by D B Nielsen
‘All right, Safie,’ she said, the corners of her expressive mouth widening to a smile as she saw me sit up in anticipation, ‘you have your wish. Dr Mukherjee is keeping you here for one more night. She wants to check your blood work and see how your ribs are healing before you leave but, if she’s satisfied, she’ll release you in the morning.’
‘Sweet! Way to go, Mum!’ I hooted in equal parts relief and appreciation.
‘And I didn’t need to bribe her,’ Mum said in mock-exasperation. ‘She’s a perfectly reasonable person.’
‘For a witchdoctor,’ I muttered under my breath.
‘I heard that, Safie. And I’m not impressed with your attitude, young lady.’ Mum chided. ‘Maybe a few more days in hospital might improve it.’
‘Mum! You wouldn’t!’ I protested anxiously.
‘Well, perhaps not,’ she admitted, releasing a weary sigh, and I suddenly noticed the strain around her lips and eyes; fine, spidery new wrinkles where none had been before. ‘But you have no idea how concerned we’ve all been for you, including Dr Mukherjee.’
‘Yes, Mum, my bad,’ I meekly murmured in contrition, briefly wondering whether this was how Ron Weasley felt every time he got scolded by his mother.
‘You were incredibly lucky to have survived such a fall–’
‘Yes, Mum.’
‘And not to have suffered from hypothermia or caught pneumonia, which is a miracle in itself considering how long you were exposed to the elements before we found you–’
‘Yes, Mum,’ I repeated, thanking my lucky stars that no one seemed to be any the wiser that Finn was responsible for my present state of wellbeing, managing to keep me warm and conscious until help had arrived.
‘And only to escape with a couple of broken ribs and cuts and bruises ... I swear someone must have been watching over you!’ Mum was on a roll now. ‘The only surprise in all this is that it happened while you were out walking Indy and not participating in one of those extreme sports you seem to love so much.’
‘Surfing’s not an extreme sport, Mum,’ I objected automatically, ‘unless you surf that beach off the coast of Western Australia or that one in Tahiti; the one with the razor sharp coral reef. And I’d be nuts to go surfing there.’
Equally as crazy as embarking upon my journey underground in Paris with Gabriel.
Reconsidering, I added, ‘Unless I wanted a sponsorship by Billabong.’
‘Safie, I hope you’re not considering doing something so stupid.’ Mum’s tone of voice was similar to when Dad lectured his apprentices on site, holding an implicit warning.
‘Honestly, Mum, you don’t have to worry about me surfing some insane seventy foot wave like Mike Parsons,’ I replied, continuing self-deprecatingly, ‘I’m nowhere near that good, unfortunately.’
‘Fi!’ said Sage, whose patience was deserting her rapidly, ‘Be serious! Are you trying to get yourself killed?’
‘Don’t be stupid, Sage,’ I said, feeling a thumping pulse in my temples, ‘Have you taken a good look at the state I’m in! I’m hardly about to go surfing any time soon. And you can also rule out abseiling, paragliding, base jumping, cliff diving, and rally driving against the Stig.’
Despite my bravado, I knew if my parents found out about my adventures in Paris I would be grounded for life. If Sage and St. John found out about my various trips to Satis House they’d kill me. As it was, I had no idea whether this would happen anyway in response to getting a “tattoo” without parental permission.
Sage and I glared at each other, hardly daring to blink.
‘Well,’ remarked Mum, breaking the stand-off, ‘I think you might have already inadvertently attempted base jumping. But I’m happy that you won’t be rally driving against the Stig or anyone else for that matter ... because you’re nowhere near that good. Fortunately.’
Sage began to laugh, thinking it hilarious that our mother had managed to get one past me. I gave a wan smile, shaking my head ruefully which made her laugh all the harder.
God, they were so lame!
‘Well, at least I went out and sat my driving test when we first got here,’ I remarked, pointing out that Sage had yet to do so and, as such, couldn’t drive our Prius despite holding a valid driver’s license in Australia.
