Heaven's Lies

by Daniel Caet

  “My light. My soul”

  “That's right. Do not ask me how it happened, but somehow the light has been taken away from you. That's why you cannot recover your angelic form. And what is more important, that's why we cannot hear you anymore.”

  “None?”

  “None,” he said bluntly. “It is as if you had disappeared. Not a single trace.”

  The revelation was a surprise. I had assumed that my new human nature was what kept me from feeling and contacting my brothers as I always had. A large hive structure where we could all communicate with everyone. What I had not assumed was that the communication had been broken both ways, which for my brothers had made me invisible.

  “If you cannot hear me, how did you find me?” I asked for.

  “Listening to humans. I found the place of your fall and spent several days in nearby towns and villages hoping someone had seen something. Two days ago, in Uruk I heard that a slave in the market commented that he had found a man in the desert and that he had taken him to his master's house. That's how I found you.”

  “Then, it was you who handed me my sword in the market.”

  “Yes, it was me. I found it near the place where you fell. I did not know if the sword would recognise you or not, but I had to try. I knew you could not feel me and that it was safe to give it to you in a crowded place.”

  “Actually, I can.”

  “How?” The incredulity reflected in his face.

  “I can feel you, but only when you are close to me. The sensation is completely different, it is a kind of inner vibration, but I felt it in the presence of Gilgamesh and again when you appeared. In the market I do not remember having noticed it, but I was probably too upset to pay attention.”

  “One moment,” he said, approaching me. “Did you feel the same vibration in the presence of the king of Uruk?”

  “Yes, he insisted on meeting me and I could feel the vibration clearly when he approached me. And yes, I know what you are thinking, and I believe the same. Nephilim.”

  “This is very important, brother. If you can still feel us when we are close to you it means that all is not lost. Your sword has recognised you and from what I see it has fused without problems with your new body. In some way it is as if something of your angelic essence remains in you. On the other hand, if Gilgamesh insisted on meeting you and is a Nephilim, it is likely that he somehow suspects who you are or is working for whoever has done this to you.”

  “Whoever has done this to me?” I echoed, “Is it not clear who has done this to me? You know perfectly well that only our father can take away what our father delivered.”

  “We do not know that, Helel. What reasons could our father have to do this to you? You, who were always his favourite. It does not make any sense.”

  “It's been a long time since any of us has heard our father's voice. All this time we have been alone, guardians of his work, protectors of the kingdom but ultimately alone. You're right, I was his favourite. I was, past tense. For too long, our father has not shown his predilection for anyone or anything. He has abandoned us.”

  “Enough, Helel!” his voice resounded on the rock walls around us.

  He placed his hands on mine affectionately and I felt my inner anger calm down immediately.

  “I know how you should feel,” he continued. “I understand the anger and anguish of not knowing why all this happened to you, but I think you are looking for your enemy too high in the heavens.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know that many of our brothers have taken that guardian role you talked about too seriously. In some cases, the guardian has believed himself the lord of the house. You are aware that your constant defence of the human being has bothered many of those who believe that they are the only mistake of our father's creation and believe they have sufficient authority to correct that error.”

  “Eridu.”

  “Exact. Your defence of that city against those who wanted its complete destruction did not help you.”

  “That punishment was unjust, unnecessary and contrary to what our father would have wanted.”

  “Maybe, Helel, but standing as the interpreter of our father's will is what paved the way for those who were interested in eliminating you. You do not understand it? Your trial and everything that surrounded it was just a pantomime to be able to eliminate you.”

  Suddenly the images of the trial came back to my head and the pain of accepting what I had always known was like falling again. Eridu was a city governed by a council of elders too old or too rich to be interested in the spiral of depravity into which their city had entered. The basest instincts had taken over the city, which was a center for prostitution, the sale of slaves, murder, and all kinds of vice and perversion. Some of my brothers considered that the city could not be redeemed and that it should be eliminated along with all its inhabitants. My opposition to the punishment of the city was taken advantage of to justify being brought to trial before the archangels for pretending to be the only knower of our father's will. I had always known that behind my trial there was some hidden interest, but Abaddon confirmed it with his words.

  “But, to whom could it benefit that I was taken to trial and publicly admonished? I do not get it.”

  “The objective was never that you were publicly warned. The objective of the trial is that you were sentenced to death and, if that couldn’t be obtained, the prison guards were in charge of ensuring your disappearance. One of the guards had been my student during his training as a member of the celestial army and he confessed to me just before the guards went to look for you in your cell. I arrived as fast as I could, but you had managed to escape on your own and I could not find you. The story that was circulated later was that you were in cahoots with high-level demons to strike a coup in the heavens and usurp our father's place. Your flight and the fact that we could not hear you was considered the ultimate proof of your guilt.”

  His words, despite not being a total surprise, were another hard blow. Not only had I lost the most precious thing I had, my soul, but I was considered a traitor and a pariah among those who had been my family. And all that web of lies woven around me had been manipulated by someone from that family, someone I had called brother.

