by Jerel Law
Rupert waved his hand in the air. “Well, what are the gifts, then? I for one would like to know.” Some of the other kids nodded their heads as well.
“Patience, dear Rupert.” She smiled. “Elohim reveals your gifts to you when He deems necessary. It is not for the angels to reveal all of His purposes.”
Camilla looked at her notes and began splitting the kids up according to what she’d written. The first group went with Samuel down to the other side of the reading room. They sat at a table in the corner. It was so far away that Jonah couldn’t have heard them if he’d wanted to.
The second group went with Camilla out of the room and into a hallway. Apparently there was another classroom where the Spiritual Arts would be taught.
Jonah, Eliza, and Jeremiah were all in different groups. Frederick was selected to join Jonah’s group. Just my luck, Jonah thought. Also joining Jonah was his roommate, David, Lania from Australia, and Hai Ling, the Chinese quarterling who still looked less than thrilled to be there. Jonah tried to quickly analyze the groups. They must be grouped together by gifts . . . but what were those gifts, exactly?
Marcus and Taryn began pushing tables against the walls of the reading room. A rectangular space was cleared out in the middle. Jonah figured it was as wide—and almost as long—as the basketball court in their school gym back in Peacefield. At one end, they positioned two tables up on their sides. Marcus pulled two pieces of paper out from his belt. He unfolded two bull’s-eye images and tacked them onto each of the table bottoms.
“This is no ordinary paper,” he said as the quarterlings watched him. “When your arrow hits this, it will stick, not just dissolve away.”
Taryn nodded. “This will be our combat practice area every time we are together. Elohim has made it clear to us that you need to be able to protect yourself, so the first gift many of you will discover is a weapon to be used in combat. One of the gifts you all share is angelic archery. Some of you have experience with this.” She gave Jonah a knowing smile. Frederick noticed this and rolled his eyes. “Have any of the rest of you had any archery practice?”
Frederick and Lania raised their hands.
“Marcus, why don’t you take those three? I’ll work with our beginners, David and Hai Ling.”
She took David and Hai Ling over to the side and began to instruct them on how to pull out an arrow. David was eager, but Hai Ling stood listening with her arms folded. At Taryn’s insistence, she finally reached back over her shoulder and pulled out a white flaming arrow. She looked at it, seeming almost surprised that she could actually pull an angel arrow out of thin air and hold it in her hand. Before she knew it, a bow had appeared in her left hand.
Marcus stood with Jonah and Frederick. “All right, let’s see what you boys have.”
Frederick stepped up. “Let me go first,” he said, and abruptly pulled an arrow off his back. He grinned as his bow appeared in his other hand. “Cool!”
“Very well,” Marcus said, motioning him forward with his arm. “We will start here.” He pointed down to a line in the floor formed by a crack.
Frederick stood at the mark, pulled his arrow back, and fired.
The arrow pierced the red center of the bull’s-eye on the paper and stuck there. He smiled smugly, glancing back at Jonah.
“Excellent!” Marcus said, clearly impressed. “You’ve had some practice.”
Frederick nodded. “It’s no big deal. We bow hunt at my parents’ compound all the time. ”
“Jonah?” said Marcus. “Why don’t you give it a go?”
Jonah doubted Frederick had more experience, at least at shooting angel arrows, than he did. Confidently, he pulled an arrow off his back and put his toe up beside the mark. The bow appeared in his left hand, and he took aim and fired.
The arrow flew wildly off to the left, careening into a bookshelf and disintegrating.
“Hmm,” said Marcus. “Try to focus a little more on the target, Jonah.”
Jonah didn’t turn around, but he could hear Frederick snickering behind him. He quickly pulled another arrow and fired. It only ended up a little better this time, hitting the top right corner of the target.
“Better,” said the angel. “But you clearly need more practice.” And he began to instruct Jonah in the finer points of holding a bow, how to aim, and releasing it at the proper time. He was full of advice and instruction, and while Jonah tried to listen and take it in, he could feel Frederick behind him. Probably still laughing, he thought. He had more experience fighting fallen angels than all of the other quarterlings combined—except Eliza, of course—yet here he was, getting a basic lesson on how to hold a bow and shoot an arrow.
