by D B Nielsen
‘Listen to me,’ he said urgently, ‘You must live. Try to remain conscious. The Nephilim need you...’
He nimbly stood up, lifting his wings away from my injured body. Without the cover of their warmth, the freezing winter air assailed my slight frame. As if suddenly plunging into a bath of ice, the cold struck skin and pricked bone – a hundred thousand icicle needlepoints of the sharpness of death bit deeply into living flesh.
I almost swooned.
‘Saffron, listen to me, stay awake!’ Finn commanded sternly, though his fingers were cool and gentle as they stroked my cheek.
In one swift, graceful movement, his wings fanned out behind his shoulder blades, reaching towards the chasm’s opening and the storm and the night. Velvet blackness against the darkness, the rustle of his feathers stirring the frigid air of the cavern. His motion was pure artistry – smooth, unbounded – as he soared into the night sky and disappeared quickly from sight.
The darkness stole across my vision until I saw the stars spinning in the sky overhead – seven distant stars in the universe – or maybe they were merely dancing in front of my eyes. Faster and faster they wheeled, circling in their orbit, until they burst into bright white light and fell from their moorings like the sun had just exploded, searing my sight.
And, as I was caught in their trajectory, I thought I heard Finn calling to me like some distant dream.
‘Saffron, come back ... I need you...’
SEVEN SISTERS
CHAPTER THREE
‘Bloody hell!’
My protest could be heard echoing down the stark corridors of the hospital ward as the mousy, young nurse attempted to insert a wicked-looking needle to draw blood from my right arm with all the finesse of some myopic geriatric using knitting needles.
‘Safie!’ My mother admonished as she monitored proceedings, more out of sympathy for the nurse than at the language of her teenage daughter.
‘Sorry,’ the embarrassed nurse apologised, swiping my skin with yet another alcoholic swab in readiness to try again. ‘You have such fine veins.’
I glared across at her before catching sight of Sage who was shaking her head ruefully and gesturing that it might not be in my best interests to fluster my tormentor. Heaving a heartfelt sigh, I closed my eyes and pretended I was anywhere but here.
I had spent five interminably long days in hospital so far and was not due for release for several more as my breathing had been laboured when I was first brought in and it was feared that the fractures to my ribs and exposure to the cold for all those hours would lead to infection such as pneumonia. Added to that, the injury to my head and the many contusions and lacerations to my body, and I was a primary candidate for an extended hospital stay. But it had proven to be an excruciating ordeal both physically and mentally.
I hated hospitals. Hated them with a vengeance.
The unpleasant memories of my time in hospital two summers previously was something I’d never be able to forget, not ever, and I’d done everything that was necessary to stay away from hospitals and doctors ever since. Yet now I found myself stuck in hospital again, and all of my days seemed to be at the mercy of the hospital’s routines – a battery of tests for blood pressure, cardio, breathing, giving blood, checking sutures, not to mention the visits from Dr Mukherjee, the nurses bringing in painkillers, the cleaners wishing to empty bins and vacuum the room, the catering staff bringing in trays of bland hospital food.
It was enough to make me want to scream.
Time seemed to be moving in two different rhythms – a separate reality outside the hospital and a slower, more sedate pace inside.
The sense of imprisonment was the worst. I hated being confined like some caged animal. I’d been too used to strenuous activity to adjust to the vacuity of hospital routines and it would have been easy to lose track of what hour or day I’d been inhabiting if it weren’t for the precision of those annoying routines.
But in the hospital, healing took priority.
I now sported an identical scar to Sage, which brought raised eyebrows from the medical personnel who were attending to my case, many of whom had also been on call when Sage had her accident at the museum. But it was more out of curiosity that drew them to my bedside than simply medical duties.
It had been Sage who knew instinctively that I was in desperate trouble, had felt my pain as only a twin could and, with the assistance of Indy and St. John, had managed to direct the rescuers to where I’d fallen. Of course, everyone had heard myths of identical twins feeling the other twin’s pain, but no one had actually witnessed it. We’d now gained legendary status within the hospital, and my accident was given a minor write-up in the local papers, clipped between a column on the renovations made to an eighteenth century ice house at Hole Park Gardens and a review for a local oyster bar.
