by S. S. Segran
Aari shook his head in wonder. The design of this garden . . . just stunning. Not to mention the Parthenon-looking buildings we saw while driving up! Man, what a place.
Mariah, beside him, linked her arm through his. “I wish Jag could be here to see all this,” she murmured.
“Some contrast, huh?” Marshall said, leaning on the marble railing, a breeze sweeping through his hair. “Being in an oasis like this while the world is on fire.”
Tegan nodded. “And the irony is that amidst everything, we find solitude in the Middle East of all places.”
The Sentry chuckled. “I guess Israel’s security paranoia paid off. They’re not completely free of the virus but at least they’re somewhat safer.”
“Okay, I hate selfies, I really do,” Kody said, “but can we take one picture?”
“Yes!” Mariah pulled the others close.
One of the guards at the entrance, no older than twenty, poked his head past the gate. “Hey, guys! I can take that photo for you if you like.”
Kody passed him his phone and the guard snapped away, then returned the device. “Thanks, my dude,” Kody grinned. “You don’t sound like a local. Where you from?”
“Germany.” The guard jerked his chin at the entrance where an Asian girl was laughing with one of the local security personnel. “And she’s from Australia. We volunteer here.” He nodded down the slope. “How do you like it?”
“It’s gorgeous,” Mariah gushed. “Your gardeners do an amazing job.”
To their left, a man came up the stairs to the balcony. “Some call it the Eighth Wonder of the World. I’ve worked here for years but I never get tired of the view.”
The gardener wore dirty gray pants and a black sweater. He looked to be in his early sixties and was deeply tanned with short, white hair. The corners of his russet-brown eyes crinkled as he smiled. “You must be the group the guards said is looking for me.”
Marshall extended his hand. “Yes! I’m Marshall. That’s Tegan, Aari, Kody and Mariah.”
“Asa.” The man pumped the Sentry’s hand. “Welcome to Haifa. What brings you here?”
“More like who—the Welsh twins.”
The gardener’s face lit up. “Deverell and Gareth! Those rascals . . . good boys, them. Why did they send you?”
“We were hoping you could help us. They said you have extensive knowledge about the history of the region, and that you’ve also got a great collection of artifacts.”
“They said that, hm?” Asa folded his arms. “And what are you looking for?”
“We’re on a mission to hunt down a relic from about two thousand years ago, give or take,” Aari explained.
The gardener’s eyes bore into the group. “A mission, you say.”
They swapped glances. He’s not going to give things up easily, Aari thought. The only reason he’s even entertaining us right now is probably because we mentioned Gareth and Dev.
Asa studied each of them, his demeanor gradually softening, then said, “I have another hour until I’m done for the day. Meet me at the entrance at the bottom of the hill. We can chat then.”
He strode away without waiting for a response, leaving the Sentry and the teenagers alone on the terrace.
* * *
The group milled around the fountain in the middle of the courtyard, waiting for Asa, until a voice called out. “Yalla!”
Asa stood outside of the entrance, waving at them. They quickly joined him, exchanging brief greetings.
“So, Asa,” Marshall began. “We—”
“No, no, no.” The gardener smiled courteously but firmly. “I insist we talk business after tea at my place. Come.”
Aari, seeing the Sentry rub his knuckles against his short beard and suppress a frustrated breath, offered the man a consoling look.
Mariah gazed up the terraces at the lustrous, golden-domed building in the heart of the gardens. “Is that a temple?” she asked, pointing.
“It’s a shrine,” Asa replied. “The Shrine of the Báb.”
“Shrine of the what?”
“The Báb. It means ‘the Gate’ in Persian. The Báb was the martyr-herald of the Bahá’í Faith. Kind of like John the Baptist.”
“A herald?” Aari asked. “For who?”
Asa gave him a friendly slap on the back. “That, habibi, is a long story that we can chat about over tea.”
“What about you?” Tegan asked. “Are you a follower of this Faith?”