What made it worse was that when it was Lania’s turn, she strode up and fired her arrow right into the red center of the bull’s-eye too. She shrugged and said nothing.
“Nice work, Lania,” said Marcus. “Looks like you’re a natural.”
She blushed, looking down at her sneakers. “Thanks.”
For the next hour, they practiced. Frederick continued to either hit or come close to the bull’s-eye at every turn, earning the admiration of Marcus. Lania was not quite as accurate, but almost. Jonah was turning out to be the worst. He wondered where the touch he seemed to have last year, in the real battle, had gone. He struggled to even hit the target, finding the wall three more times.
Exasperated, he was glad when, mercifully, Camilla announced that it was time to switch classes.
“I’m sure you’ll do better next time, Stone,” Frederick said, patting him hard on the shoulder. Jonah quickly pushed his arm off and sighed loudly. Maybe this was not going to be as easy as he thought.
Staring at this big book in front of him in Samuel’s class, Jonah couldn’t help but feel a little intimidated. This class might not be so easy either.
“Jonah Stone.” Samuel said his name loudly, nodding in approval of his new student. Jonah looked up from the table and raised his eyebrow. “It is a real pleasure to have you and your family with us.”
Jonah wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say. “Thanks,” he muttered, eager to get the spotlight off himself after his dismal failure in Angelic Combat. But Samuel continued on.
“Your sister, Eliza, was a pleasure,” he said, almost gushing. “Her knowledge of the Scriptures, for someone her age, is quite extraordinary. I hope that I will find the same is true of you.” Jonah tried to smile and look at him confidently, but accidentally made a noise that sounded like a wince. “You and your sister have made tremendous progress, tremendous progress . . .”
Jonah could feel the stares of the others on him, but he didn’t dare look over at them. He was sure Frederick would have something to say. The last thing he needed was special treatment from one of their instructors. That was more trouble than it was worth.
“So, ah . . . what are we going to learn today?” Jonah said, although as soon as the words left his lips, he wished they hadn’t. In trying to get the attention off himself, it made him sound like he was returning the compliments with some sucking up of his own.
Samuel beamed. “Yes, yes, of course! Now where to begin . . .” He began thumbing through the giant Bible in front of him, dust flying off it.
“Ah, yes,” he said, “an overview is in order.”
For the next hour, he proceeded to walk them through the entire Bible, talking with more enthusiasm than Jonah would have expected from looking at the angel. He began in Genesis— actually, before Genesis—talking about the existence of Elohim as God Three-in-One.
“We’ll come back to that,” he said with excitement, a phrase that Jonah and the students would hear often from him. He mentioned the creation of the angels.
“We’ll come back to that.”
And then he spoke about the angelic rebellion, a brief shadow tarnishing his glow for a moment.
“And, of course, we’ll come back to that too.”
He moved through the Old Testament in a flash, and Jonah found it hard to stay
with him. Each of the kids had a notebook and pencil in front of them, and Jonah tried to write down as much as he could, but it was no use. Samuel blazed through the Old Testament law, the judges, and then the prophets.
“Who can tell me about the prophet Malachi?” he asked, searching the faces of the five students in front of him, which had just gone blank. “Jonah?”
He waited for an intelligent response from Jonah, but when Jonah heard his name called out, his mind ground to a halt.
“Uhh . . .” was all Jonah could muster. Samuel looked terribly disappointed, but brightened when David spoke up.
“Malachi was one of the minor prophets, around the same time as Nehemiah,” said David. “‘But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings.’ Malachi 4:2.”
Samuel beamed. “Very nice, David. Very nice indeed.”
He spent a lot of time, and his most passionate comments, on the birth and life of Jesus in the Gospels. And when he came to the death and resurrection, his voice grew low, to barely a whisper. The students, even Frederick, Jonah noticed, were leaning forward, listening intently. Samuel spoke of the events almost as if he had actually been there, not merely as some old, out-of-touch professor talking about the history of long ago.
