by D B Nielsen
Fi was already offering her assistance to the physicians, demonstrating her capability. The surprising thing about my sister was her resilience – she was calm in a crisis and not squeamish at the sight of blood or needles, even though she hated hospitals – I had to admire her for it.
Having made up my mind to seek out Anak and St. John and offer whatever assistance I could to them, I was prevented from moving by a strong hand at my shoulder, holding me back. I pivoted quickly on my toes to confront the long face of Anachiel, an attitude that made him look rather stern like a headmaster. His warm brown eyes were not unkind but I had a feeling that whatever he was about to say could not be good. On the instant, it put me on my guard.
He hesitated.
Glancing around the room in a manner that expressed his perplexity at the request, he said, ‘Ellen Jacobi would like to see you. Alone.’
I almost asked, Who? Me?, then realised that was exactly whom he meant as he continued to hold my gaze. I made a brief gesture as if to indicate some sort of neutrality, neither willing nor unwilling to accede to the request, but not really knowing how to respond.
Lifting my eyes to the darkness of the corridor beyond his tall frame, I mumbled, ‘Erm ... all right.’
Anachiel gave a curt nod that conveyed his discomfiture. ‘Thank you.’
I wasn’t quite sure why he was thanking me or what he was thanking me for as I followed him back down the darkened corridor but I didn’t bother to ask. I didn’t think I’d like the answer.
Barak was standing in the middle of the hallway and gestured to the last door on the left, beyond the room I’d used earlier. My legs, as shaky now as they were then, but for completely different reasons, managed to hold me up as I stumbled past them both, murmuring my thanks. I approached the final door alone.
Tentatively knocking, I waited for some signal to enter; exchanging a long glance with the Anakim on guard duty when several moments passed and none was forthcoming. Barak didn’t move, didn’t blink, as if he was carved from stone, but Anachiel gave another curt nod. This was the only encouragement I received, so I grabbed hold of my courage as I grabbed hold of the door handle and let myself in.
Inside, it was oppressively dark. At the threshold, I paused, not moving. Finally, I took a step or two, and let the door swing closed behind me. My heart rose in my throat as I shuffled forward. I called out in a low voice, not wishing to disturb the sick patient, and when there was no answer again, I pressed on into the room.
Then I felt it. Not a sound so much as a slight shift in the air, a sense of someone breathing or some minor movement from within, a recognition that someone was there ... inside the room ... with me.
My eyes adjusted to the gloom. I could just make out the proportions of the room from the low lighting emitted by the medical equipment. Its contents swelled up from the dark carpet like the parabola of highlands in the dimness of night; bed and bedside tables in the same bleached blond wood, pendant lights hanging low, a cosy chair in the corner, an abstract Pollockesque painting on the far wall that bled colour in the darkness as if its canvas wept from innumerable stab wounds. And then there was the medical equipment, including an infant incubator, which emphasised that the room had been fitted out like a birthing suite.
There was an indistinct outline of a body on the bed, the long curve of spine like an unearthed fossil or conch shell. Ellen seemed to be asleep; her body was curled into itself like a foetus and it was impossible to tell she was pregnant from that position.
I paused, blinking away the dim interior. The air in the room was oppressive – close and claustrophobic – it clung to my skin with an unpleasant sliminess, heavy and humid with the smell of sour milk and unwashed body. Silently gagging, I tried not to breathe in the foetid air.
Hovering half way inside the room, I contemplated my options – retreat or continue further inside, towards the bed. For an insane instant, I wondered if Ellen Jacobi was dead and felt a surge of bitter relief.
Then the huddled figure on the bed stirred abruptly and I barely suppressed a gasp of surprise as it looked around, shifting with the ungainly, wildly flailing limbs and whimpering of an animal cornered.
‘Who’s there?’ Ellen’s voice broke on a cough. There was an awful, tragic frailty in her angry demand.
‘It’s only me. Sage Woods.’
A few seconds of confused silence. At the sound of my voice, I saw her straining to focus in the room’s murkiness.
‘Who? Come closer. I can’t see you.’
Every terrifying nursery rhyme and fairy tale I knew leapt to mind – from the spider ensnaring the fly to the Big Bad Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood. I much preferred to stay where I was but stepped forward. A small step.
An angry, laboured noise issued from the bed.
‘Come closer.’
