The Crossing Point

by August Arrea

  “I can’t say I could argue with him,” said Damiel.

  “It’s why I chose to return to Eden,” said Gotham. “But in seeing through what has been called upon me, I find myself needing to ask something from you; something I’m not sure I have a right to request.”

  “You can ask from me anything, you know that,” replied Damiel.

  “I’m glad to hear that, because I need your assurance that you will step in and take my place watching over Jacob should I be unable.”

  Damiel was visibly caught off guard by the request.

  “Unable?” he echoed. “You just got through saying you were ready to embrace your duty to the boy, and now in the same breath it sounds as though you are already planning on taking your leave yet again, but not before entrusting Jacob’s welfare into my hands.”

  “I have already made my promise to the boy, and I now make the same assurance to you that I have no intention of going,” said Gotham vehemently. “I also have no idea what bends shape the road that lies ahead of me.”

  Despite Gotham’s assurances, Damiel found the request surprising, to say the least.

  “Why me?” he asked finally without giving an answer one way or the other.

  “Because I trust you,” came the angel’s response, which Damiel found strangely flattering to hear knowing Gotham was not the trusting type. “More importantly, Jacob trusts you. And rightly so after coming to his aid at Broken Earth when the expectation of wings—and Eksel’s role as teacher and guardian—failed him.”

  Of course, Damiel knew instantly Gotham was referring to the first day the Fledglings were first brought to Broken Earth when instinct sent him racing down to end Jacob’s long fall from the cliff top while Eksel looked on without so much as moving a muscle.

  “You’ve heard.”

  The fiery gleam in Gotham’s eyes served as more than an answer.

  “Eksel would be remiss in not thanking wholly our father for my absence that day,” said Gotham. “He’d have suffered a fate much more severe than a bruised jaw.”

  “Hard as he sometimes makes it for us to see, Eksel means well,” said Damiel. “We must be mindful his way of seeing things is mostly limited to two colors: black and white. Jacob, unfortunately, is a shade of gray seemingly lost to his color blindness.”

  “Which is all the more reason I have come here to ask you what I have today,” said Gotham as he stood waiting to hear Damiel’s reply to his request.

  Before Damiel could give his answer one way or the other there came suddenly, in the distance, a desperate wail of a cry carrying Damiel’s name. They turned to see Ethan coming up over a slope. He was running with all his might toward them with his sword gripped tight in his hand carrying the blinding glint of the sunlight in its blade.

  “What on earth has sent you howling through Eden like some kind of wounded banshee?” asked Damiel with a grin when the boy finally reached them.

  Though desperate to answer, Ethan stood stooped over grasping his knees trying to catch his breath from his long, hard run.

  “It’s Balantine...he’s hurt...!” he managed to sputter through his strained gasping.

  Gotham immediately eyed the sword clutched in the boy’s hand and caught a stain of red on the blade. Grasping Ethan’s wrist, he raised the weapon for closer inspection.

  “And what exceptional display of skill has colored your blade, Fledgling?” he asked with calm concern.

  “Huh?”

  “This blood...where did it come from?”

  “I’m not sure,” answered Ethan. There was an edge of panic in his voice. “We were just messing around...sparring...you know, like Damiel instructed us to do. I don’t know...I guess we must have gotten a little carried away. The next thing I knew Balantine cried out in pain and fell to the ground holding his leg. I saw blood…lots of it!”

  Ethan barely finished his sentence when Damiel bolted. He was half a dozen steps into a fierce sprint when his form began to change. His body became hunched, bending to all fours so his hands could find the ground and join his feet to speed him in his run. And in a quick instant, he was no longer human, but a cheetah tearing across the grassy turf with wind-like swiftness toward Lions Bite.

