The Given Garden

by S. K Munt

  The situation was further agitated by the circumstances on earth and the fact that he could not return to them and speak freely. Once, there had been enough of his Soul Mates around to communicate for him but there were too many people now and the Souls could only touch so many lives. As a result, the people who cried out his name with the most faith, had taken his original command to do unto others as they would have done to them, and had applied all sorts of senseless rules and guidelines that not even God could have abided by if he’d lived among them as a mortal. There were days when certain animals could not be eaten by starving people, days when people were forbidden from working, and so many restrictions put on loving another that soon, there were too many people angry at him to love him, for they believed that he wanted them to suffer at the word of another! Then, the ones who claimed to love him the most had houses of worship built in his honour that were so elaborately sculpted and expensive, that the people who built them did not have the energy to love him after a day’s work, or the money to buy food to work again the day after. And so, many died in the quest of building a direct route to Heaven, and had their spirits swept away by Satan’s minions and her promises to want for nothing during their final slumbers, before God could send an Angel down to intercept their lost souls and reclaim their love.

  In time, the humans completely lost sight of God’s original plan for them- to love and be loved- and the stories of him and what he wanted from them to be allowed into the blissful after life continued to disintegrate like in a perpetual game of Chinese whispers. God had never intended to keep anyone out of Heaven, and yet the way he’d betrayed Satan became the ugliest, most-discussed story of all and though the characters, plot and setting of the woeful tale changed every time it was repeated or recorded, the moral remained more or less the same: if you disobeyed one of God’s multiple rules, he would turn his back on you and Satan would step forward and claim you as her own. So when people failed an imagined test, they would think they had failed God and so, they surrendered their fate so Satan who, unlike him, could keep track of the minority and without their love, he could not find them to rescue them back.

  Yes, some people had some of the facts right, but those same people had others so wrong that God was shocked to see how something beautiful- like his love- could be translated into thousands of languages and yet heard wrong each time. All he wanted was for people to treat one another with equality, share in all they had, and love him in gratitude and yet, civilisation was in shambles!

  But he clung to the joy left in the world like a lifeline and grew from it, taking the souls up to Heaven with him after who cried his name with love, and allowing Satan to claim those he was blind and deaf to for Hell’s benefit, for so long as he could gather more souls than his rival, he could maintain hope for the human race and strengthen Heaven. Where he grew from love and kindness, she grew from hate and lust but for centuries there was still more love than hate, and more hope than fear and so he prevailed. The collective spirit of the human race ebbed and flowed like an eternal tide, and when things got especially bad, God would send down the angels to intercept and save before corruption could be done to their hearts so these ‘miracles’ earned him a lot of love- and with it, the kind of power that Satan could never hope to attain with anger.

  But there were only eleven angels, and billions of people in need of help and with every passing year, Satan tightened her grip until the balance between good and evil came dangerously close to being evened out. Beginning to grow desperate, God sent all of the angels to find Satan and bring her to him so that he could offer her entrance to Heaven and dissolve Hell after- but Satan hid from them by keeping all loving thoughts out of her heart. She did not remember Miguel’s beauty- only his broken promise. She did not allow herself to remember how perfect Eden had been- only how she’d been kicked out of Barachiel with her dead son in her arms. She did not allow herself to remember how she had loved Hell for that broke her easily and beckoned the angels nearer- no, she remembered the sight of the spear puncturing his perfect, flawless heart. This hatred kept her not only out of the angel’s reach and detection, but God’s as well.

  But her own offspring were not so strong or their souls as blackened as hers and so, some of them were weak enough to hope for love and redemption and this gave the Soul Mates the opportunity to track them down and plead that they change sides. But the Fallen knew that they would be barred entrance into heaven with their blackened feathers, and quickly remembered whom their loyalty was to and acted accordingly. They tempted the Soul Mates their way instead using dark promises, and the Soul Mates were overcome by the lust and promises of love offered up by their beautiful dark counterparts. Resisting a desirable human was one thing, but resisting a glittering black Angel so like them was quite another! God was furious when he felt the first angel fall into a dark embrace, but Satan rejoiced for breeding light and dark had been her goal all along. She hoped that a child would result from such a coupling- one powerful enough to forever unite Heaven and Hell and not only put her on equal standing with God, but grow to be as powerful as he had been before creation and under her command. But God anticipated this and vowed that that day would never come. No one could be more powerful or more deserving as he!

  Mixed-blood Nephilim were born with extreme amounts of power, but God commanded their parents to destroy the infants before Satan could infect their souls. The Soul Mates did so with broken spirits and then abandoned their lovers and returned to Heaven, leaving behind Satan’s so-called paradises formed from concrete, glass and steel that reached the skies, and vowed never to give their bodies away again, for lust and passion were no substitute for a broken heart and the rapid rate at which their wings were malting in this new world. Satan was disappointed to see her plan fail- she’d never imagined that Souls could murder their own innocent infants and to the detriment of their own glorious wings- but she abandoned those places too and sought a new battleground to wage her side of the war from, convinced that she was on the right track and that next time, God would not be able to stop her because she would strike before the Angels could.