There was no help for it. I moved another step or two forward and, as I drew closer, I heard Ellen’s raspy breathing.
Her frail voice collapsed into a wheeze. ‘It’s not pretty, is it?’
I wasn’t certain at first what she meant – her words a statement and not a question – until I saw her hand flutter upon her bloated belly. Looking up at her, startled, I sucked in a breath as I found her dark eyes fixed on mine, the expression on her face twisted and cruel.
‘I’m s-s-sorry, I–’ I stuttered, trying hard to cover up my revulsion. ‘Er ... Shall I come back later?’
‘Don’t be stupid, girl. You think I don’t know why you’re here?’ Her eyes still held mine and I floundered. She had requested my presence. Was there an answer to her question? Was it a question?
I ignored the remark, letting her talk instead.
Her voice was thin, breathless, followed by a bout of coughing. ‘You want to find a way to save him, don’t you?’
I hesitated. She meant St. John, I was sure of it.
But what price paid in bargaining with the devil? I’d been warned not to bargain with Elijah – surely a deal made with the madwoman carrying Semyaza’s offspring would be just as bad. I was uncertain of the spirit in which the question was asked. I was even more uncertain that she could help me.
‘Why? Why would you help me?’ I tried to stop my voice from betraying my desperation but she heard it anyway.
‘Did I say I could help you? He’s dying. I’m dying. We’re all dying. All of us fools fucking dying. Every moment, death devours us.’ She laughed viciously, her voice bitter and angry. Spittle flew from the corner of her mouth as the laughter provoked another spasm of winded coughs.
I was caught between staring rudely at her distress and looking away. It was not unlike staring at the victims of a car accident – knowing you shouldn’t but not being able to help yourself. I wanted to hate her – but instead I pitied her. And she knew it. And she hated me for it. Disgusted, I turned away, preparing to leave.
‘Wait!’ Another spasm rocked the fragile figure on the bed as I turned back to face her.
‘Do you want me to get a doctor?’ I asked out of pity, but Ellen Jacobi merely shook her shaven head.
Abruptly, changing the subject, she suggested, ‘I might be able to help you.’
I tensed. What kind of game was she playing? And why had the Anakim allowed me to speak to her unless it mattered, unless she could help?
She seemed to know what I was thinking as she smiled – there was malice in the smile, a flash of something hard and punishing upon her gaunt face.
She shrugged, her belly quivering with the movement. ‘Ah, perhaps not. Maybe you’re not interested. Or maybe you don’t trust me. Maybe you need to decide whether your desire to help your lover and the others outweighs your distrust.’
But she knew that I was desperate and she taunted me with that knowledge. I found myself growing angry with her, irritated with the game she was playing at my expense. I couldn’t coerce her to tell me what she knew – or what I hoped she might know to save St. John and his comrades – nor could I simply concede the point and demonstra
te my desperation. I let my frantic impatience with her show, shifting from one foot to the other as if contemplating leaving. But she read the game better than me and let me stew.
Finally, I sighed; annoyed with her, annoyed with myself. But before I could tell her I was definitely leaving, Ellen looked past me as if I wasn’t even there and said, ‘There is too much darkness in the world.’
I stared at her, more confused than ever, trying to read the expression on her ruined face. There was a roaring in my ears as I fought the encroaching blackness, feeling faint. The need for the knowledge she held twisted viciously inside me like an impotent hunger.
‘Help me. Tell me, please.’ My voice seemed to come from far away, disembodied, distant. I repeated, stronger this time through clenched teeth, ‘Tell me what you know.’
‘No.’
But Ellen Jacobi wasn’t speaking to me. I was struck by the sense that the words were not addressed to me at all but to someone else. I wasn’t quite certain exactly whom she was talking to but I knew it wasn’t me. My heart pumped violently in my chest, my lungs heaving, my ribs shaking. It took everything within me not to reach out and make her. I fought back the desire to step forward, to lean close into her, to seize her arms and shake her roughly, to slap her, to jar her voice open with force, to bully the words out of her.
‘Please, tell me.’ I swallowed back tears. ‘Help us.’
There was a sudden stillness in the room. Her hands loosened then clasped tight around her swollen abdomen, claw-like. Her breathing was suddenly too loud, grating in the stifling space.
‘Come back tomorrow ... or the next day ... when I’m less tired.’