  “I didn’t mean it, I swear!” Ethan exclaimed fervently to Gotham. It was not the time for apologies, and with a loud flap of his mighty wings unfurling themselves, the angel lunged for the sky with a strict directive to Ethan to follow.

  ~~~

  Damiel reached Lions Bite with extraordinary quickness and as he passed through the large stone markers heading into the arena his form shifted once more to its angelic likeness. Without missing a step, he raced to where a group of Nephilim was seen huddled in a tight circle around a pair of feet donning dusty sneakers sticking out from within the scrum. When they saw Damiel approaching, the boys quickly stepped back to make room revealing Balantine, who was lying motionless on his back on the ground. He was conscious and didn’t appear to be in any pain. Kneeling beside him was Jacob, who was applying pressure with blood-soaked hands placed one on top the other to Balantine’s upper thigh.

  When Jacob looked up and saw Damiel, there was a wide-eyed panicked look in his face. “I didn’t know what else to do. It wouldn’t stop bleeding. I think he may have cut an artery or something.”

  Damiel offered Jacob a calming smile while sinking to his knees opposite him, then turned his attention to Balantine who remained surprisingly quiet and calm.

  “Now, you know why this place is called Lions Bite,” he said. “Don’t be afraid. You’re not the first Nephilim to shed blood here.”

  “I’m not afraid,” replied Balantine replied calmly. “In fact, I don’t feel any pain anymore.”

  Damiel instructed one of the boys to fetch him some water from the River then gently took hold of Jacob’s hands sticky with blood and tried to remove them from the wound, but at first Jacob was reluctant to relinquish his hold.

  “It’s alright Jacob, I can take it from here,” said Damiel reassuringly.

  Jacob looked into the angel’s face and the smile that was returned gradually filled him with a peaceful ease. He relaxed onto his haunches and as he did Damiel felt the boy’s hands slacken and slowly guided them away from Balantine’s thigh. When Damiel lowered his gaze to examine the wound, however, a curious look came over him. The jeans Balantine wore were blood-soaked around the upper leg area, and it carried the unmistakable mark of a mishap involving swords in the clean tear without fray several inches wide in the denim.

  There was, however, no wound.

  Damiel pulled wider the slashed denim opening and searched more closely the flesh of the leg hidden for any sign of injury that would explain the presence of blood. Yet strangely there was no nick, no scratch, not even a bruise. And the kindly look of concern quickly fell away from Damiel’s face.

  “What is this?” he hissed before casting a suspicious leer upon the group of boys watching quietly and searched their faces for some tell-tale sign of mischief-making. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time Nephilim engaged in a good-natured prank to help ward off the tediousness of their training, though no one had yet gathered the nerve to target an angel in order to get a quick laugh. And if indeed this was an attempt at such a prank, the stone-faced expressions staring back at Damiel offered no sign betraying their involvement. If anything, their faces carried the same dumbfounded expression as the angel, even as they strained forward by the neck to gain a peek at Balantine’s leg, especially Jacob.

  “So, how is it?” asked Balantine impatiently.

  “Why not see for yourself?” grumbled Damiel.

  Balantine quickly sat up and when he peered inside his lacerated jeans he beamed with delight, and relief, when he saw his leg was wound-free.

  “Oh, thank heavens…you healed it!” he exclaimed happily.

  “Heaven had nothing to do with it,” Thaniel grumbled.

  It was then that Gotham and Ethan reached the arena and hurried over to where
the group of boys were gathered.

  “I see you’ve made him good as new again,” noted Gotham when he glanced at Balantine’s leg and saw it was in perfect health.

  “There was nothing in need of making good as new again,” Damiel stated gruffly which only drew a confused expression from Gotham. Then, raising his hand to his face in order to look closer at the red coloring coating his fingertips, Damiel turned a questioning glare back on the group of boys. “The blood is certainly real enough, though I doubt any of you were dedicated to this bluff enough to have it squeezed from you, and I can only hope for all your sake it wasn’t siphoned from some animal in order to harvest your laugh or I assure you the punishment for all of you will be of utmost severity.”

  “It didn’t come from any animal!” said Balantine. “It’s my blood. I didn’t think it would stop gushing from my leg. I thought I was going to need a transfusion.”

  His declaration did little to erase the questionable look with which Damiel peered down his nose at the boy, which only seemed to raise the boy’s rankle.

  “Why are you looking at me like I’m lying. Look, these jeans cost me almost two hundred dollars—which by the way, Richert, you owe me a new pair,” barked Balantine when he caught sight of Ethan standing nearby. “Do you really think I would ruin them for some lousy prank?”

  “He’s telling you the truth,” Jacob intervened. “I saw the cut myself.”

  “Really?” replied Damiel dryly. “And how do you explain the fact that this cut is suddenly gone without any intervention from myself or Gotham? Have you got an angel stashed somewhere in your pocket? Or perhaps you’ve suddenly been gifted with the power to heal?”

