Standing in a triangle were Patrick, Bart, and Gregory. Patrick had his gun to Gregory’s head. Gregory had his gun to Bart’s head. Bart was holding a cross toward the window and mumbling something.
Outside was a vast desert. We were soaring over giant sand dunes. A hundred flying creatures dotted the sky around us. They looked like they were battling, wrestling for control of the air. But the largest creature seized my attention. It was the dragon. The dragon of my dreams, of Rome and of Patmos, and it was flying straight at us.
“Shoot him!” Bart shouted. “Patrick, fire now!”
“You shoot, and we all die,” Gregory threatened. “Bart’s the only thing keeping this ship in the air, and if you shoot, I shoot.”
“Shoot him!” Bart shouted again. “Elijah will fly us out of here.”
Gregory glanced at me, and the moment he did, Bart flung his huge mass at the prince. Patrick and I stood there, stunned, as Bart knocked away Gregory’s gun and pummeled his face, like a killer silverback ape.
“The controls!” Bart commanded, pinning Gregory down. The prince looked unconscious.
I dashed forward and grabbed the steering levers. The dragon’s red eyes locked on me. We were on a collision course.
Patrick came to my side and readied to fire the ship’s missiles. “Where is it?” he asked frantically. “Where do I shoot?”
But it was too late.
The dragon spun beneath the plane just as we collided. Claws that looked like iron cracked into the glass before us. The creature had grabbed our ship and was clinging to it as we soared ahead.
“Fly down!” Bart shoved me aside and seized the controls. He sent us spiraling down. The bottom of the ship clipped the top of an enormous sand dune, making us all fall forward, but the dragon’s claws still clung to us.
As the plane rose again, the dragon slowly pulled itself up. Its face filled the cracked-glass view. It coiled back and struck before I could react. Its horned forehead slammed into the glass, shattering it into a million pieces. Wind tore into us. The creature roared out pure terror and fury.
Bart, scraped and bleeding, turned back to me. “Go!” he shouted. “Protect her, Elijah. Whatever you do, stay with her and keep her alive.” He turned his desperate gaze to Patrick. “Go back to America with Chris. Serve the order first.”
The silverback priest turned away from us and jumped onto the dashboard of controls. He was holding a plain wooden cross, trying to look everywhere at once. He glanced back. “I don’t need to see him to believe. This date has long been planned.” I could have sworn there was a grin hiding under his goatee. “Meet you on the other side. The plane’s auto-pilot should give you enough time. Now go!”
The dragon struck again, crashing through the glass. It shrieked into the cockpit. Its jaws clamped around Bart and yanked him out of the plane. They spun down in the air, falling to the desert below.
All the other flying creatures were gone. The plane soared forward, but the alarms continued.
“Come on.” I grabbed Patrick’s arm and dragged him out of the cockpit and down the hall to the back of the ship.
“That was the dragon?” Terror laced Patrick’s voice as he followed after me.
I did not stop to answer him. How had Naomi known it was coming? At least I wasn’t the only one anymore. We could be crazy together.
“In here!” Chris shouted to us as we reached the back.
He and Naomi were seated in a tiny, round room with six chairs around the wall. Belts were tied around their chests and their waists.
“Sit down, buckle up,” Chris said. He pointed at a screen on one of the walls. “Our last engine is about to blow. We have to eject.”
Patrick and I did as he said.
“Where’s Bart?” Naomi asked.
“We lost him,” I replied. “The dragon attacked and took him. Last I saw, the two of them were crashing toward the desert. Bart was fighting on the way down.”
“What about Gregory?” Chris asked.
“He’s in the cockpit. Bart knocked him out.”
“We have to leave him. He was already gone.” Chris shook his head sadly. “Another member of the order is nearby and will protect us.” He put his hand on a red lever by his side. Lights began to blink around us.
“System clear,” said an automated voice. “Pull to eject.”
Chris pulled the lever.
