Scroll- Part One

by D B Nielsen

  THE ORDER OF ANGELS

  CHAPTER THREE

  I woke late in the day from a fitful sleep, the sun beyond my open curtains already dipping low in the slate-grey sky. I groaned, rolling over in bed. My intention to return to Satis House during daylight hours was inevitably postponed. First day of the New Year and the tone was already set. I ignored the mocking little voice of my conscience at the back of my head which reminded me that last year Sage and I had resolved to “seize the day” after our Finals. Carpe Diem. Well, I could say goodbye to that notion.

  I finally got out of bed, shivering as the chill winter air enveloped my slim frame, causing my pale skin to break out into goose bumps. As I hurried to retrieve a bright orange Zara top and pair of jeans from where they were lying on my bedroom floor, I managed to stub my big toe on the hard edge of my dressing table in the process. Muttering all manner of obscenities under my breath, I almost injured myself again when the door suddenly flew open to admit Sage. Her timing was impeccable but I should have known that she’d be in my room in less than a heartbeat once she knew I was awake – she had always taken to coming into my bedroom whenever she had found the need to discuss things and lately she had found the need often.

  ‘No,’ I said automatically before she had an opportunity to frame her request, turning in a full circle to look for my other pair of leather boots after leaving my good pair in the laundry last night.

  She paused in the doorway, amber coloured eyes showing bewilderment. ‘No what? What do you mean?’

  ‘No, I am not about to go hiking with you in the forest,’ I grumbled, ferreting out one of the pair from beneath a denim jacket I’d borrowed from Sage’s wardrobe and had yet to return. ‘You can go practise your navigational skills with someone else today. I know – take Jasmine.’

  She sighed as she crossed the room and sat on the edge of my unmade bed.

  ‘Don’t worry, I wasn’t about to ask you to come with me into the woods so that I could practise navigating. It would be useless anyway,’ she commented.

  I gave a triumphant holler as I found the other boot in a corner and flourishing them in front of her face, remarked, ‘Sweet, because it’s freezing outside and I’m way too tired to–’ I gave pause as it finally dawned on me what she’d just said. ‘Hey! Wait a minute! What do you mean that it would be “useless anyway”? Just because we were attacked the last time, doesn’t mean–’

  ‘No, it’s got nothing to do with that. Or rather, it has only a little to do with it,’ Sage denied, looking me in the eye. ‘I finally realised that the skills I felt I needed to develop are innate. Being attacked by a Rephaim when St. John wasn’t present made me see that I can read the signs. I think it just happens when it’s meant to and not when I want it to.’

  I looked at her rather sceptically. ‘You mean like stressing before an exam when you know it all already?’

  Sage’s sombre face brightened as she said to me, ‘Yeah, exactly like that. Like cramming for the Finals the night before and producing my best work.’

  I looked at her with incredulity.

  ‘Whatever, Sage.’ I scoffed.

  Sage turned on me with some exasperation. ‘What?’

  I felt my mouth twitch into a smile. Coming to sit next to her on the bed, I stated, ‘That sounds more like me than you, Little Miss Bookworm. I don’t remember you cramming the night before any exam and you were always the first one to remind us all when homework was due. I mean, let’s face it, you’re a nerd.’

  ‘Some nerds are cool,’ she said, defensively.

  I laughed, stating, ‘Only if you’re Hermione Granger.’

  ‘I could be–’ she began, only for me to cut her off.

  ‘Epic fail! No, you couldn’t! Definitely not!’

  Sage shot me a reproachful look but conceded that I was probably right, though she still felt that the abilities given to her by the Seed were innate. I wondered if she saw herself as some seer or prophetess with her new-found abilities to channel visions and commune with nature. It wasn’t a role I would ever have picked her for but she seemed to be coping fairly well with the hand that fate had dealt her – except, of course, her complete incompetence in being able to navigate us through the woodlands that bordered the Manor House.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, zipping up my right boot. ‘You didn’t come in to ask me to go with you into the woods to practise your non-existent navigational skills, so what did you come in to ask me?’