‘There! All done!’ the nurse proclaimed proudly, using another circular bandaid to stop the flow of blood so that my inner arm now sported what looked like a child’s artwork of an H2O molecule. ‘That wasn’t so bad now, was it?’
Her cheery, optimistic tone left me speechless as, gathering her equipment, she briskly walked out of the hospital room to attend to another victim-patient.
As soon as she was out the door, I turned to my mother.
‘Mum! Please! Please! Get me out of here!’ I pleaded, my eyes beseeching. ‘Please find Dr Mukherjee and ask her if I can go home – make her let me go home – even if you have to bribe her with one of your paintings! I can’t take it any longer!’
‘Safie, it’s only for another few days–’ she began, but I cut her off.
‘Please!’ I begged, my tone of desperation emphasising my need. ‘They’re killing me in here!’
Whether it was because I’d been begging her to go home since I regained consciousness, wearing her down with my incessant whining, or because she realised that I was going stir-crazy in my confinement, she agreed to find the good doctor and enquire whether I’d be able to be discharged early.
I breathed a sigh of heartfelt relief as she left the room.
‘All right,’ Sage began, crossing to sit on the edge of the hospital bed where I was propped semi-upright, amber coloured eyes narrowing in warning, ‘You’re going to tell me everything – and I mean everything – starting with where you got that tattoo!’
I blinked, caught momentarily off guard. ‘What?’
‘The tattoo, Fi. Come on, spill the beans,’ she said witheringly.
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’ There was no defensiveness in my tone.
‘On your left shoulder blade, Fi. It looks like the Subaru logo.’
I spun my head round quickly, trying to look over my shoulder, but managed only to make myself dizzy after feeling a sharp stab of pain in my right temple for my efforts. I didn’t even know what I expected to see, considering I was wearing my most comfortable Juicy Couture hot pink velour sweatsuit.
‘Are you nuts?’ I asked through clenched teeth. ‘If I was going to get a tat, I’d be something cool like those Chinese letters that spell out “strength” or “wisdom” or some proverb, or a Celtic rune, or something like that. Why the hell would I get a car logo tattooed on my shoulder blade?’
‘Because you’re you!’ Sage’s voice was edged with amusement.
‘Geez, thanks, Sage! You’ve got heaps of faith in me!’ Snorting, I demanded, ‘Look, get my iPhone, will you?’
Sage crossed her arms over her chest. ‘Why? You’re not thinking of making a phone call, are you? Who are you going to call anyway?’
‘Fail!’ I shook my head at her lack of intelligence. ‘Idiot, I want you to take a photo of it to show me!’
After conceding that I’d had a bright idea – and apparently there weren’t too many of them – Sage took a photo of my new tattoo. Except that it wasn’t. The symbol, like a mark that had been branded onto my skin, leapt in front of my eyes. Unlike the mark of longevity that graced Sage’s palm, now faded to a faint whit
e scar, my own looked as if it had been burnt into the flesh of my left shoulder blade. A dark outline gave the impression of a tattoo on first glance, but a closer examination revealed that this was not dye or ink injected into the skin but a fusion of sacred symbol with living flesh.
‘I don’t know how accurate the Subaru logo is, but this represents the star constellation. It’s the Pleiades, Sage. Don’t you recognise it?’ I asked.
The six stars of the Pleiades were clearly identifiable, even without the car logo’s defining oval ring surrounding them.
Clearly Sage wasn’t quite as certain as, wrinkling her brow, she quizzed, ‘Aren’t there supposed to be seven stars?’
I shrugged, forgetting my injured ribs, and regretted it immediately.
‘Well, only six stars are visible in the night sky without a telescope. The seventh star is the lost sister. Apparently, it’s both visible and invisible, or something cryptic like that,’ I said, recalling what Gabriel and Finn had told me of the legend.
‘Well, I’m sure that’s important somehow,’ Sage stated, ‘but I can’t imagine what it means.’
‘No, neither can I, though I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough.’ Agreeing, I turned off my phone and the image disappeared from my sight. A look of concern passed over my face. ‘Has either of the ‘rents seen the mark on my shoulder blade? How did they react?’
