The Crossing Point

by August Arrea

  “It’s not really the Tree really I’m looking for, but another angel,” said Jacob.

  “You must mean Gothamel.”

  “That’s right, how did you know?”

  “Who but he has spent so much time occupying its shade these days?” said the angel. “Most every hour of each day passed since he first arrived back in Eden he has spent there. Many a night as well with only the moon and the sea of stars flickering in the sky to light his perpetual vigil. It’s a solemn sight, if I do say so myself. Having never sired any offspring myself, I nonetheless recognize the pain he suffers from having to bury his own and embrace tighter the grace that my own heart has not been pierced by such a particularly cruel thorn.” As he spoke, the angel’s eyes, piercing in their pools of molten gold, seemed to drift off in a thought-filled instant before refocusing themselves and gazing newly upon the boy’s face.

  “You must be the one they call Jacob; the one brought here by Gothamel.”

  Jacob nodded with some reluctance.

  “Yes, of course you are. Now that I look upon you I clearly can see that to be the case.”

  Here it comes, thought Jacob, recognizing the glimmer of keen intrigue in the angel’s eyes. He then waited for the friendliness in the angel’s face to fade and quickly be replaced with one of recoiling disapproval, just as he had witnessed with each of the Guides. No such look revealed itself. In fact, much to Jacob’s surprise, the angel’s smile broadened.

  “Well then, fancy I should come across you this way. I’ve heard much of your arrival and stay so far in Eden and have been eager to see who has been the cause of so much tongue-wagging amongst my brothers.”

  “I think it has something to do with my face. Couldn’t tell you what, but it doesn’t seem to be a pleasant sight for some of the others,” said Jacob.

  “Your face? What of it? Two eyes, a nose and a mouth. Same as every other creature walking around on two legs, that is if God smiled kindly upon you,” answered the angel.

  There came a shrill echo from some unseen animal veiled somewhere within the thicket of the surrounding woods whose piercing cry Jacob didn’t recognize.

  “I’m not trespassing or anything like that, I hope,” said Jacob. “Anahel said we were free to go anywhere in Eden except a couple places he noted. But I also know the Tree is considered a sacred spot.”

  “The most sacred spot in all of Eden, without argue. But as long as the intention in one’s heart is pure and the path beneath his feet is righted, makes no mind to me your visit,” the angel said before his gaze shifted to the pathway ahead. “Speaking of which, your feet have led you in the right direction. The tree you seek resides a short distance down this path. To reach it one just has to follow it until there is no more path left to follow. Come, I shall walk with you and see you the way if you should care the company.”

  While an unexplained urgency had carried Jacob wind-like to this section of the Forest he had never before visited, the curiosity stoked by his new-found companion helped settle him into the leisurely pace he took to the path alongside the mysterious angel.

  “So, are you a Guide as well, er—?”

  “The name is Haniel. And no I’m not a Guide, except at this particular moment it would appear,” the angel replied as the two strode slowly through delicate slats of sunlight sneaking its way down through the boughs of the trees.

  “How is it none of us have never seen you before until today?”

  “I serve as Guardian of the Tree,” said Haniel, “and as such my time is spent roaming the halls forged by the land rather than those of Havenhid. My presence tends to go unnoticed; unless, of course, one is compelled to pay a visit to this end of the Garden and crosses my path as you have.”

  “Guardian of the Tree? Why would a tree be in need of a guardian? What, do you fear someone might plot to uproot and make off with it? Or perhaps carve their initials into the trunk?” Jacob remarked with a light laugh.

  “I’ve no doubt you’ve already come to learn a great many things in your time spent here as you become enlightened about the Nephilim ways. But as your joking nature reveals, you are still green, Fledgling; as green as the fern you see grouped alongside this path we walk,” said Haniel with a grin. “The time has not been that far removed when a very real evil took shape in this Garden and its coils found its way into the branches of the Tree. Unfortunately for you, and most of mankind, that dark trespass has become nothing more than a story from an old book, even as its lingering presence stalks you, slithering in the company of your shadow and the shadow of all mortal man, scheming to finish that which it began right here in this Garden those many eons ago.”

