by August Arrea
“What’s Caelestian?” asked Jacob.
“Basically, it’s angelic writing. We have the English alphabet, they have theirs,” explained Max. “My father tried teaching it to me when I was younger, but I really didn’t put much effort into learning it.”
Despite their shared abilities to understand foreign languages and writings, none of the other boys seemed able to decipher the meaning of any of the symbols. Even if one of them managed the expertise to crack the encryption of the strange code, such an effort was quickly interrupted when Ethan was suddenly heard calling out, “Over here, you gotta check this out.”
The group of boys migrated their way to the very edge of the overlook where Ethan stood and they were immediately gripped in the awe of the view unveiled to them. Looking straight to the east, they could see the vast stretch of forest butting up against the foot of a wall of mountain before encroaching the higher peaks in clumps of green. To the north, dramatic falls of water spilled over the brim of higher, more precipitous cliffs rising high into the skies as if to form some magnificent crown of unknown royalty.
Jacob stood mesmerized along with his fellow Nephilim silently bearing witness to the biblical Xanadu below looking almost unrealistic in its beauty. The quaint valley of rolling green spaces and groves of shade trees appeared peaceful in the presence of the River emerging from within the ghostly ball of mist rising up at the fall’s feet. The transfixed gazes gradually shifted one by one to the sight of a magnificent eagle circling weightlessly above the valley as it glided about a blanket of deep blue with its impressive wings unfurled like an archer’s bow. Its sleek brown and white patterned feathers fluttered against the wind and with a screeching cry it made a sudden swoop downward and began flying directly toward where the boys stood watching. As it drew nearer, it became clear it was much larger than that of a normal eagle. Its piercing shrill of a cry sounded once more—and much louder. Slowly, the boys backed away from the ledge of the mountain as it looked more and more like the eagle, with its golden raptorial eyes fixed upon them, was coming in for an attack. And just as it reached the cliff terrace, the eagle reared its body up with its powerful wings rustling loudly as they swiped powerfully at the air, and a glint of sunlight caught one of the polished, razor sharp talons with a flash of brilliance, like a switchblade knife suddenly drawn from the confines of a pocket. Instantly, the mouths of the boys, who had ducked for cover, began to drop open at the sight of the eagle’s two spindly limbs, which began to elongate into the shape of human legs. At the same time, the rest of the bird also began quickly changing its form into that of a human. And when the feet touched the ground, the eagle had vanished from sight and in its place stood Zuriel.
The transformation brought a collective “Woooooah” from the boys. Zuriel paid no attention to the frozen looks of amazement locked on him as he brushed past without so much as a look at the gawking group of boys who quickly side-stepped out of his way. He briskly made his way to the center of the mountain shelf, and with his back to the boys he gestured to the stone slabs arranged in a circle around him.
“Come, and take yourselves a seat,” he gruffly instructed.
The boys scrambled to claim a spot amid the various smooth, yet time-weathered seats and waited with bated breath for the angel to speak.
“Let me begin by saying you are not here for instruction in magic tricks. There exists here no hocus-pocus. No spells, no wands, no supernatural balderdash. Nor am I here to indulge you in any juvenile fantasies some of you may have entertained that involves transforming yourself into some mortal superhero. Do I make myself clear?” There was a cool, no-nonsense tone in Zuriel’s voice, one which seemingly dared anyone present to stray from the absolute attention and order it demanded.
“The skills you learn here will demand great responsibility and maturity, and even greater discipline,” he continued. “What you choose to do with them once you leave Eden is not for me to dictate. Those actions, as well as their consequences you will forever after be bound by from this day forward, are yours and yours alone to make and, if need be, suffer. But while you are here, you will conduct yourselves as the learned apprentices you are. I trust you are each of you smart enough to not force me to repeat myself on this point.”
His eyes, while like two golden suns, were penetrating in their iciness as they slowly grazed the faces staring back at him as if waiting to see who might be brave enough to take the opportunity presented to voice their dissension.