He paused to catch his breath, and for their final twenty minutes launched into his comments on the book of Acts, about the very first group of believers, then the letters of Paul, and finally the book of Revelation.
He looked at his watch. “But we’ll come back to that,” he said, once more.
Finally, Samuel closed his Bible and stepped back, clearly having exhausted himself, as well as the students.
“Wow,” David said as they stood up from the table. “That hour went by very quickly, don’t you think?”
Jonah nodded. “I never thought the Bible would be so . . .”
“Interesting?” said David, grinning.
“Well, yeah, interesting,” Jonah said.
Jonah looked at his watch. 12:03. He stretched his arms out, feeling himself growing tired. He saw the looks on the faces of the other students too. It had been a long day, and it wasn’t over yet. He wondered how they were going to handle late-night sessions.
“You will get used to the timing of these classes,” said Camilla as they passed by, as if reading his thoughts. “Besides, you’ll get to sleep in each morning. Just what you’ve always wanted in a school, right? The chance to sleep late!”
She chuckled to herself and walked over to another group, trying to keep tabs on all of the students at once. She informed them that after their final class, they would gather back together for a time with her. Time to talk through their experiences together, share what they had learned, and hear directly from Camilla.
Jonah watched as Eliza’s group emerged from a door in the hallway across the room and tried to read the looks on their faces. They spoke together in hushed tones as they walked over toward Marcus and Taryn’s area. Before they did, they stopped to pray silently. He saw the glimmer return in each of them, and he knew they’d entered the hidden realm again.
“Well,” Jonah said, punching David in the arm. “Time to meet the mystery teacher face-to-face.”
ELEVEN
THE SPIRITUAL ARTS
Jonah and his classmates stood in the hallway in front of the closed wooden door. They looked at each other, suddenly aware that leaving the hidden realm meant that any human who might accidentally walk into the hall would be able to see them.
“What’s this class going to be?” asked Frederick. “Listening to some old guy ramble again, like the last one?”
He laughed, but no one else laughed along with him. Jonah was determined to take the high road and try to ignore him.
“I guess it’s time to come back into sight,” Jonah said. He bowed his head and quieted himself, offering a sincere prayer out loud so the others would also know what to say. He felt the change, and when he opened his eyes, he knew he was back.
The other kids followed his lead, and when they were ready, Jonah opened the door and entered the room.
The soft glow of candlelight flickered against the beige walls. It was a small space but cozy. Tall candles were lit and had been positioned along the walls. Instead of a table in the room, there was a circle of chairs, six in all.
“Welcome, friends,” a man said softly, standing in the middle of the room. He motioned to the chairs around him. “Please take a seat.”
Jonah and the others stared at him for a few seconds. He wore a black T-shirt, and his hands were slid comfortably into the pockets of his dark jeans. His hair was as black as his shirt, and it swept across his forehead and down almost to his shoulders. A goatee covered his chin. Tattoos covered the brown skin on his left arm down to his wrist. Lania and Hai Ling hadn’t blinked at all and seemed suddenly taken with the new instructor.
He sized them up with warm brown eyes and an easy smile. The quarterlings quietly found a seat. A silver cross hung around his neck, drawing Jonah’s eyes. The candlelight glistened against it, causing it to shift from silver to crimson red and back again.
“My name is Reverend Kareem Bashir,” the man said. “Please, call me Kareem.”
As he spoke, his bright eyes shone, and he bore them into each of the kids intently, as if searching for something beneath their skin. Jonah met his piercing gaze for a few seconds. Soon, though, he found himself glancing away uncomfortably.
“I live here in New York, where I pastor a church my wife and I began seven years ago,” he said. “But as you may be able to tell from my accent, I’m not from here originally. I am Pakistani by birth. In fact, most of my family still lives there.”
David raised his hand. “How did you get here, then?”
