Dawn Of The Aakacarns

by John Buttrick

  Jubal had wondered about the numbers, the Tinies did reproduce more rapidly than the Anakim or Nephilim, but he simply reckoned it had to do with traits. Some people had dark hair, others had light hair, and for the same reason most were small of stature and he was tall. He never thought of having a larger purpose, except as a Weapocarn.

  In the section to his left he caught Isis nodding her head as if verifying the numbers. She could probably give an accurate list of physical characteristics, like how many in the population had wheat-colored hair and green eyes, something Jubal admitted to himself he did not know, but would not have been the least surprised if she could quote the amount on the spot if asked.

  “Even though less than a quarter of you in this meeting are Weapocarns, each man and woman among you has been given greater abilities than the rest of mankind,” Vivian singled them out as being special and folks all around Jubal were puffing up their chests with pride as she spoke, “You are on this earth to watch over and protect what will soon be a multitude of diverging races. The Nephilim are meant to be guardians and the welfare of mankind will fall on you.”

  “Great Lady, I am willing to take on the burden,” Roddy called out, not surprisingly, given his dream of being ruler of all.

  Sheba smiled indulgently at her grandson and began shaking her head as if amused by the precocious child of Cush. From the vantage point of three centuries, two decades probably did seem quite young. “We appreciate your willingness to take on the time consuming and burdensome task we have in mind.”

  From the section to the left, Nimrod stood up and pointed. “Jubal will help me.”

  “Right, every time there is more work than glory he mentions you,” Vashti commented in a tone Jubal hoped no one else heard.

  “At least he thought of me,” was the reply.

  “The responsibility is laid upon all of you Nephilim and those who will be born in future generations,” Vivian said and her eyebrows drew down sternly. “Be assured you will all give an accounting for the stewardship your race has been entrusted with. Do not become overly caught up in the powers bestowed upon you and begin to think of yourselves more highly than you ought,” the warning was clear and her eyes scanned the crowd. “I want you all to consider the coming storm as a test of how well you serve your less powerful brothers and sisters,” she added and then nodded to the chair below. “Herara, if you please.”

  “Everyone, most especially children and pregnant women, will have to be brought to high ground,” Jubal’s mother announced.

  All of the dwellings were scattered around the hills and on the other side of the river, which meant a lot of homes to be evacuated, and the only places to go were the hill upon which the Place of Meeting was built and the four upon which the elders resided. Jubal had lived on the third hill until coming of age, but had moved and resided far out on the edge of the settlement near the crops. Higher ground was going to become extremely crowded.

  Herara resumed issuing orders. “Zeus, you will be the administrator for the tribe of Shem. Your father and I are giving you the responsibility of coordinating the movement of your brothers, sisters, and cousins to higher ground. The Nephilim and Anakim descended from me will be at your command.”

  Jubal glanced to the right, beyond his wife, and noted how puffed up and proud Hera became at hearing the high position given to her husband. He half expected Vashti to whisper something about how it should have been her husband placed in charge, but the white-haired beauty actually said, “Your brother is good at organizing people.”

  Jubal agreed with the assessment, but was a little surprised she was of the same opinion, given all she had said about Semiramis, Nimrod, the lion coat, and putting himself forward. Herara was not finished speaking so Jubal refocused on the stage rather than respond to his wife’s statement.

  “And so the animals and the adults too numerous to be on the five hills must be taken south to higher ground which, the priest assured me, is deep in the wilderness, and farther than any of us have travelled,” Jubal’s mother spoke and when the crowd began murmuring and raising doubts about whether or not higher ground even existed, she raised her hand for silence and in moments the signal was heeded.

  “High ground does exist and can be reached ahead of the rising waters. We have no room for most of the people here and they will die if we do nothing. As it is, most of our crops will be ruined, so be sure to harvest what you can over night because there will be little to eat if you falter on the task,” Herara finished and then nodded to Sheba.

  The bronze matriarch fixed her gaze on the long benches where sat the descendants of Ham. “The situation Herara described also applies to you. I have chosen Ra to be the administrator and he will be in command of all Nephilim and Anakim descended from me.”

  The promotions of Zeus and Ra were probably why the meeting had been delayed, Jubal realized.

  “What about me?” Roddy’s tone came close to being a demand for an explanation.

  “Nimrod is chief of the Weapocarns, yet they number less than a quarter of the Nephilim and less than half of the Anakim the Creator has blessed us with. What we face cannot be fought with spear or arrow, no our survival depends on how well we prepare, and that takes skillful organization,” Sheba replied indulgently, seeing as she could have taken exception to his tone, but evidently chose otherwise.

  Roddy sat down beside Semiramis, who brought her mouth close to his ear. Whatever she was saying made him smile. His bride had light brown skin and black hair, an attractive woman who was very much aware of the fact.

  “I bet she is telling him about the lion coat,” Vashti whispered and then sat up straighter, actually leaning forward when Lilith’s turn came to speak.

