by Troy Hooker
Watchers. The first beings ever created, servants of God himself.
“So you are the children of Watchers? Meaning that the angels must have come to Creation and …”
Emma smiled.
“Exactly. But that wasn’t the Creator’s plan. Those choices are why evil exists in both worlds today.”
Sam listened to the crowd roar once again, the glowing lights of the regions waving like a field of wheat in the wind.
“So since you are half Watchers, it gives you magical powers with Light?”
“It’s a gift. The Creator gives us the gift of Light Manipulation.”
“But the Dark Forces have powers too.”
“Yes,” she told him. “They have learned to force the Light into obeying them. It is not our way, however. We believe it is a gift, and so we treat it with respect and honor.”
“The Dark One has power too, doesn’t he? Why does the Creator allow that?”
“Samuel, the Creator offers the gift to any Descendant, but some choose to use it for their own purposes,” she paused as the chanting of the crowd grew loud as the parade drew to a close. “He uses it regardless of how it was intended.”
“And the Creator just allows it?” Sam pressed.
“Choices, Sam. Remember? He allows the freedom for all to choose.”
Watchers were angels that followed the Creator, and Dark Watchers were those that followed their own path. Both can manipulate the Light, but each in their own way. It was the spiritual battle he always knew existed but refused his concrete mind to accept. It was just like the world he knew on Earth—ruthless dictators and benevolent governments, heroes of philanthropy and mass murderers, the good versus evil. It was the same, but then again, it was all so different.
“I must be dead … caught in some sort of limbo between heaven and hell,” he said jokingly, but silently pinching himself to see if he would wake up.
Emma laughed.
“No, Lior is very much alive. We—are alive. We are just in another dimension of the Creator’s realm. It’s wonderful, isn’t it?”
“Have you—seen Him? The Creator?” he hesitated to ask for fear of compounding his already spinning mind, but chose to anyway.
“No,” she said smiling. “Long ago our ancestors did. But every time we use the Light, Descendants feel Him in us. Soon, I think you can feel Him too.”
“God. You feel God in you.” The words left an obvious skeptical feeling in the air, but even he couldn’t deny what he had seen since yesterday.
“Yes. The Creator is God.”
There was no God. Science had proven that. He was a fictitious creature man made up to give himself hope, and now the people of Lior were also caught up in it, and even they couldn’t see it. God was a crutch for people who needed relief from pain and suffering. Plus, there were too many holes in the theory of an all-powerful being controlling the universe.
But he had seen so much already that challenged all reason. He had learned to comply with the unreasonable, and to open his mind to what he saw. Perhaps even he needed to allow the impossible to penetrate him.
***********************
The parade had ended and Emma led him down another hallway and a main stairwell that led to the hall, where people were already being led into the lavishly-decorated room.
The inside of the hall was even larger than it seemed from the outside, and even more ornate than its exterior, with carved columns and finely-detailed creatures with wings spread and sitting atop. It was decorated in different shades of red curtains lining the stained glass windows, with candelabras of silver staggered on the walls. Spectacular glittering chandeliers hung from the ceiling over the many tables where the people of Thalo were now being seated.
Emma spotted her parents and the others from the cabin circle right away as they filed in, and she led Sam to a long table near the center of the hall, which boasted huge lighted fountains of sparkling punch and tea, tables of various meats and cheeses, artfully arranged fruits and vegetables, and an entire table just for unique kinds of bread.
Around the outer edges of the hall were similar tables of finger foods and juice fountains, which many had already discovered and were filling plates.
“I can’t believe how many people fit in here,” Sam said loudly as he and Emma rejoined with Gus and Lillia at their cabin’s table, which was as full of pomp and fanciful decorations as the others in the hall. Gus, who was eagerly looking at the long tables of food, bumped past Sam on his way to the mountain of cheeses.
The hall didn’t seem crowded, but the noise reached concert levels as people laughed and talked while they searched for their seats and circled the tables of appetizers. Sam sat with the rest of the group near the middle of the table, with Miss Karpatch and Lillia on either side of him, and Cooley finding a spot next to his History teacher. Gus, when he returned with his plate full, and Emma sat opposite them, with Mr. and Mrs. Sterling next to them. Mr. Sterling seemed engaged in a deep conversation with the man next to him, whom Sam recognized immediately as the man he saw from afar carrying firewood into the pavilion at their circle of cabins.
There were others at the table too, about twenty in all, that Sam didn’t recognize. All seemed to know each other well, however, and laughed and chatted as they sat down with plates of cheese and bread. But before he could lean over and ask Emma who they were, Mr. Sterling stood at his wife’s beckoning and held a glass of bubbling liquid in the air.
“Friends, it has been a long time since our last reunion,” he said loudly over the noise of the hall. “I am grateful to be back in your presence once again, and I am glad to be back in Lior, as I am sure all of you are.”
“Indeed!” some said as they also stood, raising their glasses to meet his.
“We have a new member of our cabin circle that I would like you to meet.”
Sam froze. He was unaware that there was going to be any sort of introduction.