Kareem folded his arms, his smile turning into an easy laugh. “It’s a long and crazy story that perhaps I’ll tell you sometime. My family is Muslim, but I was able to come to college in the States. I found Jesus—or rather, He found me—one night through a conversation with a friend in my college dorm room. That night I became a Christ-follower. Not long after that, I was called to start a new church in this amazing city.
“I’m friends with Sister Patricia,” he continued, “and she told me about you extraordinary kids and requested that I come. I sensed that Elohim was moving mightily here. How could I refuse? My job is to help you learn how to practice what are called the Spiritual Arts: those practices, the disciplines of the spirit, that can lead a person to a deeper communion with Elohim.”
Jonah glanced over at Frederick. In spite of their new instructor, he already looked bored. Kareem was acting as if he didn’t notice, but Jonah wasn’t so sure.
“I’m sorry,” Frederick blurted out, “but what can someone like you possibly teach us about prayer and this other stuff?” He seemed to be staring at Kareem’s tattoos.
Kareem glanced down at his arm but continued smiling. “There are no experts in the spiritual arts, my friend. Just learners. We will learn together. I will say, however, that I do have some experience that will be helpful to you. I began our church with only prayer, after all.”
“What is it up to now?” scoffed Frederick. “A dozen people or so?”
Kareem pushed his fingers through his hair as he thought. “I think around three thousand. Now, shall we get started?”
Frederick snapped his mouth shut, and the others nodded.
“Now, you all look human to me,” Kareem said, causing Hai Ling and Lania to giggle. He sat down with them and began to speak a little lower. “Of course, I know your true identities. That each of you is part angel, offspring of both human and nephilim. You are amazing kids, with much to offer this world. Just like all of Elohim’s children. I’ve heard that some of you have already been using your gifts quite effectively.”
He glanced at Jonah and nodded. Jonah blushed, and Kareem seemed to get the hint and moved on quickly.
“I must confess I’ve never been around quarterlings before.
It’s a pretty cool experience for someone like me. But just like the rest of us,” he said, “prayer is the central connection we have to Elohim. You will never realize your full potential to engage in the battle between good and evil if you can’t, or won’t, pray. So why don’t you join me now?”
He reached out and extended his hands to the right and left, grabbing the hands of Frederick and David. Frederick looked as if he was going to pull away but didn’t. Jonah, Lania, and Hai Ling followed suit, each reaching out to hold hands with the kids next to them.
“Close your eyes, friends,” he said, and they obediently followed his direction. “This will allow you the least amount of distraction. Let everything that is worrying you, all of your cares, all of your fears, your doubts . . . let it all blow away, like a dandelion in the breeze. Now, turn your mind to Elohim, think about Him, invite Him to come into view, and ask Him what He wants to say . . .”
Kareem kept speaking softly, not so much praying as encouraging the students to pray themselves. Jonah kept his eyes closed, trying to concentrate. But his mind kept wandering off in a thousand directions. His parents, the flood in the school bathroom, his house and all the things he wished he’d brought from his room—when he tried to concentrate on Elohim, all of these random thoughts kept interrupting.
He took a deep breath. Let those things go, Jonah . . . let them blow away. He pictured each of his worries blowing away like one of the dandelions in his backyard, caught up in an autumn breeze.
Suddenly, Jonah sensed that something had changed.
Thud, thud, thud. Thud, thud, thud.
What is that noise? It sounded vaguely familiar. And then he heard a faint roar that grew steadily louder.
He opened his eyes again. The room around him, along with the rest of the quarterlings, had vanished. Jonah found himself standing in the center of the Granger Community School basketball court.
Thud, thud, thud.
The thudding noise was the basketball he was dribbling. The growing roar now filled up his ears. He looked up, and on both sides of the court, bleachers full of fans were screaming. He found himself momentarily captivated by their faces. Because even though they were looking at him, they weren’t cheering. Some of them were weeping uncontrollably. Others wailed from pain, or grief. All around him were faces of human suffering.
