by Hanna Peach
“And you…fell in love?”
“Deeply. I was living in a FreeThinker community and I would see her in secret at night. She hated this. She wanted to be introduced to my world, and for her to introduce me to hers, her sister, her friends, but…”
“But?”
“I was an idiot. I still thought what we were doing was wrong. I wanted to hide her and that always hurt her so much. One night when I came to her she was hysterical. She told me that she wasn’t safe anymore but she wouldn’t tell me why. She asked me if my community would take her in. I was horrified. What would they say about us? So I said no. We fought. She claimed I didn’t love her and told me she never wanted to see me again. I left. It took me weeks to calm myself down and to realize I was being stupid.”
Tobias sighed deeply and ran his hands over his face. “By the time I returned, she was gone. So was her sister. They lived together and were each other’s only family. Months later I managed to track Josephine down. I demanded to know where Maresa was. She told me Maresa was…” Tears welled in Tobias’s eyes and Israel turned his head to give him some sort of privacy. “…dead. I didn’t believe her until she took me to Maresa’s grave. I never saw you. Josephine never mentioned you. Why?” His bottom lip quivered. “Josephine told me Maresa had died suddenly. But I knew that she died from whatever she had been scared of. She died because of me.”
“You don’t know that. We don’t know what happened. But we will soon.” Israel slid a hand on the broad shoulders of his father. Jesus…his father. His real father. He had spent his life feeling like an orphan, and here he was suddenly with a flesh and blood father.
Tobias nodded and Israel felt his shoulders relax into his touch.
“Are you ready…Dad?” Israel tested this term on his tongue. Surprisingly it fit.
Tobias smiled. “As I’ll ever be.”
Making sure that no one could see them, they slid down the side of the dusty building to the ground.
Streets in the old town of Marrakesh were thin dusty gorges, closed in on both sides by the Riads that lined the streets like long snakes. There were no sidewalks, just flat dirt worn down by a million footsteps or sometimes a roughly leveled concrete mixed with dirt and sand from the desert. Most of the houses had no numbers, most of the streets had no names. If you weren’t paying attention you could find yourself suddenly lost within the labyrinths.
Israel and Tobias crossed the street to Josephine’s door and rang the bell. Israel swallowed the small knot that had started to form in his throat. He hadn’t seen his auntie in years since he had run away from home. She was divorced now and living alone. Thank God he didn’t have to face his stepfather.
His heart sped up at the sound of footfalls just behind the door, then a lock turning. His aunt’s face appeared as she opened the door.
Israel had been told that the two sisters, his Aunt Josephine and his mother, looked very much alike. He recognized some of his own features in his auntie’s face: his thick, shapely lips and his pale green eyes.
It had only been four or five years since he had last seen her but now she looked…worn. Her jaw and cheeks were soft and crinkly like aged paper. Lines had begun to etch around those familiar eyes. Silver hairs decorated her fading brown hair, now tied back in a low bun at her neck. A small wave of affection rose up in him. He had missed her.
Her face dropped into a mask of shock. “Israel. Oh my God.”
“Hi, auntie.”
“Josephine,” Tobias said.
Her eyes landed on Tobias. “And…you!”
Josephine lived in a traditional Riad, a traditional Moroccan home, built up in a square or rectangular shape with an open space in the middle to let in light and air. Unlike the crumbling exterior of this city, the inside was where the real beauty lay. Lightly painted walls, brightly colored cushions and curtains and carpets laid out like a peacock displaying his feathers.
Obviously stunned, his auntie invited them in and sat them down in her living room before disappearing into her kitchen. She returned, still mute with a wide-eyed expression that made the whites appear around her grass-blade eyes, carrying a silver tray of sweet mint tea and an ornate bowl of delicate pastries that looked like tiny flowers in various stages of blossoming. Auntie poured the tea from a small silver teapot into three small glasses from a height that made the tea froth at the top. She must have done this a thousand times because her aim was extraordinarily true and yet the whole time she stared at Israel, her bottom lip trembling slightly.
Not sure what else to do, Israel took the glass in his hands. It was too hot. Without thinking he let a little of his magic swirl across the top of it, cooling the pale green liquid. If it were at all possible, his aunt’s eyes widened even further.
“Oh Israel,” her eyes brimmed with water. “I thought I’d never see you again. And you…” She glanced only briefly at Tobias as if she was scared to look at him for too long. “I can’t believe that this is even possible. How did you two…?”
“I spent years on the street,” said Israel, “moving around, looking for answers. Then one night I found…her. Or should I say, she found me.”
“Her?”
“Her name is Alyx. She brought me to her community and Tobias was the leader.”
“Is this Alyx, is she…” auntie lowered her voice, “one of them?”
Israel felt the first stirrings of anger inside him, a rumble of hooves at a flimsy gate. “Don’t talk like my father isn’t sitting right here. I am one of them.”
“No, you’re not. You’re…you’re…”
“I’m what?”
“You’re more than that.”
There was a pause, a tense wire of silence pulled so tight it was about to snap.
Tobias spoke first to break it. “Israel and I didn’t know who we were to each other at first,” said Tobias, his voice clipped. “But…her ring.”