  A couple of trogons perched nearby on the low-reaching branches of a flowering pineapple guava tree offered a high-pitched shriek of greeting as the two passed by before returning to grooming their brightly colored blue-violet, green and red plumes.

  “I’m not sure I know what you mean. Finish what?” asked Jacob.

  “That which left its eternal stain on man and cast him from this paradise, of course,” answered Haniel. “You cannot see it, but it scars you as visibly as the marks seared onto the temples of the Fallen; the mark of sin which came to you with the first bite taken by the Lady Eve of the fruit grown by the Tree. By it came man’s fall from grace, and it is the Darkness’ sole aim and intention that by it man will ultimately be fully engulfed and perish from existence.”

  Jacob couldn’t help but feel a chill run through him, not so much from fear but the sudden realization he was treading in the exact same spot where the evil of which Haniel referred had once lurked in all its labyrinthine deceit. The angel had been right; Eden and its history continued to exist in Jacob’s eyes and mind as nothing more than a tale from the Bible, a make-believe fable of sorts, even as his own existence was embraced in the reality of its lush, paradise-painted lands, a reality he could see, smell and feel. And it was then the Garden came to look different in his eyes and he began seeing it not only for the paradise it truly was, but what it had once been.

  “This might sound like a stupid question,” Jacob began as an unwelcoming thought suddenly visited his head, “but how do you know the Darkness isn’t lurking somewhere in the Garden now—you know, another snake?”

  “That’s why there’s a Guardian of the Tree,” answered Haniel with a smile creeping its way onto his face that told Jacob, while his question might not have been stupid, it was naively amusing. “Not that I have much to guard against. The Darkness has about as much chance of setting hoof in these parts as man has in one day being gifted these lands as a vacation destination.”

  Gold sparkles reflected within Haniel’s eyes like light bouncing off the facets of a diamond as they then turned forward to the pathway ahead of them where a parting in the trees revealed a sun-filled clearing.

  “Go ahead now: what, and whom you seek you will find right through there,” instructed Haniel with a nod of his head, signaling he was about to part company with the boy.

  “It was good to meet you, Haniel,” said Jacob.

  “And I you, Fledgling.”

  “Hopefully, I’ll see you around again sometime.”

  “It’s a most certain prospect, especially now that you know where to find me,” said Haniel with a friendly nod. Then as Jacob continued down the path, the angel called to him with a stern warning: “Be sure to steer clear of the Immortalis. Even I would have difficulty holding back the Cherub and his wrath from you should your feet cross the blood-red blossoms.”

  Jacob gave one last look over his shoulder but the path behind him was clear and held no sign of Haniel. He had forgotten about the Immortalis—and the Cherub, for that matter. Not that he would know a Cherub from a pinecone. Yet the multiple warnings first sounded to all the Nephilim by Anahel in the Hall of Light the night he arrived in Eden made it sound dire enough, and that was enough for him to make extra mindful his steps

  ~~~.

  The path led Jacob out of the shade of the
trees where it abruptly ended, just as Haniel said it would. There, blinking in the bright sunlight with a cool gentle wind tickling his face teasingly, Jacob caught his breath at the vision awaiting him; for that’s what it was, a vision of beauty more exquisite than any Eden had yet revealed to his eyes. It unfolded itself in a spacious, yet quaint circular clearing of green, and resplendent in a rainbow of fragrant flowering plants and shrubs caught in the first breaths of blooming.

  Immediately Jacob caught sight of it.

  Straight onward in the center of the clearing, rooted atop a lazy slope of ground covered in green grass was the Tree he thought only existed in the biblical words of the Good Book. It looked not so much different than any other tree Jacob had seen in Eden, and yet at the same time it looked like none he’d ever before laid eyes upon. Unlike the towering arboreal behemoths Jacob had walked amongst in the surrounding forests, the Tree instantly called into question its age by its less than mammoth stature. Yet amongst the other trees that stood surrounding it from a distance, it had a regal presence, like that of an ancient tribal leader, and in the full light of the sun, it gave off a gauzy radiance which surrounded the Tree in a halo of gold.

  For some time Jacob stood in quiet awe, hesitant that his feet were worthy to pass beyond the edge of the path into the serene beauty before him. Eventually, the wonder in which he became lost urged him forward turning him slowly in circles as he walked. The sweet aroma of fresh grass was carried in pleasing wafts to fill his nose by the breeze. A vein stretching from the River somewhere far off in the unseen distance formed a nearby babbling stream where the playful plopping of fish jumping about could be heard. A shadow skimming across the ground drew Jacob’s gaze upward to catch sight of a brightly colored bird of paradise gliding gracefully overhead like a showgirl adorned in a headdress and trailing tail of exotic feathers. All these wondrous simple things existing before Jacob’s eyes, filled with the same life force that filled his lungs and pumped his heart. Yet he knew he was strolling through a timeless place unmarked by age or season, no matter how many times the sun rose in the east and set in the west. What became “In the beginning” would remain unchanged “In the end”—if in fact an end even existed for a place such as this. And in that moment of thinking it, Jacob suddenly grew sullen at the prospect that such beauty and peace could ever be swallowed up by such an unkind thing as the end.