‘I can’t believe you passed! The driving instructor must have been blind or simply thankful to get out of the car alive!’ Sage retorted, ‘Or did you bribe him with one of Mum’s paintings, which seems to be your usual solution to things?’
‘That’s enough, Sage,’ Mum finally said, collecting her tote in preparation to depart, ‘Leave your sister be. She looks done in. We’d better get going if we’re going to be on time to pick up Jasmine and Alex from school.’
Crossing to the bed, she leant down to give me a kiss on my forehead, careful to avoid my injury. Concerned at the pallor of my skin, Mum asked, ‘Are you planning on getting some rest, pumpkin?’
I’d thought I’d past the “pumpkin” stage but apparently my accident had resurrected my former pet names.
Shaking my head slowly, I answered, giving a white lie, ‘I thought I’d update my Facebook status first.’
Straightening up, she murmured, ‘Just don’t tire yourself out. I’ll be back later this evening once I have the kids settled with your father.’
Nodding absently, my mind was already flitting to other thoughts as Sage followed Mum from the hospital room with a ‘Catch you later.’
It didn’t take but a moment to update my Facebook status. I’d exhausted all complaints days ago and there was only so much that could be said about the boredom, the quality of hospital food, the daily visits of family members; the only new thing to add was my being released from hospital the next day. Having entered that piece of information, I looked through my friends’ updates, adding a comment here and clicking “like” there in response to their own updates, and then turned my attention to weightier matters.
I’d given Mum a white lie, intending to do some research that was long past due and I wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Though it had been over a month since I had resolved to look up information on the myths associated with the Pleiades, I hadn’t given it much thought until now. But what my Google search brought up made my brain boggle. There were myths associated with the Pleiades in almost every culture and religion around the planet, from the ancient Greeks to the Pawnee Native peoples of the American Plains, from Hinduism to Christianity. The number seven, the seven Fates, doves, water girls, ice maidens, bird goddesses, bee goddesses, cords, knots, webs, pyramids, hillsides – the entries relating to this cluster of stars seemed to go on exhaustingly. It was information overload. And I might have given up my search then and there if I hadn’t come across a small, seemingly insignificant reference to the Pleiades and cosmic mountains which made me sit up and take note.
According to Toby Wilkinson, an Egyptologist from Cambridge University, the pyramids could be seen symbolically as the stairways to the stars which acted as launch pads or gateways for the pharaoh’s journey to the afterlife. I wondered if this could extend to the Babylonian ziggurats, despite the fact that they were not burial chambers for the kings. Maybe they could even be arrival ports or platforms for space travel.
Whilst all this was mere speculation on my part, there was a theory that there were places on the earth that allowed for communication, and even transport, between worlds. The legends of the Seven Sisters featured these landmarks, such as the Devils Tower in Wyoming which appeared in Steven Spielberg’s cult film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and a series of seven hills such as in Rome, and in the Atherton Tablelands west of Cairns in northern Queensland. The legends claimed that the Sisters visited the earth through these secret passageways. These words fairly leapt off the screen at me and I could hear the voice in my head narrating the tale...
“Long, long ago in the Dreamtime, Seven Sisters came down from the sky, landing on a familiar high hill. This was no ordinary hill, for it was hollow inside
containing a cave which served as the Sisters temporary home. A secret passageway leading into the cave enabled the Sisters to come and go between worlds.
On one of these visits, the Sisters went hunting for food in the bush. They were excellent hunters and soon gathered enough meat and other bush foods to eat. On their way back to the cave, an old man saw them but the Sisters were too busy to notice him. The old man decided to follow the young women, as he wanted a wife. When they were camped by a creek, he jumped out from behind a bush and grabbed the youngest sister. The others ran towards the cave in the hill to escape. They ran into the secret passageway and flew off into the sky.
In the meantime, the youngest sister struggled to free herself. She called out to her older sisters to come to her aid but did not realise they had already left.
‘Sisters, please help me,’ she cried as she fought with the old man.
She started to kick and hit the old man as hard as she could, finally managing to break free.
