots had anchored themselves to the thick hide of rock. Jacob marveled at their size which made him feel no bigger than an ant in their looming presence. And yet all the while he could not help but sense Damiel’s burning gaze upon him. Constant it had been on him, during their ascent up the mountain and now back down.
“Where to now?” asked Jacob, staring into the Forest ahead while trying with a growing uncomfortableness to ignore the angel’s penetrating eyes fixed on him.
“We follow the path through the Forest,” answered Gotham.
“Looks to be quite a walk.”
“That it is,” said Damiel as if a gentle warning as they crossed the Forest’s threshold. “You may begin to wonder if it has an end by the time we reach our destination.”
The angel’s words caused Jacob no pause. He was far too taken by his new surroundings to wonder where they were headed much less worry about the toll the path they walked threatened to take on his feet. And in his unharnessed eagerness, he wandered off ahead of his winged chaperones to explore the mysterious new place that was slowly unveiling more of itself to him with each step he took. Once immersed deep in the woods, Jacob immediately became aware of an almost sacred serenity that moved amongst the trees. It was church- like, as though the peacefulness itself was an unseen but very real presence.
Here, the slanting sunlight was thin, pushing its way through a thick canopy of branches and leaves above that all but blotted out the sky. The feathered fingers of fern bejeweled with drops of dew from the constant light drizzle in the air glistened brightly as they unfurled from their thick clusters and stretched upward toward the streaming warmth. An ever-hanging mist hovered low like a veil of silk fluttering gently in the breeze. It bathed the Forest in an almost unreal, dreamlike gauze as it moved amongst the trees like some ghostly apparition.
And then there were the trees themselves.
If Jacob had not laid eyes on them himself, he never would have believed they could grow into the colossal giants that surrounded him. It was as if he had stepped into a prehistoric world no longer in existence, and maybe never was. The trunks of the rooted giants looked as though it would take a couple dozen men holding hands to fully encircle, and they stretched to the heavens higher than the eye could follow. Stoic they were in their stature, like elder statesmen proudly poised amongst the smaller trees and saplings far too young to have witnessed the birthing of their world as they had. Their tough, gray hides, draped in the coils of leafy vines and ivy, were like that of an elephant, yet brightly greened with moss and emanating a pleasant and sweet, pungent woodsy perfume that permeated the air all around. And despite the peacefulness that reigned through the Forest, the unmistakable sounds of life lurking within the thick greenery growing all around echoed from all corners.
The calls of the wild soon had Jacob performing clumsy pirouettes while making his way along the damp dirt path that snaked its way through the Forest, as his eyes darted all about him trying to catch a glimpse of the elusive creatures. Above him, rustling about unseen high in the trees, his ears pricked to the chatter of birds. The language of some was familiar; others he had never before heard. Yet their growing curiosity as they fluttered about in their attempts at gaining closer looks at the stranger strolling through their woods was unmistakable.
Leaving Jacob unhindered to acquaint himself with the new surroundings slowly unfolding itself with every step, Damiel and Gotham lingered some distance behind, their pace easy and unhurried. The stretch of path had lent them a chance to talk alone and reacquaint themselves since they had last seen one another, which by then had seen the passing of many decades when Gotham last stepped foot inside Eden’s borders before disappearing without a trace into the world beyond its Gate. Yet it wasn’t long before a noticeably awkward quiet fell over the two, and for a moment that seemed to each of them much longer they walked in silence with only the tranquil sounds of the Forest accompanying them.
When Damiel finally breached the quiet to speak, his voice was quiet, yet firm. “Tell me my eyes are playing to deceive me.”
Gotham didn’t need to look to Damiel to know the angel’s gaze, like his own, was fixed firmly on Jacob scampering far ahead of them along the path. Patiently, Gotham had awaited the inevitable question visibly eating at Damiel long before the three had journeyed up the mountain pass and through the hidden corridor, and now that they finally had a private moment out of earshot from Jacob, he dreaded it.
“I take it’s the boy to whom you refer?” asked Gotham.
“You know exactly to what I am referring,” snapped Damiel.
Gotham sighed with a knowing resignation. “The resemblance is striking, is it not?”
“Then it’s not my imagination.”
“From the look on your face when you first laid eyes on him down at the beach, I suspect you already knew the answer. And I thank you, Damiel, for holding tight your tongue until we had this moment alone to speak about it.”
“You’re telling me he doesn’t know?”
Gotham smiled and shook his head much to Damiel’s amazement. “Up until yesterday he thought of angels as harp-strumming cherubs flying in the clouds, and Eden as something out of a Peter Pan fairy tale,” recounted Gotham. “The day I came into his life he was already concerting with a physician to help cure him of the mysterious deformity that had fo
und its way onto his back. So yes, I believe it’s safe to say he’s very much oblivious where his heritage is concerned.”
“Would it be so naive of me to ask how the son of your greatest enemy came to be your ward?” inquired Damiel.
“How, indeed,” answered Gotham in a quiet way as though he himself had only just then pondered the question. “Fate seems to deride great amusement in the schizophrenic way it stalks me; clothed as a most amusing joker one minute while trying to sink its blood-stained fangs into my skin when my guard is down. The intent of its fickle ways is lost to me.”
“That is your answer; that fate brought him to you?”
Gotham let free an almost resigned sigh. “I can tell you only what I myself have been able to make sense of, Damiel,” said Gotham. “But it’s a long story in telling and, if all the same to you, I’d rather it be heard by all ears demanding to hear it, as they most surely will, when we reach the Garden.”
“As you wish. But at least answer me this much: why on earth would you dare to bring him here? To Eden, of all places?” asked Damiel.
“Because he is a Nephilim,” said Gotham. “And because like the other Fledglings brought here, he is deserving of training and to learn who and what he is.”
“And what is that exactly, Gotham? Have you given any thought to that question as you ponder the twisted interest fate has taken in yourself?” asked Damiel.
“He is the product of what we have been given the choice to create, like every other Fledgling who’s stepped foot within this Forest,” answered Gotham testily.
“Like every other Fled—? Are you hearing the words escaping your lips?” An abrupt surge of anger gave brief rise to Damiel’s voice before he managed to regain his calm and keep his rumblings from being carried through the trees ahead and overheard by Jacob. “Certainly you of all people should know what his presence here will mean. For all of us.”