‘Don’t you mean how Dad took it? It was lucky you were unconscious,’ she replied sardonically, quirking an eyebrow. ‘They were equal parts angry and out of their minds with worry. I think the fact they thought you were dead, or close to it, saved you.’
I sighed again.
I’d heard about the search and rescue that had been carried out when I failed to return home with Indy. Somehow, Indy had managed to make his way back to the Manor House, wet and bedraggled and favouring his left hind leg. Assessing Indy’s state, Mum had automatically phoned the police – her fingers so cold and numb she could barely hold the phone – who had, in turn, called the emergency services. By the time the hands on the clock on the kitchen wall had made another full circuit, Dad and St. John had arrived together, rushing back from the museum in the wake of Mum’s frantic phone call, to join a force of a dozen or more locals who were familiar with the area and had responded to the emergency.
They were well kitted out in rugged ski jackets, hiking boots or galoshes, and bright orange and silver reflective overalls of the kind worn by traffic officers, with their short-wave radios, GPS, charts, torches, compasses, ropes and pulleys. There was even an ambulance standing at the ready to transport me to hospital.
The police had tried to reassure my parents, and did what they could to maintain calm. They left my parents in the charge of a young police sergeant who was coordinating the rescue by radio in orchestrated team sweeps of a certain radius. Yet all the while, Sage claimed later, she could feel the rescuers’ sympathetic glances exchanged over their heads, the brisk efficiency in the gathering dark which saw them check gear and make ready equipment, communicating through eye contact and hand signals and hushed and hurried whispers. She felt the tension ripple through them as night fell and the rescuers had to rely on the artificial light provided by torches, fearing that the search would have to be postponed in the dangerous and dark conditions.
But it was St. John, not Sage, who had picked up the scent with his phenomenal olfactory sense, far better than any blood hound. When the search team found me, gazing down at my unnaturally still and lifeless form lying at the bottom of the chasm, they’d assumed that I was dead. Sage might have become hysterical had it not been for our psychic connection as twins, coupled with St. John’s assurances that he could hear the faint but steady rhythm of my heart beating, which provided the certainty that I was still in the world of the living. But even the most stout-hearted rescuer had entertained doubts as I was winched to safety; the stretcher bearing the bloody mess of my brutal fall.
At the hospital, while I was being examined and X-rayed and stitched and bandaged, Dad had vented his pent-up frustration and worry, threatening to get rid of “that damn dog”. He’d assumed along with everyone else that I’d taken Indy for his afternoon walk and, as usual, Indy had followed his nose and whatever passing wildlife that had scampered across his path and gone tearing after it, causing me to give chase which resulted in my accident. Luckily Mum was there to calm him down and had saved Indy from a trip to the dog pound which would have devastated my younger siblings and upset the equilibrium of our family unit. It would also have made me feel as guilty as hell.
‘Here,’ I instructed Sage, gesturing to the table-trolley at the end of the bed, ‘hand me my laptop.’
She muttered something under her breath too low for me to hear.
‘What was that?’ I demanded.
Rolling her eyes, she repeated, this time more loudly, ‘I said that you’re even bossier than normal when you’re ill!’
‘I’m not ill, I’m just injured,’ I replied, accepting the laptop from her outstretched hands. Allowing it to boot up, I asked without preamble, ‘Anyway, girl, focus. What do you know about the legends of the Seven Sisters?’
Sitting down again at the edge of the bed, she wrinkled her nose in thought.
‘Just the Greek legend,’ she said, recounting what she remembered from taking History and Greek in her Finals, ‘According to the ancient Greeks, the Pleiades were seven sisters. In Greek, the word “Pleiades” means “doves”. Their parents were Pleione and the Titan, Atlas, who was condemned by Zeus to support the Heavens on his shoulders because he’d participated in an unsuccessful war between the Olympian gods and his fellow Titans. Legend has it that one day the Pleiades were travelling with their mother and met the hunter, Orion. On seeing these beautiful women, the son of Poseidon set off in hot pursuit of Pleione and her daughters–’
‘What? The mother and the daughters? All seven? Pervert!’ I muttered, but Sage just ignored me.