  ‘I think it’s time you told me what exactly is going on with you. What have you been doing at Satis House?’ Sage asked me quietly.

  I shot her a surprised, almost angry look, immediately thinking that she had spied on my furtive movements early this morning but then realised that she wasn’t referring to last night in particular, just to my disappearing acts over the last few days. The time for being evasive was now well and truly over, I had to come clean.

  ‘O-k-a-y, give me a minute,’ I said in agreement, pulling on my other boot before I crossed to the door and closed it with a definitive click. Coming back to where Sage sat, I pulled the chair out from behind the desk and dragged it over so that I could sit facing her. Her eyes, I saw, were shadowed, but there was a sisterly tenderness in them too.

  ‘Do you remember when we first ventured through the woods to Satis House?’ I began tentatively, waiting for her nod before continuing. ‘I can’t explain it but I felt drawn to the place even then. I felt this driving urge to see it and when I finally did ... I felt overwhelmed ... almost light-headed. When I viewed it through my camera lens, I saw something–’

  ‘Like a veil had been stripped away,’ Sage murmured.

  I looked at her in surprise, then simply shook my head in realisation that we would both have shared this same vision.

  ‘Yes, exactly,’ I said, ‘I saw Satis House without its illusion or glamour but as it really was. Since then, the feeling has become stronger. I find myself unconsciously walking in that direction. I thought at first that I might be coming down with something ... like an illness or fever, you know? Some sort of delirium. But ...’

  My voice trailed off. It sounded kind of silly trying to explain what I’d experienced – the only other time I’d had to do this was during counselling with my nutritionists and doctors during my time in hospital and that wasn’t an experience I wanted to repeat or even be reminded of.

  ‘But?’ Sage prompted me.

  I took my time, and looked at her intently, wondering what she would make of what I was about to say and whether she felt the same way when trying to explain her involvement with the Seed and Nephilim to me. Besides, while Sage never lied, I was prone to making up stories to get myself out of trouble. There was no reason to believe anything I said, but Sage had always had my back, believing in me when even I had doubted myself.

  ‘I don’t know exactly. I feel ... out of time somehow. Or like the world I am in now, right here, is suddenly a totally different one. Well, I know that sounds kinda dumb because, yeah, of course it’s a different one. But it isn’t because of what’s happening to you with the artefact and all that,’ I hastened to reassure her, ‘it’s just that since we moved to London, my orientation feels ... different.’

  It sounded so lame.

  ‘I’m not sure what you mean by your orientation being somehow different. You seem fine to me – you’ve always had an uncanny ability with direction and your navigational skills are still superior to mine.’ Sage commented.

  I shrugged my shoulders dismissively, replying, ‘No, you don’t get it. I feel like I’m travelling through a maze or going around and around in circles. I just feel odd. Like I feel I’m kinda between worlds. And the voices ... I’ve been hearing dislocated sounds, conversations and chanting in weird, foreign languages – sometimes in Latin but other times in some language that I know but I don’t know. I mean ... well ... I can’t seem to get it. Anyways, I’m totally clueless about what it all means and it’s annoying the hell out of me.’

&nbs
p; At my explanation, Sage leant forward, her amber eyes filled with an intense brightness as she said urgently, ‘Fi, when we were attacked in the woods you were babbling about voices. You kept begging me to make them stop. Do you remember?’

  I raised my eyebrows and looked at Sage sceptically, feeling slightly uncomfortable at these words. I didn’t remember much about that day in the woods when we were attacked by the Rephaim, Andromalius, though I clearly remembered some of the confrontation. But it was like I was suffering a selective amnesia – from the moment I began hearing the voices in my head to the moment when the young caretaker at Satis House shouted for the Rephaim to stop was lost to me. It was as though I had been tumbling through a dark nothingness, left only with the sound of voices in my head, until his shout had shattered the darkness and I rose up through oblivion back to the scene in the woods.