Israel pulled out the chain around his neck, his mother’s engagement ring, engraved with Ani Ledodi Ve Dodi Li. It meant I am my beloved and my beloved is mine. It was the ring that once tied Maresa to Tobias, and the ring that had led Alyx to him.
“Once Tobias saw this ring he recognized it.” Israel placed down his glass and leaned forward towards his aunt. “You never would talk about it before but now you have to tell us…what happened with my mother?”
She seemed to shrink in her seat. “I knew this day would come. I mean, I expected that I would have to tell you one day…but not like this.”
“Tell me.”
“I… I…” Her hands fluttered around her face, her cheeks flushed.
“Maresa and I were seeing each other in secret,” Tobias said. “Did you know?”
Auntie breathed a small sigh. She nodded. “I knew she had been sneaking out of the house. Some mornings I would notice dirt that hadn’t been there the night before on her shoes and around her window in her room. I thought it was strange. You know how particular Maresa was about dirt.”
Tobias smiled a little, his head bobbing. His eyes were a little far away as if he was remembering.
“I confronted her,” Josephine continued. “I demanded to know what the hell she was doing. She told me about you. And I was happy for her, if not a little jealous. You were taking my place,” Josephine said directly to Tobias.
“Then what?” Tobias asked. “You both disappeared. Why?”
“Days before you had your fight, Maresa had a vision. An angel came to her in a dream and told her that she was pregnant and that her son was special and would one day carry out a great Prophecy. But all his life he would be hunted because of what he was.”
Israel drew back, feeling the scowl curling at his lips. “It’s because of my blood.” His cursed impure blood. His bastardized mix of angel, demon and human, making him part of all of these worlds yet belonging to none.
Josephine frowned. “He didn’t say that it was your blood that would make you special. But that you would one day have the power to save a rac
e that would all but destroy themselves. That’s why Maresa named you Israel,” Josephine said softly. “Named after the promised land.”
These words echoed in his mind, bouncing off the inside of his skull like metal balls.
I’m to save the human race against Michael, Israel realized. How was he meant to do all that? He had magic and it was powerful, but…
He was the tri-blood keye that could unlock the gate to Hell. Didn’t the Prophecy warn that he could destroy them? Was he meant to be the hand of destruction or salvation?
Josephine continued, “At first Maresa didn’t tell me. She was going to carry that burden on her own. But she was so upset I knew something serious was wrong. I thought you had broken her heart,” she directed to Tobias. “I confronted her. Finally she told me about everything, about Seraphim, demons, then she told me about her dream and the child growing inside her.” Josephine took another sip of her tea. “I always knew there was something different about Maresa. And I had been around her enough to know that there were some unexplainable things in this world. But I never expected… She asked me to go with her, to start a new life somewhere fresh. At that point I wasn’t sure whether I fully believed her or not, I just knew I couldn’t let her go alone. She was my best friend, my only family. If she went, I was going too.”
Josephine’s face paled. She took several sips of her tea before she was able to speak again. “I left with her and helped her through her pregnancy. Your mother refused to go to the hospital so she gave birth at home with just a well-paid midwife on hand. It was such a difficult birth. Over twenty-four hours of labor. And when you were finally born…she had lost a lot of blood. She was so weak. She…” Auntie’s voice faded to nothing.
Tobias’s face contorted; he stood quickly and walked over to the window, holding his hands on the sill and leaning against it with his back to the room. Israel could feel the pain emanating from him, filling this room with its bitterness.
“Before she died she told me the last secret she had been keeping. The angel had told her it would be a difficult birth and if she went through it, she would surely die. He had given her a choice: to live and he would terminate her pregnancy, or to accept it. She chose to keep you, Israel.” Josephine’s eyes filled with tears. “She chose to die so that you may live.”
“Maresa never told me she was pregnant,” Tobias said, his voice quiet. “She never told me about Israel.”
“No. She was afraid you would try and convince her to not have the child. Don’t tell me that you would have done otherwise, Tobias.”
“I…” Tobias stared at auntie and then at Israel, the pain and guilt evident across his face.
Auntie wiped a tear from her eye and took a deep breath. “Before she died she made me promise to look after you. She made me promise to hide you from everyone, even from your father. You weren’t safe from anyone. She knew there were those who would either try to kill you or use you to their own gains.”
Tobias spun violently around from the window. “So when I found you several months later, you lied to me. You never told me I had a son. You kept my son from me.”
“I did what she asked me to do. If you knew she had your son, you would have taken him back with you and news of him would have traveled through your community like wildfire.”
“I would have protected him.”
“You could not protect him from everything. He would not have lasted to his first birthday before someone succeeded in killing him or kidnapping him. This way he at least had some semblance of a normal life before being exposed to you and your world.”
“It’s my world too,” Israel said, his voice cold. “I had a right to know.”
She turned to him. “I’m so sorry, Israel, for not telling you sooner. I was trying to protect you.”
“By keeping my real father from me? By marrying that asshole who you let institutionalize me? Even when you knew that what I was seeing was real? You made me think I was crazy. But you knew. And you kept it from me.”