  “I have selected Oden to be the administrator for the tribe of Japheth. All Nephilim and Anakim descended from me will be under his command.”

  “I appreciate the trust you have placed in me, my mother,” Oden spoke and stood up holding his baby son, Thor, in his arms. Vashti’s much older brother had a white beard and was dressed in a white wool tunic with a golden sash around his waist, and sandals on his feet. “My only question is; what has changed to cause you elders to transfer such responsibility to us Nephilim?”

  It was Vivian who chose to respond. “None of you, my grandchildren, know what it was like living in the times before the flood.”

  They would if the elders were not so closed-mouthed on the subject, Jubal thought, yet dared not say while the great lady was speaking.

  “To the average person being middle-aged meant you were four hundred fifty years old. Ham and Sheba, Shem and Herara, Japheth and Lilith, all at age three hundred-two look the way I did when I was four hundred years younger. In other words, they appear to be middle-aged. This means my grandson and granddaughters may be middle-aged at two hundred and their children considered so after living just one century,” she told the listeners and Jubal could see each one cringe at the possibility of such drastically reduced lifespans, and she was not finished speaking.

  “Even by ancient standards, Noah and I will be entering our last decades of life. We will die soon, within the next hundred fifty years, but we have noticed something more ominous and the priest verified our suspicions. The lifespan of each generation is decreasing, the reproductive years in which a woman can bear children are decreasing, and that means you all will be seeing death on a regular basis, something you have seen little of in your limited lifetimes.”

  A murmur began and soon private discussions grew louder as the Nephilim conversed on the repercussions. Folks were not taking the news well and neither was Jubal, yet found himself adjusting to the new reality fairly quickly. Truth should never be rejected no matter how difficult to accept or how much it hurt. As a hunter and a Weapocarn he had seen and meted out death on a regular basis, so surely her last sentence was directed at the others.

  “My nephew died this morning, his body has been scooped up and lies in the house of Hades as I speak, and Jubal risked
his life to slay the beast that killed him,” Zeus interrupted. “How can you say we do not know death?”

  Older brother made a good point.

  A person dying was a rare event but when such occurred the deceased would be buried or burned by Hades. Osiris, and more often than not Anubis, did the same function for the tribe of Cush. Thanatos provided the service for the rest of the population. It was a task Jubal did not envy in any way. The phrase, “Thanatos comes,” made a great many people feel uncomfortable, and Jubal did not want folks to dread his approach, even though he recognized the task the four undertook to be respectable and necessary.

  Herara chose to respond. “My mother and father,” she began and tears welled up in her eyes, so intense were the feelings surrounding what she was about to share. “My brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, none of them could make themselves believe in the approaching doom of that generation. They laughed off the warnings. All of them and every friend I had back then died,” she paused to wipe away tears and then resumed, “We had faith enough to build the ark when no one else did and were saved, but nobody came even when the water poured from the sky and underground springs gushed forth. Yes, we were scorned and ridiculed for our belief, but their negative reactions to our pleadings did not and have not lessened our grief over their deaths,” her words had everyone’s rapt attention.

  “Noah was not the only one who needed a strong dose of wine, we all did, and none of us blamed him for getting drunk that one time in his life. Some of you sitting here have, in the past, allowed yourselves to become intoxicated over far less matters, and a few simply because you like the feeling,” hers eyes darted to those individuals in the last category and then fixed on Zeus. “My son, trust me when I say you have not begun to know the magnitude of sorrow so many deaths can weigh upon the soul. Every child I give birth to gives me joy and comfort, as do my grandchildren, but I will never forget the many people who died.”

  Jubal remembered his earlier feelings over the death of Gero and how the sorrow drove him out into the woods to track down the beasts responsible. He tried to imagine that feeling multiplied a hundred times, a thousand times over, ten thousand times, and knew he could not fully fathom the numbers of deaths the elders grieved over.

  Of course Noah and Vivian each had families, of course the matriarchs each had parents and brothers and sisters. Jubal wiped tears from his eyes and noted Vashti wiping her own. He simply had not given much thought about the personal losses experienced by the elders or what it must have been like knowing they were safe in the ark while countless people they cared about were drowning.

  Silence filled the room as each individual reflected on the sobering words and then Lilith said, “What Herara says is true for all of us. Diana, my mother, died along with all of my family and friends. But Herara, Sheba, and I are Nephilim and our fathers were not human, except when they took on that form to marry our mothers,” she explained and for the first time Jubal was hearing where the trait had originated. He glanced at Vashti, who shook her head, indicating she had not known until that moment.

  Her mother continued the revelation, “All of the sons of God who took the daughters of men as wives were taken away from the earth and are being kept in chains of darkness. To me, my father is just as dead as is the rest of my family, but his legacy lives on in every Nephilim I and my daughters and granddaughters give birth to. It is the same with Sheba and Herara; their fathers’ legacies live on through them.”