“Sam, would you kindly stand?” Mr. Sterling raised his arm toward him. “This young man has joined us from the far reaches of Thalo, and thanks be to the Creator that he has now rejoined his family.” He paused, raising his glass. “As a once lost member of our family, we are thankful now that he is found.”
While Sam was confused by Mr. Sterling’s words, by instinct he raised his cup of sparkling juice that Emma set in front of him gingerly and smiled at those who smiled at him. It was then that he noticed the girl sitting opposite him at the other end of the table.
She had long silky brown hair and blue eyes, which seemed to sparkle along with the glass she was holding up. She smiled immediately when Sam glanced, her lips showing a bright shade of natural red.
Sam quickly turned and sat, but watched her out of the corner of his eye. She was beautiful, elegant in every way from her soft physical features to the way she poised herself at the table. She was laughing and joking with another younger girl at the table, every so often glancing discretely in his direction.
He caught himself staring at her more than once and forced himself to look toward the cart that was now passing the table, large bottles of dark red liquid being placed at each end.
“Sam,” Miss Karpatch put her hand on his shoulder, snapping him suddenly out of his gaze. “Emma has been trying to get your attention.”
He turned toward Emma, whose face was now as red as her hair.
“I was trying to point out something behind you,” she said snidely, “but I think you would rather know that her name is Sayvon.”
Sam didn’t get a chance to respond because the hall fell suddenly silent. Others were turning to watch what Emma had been trying to point out to him. Needless to say, he was rather glad for the interruption, embarrassing as it was.
There was a large shudder, and then the wall that stood at the back of the great hall began to move apart, revealing the interior
of the heart of the City Center—a large semicircular amphitheater built into the floor adjoining all four halls, connecting the entirety of the building together in one massive banquet hall of diverse people sitting at similarly decorated tables with large candelabras at their centers. Each hall was decorated lavishly in their various colors and boasted similar sparkling beverage fountains and mountains of bread and cheese finger foods.
The amphitheater, which Gus explained as the central meeting place for the Council, looked as though it could hold another entire hall itself. Toward the rear of the center held one more table decorated in white and silver linens, and seated in the chairs were eight figures dressed in the robes of the various halls.
“Who are they?” Sam asked no one in particular.
“They are the members of the High Council. Two from each hall—representing the regions they come from,” Miss Karpatch whispered loudly as the halls began to quiet. “Each of the halls points in a different direction, and each direction represents a different region of Lior. She pointed at two of the older men, one with shoulder length white hair and the other with silver patches on each side of an otherwise balding head, both wearing red robes like the rest of the Thalo banquet hall, but with gleaming silver cuffs to represent their position. “And those two are the two High Council members from our hall.”
“Each of the four halls appoints one hundred Council members to meet in Lior to discuss issues that arise in the regions,” Gus said. “but the High Council is chosen from those members to serve the Chancellor.”
“And here comes the Chancellor now,” Miss Karpatch gestured toward a door behind the High Council table.
Another inner door to the amphitheater opened, and a man with gray hair and beard, dressed in a silver robe with red cuffs, glided gracefully across floor to his designated chair at the High Council’s table. Before he sat, he raised his hands in a simple gesture of acknowledgment, and all four halls suddenly erupted into cheers and enthusiastic clapping.
In another gesture of gratitude, the aged man opened his arms and turned to all four halls as if embracing the air. For a brief moment Sam thought he saw the Chancellor glance right at him.
Then, holding his hands out as if to embrace all who attended, the members of the High Council stood and mimicked the Chancellor’s posture, their hands held out in a similar gesture.
The hall was deathly silent as a blue glow began to emerge from their palms, softly in the beginning, but then increasing in intensity. Then suddenly, from each of their palms, a thin wisp of light crept upward above the center of the table, where each stream converged into one massive display of radiance that spread throughout all four of the halls instantly.
Again the four halls erupted in cheers and clapping of hands, which lasted for nearly a minute after the light had long faded and the other three men had taken their seats. The Chancellor remained standing and held his hand up for silence, to which the halls finally obeyed. He prayed quietly, a simple prayer to the Creator who had given them life.
When the man finally sat, four more doors opened up and strings of servers dressed in their representative hall’s colors pushed huge carts of food down the rows of tables in each direction. There were whole pigs, turkey, and sides of beef lusciously prepared on huge platters, and large bowls of food of every kind steaming from the carts.
Instantly a waiter was at Sam’s table and offered heaping amounts of delicately prepared potatoes, vegetables, and colorful salads. Another waiter appeared and offered an array of croissants, dinner rolls, and pastries, and still another refilled their drinks and changed out their silverware.
There were waiters and waitresses attending tables everywhere. It was amazing how many of them there were.
“Wow. This is more than I could ever eat,” Sam said to Gus, who wasted no time digging in.
“Enjoy it. The feast only happens one week a year,” he mumbled between bites.
“People from all four regions of Lior come for this feast,” Miss Karpatch said, nibbling on a buttered beet. “It is a time of blessing, and of serving—those who serve us now will be the same ones we serve at a later feast. In essence, we all serve each other.”
