Seed- Part One

by D B Nielsen

  It was eerie as I swam through darkness till I emerged amongst low-lit ruins. I was confronting the unknown.

  It was hard to believe that beneath the streets of central Paris this huge, haunting space existed. I walked quietly in its vast depths, extending eighty metres under the shadow of the cathedral.

  Up ahead, St. John and the priest had stopped and were conversing in low tones. I couldn’t hear what they said, which didn’t matter, as it would have been harder to decipher their rapid, fluent French.

  Then I saw something appear in St. John’s hands that made me gasp aloud.

  He was holding the artefact.

  Their heads shot in my direction, pinning me where I stood, vulnerable and exposed.

  Yet the artefact exerted its pull on me once again; a siren call I was unable to resist.

  I felt myself falling into blackness as the world spun around me, a grinding sprint to the end of time, dream, pain, loss, grief, memory, love.

  And my last thought before I plummeted into the depths of unconsciousness was that St. John was the one.

  St. John was the one who had stolen the artefact.

  REVELATIONS

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I became aware of voices. Soft. Low. And of something cushioning my head.

  Slowly opening my eyes a crack, I peeked beneath lashes to see I had been moved into a room which looked something like a monk’s cell; spartan, cold and bare, centuries old stone. It was dimly-lit.

  ‘Is she the one, Elijah?’ the priest asked.

  ‘Yes, she’s the one.’ St. John’s voice was strong and assured.

  ‘How can you be certain, my son?’

  ‘I knew as soon as I saw her.’

  Movement. Shuffling. Someone coming closer. I shut my eyes again.

  ‘Duty comes first, Elijah,’ the older man cautioned.

  ‘Duty!’ St. John’s beautiful voice was harsh as he practically spat the word. I was glad I’d kept my eyes closed, thankful he wasn’t directing his anger at me. ‘All my life, I have devoted myself to duty. I am well aware of my duty, Father. Do not presume to lecture me.’

  ‘Elijah, my son, your path has been chosen. You must not yield to temptation. Only one can save us now.’ The priest’s voice was placating.

  ‘I have not forgotten,’ St. John said wearily, ‘I will find him, Father.’

  ‘He will find you. It is your destiny.’ The priest sighed. ‘Do what you must. I defer to your better judgement.’

  There was more shuffling and then I heard a door opening and closing.

  Then silence.

  ‘You can open your eyes now,’ St. John’s voice, close to my ear, held amusement. ‘You’re a dreadful actress, Sage Woods, and an even worse spy. Next time when you follow someone try not to breathe so loudly and don’t wear high heels.’

  I cracked open one eye, saying in my own defence. ‘I didn’t have time to change my boots.’

  He snorted in response.

  ‘Can you sit up?’

  I opened my eyes fully and did as he asked, realising we were alone.

  Looking at my surroundings now, I saw that I was in a rectory. I’d been lying on the priest’s bed, a single spring mattress on an iron frame, with St. John’s jacket placed under my head.

  ‘Père Henri has gone to fetch you a glass of water.’ St. John said in response to my unspoken question. ‘You gave him quite a shock. He was unaware that you were following us.’

  ‘And you?’ I asked, desperate for answers to the hundreds of questions surging through my head. But, momentarily, all other thoughts save for the artefact and the fact that I’d witnessed St. John holding it had been dislodged from my mind.

  ‘I counted on it,’ he answered promptly. I must have looked as confused as I felt because he continued, ‘I called my phone from the foyer of the hotel.’

  ‘You couldn’t have!’ I protested, shaking my head in disbelief.

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘And why not?’

  ‘Because there wasn’t enough time – you were already a fair distance in front of me by the time I ran to catch up to you.’ I countered, irked by his smugness.

  ‘I can move a lot faster than that when I need to,’ he retorted.

  I was completely bewildered. ‘But why would you do that?’

  Jade green eyes were filled with a gentle mockery. ‘I told you that we’re past all evasions now.’

  I scowled. ‘You also said you were my partner but you never told me that you had the artefact.’