“What could I have done instead? I was trying to make your life as normal as possible.”
“I was never going to be normal. Never.” Without another word and before anyone could stop him, Israel strode out of the house without looking back.
Israel ran along the rooftops of Marrakesh for a long time, until his legs trembled from exertion and his breath grew labored. Until the wind ruffling through his hair carried away with it his tumbling thoughts and cooled the heat of his anger. Until the strains of the mosque echoed the call to the prayer at dusk across the city.
“Allahu Akbar… Allahu Akbar…”
God is the greatest.
He found himself back at the same spot where he and Tobias had sat, painted in the early Moroccan sunrise before they confronted Josephine, almost a full daylight ago. A lone figure sat in that very spot.
Israel leaped across the gap in the rooftops, a dusty man-made canyon, startling several pigeons into flight. He landed in front of Tobias in a half-crouch. Israel wiped the sweat off his face with both hands, flicking the precious liquid to the thirsty rooftop. “How did you know I’d end up back here?”
“Everything circles back, Israel. Everything always circles back.” Tobias glanced down towards the direction of the street. Israel knew he was looking at Josephine’s door. He knew what Tobias was thinking; Tobias didn’t have to say a thing.
“She doesn’t deserve an apology.”
A wash of pain crinkled Tobias’s eyes, making him look older than he usually did. Israel realized that he would keep growing old while his father barely aged. One day he would look like his father’s father instead of his father’s son. And one day he would leave his father behind in this world. Like he would leave Alyx.
“Israel, I haven’t had a chance to be a father to you…I’m not even sure how to start. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned, and learned too late − don’t wait to mend things.” Tobias locked eyes with him. “You might not get another chance.”
A swirl of doubt was able to penetrate his feelings around this great injustice done to him. But his anger was such and Israel fed it so that the doubt had no chance. It was swallowed up like a flower fallen into a fire. “Let’s go.”
“Israel, I−”
“I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s just go.”
Tobias paused, then he let out a long exhale and nodded. He reached out his hand so that Israel could grasp it. Israel felt the tingle of magic flow over them as Tobias miraged them both over and pulled him up into the sky.
Israel closed his eyes for most of the flight back. But as much as he tried, he couldn’t get the image of a peeling red door out of his mind.
* * *
The RaceKeeper took another toke of his shisha pipe. The apple-flavored smoke drew into his mouth and down into his lungs, filling him with a temporary rush of calm. He let it out and the smoke rushed around his tent, decorated as always with rich hanging fabrics, colored cushions, flat floor cushions and low wood tables. Wrought iron lanterns with colored glass, all different shapes and sizes, lit by small white pillar candles hung in random patterns adding to the colorful chaos of his home.
Tonight’s race was marked across the Black Forest in Germany. His tent was currently erected between massive sturdy fir trees near the River Elz. Speaking of river, where was his goddamn water? That boy should be back by now.
The tent flap moved aside. Finally. The RaceKeeper yanked the pipe away from his lips. “There you are. Where the hell−” his sentence ended in a choking noise as a dark figure leapt over him, grabbed him and held a cold blade to his throat.
“Y-You,” the RaceKeeper managed to choke out. “G-Guards!”
“Sorry, RaceKeeper,” Alyx hissed in his ear. “They’re indisposed at the moment. In fact, there’s nobody friendly to you within screaming distance. It’s just you and me and my friend Vix. Vix, meet the RaceKeeper.”
“Y-You.” The RaceKeeper’s eyes widened at the sight of Vixen Demet
ri, standing by the tent entrance and swirling a dagger in her hand. He would never forget her pale face, sharp chin and pixie-like features, and her pale blonde hair, almost silver in the right light, her hair flaring in choppy short pieces around her head like a silver flame. Even God couldn’t help him now.
“There’s no need for introductions,” Vix said, “the RaceKeeper and I go way back, don’t we, sweetheart?”
The RaceKeeper heard a choking sound and realized it was coming from his own throat.
Vix winked and blew him a kiss, her eyes full of menacing promise. “That’s right. I’m back,” she sang.
“Oh God, p-please don’t kill me.”
“We’re not going to kill you…if you cooperate.”
“What do you want?”
“The key to Sparrow’s shackle.”
The RaceKeeper cursed internally. She wanted the boy. Anything but him. “I don’t even know why you want him. He’s a terrible servant and is no use to−” The RaceKeeper howled as the blade cut into his throat.
Alyx made a noise that sounded like disgust. “Stop your whining. It’s not even a scratch. But it’ll be more if you don’t tell me where the key to Sparrow’s shackle is.”
The RaceKeeper whimpered but remained tight-lipped. Did Alyx know who the boy’s father was? Did she know how valuable he might be?
“Now, RaceKeeper,” Alyx pressed the blade into the shallow cut.
He felt like he was about to pass out. “Alright,” he managed to choke out, “alright, I’ll tell you.”
* * *
“That was so cool how you just came in there and the RaceKeeper was so scared he was squealing like a little girl.”
“I didn’t realize you were listening in.”
“Then you were all, ‘Dude, your guards are knocked out.’”
“I’m pretty sure I didn’t call him dude.”