Sam nodded his head. He remembered how willing the people of the church had been to cook, serve, and clean up the meal after the service. Here, in Lior, people seemed the same way—helpful, caring, and non-judgmental, a far cry from the church his grandmother took him to. Immediately these people had made him feel at home—no judgment, no forced communion, only an open invitation to join them.
He glanced over at Gus, who had morphed the conversation from the feast to the regions of Lior, and something about the first crossing of the Descendants into Lior.
“No, actually, from what Mentor Varsak’s publication on the People of Light says, the original location of the entrance of the first Descendants into Lior was in the Themane region, ‘buried in a vast forest,’ and was abandoned and eventually lost.”
Miss Karpatch shook her finger in his direction.
“What Mentor Varsak forgets is in the earlier journals the mention of ‘frozen peaks’ that surrounded them. Clearly, Gus, you forget the words of our ancestors,” she said playfully.
Gus paused to take a breath from his potatoes.
“I just find it hard to believe that the region of Thalo contains the gate,” he shook his head.
“What gate?” Sam asked suddenly, in between bites of a turkey leg, which was better than any he had had at the Renaissance Festival back in Michigan.
Gus looked up from his plate and was already sporting a sour look on his face from the four slices of beef, two of chicken, and two extra-large helpings of mashed pumpkin he had eaten. Sam too pushed around corn on his plate as his stomach began to bloat to an uncomfortable capacity.
“The Sha’ar Gate,” he groaned and held his belly as a server set down another huge piece of pork chop in front of him. “The only gate at the time said to be built by the Creator so that the first Descendants could leave Earth and come to Lior.”
“The original gate,” Miss Karpatch added.
Sam pushed back from the table in a show of defiance as the server attempted to set more food in front of him. “Is that like the one we came through to get here?”
Gus shook his head and took a bite of roll that was nearly twice the size of his mouth, having suddenly gotten over his inability to shove in another bite.
“No. The Sha’ar gate has not been found. Buried by the Watchers after the Great Battle because it contained too much power.”
“The only gates we have now are those that were built by the Watchers for us to travel.”
Miss Karpatch too put her hands up as if waving off an imaginary server who was attempting to coax her into another round of steamed vegetables.
“One in each of the regions.” Gus let out a little burp, drawing an exaggerated eye-rolling from Lillia. “Four total, if you don’t count the Sha’ar gate.”
“What about the Darkness? Can they use the gates?”
“No. But they have tried in the past, which is why the Protector families watch the gates. Why we watch the gates,” Gus said.
“Fortunately for Lior, life has been peaceful as of late,” Miss Karpatch smiled as Gus accepted yet another roll after finishing the first and immediately began inhaling it. “In fact, there hasn’t been any known activity in any of the four regions in almost fifty years—since the destruction of the old Lior City.”
“That you believe …” Lillia said quietly, to which the conversation quickly accelerated into sporting jests and lively debate about whether or not the Seer office and High Council were able to see the potential threat outside the Descendant-controlled territory.
As they talked, Sam stared at the rest of the food on his plate. He felt bad throwing away good food, but it didn’t look like anyone else at the table was going to finish
theirs either. Usually he kept himself in check while eating, but tonight he had been unusually hungry, and he was enjoying the atmosphere—and surprisingly, the people around him.
The intensifying debate halted suddenly as, once again, the four corners of the inner hall opened up and a stream of servers paraded in with a caravan of carts that were overflowing with the most colorful cakes, sweets, and pies Sam had ever seen.
Even though it looked as though the rest of the table was suffering from being as overfed as he was, when the cart arrived, they all stood and stared at the delectable treats like buzzards circling above.
The server placed a number of desserts on the table, many of which looked like fancy fruit cobblers, coffee and red velvet cakes, and meringue topped pies. In front of the youths she placed a vase full of assorted white and dark chocolate cake bites, a giant bowl full of chocolate and vanilla iced custard, and a large platter of berry muffins. The desserts looked so good that they momentarily forgot how full they were.
The dessert Sam tried first was a chocolate-topped meringue pie that tasted somewhat like peanut butter, but richer in texture. Then he tried a velvet cake pop, and liked it so much he went for a whole piece of the velvet cake. Gus wasted no time digging into the cobblers and cakes, while Emma and Lillia showed more restraint, daintily forking through pieces of strawberry pie with a dollop of ice cream.
Except for Gus, who seemed to have a bottomless pit for a stomach, they were stuffed to the point that they couldn’t possibly take another bite. Watching Gus eat made Sam feel even more full, so he contented himself by sipping on some strong coffee the servers had set in front of them.
As the rest of the table chatted merrily about the festivities of the Light Festival, or caught up on what had happened while each was away, Sam would glance toward the end of the table and at Sayvon every so often when Emma wasn’t looking. She pretended not to notice his looks, but the smile on her face told him she didn’t need to pretend.
Emma was ignoring him, but every so often he caught her staring at him, her eyes level and lips pursed into an obvious scowl. He knew she was angry for the Sayvon thing, so he tried his best not to look her way. But there was something about the girl with the soft brown hair—something intriguing—that he just couldn’t get out of his mind.