OUR ESCAPE POD shot up into the air like a rocket.
I glanced out one of the small windows and felt like I was looking at earth from outer space. The outline of northwest Africa was below us. Our ascent began to slow and then we were drifting down like a hot air balloon losing heat.
When I turned back from the window, Naomi was watching me. “We’ll be safe where we’re going,” she said.
“Somewhere in Africa?”
She nodded.
“The wilderness in eastern Morocco,” said Chris. “We’d been planning to make a stop here on our way to Jerusalem, but with our ship intact. We’ll have to find another way home.”
“Won’t the dragon follow us?” I asked.
“I doubt it, thanks to Bart.” Chris looked out of the pod, to the west. “The plane is on track to crash somewhere in the Atlantic. No one will know where we ejected, but I timed it so we’d drop in the right spot. We’ve turned our precepts off. Don and the others won’t be able to track us.”
Really? I thought. Maybe that was true for Don, but whatever the dragon was, I doubted it needed a tracker.
“But they’ll know we’re in this region.” Patrick rubbed his eyes while he spoke. “The dragon…or whatever that invisible thing was…it will come back for us.”
Chris handed Patrick a wet cloth. “Wipe your face, Patrick. You need to pull it together.”
Patrick sighed as he pressed his face into the cloth and held it there. He seemed older, less innocent, when he pulled the cloth away. “I never thought we’d lose Bart.” He gazed out the window. “How am I going to explain the lost plane to ISA-7?”
“You’ll come up with something. Maybe you can blame me,” Naomi suggested. “The Captain and Aisha already suspected my true loyalties were elsewhere. I don’t think they know yet that you’re affiliated with the order.”
Naomi’s voice had pulled Patrick’s gaze away from the window. He looked on her with wonder.
“What happened to you?” he asked. “You were dead.”
She glanced at me and shrugged.
Patrick turned to me. “What happened, Eli?”
“I don’t know.” I considered telling them about the man, whoever that guy was who had touched Naomi’s forehead just like Don. But I wasn’t ready to face any more questions, not yet. “One second she was dead,” I said, “then she was alive. I don’t know how to explain it.”
“He’s lying,” Patrick said, swiveling his head from Chris to Naomi and back, as if looking for help.
“It’s clear you’re hiding something,” Chris said to me, “but that’s okay for now. There’s a purpose for this. Maybe we aren’t supposed to know.” He smiled—his real smile. “Can’t you tell us anything else?”
I shook my head.
“It’s a miracle…God’s healing touch,” Naomi volunteered. “We never fight alone.”
Our group fell into quiet then, rocking from one side to the other as the pod drifted down. I watched out the window as the ground rose to meet us. After several minutes, we touched down in a valley amidst barren, rocky hills stretching as far as I could see. We each gathered up supplies from the pod and then clambered out. The sun was low on the horizon. Another long day.
Chris led us out of the valley, heading north. He was slowed by the wound at his side, but he continued through the pain. “I’ll be fine,” was all he said when Naomi asked about it.
The land was harsh around us. A few shrubs clung to the sandy soil between rocks, but there was no sign of water. We had been hiking about an hour and were on a hilltop when we saw a figure in the distance.
It was someone on a camel, with a trail of camels behind him. They were just cresting the next hill and making their way toward us.
“That should be him.” Chris sounded weak. “Come on, just a little further.”
We began descending the next hill, just as the other man descended the opposite hill. It was almost dark when we met. The man had a dense beard and a white cloth tied around his head.
“Jacques!” Chris greeted him.
“You arrive late.” He held open his arms in welcome. His accent was French. “I bring Camille’s stew, but now it is cold. Perhaps we camp here. What do you say, my brother?”
“I say I’ve never been happier to see you.” Chris failed to hide the pain in his voice.
“You’re hurt.” The man went to Chris’s side.
“It’s nothing. A stigmata of service.”