“Mm-mm, no. I’m a crusty old agnostic, my dear, and I’ll probably go to my grave that way.” He nodded to a passerby, then added, “But there are some tenets I can relate to.”
“Like what?”
“Hmm . . . well, it calls for impartial investigation of truth, of reality, so blind imitation is discouraged. That’s a big one for me.”
“Me too,” Aari agreed.
“What else, what else . . . Ah. It has a very optimistic view of mankind. That’s something I think I need. And it says that humanity is evolving to a point where it will need to recognize its essential oneness. Looking at the world, it’s hard to deny that we could use a little—or a lot—of that. It offers a good measure of spiritual pragmatism as well. As someone once said, it’s like treading the mystical path with practical feet.”
Aari leaned toward Marshall. “I think I dig that,” he whispered. “Kinda sounds like something the Elders would say.”
“I’ve noticed,” Tegan piped in, “that very few people in Haifa wear masks.”
“That’s because it’s relatively safe here,” Asa told her. “The moment there was news about the disease in Europe, the Israeli government tightened security and began working on a method to identify those with the sickness. Just yesterday they handed out individual test kits to the public, trying to get them into the hands of every citizen here. And they’ve also delivered a bunch of them to the UN.”
“Yeah, my pal that we’re bunking with brought home several kits last night,” Marshall said. “We’re all clean.”
“That’s good. In all of Israel, there have only been six cases of the violent strain and less than a dozen of the other one. Those found to be infected and their families have been quarantined.”
Kody let out a low whistle. “You guys are really prepared.”
“We have to be. We’re a small country that’s constantly under threat.”
They turned onto another street and followed Asa up a walkway that led to a white, two-story stone house with a small, expertly manicured lawn. Asa explained that the first floor accommodated all the basic necessities of a home and the top floor was entirely dedicated to his private collection of artifacts.
He sat the group down on two couches in the living room and served them hot tea and fruit, still insistent that they not speak of business until after. He sat across from them and as he took a small sip from his cup, the friends and Marshall knocked back their drinks. Asa, though surprised, consumed his tea at a more leisurely pace. Aari noticed Kody’s impatient leg shaking, which prompted Tegan to shoot their green-eyed friend a look to calm him.
I know, Kode-man, Aari thought sympathetically. It’d be nice if we could get a move on and see if this guy has any leads. Or even better, the box itself.
“Alright,” Asa finally said, putting his cup down. “Tell me everything.”
“We’ve been searching all over for an artifact,” Aari said, the words tumbling out of his mouth in a rush. “We went to Masada where it was supposed to be buried. We scoured museum collections online. No one has it. No one’s heard of it. We’re hoping you can help, because it could hold the answer to this outbreak. It could be the cure.”
Asa seemed caught off guard by the outpour of information but recovered quickly. “A cure, huh?” He leaned back, interest budding in his tone. “But what is it?”
“Right, sorry. It’s this wooden box—”
“Clad in brass,” Mariah added.
“Brass, yes,” Aari said. “And it contains these extremely rar
e seeds from an extinct tree.”
“There are markings on the lid.” Marshall nodded at the friends. “The pattern is similar to this.”
The teenagers removed their pendants and placed them on the table facing Asa. The gardener examined first the carved crystals, then the intricately-worked metal around them. His finger traced the detailed engravings. “Patterns like this?” His forehead crinkled for a long minute. The group fidgeted in the quiet. Then, he shook his head. “I don’t believe I have anything that matches the description of your artifact, my friends. I’m sorry.”
“Are you sure?” Tegan pressed. “If it helps, the box was last seen during the Siege of Masada.”
Asa’s jaw worked from side to side, his brow furrowed. “Well, there is one thing . . . I think there might actually be a box somewhere in my collection. Rega.”
As he disappeared upstairs, Kody leaned towards Aari. “What does rega mean?”
“Wait,” Aari said.
“For what?”