  ‘Okay. Don’t worry about it now,’ Sage was saying soothingly, ‘I’m not sure about the voices you’ve heard. But, you know, Greek myth tells of the Erinyes, often better known as the Furies, who were capable of driving men mad because they turned up the volume of their inner monologues and magnified the qualities that haunted them – like pain, suffering, obsessive love, self-doubt, fear of their mortality – all of which were already present in humans but taken to extremes, and burdened individuals with their inner self so that it drove them to madness because they couldn’t stand it.’

  Staring at Sage in absolute horror, I commented acerbically, ‘Geez, thanks, Sage! That’s really comforting! Not!’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t worry about it,’ Sage said dismissively, frowning, ‘I doubt it has anything to do with the voices you’re hearing, but didn’t you just say that you may have heard some words in Latin. I find that interesting because I think it’s more likely you’d be hearing the language of Babel or Hebrew or something, but not Latin. Do you recall any of the Latin words?’ Sage prompted, her voice filled with curiosity.

  I gave pause, thinking back and trying to recall the exact words.

  Shaking my head, I said in a low voice filled with disappointment, ‘Only one or two words. Nothing much. I think I heard something that sounded like “satis” – maybe “satire a repo tenant”. Sorry, I know that’s not much help. I tried to make some sense of it myself. I thought that if it had something to do with Satis House; that it might just be about its repossession by a former tenant.’

  As I was speaking, Sage jumped up from the bed and pulled me to my feet. Excitedly, she gripped my upper arms and, giving me a violent shake so that my teeth were almost rattling in my head, asked, ‘Fi, think hard! Do you think that what you might have heard was “Sator arepo tenet opera rotas”?’

  ‘Sweet! That’s it!’ I looked at Sage in astonishment, carefully extricating myself from her tight hold.

  Sage looked as if she was about to dance a jig; she was very pleased with herself. ‘That’s truly amazing! “Sator arepo tenet opera rotas”. Do you know what it means?’

  I shot her a sour look as I flopped back onto the chair – boring historical facts and languages weren’t really my thing as she knew very well.

  ‘Hey, I’m not the expert in dead things, dead people and dead languages,’ I muttered. ‘Or three thousand-year-old dudes.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ she said, obviously not paying my words much attention as she viewed my slumped form with a small smile. She began to pace my bedroom, being careful not to trip on the smattering of rubbish and discarded clothes on the floor. ‘Look, what you heard is most commonly known as the Sator Square. It’s a word square containing a Latin palindrome. It’s probably the most famous word square ever.’

  I raised a mocking eyebrow, urging her to get on with the explanations.

  ‘The words are written in a square so that they can be read both vertically and horizontally. Top to bottom and bottom to top. Left to right and right to left. The Sator Square’s earliest appearance was found at Pompeii in the ruins of the Herculaneum buried by the ash of Mount Vesuvius when it erupted. So, it dates from about 79AD.’

  I considered what she was telling me, unable to follow her convoluted explanation. ‘And? So? What does it mean?’

  Sage sat down again on the edge of the bed but leant far forward till she was almost breathing on me, betraying her excitement. ‘Well, there’s some debate about the translation.’

  I groaned, rolling my eyes. This was obviously going to take some time.

  ‘Isn’t there always?’ I replied.

  Ignoring me, she continued, ‘Some scholars basically believe that it roughly translates as “The Great Sower holds in his hands all works” or “The Great Sower holds the wheels in his hands”. But I think if we tweak the translation ever so slightly it might yield instead “The Creator holds the wheel of creation in his hands”.’

  ‘Meaning? Like in the Bible or something? Like Genesis? What’s with “The wheel of creation”? Is that like the Wheel of Fortune?’

  Sage’s eyes glittered feverishly. ‘You know, that’s not a bad idea. You’re referring to “Rota Fortunae” where Fortune is a personified figure who plays with the fate of mortals at her whim.’

  She was definitely losing me.

  ‘And?’ I prompted.

  ‘The wheel belongs to the goddess, Fortune or Fortuna, who spins it at random, changing the position of those on the wheel so that some people are brought great fortune while others suffer great misfortune. This concept arose in ancient philosophy, attributed to Cicero. In the Middle Ages, the Christians appropriated it.’