  Sheba nodded her head, confirming all that had been said. “I agree with Lilith, Herara, and Vivian. None of you have seen death on the scale we up on the stage and our husbands witnessed in the past, but none of that changes the fact that the first generation after the flood will outlive the second and so on. A first-gen son of Shem born on the same day as a son of Cush will live a longer lifespan. The second-gens will have a longer life than the third-gens, and so on. Only time will tell how short the average length of life will finally be and I am not even taking into account sickness or accidental deaths. The titanic changes happening with the earth, as described by the priest, could also result in many premature deaths, but the storms to come will be dealt with in their time.”

  Her example concerning lifespans struck Jubal as personal, seeing as he was a son of Shem, and Roddy was a son of Cush, both born on the same day. His cousin had to have made the connection and likely would not be pleased. Going by the agitated hum of conversations along the benches, not many folks were taking the news well, and perhaps some worried about the future storms.

  Vivian stood up, garnering full attention. “Our husbands are fasting and praying for the well-being of all our offspring, each and every generation. We will be joining them soon, but not before I tell you why the Nephilim are being charged with directing the people through this crisis,” she began, and going by the recent revelations, what was about to be revealed held the promise of being highly informative.

  “The fountain of life that flows and pools within in each of us is the reason for our longevity. So far as we can determine, the trait for having the overabundance of energy has with few exceptions showed up consistently among the Nephilim. You, as a group, tend to choose spouses from the different tribes who have the same trait and we suspect that has something to do with why the extra energy is found primarily in your offspring,” Vivian explained.

  Jubal new little about animal husbandry, but enough to know the experts deliberately mated pairs with desired traits, so understood what the great lady meant.

  “While it is true not every child born among you has the extra energy, the ones that do not, turn out to be Anakim. The trait is dormant in the Anakim but can be active in their children. In short, you Nephilim are larger, stronger, have more endurance, and will have longer lifespans than nearly anybody else,” Vivian’s words heartened the crowd, making them feel better about the shortened lifespans.

  Jubal was not proud of the relief he felt, knowing so many people were not so fortunate, and would not live as long as he simply because of a physical trait he possessed and they lacked.

  A sigh from atop the stage brought his attention back to Vivian. “We and our husbands will die knowing our children do not always get along in peace and harmony. You might have noticed such squabbling,” she stated while shaking her head as if she wished it were not so.

  “Disputes arise all of the time, tempers flare, and fights break out. The eight of us and the oldest of the first generation born after the flood spend most of our time hearing arguments and settling disputes, but we are not going to live forever, so we are grooming you to assume those responsibilities,” she stated gravely. “As Nephilim, your immediate role will be seeing the people through the coming storm but your lifetime role will be as guardians of mankind. Do not fail in either of those responsibilities.”

  The world was not coming to an end, but it sure felt like it to Jubal. The forecast for the immediate future seemed gloomy indeed and yet held the promise of sunshine later on. He had the distinct feeling the lifestyle he had settled into, a lifestyle that recently included Vashti, would be altered into something he never anticipated, assuming he survived what was to come.

  Chapter Three: A Certain Glow About Him

  After applying healing herbs and a fresh bandage on the injured foot; Vashti had not been satisfied with Roddy’s field dressing, the beautiful daughter of Lilith took off and left Jubal sitting alone in their small house. Oden had sent for her, leaving no choice but to begin whatever assignment he had in mind to help with the evacuation. She being an offspring of Lilith and him being in command of all Nephilim descended from her meant the obligation could not be lifted for anything less than severe illness, injury, or death. Jubal had his orders and she had hers. Preparations for the coming storm held the highest priority and everyone had to do their part, even the vast number of Tinies in the population. He only wished he could have spent a little more time with her.

  A table with a couple o
f chairs occupied the area under the window to the right where meals would be partaken of. The last had been nothing but a quick snack shared mostly in silence after they realized they could be eating there for the final time. On top of the table was an oil lamp that bathed the room in a flickering light. A broad carved-out log over near the far wall was used for bathing. To the left was the bed he and Vashti shared and would have been in at that moment had the circumstances been different. He decided not to think about what they would be doing had she not been called away, better to do as he had been told and relax.

  He swung his feet up and around, stretching out on the long couch covered in fur, and spared a glance at the oblong wooden box beside him containing clothing, another pair of boots, for which he was grateful, and sandals. The bow and a quiver of arrows were leaning against the far wall where his spear would normally be.

  In a smaller rectangular box in front of the couch he kept the Aakatools, three flutes, two lyres, and sacks of coins. The largest sackcloth container held the coppers, the silver sack was half that size, and the one containing the gold could be easily held in one fist. As wealth was measured, considering they owned no livestock or fields, he and Vashti stood fairly high.

  Even though they had all that they needed and could easily purchase whatever they lacked, true enrichment came from something beyond price; their tools of wind and strings. The use of melodious instruments seemed to add an extra quality of life, both to those who could play and to the people who lacked the skill but enjoyed listening. He, Vashti, and even Roddy fell into the first category, although Nimrod showed more skill with the flutes than he did with the lyre.