“No, no. Rega means ‘wait’.” Aari looked over at Tegan; the girl had been peering out of the window every few minutes. “Teegs.”
She shushed him. “I know what you’re thinking, and of course Reyor’s people won’t be stupid enough to be standing right outside the house, but it doesn’t hurt to check.”
Asa called out for them to join him. The friends reached for their necklaces on the table but as they did, the pendants quivered ever so slightly, drawing towards each other. The teenagers paused. Kody, his hand hovering midair, mumbled, “Umm . . . maybe that was an earthquake?”
“Nothing else in the house shook,” Tegan said slowly. “Only the pendants.”
They looked to Marshall, who offered them a bewildered shrug. They grabbed their pendants and ran up the stairs. A wall with a single entrance blocked off the entire second floor. They stepped through, found themselves in a decontamination chamber where powerful air jets blew dust from them and their clothing, then entered a second door into a cold, dim room. As Aari’s eyes adjusted, he felt his inner nerd leap for joy.
Small incandescent lights lit a long workbench at the center of the room. Against each wall, rows of shelves housed carefully preserved artifacts ranging from documents to various kinds of weapons. The windows were blacked out and the low-powered fluorescent fixtures had been darkened. UV filters, Aari thought. Smart. The low hum of an air conditioning unit and dehumidifiers filled the space.
Mariah shivered, pulling her jacket tighter around herself. “It’s freezing in here.”
“It helps preserve my collection.” Asa placed a plastic tub with an airtight lid at the center of the workbench, then pulled on a pair of latex gloves and reached into the tub, removing a cubic object enclosed in linen. “This is very, very old, from the time the Romans were in Israel. It must be handled with care, so unfortunately I cannot let you touch it. I don’t know where it was found, exactly. It was passed between a few collectors before me.”
He unwrapped the linen, and the lights from the workbench bounced off the coppery shell of a wooden box. The group crowded around him.
“Is that it?” Kody whispered. “Is that our box?”
The group moved closer to get a better view. Aari’s face fell. “This is bronze, not brass.”
“And the markings are different,” Tegan said, holding her pendant above it. “The ones on the box look like a bunch of tiny Roman numerals.”
“Asa, could we maybe take a look inside?” Marshall asked.
The gardener obliged. Aari peered in, feeling a surge of optimism only to have it slashed. The box was empty. Asa, covering the artifact and placing it back in the tub, saw the despair on his guests’ faces and apologized. “This is the only box I have from that era.”
Marshall did his best to feign a smile. “It’s alright. Thank you for your help, Asa. You’ve been incredibly gracious to a bunch of strangers.”
“Any friend of the twins is a friend of mine,” the gardener said kindly. As the group headed toward the exit, he stopped them. “Tell me more about this artifact you’re looking for. What is its story?”
Aari, his fingertips on the door handle, pulled back. The teenagers glanced to Marshall for direction, unsure how much they could divulge. The Sentry took in their expressions, then made his way back to Asa with the friends in tow.
“The seeds we’re looking for come from something called the Tree of Life,” he said. “These seeds were in the possession of a pair of siblings, a boy and a girl in Masada. But they weren’t Jewish. Actually, they weren’t even local. They were part of an ancient race of seafarers who lived around the region. Last we heard, the seeds were kept in a special box and supposedly buried in a cave in Masada when the Romans attacked. But we checked and the box isn’t there. It’s believed that one of the siblings, the brother, was killed in the attack after the box was hidden.”
“And the girl?” Asa asked; he could not hide his intrigue.
“All contact with her was lost.”
“Contact? How were they in contact? With who?”
Marshall gave a sheepish grin. “That, we can’t quite say.”
Asa removed his gloves, mouth quirked sullenly to one side. “I’m sorry. I really wish I could be of more help. If these seeds of yours are really the cure for the disease, the world could use them right now.”