“I take it by your silence we understand one another,” Zuriel surmised, after a pregnant pause. “Very good, then let us get started, shall we?”
Zuriel turned on his heel and several of the boys leaned forward on the stone slabs upon which they sat anxiously awaiting to learn what the strange crescent-shaped image on the ground might be. To their dismay, Zuriel was not yet done with his lecture.
“By now, you all I’m certain have discovered in varying degrees while living in the outside world certain unique abilities you share that set you apart from other mortal boys,” he said. “Undoubtedly, your fathers have prepared you in realizing these abilities. Still, there is no comfort in being different. Especially when that difference comes with such a vast stroke. It’s difficult enough existing in mortal skin in a mortal world with all its flaws and self-imposed hurdles. And for many of you, I’m confident it goes without saying, being a Nephilim has more often times than not felt like a curse that has brought upon you nothing but ridicule or left you feeling ostracized by those who view you as freakish in nature, for lack of better words. Am I correct?”
A grumbling of agreement rose up in response around Jacob. Even Max, sitting beside him, who had seemed to Jacob to be so comfortable and even confident in his own skin couldn’t hide the recognition of what Zuriel said from passing visibly across his face. Jacob then gave the other boys seated around him a quick, perplexed passing glance. None of the boys looked particularly odd or seemed to possess any strange habits to note that he would suspect might leave them open to ridicule from other kids. In fact, they appeared much like him; average, normal teenagers who could have been plucked from any average, normal high school. Some even looked as if they could easily step into the shoes of a bully if they so chose to answer the call. Yet here they sat admitting to Zuriel’s simply inquiry with a quiet unstated murmur that they had struggled with the same feelings of inferiority Jacob had. And for the first time Jacob realized he was not—as Zuriel had put it, as well as himself on more than one occasion—as freakish in nature as he had been made to feel more often than not the past couple years. More importantly, in that brief, vulnerable moment, he began feeling, for the first time, an inexplicable kinship to these other boys, many with whom he had yet to exchange a single word.
“I wish I could tell you it gets better,” continued Zuriel. “But the isolated gulf you feel between yourself and the life of regular civilians is likely only going to widen. You have now approached the age where your abilities—and soon enough your physical bodies as well—have begun to mature. My role here is to not only guide you through this state of flux, but more importantly train you in embracing and exercising your gifts to their ultimate potential. The first step in this process, however, is to identify the Grace that resides within each of you.”
A hand immediately shot up into the air.
“Yes, Mr. Caph,” acknowledged Zuriel, before his eyes even touched upon the boy who looked to be freshly plucked off a surfboard with his sun-kissed wiry limbs and dirty blond hair worn shaggy and bowl-shaped over the ears.
“So what kind of, uh, powers are we talking about exactly with these Graces?” the boy, unable to hide his eagerness despite his hesitancy to pose the question, asked.
Suddenly Zuriel was gone, disappearing into thin air as is he had never been there.
“Where did he go?” The question came in an echoing chorus as the group of boys looked all around, their head’s swiveling wildly in every possible direction searching for some s
ign of the angel, but there was no one else present besides themselves. And then as quickly as he had vanished, Zuriel reappeared, standing in a completely different spot from where he had been when he fell out of sight. He was also now wearing a heavy charcoal-colored wool overcoat, the shoulders of which carried a light dusting of white snow. And as he made his way back toward the center of the circle, he tossed a rolled-up paper he held clutched in his gloved hand onto Leos’s lap in passing.
“It’s a newspaper,” said Leos somewhat confused as he unrolled the paper. “A French newspaper.”
“Will you, please, state out loud for the class the date on it?” inquired Zuriel as he shrugged off the heavy coat he was wearing and tossed it aside.
“January 26, 1924,” answered Leos, as his eyes wandered further down the page grazing the bold French headlines. “It’s all about the opening ceremony of the winter Olympics in Chamonix, France.”
“Correct, which is from where I’ve just returned,” announced Zuriel, drawing an even more confused murmur from the group of boys. “Now then, who can recite for me the seven heavenly virtues?”