She took off after her sisters, running to the cave whilst the old man gave chase. He followed her through the secret passageway and up into the sky.
You can still see the youngest sister, if you look hard, trying to catch up to the others. Sometimes you cannot see her at all as she loses her way...
You can still see that old man in the sky, chasing the Sisters, still wanting to make the youngest his bride...”
But as the voice in my head faded, I sat there in the hospital room in silence with some niggling thought bouncing around at the back of my mind. I had an inkling it was something to do with Finn, but for the life of me I just couldn’t remember. And there was no point asking Finn since I had no idea what I wanted to ask him about and didn’t want to look foolish in front of him again. Besides, I hadn’t seen nor heard from Finn since the accident, though every night since then he’d featured in my dreams – dreams that with each passing moon were becoming increasingly erotic and tempestuous, leaving me feeling drained and restless the next morning.
I remembered fragments of my experience in the abyss, sensations and emotions I had never before felt. I’d never known anyone like Finn. He was such a strange combination of aloof formality and pride and protective familiarity that I couldn’t fully understand him. But even if I had understood him, had grasped his essential nature, still I was at odds to explain my own awareness of him, my ambivalent feelings. He had only to stand near me, unsmiling, remote as any statue, for me to be aware of him, keenly aware. I was sensitive to his moods, any shift in feeling. And I basked in his approval, the inscrutable looks he flashed my way. Even his warnings didn’t dampen my interest. I was powerless in his presence and restless in my own skin. I should have been embarrassed, but I was angry and frustrated with myself instead. And intrigued about the Emim who had caused these sensations within me.
But perhaps what remained with me through the endless nights in the hospital ward and made me almost feverish, heating my skin with the flush of sensual passion, was the memory of his wings, as soft as down, pressed against my body. Even now the thought of those wings, his bare chest, how hot and sexy he was, had the power to make me feel hot and flustered – and this was the memory that made me most angry.
I hated the idea that my own body was betraying me with its uncontrolled reaction, an unwitting attraction to an Emim. I hadn’t fought him off when he’d first kissed me outside the Hôtel de Ville. I hadn’t fought him off when he’d almost kissed me again in the Louvre. I doubted that I even had the willpower to fight him at all – especially not after our last encounter.
A movement at the door flickered in the periphery of my vision and it was as if I’d conjured the devil himself up from my imagination as Finn was standing on the threshold, seemingly debating with himself whether to come in or not.
I didn’t know which of us was the more shocked, but I quickly covered up my reaction to him.
It must have been raining outside as water droplets clung to his jet black hair and oversized tweed jacket, the same one he’d worn when I’d first spotted him at Satis House eons ago, which hung carelessly from his shoulders over an open red check flannel shirt, white T-shirt and black jeans. He ran a hand distractedly through his dark locks, shaking out raindrops onto the sisal carpet, and met my eyes with an expression of surprise, as if he hadn’t expected to find himself here.
‘You didn’t tell them.’
The words came out in a rush, his blue eyes probing mine as if he couldn’t work me out at all.
I stared at him incredulously, briefly wondering if he had a multiple personality disorder like my Uncle Nick, whom my family never talked about since he’d divorced my aunt to join a commune somewhere in the Cambridge Fens.
‘Tell who what?’ I asked finally.
‘Your sister. Your friends. The Anakim,’ he said defensively, his face tense. ‘About what happened when you fell. You didn’t tell them and I had to find out why.’
His voice was hoarse and strange, with none of its usual beauty, and for a moment he seemed utterly unknown to me, lacking the self-assurance I’d come to expect from him.
I shrugged. ‘What’s to tell? You saved me. I figured if you’d wanted it known, you would have stuck around.’
He didn’t speak for a long moment. He was struggling to say something, or perhaps not to say something. I wasn’t quite sure. His lips parted, but he held his silence. He snapped them closed again and I could have sworn he ground his teeth in frustration. Unlike the Finn I was coming to know, this young man wore a thousand emotions on his face, warring with each other.