Aari fell in behind Kody as Asa led the way back out through the decontamination chamber. The boys shared weary looks. As the gardener reached for the second door, he spun around, causing a pileup behind him. “Wait!” he cried, bulldozing back into the room. The friends and the Sentry hurried after him.
“What is it?” Marshall demanded.
Asa swung his head from side to side, scrutinizing the artifacts on the shelves. “It just struck me . . . that story of yours sounds a little familiar.” He started to rummage through several large plastic tubs.
“Familiar?”
“Yes, I read it somewhere.”
The Sentry looked confused. “You read about the seeds?”
“I meant about what happened at Masada.”
“It’s in Flavius Josephus’s writings about the siege,” Aari supplied. “It’s the only account there is.”
“No, habibi. I’m talking about the girl and the box.” Asa worked his way around the room. “Where did I read it . . .” He opened the cover of one tub. “Aha! It’s in the letters!”
“What letters?” Tegan asked, looking over the man’s shoulder.
“The letters that never made it to Rome.” Asa hoisted the tub onto the workbench and pulled on another pair of gloves. “I purchased these almost thirty years ago from a collector who got it from another collector who got it from a thief. But we won’t talk about that.”
He removed eight long sheets of tattered papyrus, each mounted on separate four-ply boards in polyester coverings, and laid them out on the tabletop. Aari took in the faded black writing. “This looks like Latin, but I don’t really know how to read it.”
“I do,” Asa smiled.
“You’re a linguist too?”
“I have to be so I can understand what I collect.”
“What do these say?” Kody asked.
“These were written by a Roman legionary named Lucius. He wanted to send the letters to his family but never found the courage.”
Mariah frowned. “Why?”
“Because he ran away from the legion with a young woman. He wrote these letters to his family, apologizing for shaming them with his desertion.” Asa tapped the first parchment. “In this one, he explains how he found a girl in a cave in Masada and stopped two other legionaries from killing her. He saw her bury something, and while she went back to the fortress, he dug it up. It was a box.”
Our box? Aari wondered, perking up.
“When he returned to the fortress,” Asa continued, “he saw the legionaries strike the girl on the head with the hilt of a sword. She woke up having lost her memory due to the injury. Lucius, he didn’t want to fig
ht. He never did. So with the girl and the box he escaped from Masada and paid a ferryman to take them up the Sea of Death—we call it the Dead Sea now—to the Jordan River. They trekked for weeks, past the Sea of Galilee and Tiberius.”
“And they had the box the whole time?” Tegan asked.
“They did. It says here that the girl was ‘instinctively protective’ of it. She wouldn’t let him touch it or open it. She couldn’t remember why she buried it in the first place but she always kept it with her. It says she learned his language extraordinarily fast and became fluent far quicker than he thought possible. And according to the letters, they eventually fell deeply in love. Lucius speaks of her very adoringly.”
Aari tapped his fingertips on the table. “What happened after they escaped?”
Asa scoured the rest of the letters. “They went west to the coast and settled in a small fishing village. Ahh, of course . . . I remember now. I researched this before acquiring this set. They settled right here in Haifa before we came to know it as Haifa. The Roman Empire at the time was present in most of Judea, but this particular place was safe for a while. The young couple hoped they could disappear and live quiet lives. But—and this is why your story triggered my memory—the girl stood out. She had hair like the sun and eyes as blue as the sea. She was so fair-skinned and never tanned. People started asking questions about her heritage as she obviously wasn’t a local. It became difficult for them to assimilate.”
“What did they do?” Marshall prodded.
“Around then, they heard that the Romans were beginning to march toward Haifa. They thought it was best to leave. If the legion found them, they would kill Lucius. He was a deserter and she . . . well, she probably would have been taken as a slave. In his last letter”—Asa picked up the eighth parchment—“Lucius said they’d decided to leave for Africa.”
“Africa!” Mariah gasped.
“Is there anything else?” Marshall asked. “About the seeds? About where in Africa they’d planned to go?”