  Meanwhile, God was determined to find a way back into the mortal coil so that he could face-off with, and beat Satan back into submission instead of allowing their Soul Mates to wage the war for them. She seemed to believe that she was as powerful as he was because she’d received half of his energy, but he knew that couldn’t be true. If it was, she would have opted to stay in Hell the way he preferred Heaven rather than lurking about on earth- but earth seemed to be her permanent home and if it was power she was seeking well, that meant there was power that she was lacking! Obviously she didn’t have the strength to change Hell the way he had Heaven or to create any other place worth existing in, but if he rested for long enough, he would be able to return into a powerful human form and best her. Keeping the angels near and strong and fortifying him meant that they would all have to abandon the human race for a time, which he knew would make people cry out his name in despair and give their love freely in desperation to escape a world without miracles. This would also prompt Satan out of hiding and once she’d made her position known, he would return to earth, overpower her, rip her feathers from her back so that she could never pass between the worlds again, and leave her mortal. Once her human body failed, he would take her life and then return her soul to Heaven, as he should have in the beginning.

  Miguel, who had never returned to Earth, but had chosen to absorb Heaven’s spirit and little else, was shocked from his stupor by this revelation, and begged God to reconsider- the humans had proved that they were not strong enough to fight off Satan while the angels were there, so he could not even consider leaving them to fend for themselves! Angels reversed floodwaters and stopped the spread of diseases and called forth rain and saved lives and intercepted the tragedies that Satan orchestrated- if they stopped doing these things, chaos would ensue!

  Truly afraid that God’s lack of action would cause the human rac
e to turn against him rather than to him, Miguel begged God to send him in place of the others, for he had been resting for years and was the most powerful of all- powerful enough to possibly best Satan alone, who would be weakened by the sight of him and his glorious white wings, for she had always loved him so faithfully. Surely, if he re-appeared on earth and called to her, she would show herself!

  But God refused and said that he would not dream of abandoning the human race unless it meant guaranteeing their survival, and that Miguel was doubting his love by insinuating otherwise. Besides, the human race needed to stand alone, as he’d always intended them to do! As he had done! As Miguel had for everything they needed to survive and live in harmony was right there in front of them only they were too blinded by greed to see it. He then said that Miguel had to trust in him, and not believe that he could fix what God had not- for that sort of ego would surely lead to his fall. And it was a thoughtless request to make- if Miguel’s presence could still affect Satan so drastically, why had she not called to him in over two millennia? No, her love was gone and that eradicated any chance Miguel had of besting her.

  Abashed, Miguel stayed at his side dutifully, but he could no longer watch the world go on without the Angels help and so he turned away from the floods and the financial crises and the murders and the slander and the planes crashing into the heart of Satan’s beloved cities, and prayed for Satan to call to him instead, wondering if there was a chance that the temptress of the dark could hear him through the light. If she did, he knew that God would let him return and then he could fix what he’d broken so long ago with his selfish choices.

  Satan! Please, forgive me! Please, forgive the world and love God and return to me and we will make a beautiful child together- of light brighter than anything we could ever imagine!

  Unlike Miguel, the other Soul Mates were grateful for the sojourn, and welcomed the change to regather their strength and wits in Heaven while the humans fended for themselves. Without divine intervention, the world was deteriorating rapidly and even the technology that the humans had developed could not help them through the worst of the crises or offer them comfort after. God rested, the humans suffered, the angels grew anxious- but after almost two decades of strife, pointless deaths and an unprecedented amount of natural disasters, something shifted in the collective conscience of the world, and people started to fight for love instead of hate.

  To the angel’s amazement, protests were raised against the vilest organisations and vices and for a while, God began to grow confident again because everywhere he looked, someone was trying to brush Satan’s hand off the earth and it was working. Laws were changed and tightened for the greater good of those who needed protection the most, and loosened for those who wished to love freely. The issue of race began to fade in areas where it had been rampant for years, and though he hadn’t originally intended to control everyone so tightly, he was relieved that finally someone was stopping the abuse of children, or trying to save the hungry, or raising the age to drink or discouraging men who hit their women or killed their children. He had hope again, and as cigarettes were stamped out, sex-workers policed and moves made to conserve the earth’s natural resources, his hopes grew. After centuries of working against one another to earn his favour, humans were trying their hardest to create a new Golden age without him- and one that he would surely benefit from!

  But Satan had never been in those bars or brothels or factories that poisoned the earth as many believed and so these changes affected her in a minimal way. No, she had found that the very best position to gather up the negative energy she needed, was within the walls of houses of worship- not vice- which were the last places that the angels thought to look for her in. The people who fortified Satan’s strength screamed God’s many names- but they acted with her hatred, and when the world began to change to become a more peaceful, accepting place, they took this as a slight. After all, they had been protecting the TRUE God for centuries, so how dare the heretics and atheists and sinners revolt against them now and crush everything that they stood for? With Satan whispering in their ear about the sins that she herself had brought to pass, religious extremists across the world grew angrier and angrier and started shouting more loudly to be heard over the din- not just at the sinners, but at the other religions who had the wrong idea of God.