  ‘So, is it linked to this Sator Square?’ I persisted, wishing that she would just cut to the punch line.

  ‘Could be,’ she said, thoughtfully, ‘The Sator Square has a word, “arepo”, that appears nowhere else in Latin literature. It’s a hepax legomenon.’

  I blinked in confusion. ‘A what? Lego?’

  Sage chuckled softly. ‘Not that kind of Lego, silly! Basically, it means that it might be a proper name or an adaptation of a non-Latin word.’

  ‘Such as?’ I asked intrigued, despite myself.

  ‘Look, why don’t we just look it up on the net?’ she suggested, knowing it was easier to explain using visual cues. She skirted around the chair where I sat in order to boot up the laptop on my desk where it had been gathering dust in the last two weeks since I had taken to making excursions into the woods to visit Satis House.

  As the computer thrummed away, I drew my chair in closer, unconsciously picking up a pencil from my desk and twirling it between my fingers. The screensaver flickered up an image of me surfing at Bondi beach, catching the waves on a fine summer day. It all seemed so long ago.

  Sage clicked on Google to start up a search and typed in the words “Sator Square” which yielded thousands of results. The first entry brought up images of the representations of various Sator Squares around the globe, found in far-flung regions from Syria to Manchester. I now saw what Sage was trying to tell me about its unique nature – it could be read almost any of four ways and yield the same words.

  Scrolling down the webpage, Sage gave a gasp and muttered, ‘Look!’

  Leaning forward to examine the webpage better, I finally saw what had caught her attention. The site stated that the word “arepo” may have been a derivation from the Hebrew or Greek words meaning “Alpha-Omega” – the first and the last, the beginning and the end – which also had ties to the Bible, particularly Revelations, but it went on to suggest that the word had come via Alexandria. I briefly wondered if this had anything to do with the Library of Alexandria or maybe even Alexander the Great which kept coming up in my former searches about the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

  Focusing again on the screen in front of me, I noted that the webpage even claimed that the word square had some magical properties because palindromes were immune to tampering by the devil as he would become confused by the repetition of the letters.

  ‘Maybe it’s a sign,’ I suggested, leaning back again in my chair, ‘maybe it has something to do wi
th the other part of the map.’

  ‘What sign? Should we be looking for a palindrome?’ Sage asked, but the tone of her voice held quite a bit of uncertainty.

  I shrugged my shoulders, unable to answer her as I was uncertain myself.

  ‘Click on the link to Revelations,’ I advised as she continued to scroll down the page aimlessly.

  What flashed across the screen were several Bible passages of letters which Saint John had written to the seven churches in the province of Asia. This seemed to yield some results as the site claimed that the letters consisted of a series of revelations and visions presented in a symbolic language which could only be read by those who were faithful. The first was a message from “one who is the first and the last” and mentioned that there would be great suffering in the battle ahead but that even if it meant death, if the listener remained faithful, they would gain life as a victory prize. The second directly mentioned the Garden of Eden – “To those who win the victory I will give the right to eat the fruit of the Tree of Life that grows in the Garden of God.”

  I exchanged a look with Sage knowing that this was important somehow to our quest but wondering what it could mean.

  Sage’s voice was carefully neutral. ‘I don’t like the prediction of suffering and death.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ I stated simply, shifting uncomfortably in my seat, ‘but to the victor goes the spoils. I’m guessing immortality with the mention of the Tree of Life.’

  ‘Great power too,’ she supplied.

  ‘Why couldn’t it be something cool instead, like the ability to read people’s minds or levitate objects?’ I sighed.

  Sage looked at me askance. ‘You’ve got to be kidding! This isn’t a game, Fi! How many times do I have to remind you of that?’

  ‘I know it’s not a game! You make it sound like I’m suggesting we’re competing in some kind of Reality TV show, like Survivor: The Apocalypse or something. I’m not that stupid!’ I protested.