The question drew a notable silence amongst the boys, broken only by the chattering of birds flitting about in the nearby trees.
“Am I to understand not one of you can answer what should have been the first words out of your mouths after ‘mommy’ and ‘daddy’?” questioned Zuriel, sounding both disappointed as well as annoyed.
Jacob glanced around him as inconspicuously as he could and, when he saw no one was willing to venture an answer, he slowly, though not without some hesitation, raised his hand.
“Mr. Parrish.” Zuriel narrowed a questionable gaze on Jacob while tugging at the fingers of the soft leather gloves he worked to remove from his hands. “Please…bowl me and everyone gathered here over with your elucidation.”
For a moment Jacob cursed himself for volunteering.
“Well, um…there’s Chastity,” he began in a hoarse whisper.
“Speak up!” instructed Zuriel sharply.
“Chastity, I said,” repeated Jacob louder than need be after clearing his throat. “Then there’s, uh…Humility…”
“Not exactly flowing from your tongue, are they Mr. Parrish?” Zuriel remarked with a tone of judgment.
Trying not to let the angel’s impatience rattle him any more than he was, Jacob paused for a moment as if carefully combing the inside of his skull for the remaining words. Then he quickly proceeded to blurt in quick succession his remaining guesses: “Liberality, Diligence, Meekness, Kindness and, um, Temperance.”
For once, Jacob was grateful for the sound of Mrs. Braukoff voice ringing shrilly in his head as he named off each virtue while remembering the first time he learned of them as a child in her Bible class. The look which remained on Zuriel’s face, however, made Jacob question whether he had managed to recall the list of virtues correctly. In fact, he was certain by the arch of the angel’s brow he had most definitely gotten them wrong.
“Very good, Mr. Parrish,” the angel finally remarked to Jacob’s surprise, though the understated tone was hardly congratulatory. Jacob squirmed somewhat uncomfortably as Zuriel’s gaze stayed firmly fixed on him for some time as though trying to bore its way through his flesh like a blowtorch. It was only when the penetrating eyes finally shifted from him did Jacob breathe a sigh of relief as Zuriel continued on with his lesson.
“While angels are gifted with many wondrous abilities, there is inherent in each of us seven core powers, for lack of a better word. These powers are extended to us as manifestations, if you will, of the seven heavenly virtues. They are known as the Seven Graces,” explained Zuriel while strolling his way amongst the boys with easy steps. “One of these Graces, as I just demonstrated to you, is what we refer to as Drifting. It derives from the virtue of Diligence, meaning to be steadfast in your work. No matter what stands in one’s way, or problems one might face, the person practicing this virtue will accomplish whatever it is he sets out to do, and what greater barrier is there than time and the physical restraints of the body? With the power of Drifting, one has the ability to wander through the dimensions of time, step outside the physical body and even occupy the physical shell belonging to another. A few moments ago I chose to venture back to 1924 Chamonix-Mont-Blanc in the Rhône-Alpes, site of the first Winter Olympics. Beautiful country. So beautiful I spent two days there, even though to all of you it appeared as a blink of an eye.”
~~~
Zuriel then proceeded to begin naming the remaining powers.
“The power of Bending comes from the virtue Temperance, which calls for a constant mindfulness of others and one’s surroundings. Another way to think of it is the voice you sometimes hear inside your head attempting to guide your steps when your feet attempt to lead you astray,” said Zuriel. “With Bending, you become the voice, as you are given the ability to not only tap into and read the thoughts of others, but influence them as well.”
“No kidding? You mean like a Jedi Knight?” Ethan blurted out with an intense seriousness as he seemed to become momentarily stunned by the revelation, bringing chuckles from the other boys.
Zuriel, however, ignored the inquiry with an exasperated roll of his eyes and moved to Gazing, which he explained came from the virtue Meekness and its call for a willingness to forgive and show mercy in the face of adversity. With the Grace of Gazing, one would be given the power to peer into the soul of another and see in intimate detail, including every dark, hidden secret, a life in full from start to finish. For what better way to accept the faults of others without prejudice than to be able to see the seed from which a rose sprouted and understand how it came to be given thorns, explained Zuriel to the sea of bewildered faces focused intently on his words.