  St. John laughed, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘I showed you instead.’

  At that moment, Père Henri came back into the cell, carrying a tea tray burdened with a steaming pot, teacups and saucers.

  ‘My child,’ he addressed me in excellent English, lowering the tray onto the bedside table, ‘you have placed yourself in great danger, though perhaps I should blame Elijah for exposing you to what you cannot possibly comprehend.’

  ‘It wasn’t his fault, it was mine. Don’t blame St. John.’ I found myself defending St. John against this dour old man.

  ‘Père Henri is right, Sage,’ St. John warned me, ‘you should have heeded me and kept your distance but now it’s too late; you’re in over your head.’

  I asked, desperation tinging my voice, ‘Because of the artefact? Do you honestly think that I’d be in danger because some archaeologists want to find the Hanging Gardens of Babylon?’

  Père Henri exchanged a look with St. John.

  ‘She does not know?’ he asked in a low voice. ‘My son, it is better that you tell her everything now that you have involved her in this.’

  I watched St. John carefully as he nodded in agreement; his expression resigned.

  He sighed and began speaking, his voice deep and low. ‘I want to tell you a tale so that you may understand. This is a story from the annals of time. You may recognise parts of it, as it is woven into history and myth. “At first, the people of the whole world had only one language and used the same words. As they wandered about in the East, they came to a plain in Babylonia and settled there. They said to one another, ‘Come on! Let’s make bricks and bake them hard.’ So they had bricks to build with and tar to hold them together. They said, ‘Now let’s build a city with a tower that reaches the sky, so that we can make a name for ourselves and not be scattered all over the earth.’ Then the Lord came down to see the city they had built, and he said, ‘Now then, these are all the one people and they speak one language; this is just the beginning of what they are going to do. Soon they will be able to do anything they want! Let us go down and mix up their language so that they will not understand each other.’ So the Lord scattered them all over the earth, and they stopped building the city. The city was called Babylon, because there the Lord mixed up the language of all the people, and from there he scattered them all over the earth.”’

  St. John’s deep attractive voice spoke the words solemnly, as if they were some incantation against the darkness. Our eyes held and the moment lengthened between us, casting out its wondrous web into the night.

  ‘Archaeologists believe that the Tower of Babel is the site of the Etemenanki ziggurat. The account in Genesis makes no mention of the destruction of the Tower itself, just the dispersion of peoples throughout the land. The Tower of Babel or Etemenanki was a building of deep religious significance; a shrine devoted to Marduk, the Babylonian god that represented the city of Babylon. Its size represented the power and might of Marduk and at its very top there was a temple that Nebuchadrezzar II built where religious rituals took place. Every Akitu, during the New Year ceremonies, a re-enactment of the marriage of Marduk and his consort, Sarpanit, took place in the temple. Priests would take a virgin up to the temple to sleep with Marduk as an offering – a euphemism for sacrificing her to the god.’

  I had heard bits and pieces of this before, but it was still riveting and St. John held my undivided attention.

  St. John continued, finding his rh
ythm. ‘A German archaeologist, Robert Koldewey, began digging from 1899 at this location. Some archaeologists believed that the Tower of Babel and the Hanging Gardens were on opposite sides of the city. Unlike many ancient cities and locations, the city’s position was well known, but most of it had been buried for centuries and nothing visible remained of its architecture. Koldewey dug on the site for some fourteen years and unearthed many of its features such as walls and foundations, Nebuchadrezzar II’s palaces and the wide Processional Way which passed through the heart of the city. While excavating the Southern Citadel, Koldewey discovered a basement containing fourteen large rooms with stone arch ceilings. Ancient records indicated that only two locations in the city had made use of stone; the north wall of the Northern Citadel, and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The north wall of the Northern Citadel had already been found and had, indeed, contained stone. This made it seem likely that Koldewey had found the cellar of the Hanging Gardens. A room was unearthed with three large, strange holes in the floor and Koldewey concluded this had been the location of the chain pumps that raised the water to the Gardens’ roof but the foundations that Koldewey discovered were smaller than the measurements described by ancient historians, though still quite impressive. While Koldewey was convinced he’d found the Hanging Gardens, some modern archaeologists called his discovery into question arguing that this location was too far from the Euphrates River to have been irrigated with the amount of water that would have been required. Also cuneiform tablets recently found at the site suggest that the location was used for administrative and storage purposes, not as a pleasure garden.’