  “I'm sorry” said Abaddon when he saw my face. “You know that nothing would pleas me more than being the bearer of good news, but I think it is important that you know all this so that you can disappear.”

  “Disappear?”

  “Of course, Helel! You are not safe here. In the same way that I have found you, others can do it and that would be your end. With your human body you cannot face an angel. You must leave this place, hide, cease to exist. The Helel we have known can never return. Brother, you must accept your situation as something irremediable and live, that is the most important thing. Live!”

  “I cannot understand that you speak to me like that,” I said, without believing his words. "The soul, as a gift from our father, cannot be destroyed. It exists somewhere, and it is necessary that I find it. Recovering my soul is my only chance, Abaddon.”

  “I know that what I say is not easy to accept, but you must do it, it is the only way out. For your safety and that of the humans you live with now. What do you think will happen to them if our brothers find you? For the love that unites us I beg you, run away!”

  The image that formed in my head was terrible. The house destroyed and Armesh and all his family dead. I knew it was Abaddon who was inducing that image in me, he wanted me to be aware of the possible consequences of my stay at Armesh's house.

  “I'm sorry,” he said, “but I think it's important that you be aware of reality, of your reality.” He came closer to me and grabbed me by the shoulders staring into my eyes. “Live brother, even as a man, even hidden away but live.”

  “I will not see you again, right?”

  “No. I'm sorry but it cannot be, I cannot put you in even bigger danger.”

  A part of me died at that m
oment. Abaddon was the only thing that for a moment had made me remember who I was, who I had been and now I should lose him again for the safety of those who had been kind to me and my own. He leaned over me, covering me again with his wings and kissed my lips with tenderness. My eyes closed and when I opened them again I was back in the courtyard of the house. The sun was starting to rise, and the light was completely different from the night before. Abaddon was gone. I turned to go to my room and found myself face to face with Suriath. Her eyes stared at me, but it was impossible to guess what was behind them. Her face impenetrable, rigid as a statue. It was very easy to find out that she had been a very beautiful woman in her youth.”

  “You know what I am, right?” I asked bluntly.

  “I know what you were, I knew it long before you came to this house. I do not know yet what you have become.”

  The sincerity of her words was comforting. If there was something I did not need then was more falsehood and deception.

  “Me neither” I answered with the same sincerity as I started walking towards my room.

  As I passed by she took my arm and I could see that her eyes were full of tears.

  “I only ask you one thing. If there is anything left of what you were, promise me that whatever happens, you will protect my daughters.”

  Her strange request and her eyes caused me great concern.

  “What is it, Suriath? What have you seen?”

  “Just promise me, I beg you.”

  At that moment, looking at her eyes full of tears, full of fear for what she might have seen, there was only one answer she could give.

  “I promise you.”

  I did not know then, but that promise would mark the rest of my life among you.

  Flames

  Abbadon did not return. I knew he wouldn’t, but it was not easy for me to see him leave. His words echoed in my head constantly for several months but far from helping me to follow his advice to live as a human, a single desire started to grow inside me, to find my soul, recover my place and take revenge on those who had turned me in what I was then. And it became an obsession from which I could not escape. I could not conceive that my soul had disappeared, that my father whom I had venerated since my creation, the one who had told me that I was his beloved son and whom I had faithfully believed in, would have done that to me. And the pain was even greater because of the impossibility of asking him why this punishment, that inexplicable sentence. The reason why of his abandonment.

  In my agony I was soon bowed to the will of the most unstoppable force in human existence, time. Our lives were folding at the inevitable pace of the days, months and years with me hardly noticing; and with each moment a part of me became more human. Little by little my anxiety to recover my past life was lost in the lightness of my days among you and I let myself be carried away by my new reality and the preoccupation to adapt, because I was getting a little more and more into what I was, dragged along the same path of those around me who were advancing without rest.

  Sadith left for the temple leaving behind the tears of the whole house and the silence filled all the rooms for some time. Little by little her space was filled with new routines, tasks and worries, but her memory was never erased. The news from Akkad were not as frequent as we all would have liked, but Suriath’s brothers made sure that messages were sent whenever a caravan came to Uruk or passed by. Through them we knew that they did not see Sadith much either. The girl had begun living in Ishtar's temple shortly after her arrival in Akkad as planned and, except at designated festive days when she could visit her aunts and uncles in the city, her life was now under the care of the priestesses of the goddess. Suriath seemed to accept the situation with resignation, knowing what her daughter was living. For Armesh, however, it was much more difficult, and he complained frequently about the lack of news about his little girl.

  For my part, I was gradually integrating myself more and more into the life of Armesh's family and even into his business. In order to keep me occupied and convinced that it would help me recover the memory that he thought lost, Armesh took me with him on his trips to the city, to deal with the merchants or to visit his grazing land. I felt that Armesh had somehow replaced Sadith with me and started treating me like the son he had not had. Far from bothering me, that situation helped me to relax, to focus on the day to day and to stop worrying about what had happened to me. I could not realise it then, but little by little I was also accepting that new role that Armesh, conscious or not, was giving me. Eventually Armesh managed to convince Gilgamesh and his advisors that I was not a danger to Uruk or its inhabitants and I was granted permission to move alone around the city and Armesh's properties. I knew that it was only an apparent freedom and the eyes that Gilgamesh had in the city no doubt watched me closely but, even so, I appreciated the change. I began to supervise the work of the servants, the raising of cattle and the negotiations with the merchants of the city. Armesh guided me every step of the way teaching me what he knew, and I learned fast for my teacher’s pride.