  Soon enough, Satan was in the ultimate position of power without having to do anything but wait as good and evil divided itself without the angel’s guidance or intervention. The good were shouting loudly and for many of the ideals that she had cherished, but the ones with hateful, pious hearts had had thousands of years to amass power and there was nothing she could have done to stop what happened next, even if she’d wanted to.

  And she didn’t want to. Satan knew that what was coming was drastic, but as far as she was concerned- God had made the wrong decision by drawing a line between good and evil at her feet while she held her son’s murdered corpse. And the fact that he was forgiving wicked men who called out to him for even more heinous crimes than what she committed, in order to fortify Heaven, was unacceptable to her. Hell wasn’t filled with the vilest creatures on earth- it was filled with the people who GOD had failed to guide, because he’d been too busy creating someplace better than the one he’d abandoned! The paradise he’d created first! And Miguel had done the exact same thing to her! The only way for the world to ever become an equal place, was if God either destroyed it, or started again but until he did, she would continue to take in the lost and offer them what she could- acceptance for being flawed.

  Miguel, you should have turned to me! You should have kept your promise to me and fought for me, for I loved you even more than I loved God and you left me free falling with broken wings! We would have created something even more perfect than Heaven and Hell together!

  This thought ran through her mind in a moment of weakness and sorrow and regret as she kissed her human lover’s cheek and urged him to do what would make him a true messenger of God. But by saying his name and remembering her love, Miguel heard Satan and saw her at long last. He unfolded his wings, but it was already too late. He screamed her name and that he had loved her too and could again if only she would stop- but as soon as he took flight, the man in Satan’s arms pushed the button, and the largest and most powerful city in the western world collapsed in on itself and took God’s hope for redemption on earth with it. Barachiel, the city of Angels, the place where Heaven and Hell had originated from was wiped from the face of the earth.

  World War Four had started, and knowing that Armageddon would quickly follow, Satan returned to Eden and waited triumphantly for God to find her. He had cast the first stone, but she would cast the last.

  22.

  March, AA643

  Our education got serious that spring, because we would be expected to take a mock-up version of the Caste Examinations at the end of the year. Regular kids took it on the full moon in the month after their sixteenth birthdays and went immediately into their new apprenticeships after, but our education had been staggered to ensure that nobody pulled too far ahead of the youngest to turn five for the first year of our life within the palace. So as Kelia’s birthday had delayed us learning about becoming a Companion until the end of our thirteenth years, our class schedule had remained basic until the beginning of our second year in Eden. Now, we would take the PCE as seventeen year-olds, just as the first of the regular sixteen year olds were doing outside of Eden’s walls in the new year- on the first full moon of spring, AA644. Lindy’s eldest daughter, Carmine, would sit it the same day for it was her sixteenth birthday the day before, and I had been secretly helping her study using my ‘special’ notes for a year already. Emmerly on the other hand, would turn seventeen a few weeks later, which gave her an edge, even if Maryah said otherwise. If Martya had stayed- she would have smoked us all- academically anyway, and Lette still had everyone on the dance floor.

  The PCE were a pretty big deal- everyone had some sort of hope for t
heir future, regardless of their caste, but it was rumoured that children of the nobility were always the most anxious because there was no way to qualify for the noble caste once you were emancipated- you had to earn your way back in there so testing badly could seriously lower your station in life, or reduce your chances of marrying someone considered eligible if you didn’t get married before twenty-one.

  Blue Collars on the other hand could elect to do whatever job they wanted to do within cast parameters, and then go into the apprenticeship, provided there was enough room for them. The most popular Blue Collar jobs for women were nursing, teaching and anything in the beauty industry, and the most sought over male vocation was, strangely enough- cooking. Everybody wanted to work in a nobility-owned restaurant, because the hours were the least and the praise high if you were a good chef. It sure beat digging drainage, and ‘Chef’ was a title of sorts.

  But we Given girls had been trained to excel at everything and were supposed to leave as skilled beauticians, dancers and artists who were physically fit and worldly, and so we would sit every single exam. Our results wouldn’t change a thing about our lives, but it would give Maryah the opportunity to scold us for the things we did not do well at. I was dreading the dance one, but excited about the Academic one because the result I got would be indicative of the one I hoped to get when I got my chance to take the exam again at twenty-one.

  To help prep us, we were given over to Kohén’s tutor for one day a week who started taking us out of our classes and into ‘the field.’ Our excursions varied from small ones to the library to study history or the beach to learn about ecology, but he occasionally took us outside of the palace walls and into the heart of the villages so that we could see the museum that had been built (most of the Collection room had been emptied that winter to fill the museum), sit in on a strike in Rachiel and then led through factories to see how boxed food items were being manufactured. The best excursion was the one we took to a farm just outside of town where we got to experience a whole day as farmers (I was the only one who liked that) and the worst was the one where Maryah escorted us to a real Harem.