  Fascinated, I asked St. John, ‘How does the artefact fit into all of this?’

  He smiled at my impatience as the priest handed me a cup of steaming sweetened black tea and insisted that I drink it all down, claiming it would revive me from my earlier faint. I sipped at the hot liquid, never taking my eyes off St. John’s hauntingly beautiful expressive face.

  ‘I was just getting to that,’ he said. ‘You may have noticed that the artefact contains some cuneiform lettering recognisable from the map of ancient Mesopotamia you saw at the British Museum, but not all the symbols date to ancient Mesopotamia, some of them pre-date history as we know it – at least the history of language as we know it. It seems that the symbols on the artefact may be the language of the people who attempted to build the Tower of Babel which means it’s the original language of humankind before they were divided and scattered across the face of the earth.’

  ‘My God!’ I breathed in awe, realising how important a discovery this was.

  ‘So you were right when you suggested that the artefact was an ancient map. But just like the clay tablet at the British Museum, it depicts something beyond our reality; it’s not meant to be geographically accurate but merely a representation of cosmic geography, a representation of a mythical world.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Intrigued, I leaned forward, placing my elbows on my knees and folding my hands to rest my chin upon, after putting the empty teacup down on the floor at my feet.

  ‘It means that the boundaries are blurred between fact and fiction, myth and reality.’ He said, looking me in the eye, ‘It means that the Hanging Gardens are real but that the ancient Mesopotamians realised how dangerous this knowledge could be.’

  I was silent, waiting for him to continue, knowing there was more to come.

  ‘You see, Sage, it isn’t the Hanging Gardens that they were protecting but another Garden, far more significant and far more ancient.’

  Suddenly I realised with perfect clarity what the visions had been trying to show me.

  ‘You don’t mean...?’ My voice trailed off. I could barely give voice to my thoughts which seemed fantastical even to me who had seen so many inexplicable things lately.

  ‘The Garden of Eden, Sage.’ St. John confirmed.

  ‘But ... but ...’ I protested, ‘How is that even possible?’

  Père Henri finally spoke up. ‘The cradle of civilisation, my child. One of the most vibrant regions of Mesopotamia known as Sumer, which has been settled since at least the seventh millennium BC, is often referred to as the “cradle of civilization” and is traditionally said to be home to the Garden of Eden.’

  St. John continued as I tried to take in what they were telling me, ‘Ur was one of the most powerful city-states in ancient Mesopotamia, which lies between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in present-day Iraq and Syria. It is here that the world’s first cities, first writing system and first global economy emerged. There are hypotheses that locate the Garden of Eden at the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates.’

  ‘But isn’t the Hanging Gardens also located near the Euphrates?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, exactly,’ St. John agreed, taking one of my trembling hands in his. ‘Understand this, Sage. The ancient Mesopotamians and later the Greeks under Nebuchadrezzar II and Alexander the Great felt the need to hide the Garden of Eden behind the legend of the Hanging Gardens. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon is the Portal to the Garden of Eden. Find the Hanging Gardens, you find Eden.’

  Père Henri crossed the room to sit beside me on the bed. ‘Child, many men have sought Paradise on earth and many men have failed because they were not worthy of achieving Paradise. The Garden of Eden was created for Adam and Eve who thought of it as their playground and, in their innocence, they had no knowledge of suffering, loss, passion, despair, greed or death.’

  ‘But they gave in to temptation.’ I stated, remembering how St. John had told me on the way to Ebbsfleet International he would explain the inability to resist temptation another time. I looked at him bleakly.

  ‘Yes, they were tempted and the price of that temptation was enormous.’ St. John said, meeting my eyes. ‘But even though they were cast out of Paradise, the Garden still remains and must be protected.’