‘I have a tattoo,’ I blurted out, unwittingly. Then realising how stupid that sounded, made things worse by attempting to clarify it, ‘Well, not a tattoo exactly. More like a marking. Of the Pleiades. It looks like the Subaru logo. I can’t explain how it got there. It just sort of happened.’
‘A tattoo? For real? Can I see it?’ He sounded surprised.
‘No! As if!’ I automatically responded, thinking of him being way too close, bending over me, staring at – perhaps even breathing on – my exposed skin. Grateful that I wasn’t wearing one of those awful hospital gowns that would have left me feeling practically naked in front of Finn, I tried to breathe evenly. ‘No way!’
He was now studying me with curious eyes.
‘Ah, right,’ he replied, muffling a snicker. ‘Is it some place unmentionable?’
‘No! Fail!’ This time my tone was derisive. ‘It’s on my shoulder blade.’
His faint smile was mocking as if he knew how uncomfortable he was making me feel. It was probably payback for the wing thing.
But with my next statement, I managed to wipe the smirk off his face.
‘I suppose I should be thanking you for your protection once again.’
Finn automatically made a dismissive gesture, but upon my earnest words he’d averted his gaze, studiously avoiding my eyes.
‘That was more Kemwer than me,’ he began, shrugging off my thanks in a humble manner which I hastened to interrupt.
‘No,’ I insisted, leaning forward in an attempt to force him to look at me despite the sharp pain it was causing to my ribs, ‘not simply my survival underground, I meant back at Satis House.’
If anything, my words had the effect of leaching all colour from his flawlessly fair skin, turning it an unnatural shade of pale, whiter than white.
‘What do you mean?’ he asked, his voice harsh.
‘Louis Gravois wants Sage and me dead.’
It was a simple statement of fact that Finn didn’t attempt to deny. He relaxed a fraction – such a small motion – but I could tell the difference immediately.
‘You should never have gone to Satis House. It’s dangerous for you to be there. My brother is not the only predator.’
‘What do you mean? Why?’ I demanded, my voice raised. ‘Why does he want to kill us? He needs us. All of you Nephilim do. You admitted as much to me. Without us, how are you supposed to find your way home?’
/> ‘We can’t,’ Finn admitted.
‘So why?’ I persisted, ‘Why does he hate us so much? Why does he want us dead?’
Finn’s voice was without warmth or colour. ‘Louis is a true Rephaim. You might find what I have to say unpalatable but there’s no way to protect you from some realities. It’s true that the Nephilim need you to return to their homeland – a land none of us have ever even seen but the memory of which has been passed down through living consciousness and has sustained us in our centuries of exile. But it’s also true that Louis and the majority of our kind hate you and your kind. And why shouldn’t they? The Creator chose your species, loved you more, allowed you the possibility of Paradise, yet we are condemned to remain in exile for an accident of birth.’
‘It’s not fair,’ I murmured, feeling ashamed.
‘Fair?’ Finn’s lips twisted bitterly. ‘We are the offspring of heavenly beings. The offspring of angels. And this is our fate. “It’s not fair” is an understatement. Why should the Creator love his human offspring more than us? It may seem unthinkable that Louis is willing to wipe out your entire species in order to gain Paradise, but what of your own species? What justification can you give for genocide and ethnic cleansing? The Holocaust? Bosnia-Herzegovina? Rwanda and Darfur? ISIS? Despite the fact that you consistently try to annihilate your own species, the Creator allows you the possibility of redemption but not us. How is that fair or just?’
I winced at his words, looking down at my laptop still displaying my Google search and open Facebook page. Suddenly it seemed so surreal – the hundreds of Facebook friends I had, leading such mundane lives, believing everything they did was so important, so difficult. What was sitting an exam, or being stuck waiting due to a delayed train, or getting a bad haircut, compared to what Finn and the Nephilim had suffered?
‘I’m sorry.’ The words seemed inadequate, but I couldn’t think of a better response.
He smiled slightly, but his eyes were hard. It took him a moment or two to calm down, to rein his emotions in and keep them in check.