  The words, laced in sarcasm, barely passed Damiel’s lips when his face suddenly darkened and, in a brief glimpse, Jacob saw a direful shadow pass across the angel’s golden eyes before they turned away and settled on Gotham, who was held captive by the same stricken look. A hushed silence fell over the arena except for the chattering of birds fluttering about. Gotham stepped forward past Ethan and, in concert with Damiel, leveled his gaze at Balantine’s leg and then back to where Jacob remained kneeling

  “Perhaps, you should tell us what occurred here,” said Gotham in a tone equally cautious as it was guarded.

  “I’ll tell you what happened,” Balantine interjected before Jacob could utter a word in response to Gotham’s inquiry. In a flash, Balantine was up on his feet demonstrating fully that whatever injury he claimed his leg suffered was no more. As he began reciting how he and Ethan had engaged in a friendly match of crossing swords, one couldn’t help but compare the two boys standing in close proximity of each other and wonder how Ethan, who was noticeably shorter and somewhat slighter than the more athletically apt Balantine had ended up being the one with blood on his sword and showing no signs he had even been in a duel, friendly or not.

  “Before I knew it,” continued Balantine while focusing Ethan in his sights, “I was in a scene from ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ with Luke Skywalker here jumping and bouncing all around me in all these elaborate moves while swinging his sword—I’m sorry…I mean light saber.”

  The chorus of chuckles that came from the other boys gathered around only made the look on Ethan’s face turn more sour.

  “All I could do was stand here and watch the show this idiot was putting on when in the middle of one of his Jedi spams his blade caught my leg,” Balantine explained.

  “Accidentally,” added Ethan fervently.

  “Accidental or not, you still sliced my leg open! Not to mention ruined my favorite pair of jeans.”

  “Alright already, enough about the jeans you big baby!” balked Ethan. “I’ll replace them with a new pair…Jesus.”

  He immediately felt the fire of Damiel’s gaze turn itself on him at the sound of a name he knew better than to utter in such a flippantly vain way and offered a quick “Sorry.”

  “I thought I had made it clear what takes place within the walls of Lions Bite is not a game,” Damiel reprimanded not just Ethan, but all the boys.

  Gotham’s attention, however, remained unwavering on Jacob. “And now I want you to tell me precisely what happened once you saw Balantine had been injured.”

  Jacob was silent at first, unnerved by the sea of inquisitive eyes suddenly cast upon him, most notably those of the two angels.

  “I saw Ethan’s sword strike Balantine’s thigh, and even before I heard Balantine cry out in pain I knew he had been badly hurt,” said Jacob. “We all rushed over to him. He was on the ground clutching his leg, so we couldn’t see the cut at first. But we could see the blood. It seemed to be coming out in buckets and it was seeping between his fingers and running down his leg.”

  “Go on,” prodded Damiel.

  “No one seemed to know what to do, so I went to his side. I learned enough about first aid in school to know I needed to apply pressure to the leg in order to stop the bleeding. Before I did that, I grabbed my water bottle and I had Balantine remove his hands so I could wash away the blood and clean the area as much as possible.”

  “It burned like crazy at first,” Balantine jumped in. “Like someone had placed a hot poker against my leg.”

  “That’s when I could see how deep the wound to his leg was,” continued Jacob. “I tore the bottom half of my T-shirt to tie around his leg as a sort of tourniquet, and once that was in place I quickly washed my hands and placed them one on top the other over the wound to keep the pressure applied.”

  “And then what?” pressed Gotham. Jacob hesitated answering at first as he became more uncomfortable with the gruff way in which he was being questioned. He was beginning to feel as if he’d done something wrong, committed some kind of crime, though he couldn’t for the life of him figure out how helping a fellow classmate who had been injured could necessitate such a reaction.

  “What happened then?” Gotham repeated curtly.

  “Nothing!” answered Jacob. “I yelled for Ethan to go find Damiel and he ran off.”

  “And that was it? You didn’t do anything else?” Damiel, whose demeanor was much calmer and more collected, though a dire urgency could be seen clearly upon his face, asked.

  “No! I just knelt here and pressed hard against Balantine’s leg. I could feel the wound pulsating against the palm of my hands as it forced up more blood. All I was focused on was wishing the bleeding would stop. That’s it.”

  “Is the account he’s told us true?” Gotham asked the other boys who were grouped tightly together in a circle around him. And in unison they nodded their heads.

  “What…you think I’m lying?” said Jacob, sounding offended as he slowly felt himself becoming angry.

  Damiel again knelt down and turned his attention to Balantine’s leg. Pulling back the flap of denim where the jeans had been cleanly sliced open, he gently he ran his forefinger across the exposed patch of smooth pale skin and his brow crinkled in a show of puzzling curiosity when his eyes could find no sign of injury other than the red tint of dried encrusted blood. He turned and looked over his shoulder at Gotham. “What do you think?”

  Gotham stood silent for a moment before he turned the fiery orbs which illuminated his gaze once more in Jacob’s direction. As he did, Jacob felt a chill run through him. He had never felt fear of Gotham, nor had the angel ever given him a reason to fear him. Suddenly, however, Gotham was upon him.

  “Come with me!” said Gotham.