  ‘And the artefact?’ I asked.

  ‘Is a problem,’ Père Henri admitted.

  I looked at him confused. ‘Why?’

  ‘In the Garden of Eden at its very heart are two trees, Sage. The Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life. If you enter the Garden, you will find the source of Life and the source of Knowledge.’

  ‘Adam and Eve took merely one bite of the Fruit of Knowledge. Just one. And look what happened.’ St. John explained.

  ‘They opened Pandora’s Box,’ I said.

  He seemed sombre but I thought I saw a trace of humour deep in his eyes. ‘That’s a different part of history. But, essentially, you’re right.’

  I looked down at where our hands were linked. ‘The world isn’t ready for that.’

  ‘No. They aren’t ready.’ St. John agreed. ‘But we cannot afford to lose the knowledge of where the Gardens are located because the day will come when that knowledge is necessary.’

  ‘But, until then, we are all in terrible danger,’ the priest said, his face worn like fine linen, wrinkled and threadbare.

  ‘Why?’

  Père Henri’s eyes were suddenly shrewd, ‘Because the artefact must be returned to its origin.’

  ‘How–’

  St. John cut me off. ‘I must return it. It is my duty.’

  My expression must have mirrored my confusion and fear as I asked, ‘But you took it, didn’t you? You took the artefact from Conservation?’

  Père Henri shook his head sorrowfully. ‘No, my child, Elijah did not steal the artefact. He did not need to. No one can own the artefact. It is sentient. It has a mind and heart of its own.’

  I nodded in understanding. Hadn’t I felt that the artefact was somehow alive?

  ‘No, I did not steal the artefact. The artefact was sent to me, Sage.’ St. John claimed, pushing his hand through his hair in a gesture of frustration, ‘Unfortunately, it fell into the wrong hands at the museum and I had to recover it before your father and the others discovered too much.’

  ‘But why was it sent to you?’ I asked St. John.

  ‘Elijah is the Keeper,’ Père Henri s
aid, reverently, looking to St. John. ‘There is always a Keeper of the Seed.’

  ‘Seed?’

  ‘The artefact,’ St. John confirmed.

  ‘Seed,’ I repeated, trying the word in my mouth, liking the sound of it.

  St. John smiled tenderly at me.

  ‘It’s shaped like a tree, you said so yourself. You knew that, didn’t you?’ I stated, watching his face carefully, ‘You knew what it was, because it was meant for you to keep safe.’

  ‘Yes, Sage.’ He nodded, his face taut with the burden placed on his shoulders, ‘I am meant to keep the Seed and its knowledge safe. But it has been difficult. I slipped up when talking to your father. I gave too much away. Something so simple; just the word “tree” but it fired your father’s imagination. If only he knew. It has taken me a long time to find the Seed.’

  ‘The truth is that the Seed has been missing for a very long time, for aeons. It was stolen from the Garden and now must be returned.’ The priest patted my other hand comfortingly.

  ‘Who stole it?’ I demanded.

  ‘Alas, we do not know. And therein lies the danger,’ said Père Henri. ‘Whoever stole the artefact will do anything to get it back – it is but one part of the whole needed to find the way to the Portal and enter Paradise.’

  ‘One part? What do you mean “one part”?’ I demanded.

  St. John clarified. ‘There is another part to the map. One part provides the location of the Garden in the cosmos – through time. This is the artefact which we already hold. And the other part provides the location in the real world – through space.’

  ‘So where is the other part of the map?’ I asked concerned.

  ‘We don’t know,’ he confessed. ‘It was last seen in the Library of Alexandria.’

  ‘Oh, no problem,’ I said, sarcastically, ‘that’ll be easy to find.’

  ‘Bah, “...there is nothing lost, that may be found, if sought.”’ St. John remarked cryptically.

  ‘Spenser’s The Faerie Queene: Canto II,’ I countered. ‘But that still doesn’t mean you’ll find it easily. Have you got a plan?’