And while Nephilim may have had the ability to understand the sounds of nature, a passing butterfly gave Zuriel the opportunity to demonstrate how the power of Whispering held the voice of the beasts, and the lone butterfly was quickly joined by a colorful swarm to follow any command the angel gave much like an army to its general. The power of such of Grace came from Kindness, or the virtue of being good towards all life.
“There’s good reason the creatures of the earth have long been timid and leery of man, and that is because unprejudiced and compassionate sounds are absent from his tongue,” said Zuriel. “Those gifted with the power of Whispering have harnessed the one language lost to man—the call of the wild; and a most powerful language it is.”
Then there was Summoning. Derided from the virtue of Chastity—or achieving purity by being unhindered by worldly desires, as Zuriel explained—this Grace gave its holder the power to control not only the elements of earth such as water, wind and fire, but maneuver the time of day as well, because nothing was as pure as the very things from which all life sprang forth. To demonstrate this extraordinary feat, Zuriel awakened a sudden squall from thin air to breathe its wrath briefly through the peaceful outlook and knock several of the boys off their stone slabs before it dissipated into the surrounding mountain cliffs.
“I’ll be stuffed!” Jacob heard Max exclaim with disbelief under his breath when the wind subsided. And under any other circumstances, Jacob would have likely offered up an appreciative snicker at his friend’s unique cache of down under phrases that he had quickly come to find amusing had he, too, not been struck speechless by the demonstration. Especially when moments later Jacob watched with ever-widening eyes as Zuriel suddenly began to bend forward at the waist in an unnatural manner. And as his did, his body quickly began to change its shape, becoming slimmer and more elongated as it lowered itself onto all fours. When the hands met the ground they were no longer hands, but giant paws, and the human form that was Zuriel in an instant once again slipped from sight and in its place was a large, black panther whose fierce golden eyes peered brightly from behind an ebony pelt as black as the angel’s own long locks.
Glued to the stone slabs upon which they remained seated, the group of wide-eye
d Nephilim cautiously leaned as far back as they could from the intimidating creature purring loudly as it moved stealthily past them. It continued along the curved aisle of stone pedestals until it reached the end of the row where Ethan sat stiff as a board and motionless except for his rounded eyes which followed the animal as far as they could as it circled around behind him.
“And of course I’ve already shown you at the beginning of class the ability to mimic the form of any living creature,” came Zuriel’s voice again, and when Ethan managed the courage to turn his head and look to the angel his pie-shaped eyes grew even wider.
“AHHH, IT’S ME!” he cried out when he found himself staring back into a mirror image of himself kneeling on the ground beside him.
“Terrifying, isn’t it? Both for me taking on this form as well as you getting a gander of it up close, I would well imagine,” came Zuriel’s voice from Ethan’s clone, drawing a chorus of giggles from the other boys. And in a flash, Zuriel reemerged from Ethan’s carbon copy wearing a satisfied grin on his face.
“Ha, ha, very funny! Ethan remarked under his breath as Zuriel rose to his feet to continue on with his oration.
“The Grace called Cloaking not only allows one to change physical shape but appear as a beacon of light, a plume of smoke, a drift of fog and, just like the virtue of Humility, from which this power is derived, it allows one to exist unseen,” said Zuriel to the stone-rendered faces staring back in replicated awe at all they’d just witnessed. “So there you have the Graces: Gazing, Bending, Summoning, Drifting, Whispering and, finally, Cloaking. You will sometimes hear these powers referred to as Angel’s Breath. This is because Graces are passed onto Nephilim offspring upon their birth by the angels who father them. It is only at a certain age when the Nephilim child is brought here that the Grace, which has remained unknown to himself and even the angel who fathered him, is revealed.”
Zuriel had barely finished speaking when nearly every boy’s hand shot up into the air in unison.