  ~~~

  Grabbing hold of the boy by the back of the neck, Gotham lifted him up with such force Jacob felt both his feet briefly leave the ground. He found himself tripping and stumbling awkwardly as his legs struggled to keep up with Gotham’s swift pace as he was guided roughly out of Lions Bite. Once they were far beyond the earshot of the others, Gotham released his hold and Jacob felt his legs give way from underneath him sending him sprawling face forward across the grass-covered earth.

  “Why did you not tell me you had this ability?” barked Gotham angrily.

  �
��What’s wrong with you? And could you be a little rougher next time?” snapped Jacob, rising onto his knees and brushing his front of the dried debris clinging to him.

  “I asked you a question: Why did you choose to keep this from me? Speak!” The angels’ voice rang out like a clap of thunder sending several startled birds scattering from their resting places high above in the nearby tree tops.

  “Keep what from you? I have no idea what you’re even yelling about.”

  “HEALING BALANTINE!

  Jacob would have been taken back by such an exclamation had he not found it so preposterous.

  “Excuse me?” Jacob, unable to keep from chortling at the preposterousness of such an idea, said.. “You think I healed Balantine?”

  The angel stood silent, and his eyes alive with disbelief were fixed on the boy in such a way that Jacob began feeling uncomfortable, as if he suddenly found himself in the presence of a hulking cop accusing him of shoplifting from the neighborhood convenience store.

  “Look, if anything healed his leg it was the water I poured on it from my bottle, which I filled from the River like I do every morning,” said Jacob. “You heard Balantine say it himself; he felt a burning sensation when I doused his cut with the water.”

  “Water from the River does have healing powers, it’s true,” said Gotham. “But what undid the wound set into Balantine’s leg by Ethan’s sword could come only from someone with the true gift of healing.”

  Jacob felt tiny droplets of sweat break out across his brow, and he had no idea why suddenly he found his nerves roused in a discomforting way.

  “I don’t know what you want me to say,” he said. “But I have no idea what happened back there with Balantine, or how it happened.”

  “You’re lying to me,” said Gotham. His booming voice had retreated to a calm tenor, yet strangely it was somehow more threatening to Jacob than the roar that sent the birds fleeing. “On Akdamar Island when I overheard you share with Johiel the story of when your friend Christopher was killed, there was something you said which struck me as curious. I asked you about it later as we were rowing across the Van Gölü to the island inhabited by the Powers; you said you had to be held back from going to your friend as he lay dead in the middle of the roadway after being struck by a truck. ‘I can save him, I can save him’ you said you cried out. I asked you what you had meant and I sensed then the answer you gave was not the truth. So now I ask you again, what did you mean?”