  In the years that followed Abbadon's visit, I did not have any kind of vision or memory to help me clarify what had happened to me, why or how I could fix it, but I had noticed changes in me. Being able to move freely on my trips to Armesh’s farming and herding fields had given me the possibility to find time to practice with my sword in remote places where there was no risk of anyone seeing me. At first I felt rusty, my movements were coarse and slow due to the limitations of my human body but, gradually, the practice made them more fluid and faster and, although I could not pretend to be as fast as in my previous life, it was evident that my reflexes and my strength were beyond what you would have considered normal. And what was better, I did not know of any human who could fly. Having lost my wings, I had lost the ability to elevate myself, but had replaced it with something especially useful. One of the days I was practicing with my sword, when I turned it to strike a sharp blow, the sword slipped from my hands and shot out like an arrow. My body reacted reflexively and suddenly I was two hundred meters from my original location with the sword back in my hand. Somehow my body had allowed me to transport myself to the point where my sword was and catch it in flight. The emotion of what had just happened overflowed at that moment and I began to scream and jump like crazy. Fortunately, nobody could see me. That discovery was a new injection of hope that opened the door to the almost forgotten possibility that one day I would be the one I once was. I spent the following days practicing my new skill. At first frustrated because I was not able to control it consciously until slowly my body began to respond to my desires and progressively I was able to increase the distance I traveled. For several days I needed to have visibility of the place I wanted to transport myself to, but in time I got better, and I just needed to visualise in my mind where I wanted to be to appear there. Of course, they should be sites that I knew to be able to visualise them correctly without risk of finishing embedded in a wall. Distances that for a human would have meant several hours of walking were barely a sigh to me. My new skill filled me with happiness and made me regain the pride I once had, the pride of an angel. Just as some of the facets of being human had begun to make me very happy, a part of me still rejoiced knowing that I was not completely like you, completely a man.

  But I was not the only one who was discovering new talents. In the months following Sadith's departure it became evident that Liliath's abilities were growing. Her predictive capacities were augmenting, and the visions were increasingly accurate and detailed. If at first the visions only manifested in her dreams, she now showed a much greater level of control over them and was capable of provoking them at will on many occasions. At first, she used water as a conveyor as she had seen her mother and sister do, but it was soon evident that her power to visualise what was going to happen was much greater than theirs and she stopped using the water to see. At the same time that her powers were developing, the trust strengthen between us, perhaps promoted by the fact that we were in a way two
misfits, two creatures different from all those around us and we knew that only the other one could understand what each other was going through; and, although I could not explain anything about Abaddon's visit and his words so as not to put her in danger, at least I could share with her my new achievements with the sword and with my uncommon way of transporting myself. For her part, each day she told me how her visions improved, and she felt more confident with her abilities. Unfortunately, other much more dangerous abilities also awakened in her and it was the misfortune that had to strike a blow to Armesh’s family so that we all would realise it.

  Liliath had grown up and left behind the girl I met the day I woke up at Armesh's house to become a beautiful woman with a heart as hot as the colour of her hair. Unfortunately, control over her own emotions was one of her weaknesses. None of us were unaware of these changes and we had noticed that when something bothered her or just did not result as she wished, the responsible servant received all kinds of verbal and physical abuse to the point that those who had taken care of her from their birth did everything possible to avoid her and to do nothing that could offend her in the least. Armesh had always been the gentle hand that intervened in time to prevent the outbursts of that beautiful tyrant to reach greater levels, but never gave them too much importance, not even when Suriath told him how worried she was about this change of attitude of her no longer so small girl. Armesh always replied that her character would soften when she had a husband and her own family, and that is precisely what led him to accept the invitation of some distant relatives who were celebrating the wedding of his son in a village near Ur. I am still surprised how an innocent and well-intentioned act like that could unleash so much pain and tears in the years to come.

  Suriath tried to convince him by all means of the lack of necessity of that trip, but he was adamant that this party, full of family and friends, was the perfect place to start looking for a husband for Liliath. And so, on a cold early spring morning, we headed for that wedding leaving the house in the hands of some of Armesh's most trusted servants. Our caravan was as small and discreet as it could be considering the occasion, two wagons pulled by mules and three camels. Five servants accompanied us and took care of everything we might need as well as setting up the tents at nightfall and preparing the food. In addition, two of them were expert swordsmen who guaranteed our safety during the short two-day trip. The carts carried all the utensils necessary for the trip, the gifts for the bride and groom and the chests containing the six costumes embroidered in silver and jewellry that Liliath should wear during the three days of celebration. Armesh had not hesitated to mobilise everything necessary for his daughter to shine above all the other girls.