  ~~~

  “What is it you’re doing here?”

  The sound of Gotham’s voice jarred Jacob abruptly from his drifting thoughts. Spinning around, he found the angel seated beneath the Tree’s wide-stretching branches. It was clear from the agitated look on the angel’s face that Jacob’s unannounced appearance had proven to be unexpected and unwelcome.

  “The Tree,” blurted Jacob, pointing up to the branches. “I figured being here in Eden and not paying a visit to the Tree of Life would be like…like…going to France and not seeing the Eiffel Tower.”

  “That’s all well and good. However, the light tells me you should be heading back to Havenhid from Lions Bite,” noted Gotham after a quick glance upward at the sun.

  “I thought I’d take the scenic way back,” said Jacob.

  It was then he noticed resting at the foot of the slope where Gotham was seated was a large rectangular-shaped block of white stone draped in spindly ropes of a leafy green vine constellated with small, white star-shaped flowers. At first, Jacob thought it to be a monument of some sort. He quickly became wiser when he recognized the way Gotham seemed to be keeping company with it that the stone was actually a sarcophagus.

  “Your son?” he asked with reluctance.

  Gotham didn’t answer, nor did he need to; the forlorn look deep-set in his face spoke as clearly as his words ever could.

  There was no writing of any kind to be found on the burial vault, only a few intricate carvings etched in the stone. The most notable were two reliefs of large size seen behind the strands of clinging vine on the side of the sarcophagus facing the boy; one was of a lamb lying in one direction, the other a lion lying the opposite way, both stretched out in their repose at the base of the stone. Jacob moved in to get a closer look when he stopped suddenly. Glancing down he saw his foot was nudging a clump of the unmistakable Immortalis sprouting in patches across the grass-covered ground all around the area where the sarcophagus and tree resided like some decorative border, and Jacob knew the beautiful blooms, while enticing to admiring eyes, were equally just as repellant to anyone whose veins coursed with mortal blood wishing to step any closer to the Tree.

  “I’d stay firm where you are now, if I were you,” warned Gotham. “Should you hold any curiosity for the Cherub, you are a mere half step away from satisfying it. But trust me when I tell you, it’s an invitation you do not want to extend. And I for one have no interest this day in incurring a beating while attempting to fend it off you over a careless misstep.”