‘Considered the most handsome man alive, he was said to be especially enamoured of Merope, the youngest – though some accounts suggest that it was the mother he was after. Orion spent a great deal of time chasing after them, trying to win their love and affection–’
‘I mean it! How many girls does this guy need?’ I exclaimed hotly.
‘Look! Are you going to listen to the legend or shall I stop?’ Sage huffed and, when I rolled my eyes and grudgingly nodded my assent, continued, ‘Okay, well, after several years, Zeus intervened and transformed the women into doves to help them escape. They flew into the sky to become the cluster of stars that today has their name. The ancient Greeks explained the absence of the seventh star with several different stories. According to one story, one of the Pleiades, Merope deserted her sisters because she was ashamed of having a mortal husband.’
‘Not that whole mortal-immortal thing again? Personally, I don’t really get it – what’s so wrong about interracial relationships?’
‘Interracial?’ Sage queried with a twitch of her lips.
‘Interspecies? Inter– ... Inter– ... Interchrono-something-or-other.’ Searching for the right word with no luck, I gave up. I was about to shrug my shoulders again when, recalling my injury, decided against it. ‘Whatever.’
‘Well, you know,’ my sister commented, philosophically, ‘there’s always been a debate about what nature or God intended. You can trace through time in almost all cultures the desire for a superior species – like Hitler’s Aryan race, though even he wasn’t the first – and the fear of the contamination of the purity of ancient bloodlines.’
‘Like the Malfoys’ hatred of Mudbloods,’ I spat bitterly, shaking my head.
‘Mark Twain had it right, Fi. He wrote that, “Human beings can be awful cruel to one another.”’ Sage stated in agreement, before continuing, ‘But there’s more to Merope’s story than that. Some say Merope was ashamed, not because she married a mortal, but because she found herself with a criminal husband serving time in Tartaros.’
I gave a start. ‘Tartaros? But isn’t that–’
‘–where Semyaza escaped from? Yes,’ Sage affirmed, darting a meaningful glance at me.
Shaking my head, I exclaimed, ‘No way! What is it? Like the Underworld slammer for immortals?’
‘You forget that Merope’s husband wasn’t immortal – or, at least, that’s what one legend claims.’
I raised an eyebrow in disbelief. ‘Maybe half-mortal then? Like St. John and Gabriel?’
‘I suppose. Could be. Something like that.’ She hesitated briefly then went on, each word clearly upsetting to her. ‘I’ve been doing a little checking. It seems that Tartaros features quite a bit in the works by Hesiod. In Theogony, he claims that Khaos, or Air, first came into existence followed by Gaia, or Earth, who gave birth to the Deathless Ones and the pit of Tartaros. So, presumably, it’s the dark side of the world, a part of the void of Khaos. The Greeks believed that Tartaros was unbounded, where Light and the cosmos were born. But in the bible and Jewish literature, Tartaros is where the Grigori are held in darkness and chains, waiting until the Day of Judgement, guarded by Uriel.’
‘Okay, now I’m just confused,’ I protested, ‘I thought Uriel was the Angel of Light or something. Although, come to think of it, he was a bad guy, a traitor, on Supernatural.’
‘Yeah, well, there’s some confusion here, so it’s not surprising the writers of the TV series get it worng,’ Sage pointed out, ‘Uriel is linked to the Archangels, often identified as the Angel of Repentance, standing at the entrance of the Garden of Eden with his fiery sword. But in modern angelology, Uriel is the Angel of Salvation, the flame of God, presiding over Tartaros or hell.’
‘That’s a big difference, Sage, though there’s been a lot of stuff said about angels that have gone rogue,’ I said slowly, ‘I guess we’ll find out the truth sooner or later. But who the hell are the Deathless Ones? Or is that like the Rephaim, the Dead Ones, or the Grigori? And who do you think busted Semyaza out of Tartaros?’
Sage wasn’t given an opportunity to answer my question, which was left hanging in the tense space between us, as the door to my private hospital room was pushed open and Mum re-entered.