“A heavy word.” The man helped Chris to sit on the ground. “But these are heavy times, eh? Who are these friends you bring to my desert?”
Chris motioned to us. “This is Patrick, my assistant, and this is Elijah, a seer.”
The man studied me with a slanted grin. He was younger than I had expected, about Chris’s age. “We have been waiting for you,” he said to me.
“And I am Naomi.” She stepped to my side and pulled back the cowl that had been blocking the wind and sun from her face.
The man gasped, “Mon Dieu!” He made the cross over his chest. He bowed, took Naomi’s hand, and kissed it. “I am Jacques Guillaume. It is an honor, femme revêtue du soleil.”
“What does that mean?” Patrick asked. My rough translation was something like woman coated in sun. I figured it made sense—her face shone in the fading daylight.
“Why did you not tell me?” Jacques asked Chris, ignoring Patrick’s question.
“I just found out myself,” Chris said. “We must consult with the order as soon as possible. We need to figure out what happened, and what’s coming next. It’s going to be hard without Bart.”
The man’s body went rigid. “Without Bart?”
Chris nodded. “We lost him, Jacques.”
Jacques pressed his eyes closed and leaned his head back, facing the sky. “Heavy times indeed.”
Chris put his hand on the man’s shoulder. “We should wait to speak more of this in private. How about some of that stew?”
“Yes, yes.” Jacques stood, eyeing Naomi. “We must get you rest. As I say, this is a good place to make camp. At first light we go to my home. Camille will feed you. We have stew, we have wine, and then we talk more. ”
JACQUES BEGAN BARKING orders to us, half in French, half in English. He sounded like a drill sergeant, setting us tasks of gathering sparse brush, laying out beds, building a fire, and feeding the camels. While we followed his orders, he tended to Chris’s wound.
Once the small fire was burning, Jacques heated the stew and served each of us. It was just lentils with some spice like saffron, but my starving belly found it delicious. I ate quickly and said goodnight to the others.
I went to my make-shift bed and laid down, exhausted. I could barely keep my eyes open. Was it just yesterday morning Naomi and I landed in Rome?
I looked up at the sky. The moon was a pale sliver, and the stars were radiant. There were more than I had ever seen. Each one was like a door with a dream behind it. I did not want to walk through any more doors like that.
“Beautiful, aren’t they?” Naomi laid down on her back beside me. Her bed was next to mine, and a safe distance from the others. There were perks to being assigned the task of setting up beds.
“Not as beautiful as you.” The starlight made her skin turn a rich, silver hue.
She laughed. “I’m glad you haven’t lost your sense of humor.” She was quiet for a moment, her body still. “We’ve seen a lot. We’ve lost a lot.”
“I know, I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.” She turned on her side and looked at me. Her eyes made my breath freeze. They were like Jezebel’s, except they were the sun instead of magma. “You saved me,” she said.
“I, no…”
“I know why you don’t want to tell the others,” she said, “but please, tell me what happened.” She reached out and put her hand against my cheek. It thawed my resistance.
“There was a man. He came to us out of nowhere.”
“When?”
“After you died. The dragon was still there, but the man stopped it. He touched you, like this.” I pressed my hand on her silver forehead. It was smooth and warm.
“What did the man look like?”
“He was normal, like anyone, like me. He had brown hair and a beard, nothing special, except…”
“Except what?”
“His eyes,” I began. “Sometimes they glowed, kind of like yours.”
“Did you talk to him?”
I nodded. “I asked him his name. He told me I would learn it. He told me that help was coming. Then he was gone, and so was the dragon. I ran back to you, and you were alive.”
“So it was a miracle,” she whispered, with a look of awe. “What else did he say?”
I thought back through my blurred memories. It was still hard without V. “He asked me to prepare the way. I don’t know what that meant. He told me to protect you. Do you have any idea who it was?”
She smiled at me. “You saw him, not me. This doesn’t seem like something I should guess about.”
“What, was he some augmented ISA prototype, with some super-secret precept?”