  The angel’s cautionary words were all that was needed to guide Jacob two full steps backward. Then, just to play it safe, he sat himself down fast on the ground thinking no movement was the best way to avoid any possible missteps in this place where the surrounding wonder offered a great chance for such missteps.

  ~~~

  Jacob quietly looked on at the Tree standing just a short distance away from him, studying the curves and crooks of its boughs sighing softly. He noticed the delicate veins running through the rustling leaves of the Tree were golden in color, like the veins of precious gold mined from rock found deep in the bowels of mountains in the outside world. They shined a precious brightness in the sunlight and reflected a gold brilliance which created the halo around the Tree. Yet dazzling as the leaves were, it was what he didn’t see nestled amongst them that had Jacob’s eyes searching deeper within the foliage.

  “I don’t see them,” he said.

  “See what?” asked Gotham.

  “The apples.”

  Gotham gave a questionable glance Jacob’s way and only when he saw where the boy’s attention was affixed did he understand the remark.

  “No, I don’t suppose you would at that. Not now, or any time before,” said Gotham. “Your mind is a field well-tilled with fables in which many saplings have taken root, I see. Apples!” He chuckled ever so slightly. “The fruit to which you are inferring that used to hang from these branches in healthy abundance was a sweet, fleshy fruit much like a pear called a conscius. I say used to because the Tree has not borne a single conscius since the day the hand of woman guided by temptation picked that which she was told not to and took a bite of it.”

  As he sat listening, Jacob couldn’t help but feel somewhat remedial for not only thinking apples grew on the Tree, but voicing it out loud with such naive authority. And yet what else was he supposed to think when everything he knew about Eve showed her holding an apple? Besides, who ever heard of a conscius before?

  “It was by that act of defiance that soon after the Tree of Life became anything but,” continued Gotham. “It quickly browned and withered, much like the conscius which shed themselves from the branches to shrivel and rot on the ground. Hundreds of years—far too many to count—stretched into thousands. The Tree stood lifeless here, denuded of leaves, barren of fruit, much like it had been struck by the mark of an angel fallen, only the scar was left upon Eden itself. A lasting testament of man’s willful disobedience. That is, until the day my son was entombed here, at its feet, as another marker of death to blot this garden of life. For whatever reason, of which I have none to offer, the phantom hand that for so long strangled the Tree fell dormant and life returned to it as quickly and quietly as it was snuffed in a burst of green and gold leaves unfurling themselves from deep within the bark where they had long slept—or so Anahel informed me shortly upon my return following my long absence with you in tow.”

  Gotham grew quiet, and in his pause it was clear to see the profoundness of the Tree’s presence came with a bitter anguish.

  “Strange, isn’t it, just how cruel a shape
irony can take,” he said softly. “I’d like to believe—or perhaps hope is the better word—that maybe the Tree’s miraculous reawakening was a parting gift from David; an amends of sorts. Life for life.”

  Jacob looked away to where death remained undisturbed; the stone sarcophagus awkwardly juxtaposed in a place where life flourished with such overwhelming force. Strangely, he felt a sadness, nowhere near as wrenching as what he felt sitting beside his mother’s casket on the day of her funeral, but a sadness nonetheless. It was an odd thing, to feel a semblance of grief for someone he knew nothing of outside an aged, black and white photograph. And in that grief he found himself curiously wanting to know more about the boy and how he came to be placed young and still beneath the heavy stone slab.

  “What was he like, if you don’t mind me asking?” Jacob found himself wondering aloud without really meaning to.

  “Like?” The question seemed to catch Gotham off guard, and for a long-drawn-out moment it was as if all language had suddenly somehow slipped from comprehension before Gotham’s tongue finally found the sound of his voice. “Your grandmother would often insist he was a lot like me. Not so much in looks—though it was clear to anyone who looked upon him that he came to be from my loins—but in spirit. I used to say he was like a bridled stallion, constantly fighting the lead to get at the world as swiftly as his feet would take him. He was endowed with a competitive nature oftentimes fierce, at times untamable. But at the center of what calm he did possess resided a truly gentle and uplifting soul, glimpses of which showed itself in his disarming smile.

  “A beautiful boy, he was!” Gotham was suddenly seen grinning faintly. “ ‘Boy’ I call him, when I can hear his voice in the breeze angrily insisting he was a young man, and not even a young one at that despite his age. But beautiful he was. Of that I wholly credit your grandmother, for who else could birth a child with hair the color of the sun and eyes that of the deepest most peaceful part of the ocean, and yet which held the flame of a deep-set fire in its pools?”