“No,” she laughed lightly. The sound helped my body relax. “I don’t think he had anything to do with ISA. How did he stop the dragon?”
“He just told it to stop, and it did.” That sounded even more ridiculous than it had seemed in the moment.
But Naomi nodded as if she understood. “He may be the one you have to prepare the way for, but that is for you to decide. Whoever he was, I’m glad he’s on our side.”
We were quiet then, just staring at each other. The camp was quiet, too. The still of the night made my eyes heavier.
“What’s coming next?” I wondered aloud.
“I don’t know, Elijah.” She took my hand in hers. “But you’ll stay with me, right?”
“Always,” I said, meeting her smile. I felt like God had answered my plea to save her. The least I could do was try to keep her safe. “Do you remember the last thing you said to me, before you died?” I remembered too well. It was, I love you, but had she really said it, and meant it? People could say anything on a deathbed.
She thought for a moment. “I said you are chosen, that you must use your gift to see, right?”
“Yeah,” I said, hope sinking inside me, “it was something like that.” I squeezed her hand in mine. “Don’t die again, okay?”
“I won’t if you won’t let me,” she teased.
I nodded. “Deal. Goodnight, Naomi.”
“Goodnight.”
We drifted to sleep soon after that. I would have paid a fortune for a dream pill, but those things don’t grow in deserts. And so the visions came.
My mom was standing beside my dad. His hand was at the back of her neck, hidden behind her black curls. She smiled up at him, and he smiled down at her. I’d forgotten he could smile like that.
They were standing in a temple. I could see through the walls. I could see New York City around them. I could see an enormous wave crashing toward the skyscrapers. Its frothy crest reached nearly half way up the towers.
Suddenly I was between my mom and my dad, holding their legs and looking up at them. I knew the wave was coming, but they didn’t. Or at least my dad didn’t. My mom looked at me and mouthed a silent prayer. My dad just stared at her, oblivious to everything around us.
When the wave hit, my dad fell. The building collapsed over him and he was trapped under the water. But my mom and I just floated out. She rose like a balloon, drifting above the city. I was the little boy holding the string that dangled from her as we rose above the build
ings that peeked out of the swirling water. The whole city was submerged.
My mom held out her hand to me. I took it and she scooped me into her arms, as if I was a baby.
“This isn’t real,” I said to her.
She looked lovingly into my eyes and said, “You must learn to see the truth in your dreams. They will pursue you until you heed them. The word is living and active, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit.”
“Does that mean he’s dead?”
She nodded sadly. “He’s in the space between now. He loves you, Elijah, just as I do.”
“But you are dead, too.” Despite my words, she looked more alive than I could imagine. She looked even more alive than my memories of her.
“You have seen the dead return to life,” she said.
“Naomi?”
She smiled and nodded. “The woman clothed with the sun. You must protect them both.”
“Who else?”
Suddenly others were around my mom. They had wings. They looked like the creatures that had fought in the sky when our ship was going down. They looked like angels. One of them put his hand on my mom’s shoulder.
“I have to go now,” she told me.
“No, please.” I tried to cling to her, but my pudgy infant arms were too weak. “I need you.”
“I will watch over you,” she said, “but you must learn to fly on your own.”
Then she let go of me, and I fell. I soared straight down, toward the drowned city below. But now the wave was retreating. The froth pulled back, revealing devastated steel and pavement below.
I fell so fast. The wind whipped at me. I knew I would die when I landed. My own mother had let me go. She had let me fall, and I was going to die.
Just before I hit the ground, I woke up.
NAOMI WOKE ME at dawn the next morning. I could get used to her face being the first thing I saw every day. Its radiance burned away some residue of my dream.
Next came more commands from Jacques. I fumbled through the tasks, clueless about packing up a camp, especially without my precept. Packing was easier, though, than riding a camel. Jacques said my camel’s name was Grabuge—“trouble.”
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