I fought the desire to demand she tell me now – I couldn’t be certain she would even survive the night – but she twisted away from me, her body again curling up into itself.
There seemed nothing more to say. I’d been dismissed. I would not get anything more out of her this night. Turning, I stumbled back towards the door.
‘There are things I can tell you ... about the darkness.’
I froze as my hand seized upon the door handle. And waited. Waited.
But the only other thing she said before lapsing into an uneasy slumber was, ‘Now go. Leave me alone with my sin. It’s all I’ve got left. These moments.’
Opening the door to escape, I wanted so desperately to hate her. But I just couldn’t. Because there was a tomorrow for me at least.
AND ALL OUR TOMORROWS LIGHT THE WAY ...
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Blindly, I ran – uncaring of the startled looks from the Anakim guarding Ellen Jacobi’s room. The corridor closed around me and I was desperate for fresh air, not realising I was holding my breath until I crashed against a solid, immoveable object. Protective hands came up to hold me and, gasping, I drew in a lungful of sandalwood aftershave.
‘St. John.’ My voice, like the rest of me, was shaken.
‘It’s all right, Sage. I heard it all.’ The deep timbre of his voice was reassuring, as was the firmness of his chest and arms where they wrapped around me, holding me close. Looking up through wet eyelashes, I beheld my fiancé who had obviously taken a quick shower as his hair was damp and he was wearing a clean pair of jeans and a white t-shirt. He looked so alive, so vital, it was hard to believe that the poison was even now devouring his mind.
‘No! Oh please, no! Not you!’ I moaned, feeling the pain of helplessness engulf me as I looked upon his beloved self.
‘Forgive me if I presumed ...’ The colour of his face drained, but only when he pulled away stiffly did I realise that he had misunderstood my words.
With a strangled cry, I held him fast and cursed myself inwardly. ‘St. John! Listen ... please ... you don’t understand. I won’t lose you. I won’t. I can’t.’
He looked thunderstruck. Then, wheeling me around, he headed towards the front door, taking me with him. In a voice that brooked no opposition, he threw at his brothers, ‘We’re going out. Leave us be.’
He threw open the single solid door and strode through, leading me from the safe house and into the crisp night air. My eyes acclimatised to this new light – not quite night, not quite dawn – as moonlight spilt upon the gardens and dimly-lit streetscape.
I didn’t have the breath to ask where we were going, I simply trusted that he knew where he was taking me. The insubstantial houses began to melt gradually as the moon, by some trick of perspective every step we took, rose higher. But when St. John called a halt to the small trek, two blocks away from the safe house, it was a surprise: we had reached a gated, private garden. The high walls were unable to completely hide the overhanging foliage.
‘In here,’ St. John said.
My eyes widened. ‘We can’t go in there. It’s private. No trespassers allowed.’
‘So is the Garden of Eden, Sage. What’s the difference?’ His green eyes gleamed with gently mocking laughter.
Put like that, I had nothing to say. The mood lightened. Shrugging, I acquiesced, as St. John somehow miraculously opened the locked gate and we stepped inside.
It was a moonlit dream. And the world fell away.
Bright vines wound their way around the perimeter where the paved stones meandered to skirt a stone sundial. The path was bathed white with moonlight, and the darkness creeping at its edges hummed with insects or, in the overgrowth, the skittering of some nocturnal animal; no doubt a prowling neighbourhood cat.
As we entered its guarded, green enclosure, I opened my mouth to ask why he had brought us here, but St. John closed the garden gate behind us and pulled me unceremoniously into his arms to kiss me thoroughly and at some length.
He did not let me go until we were both breathless and his green eyes sparkled with a fusion of annoyance and passion as he said huskily, ‘You are as my life, Sage. Never forget that.’
I felt my cheeks flush brightly as they always did when I felt nervous – but this time it was also from a rare excitement and pleasure – and he smiled knowingly, kissing me with greater tenderness and more gently still. Keeping his arm snaked about my waist, we passed a barrier of dark, drooping, willow-like trees and came to a wooden bench where presently we sat down. I only realised that St. John was barefoot when he crossed his long legs in front of him and the perfume drifted up from the crushed flowers beneath our feet.
‘One of my brothers lives in that house.’ St. John nodded in the direction of the inessential brick townhouse across the groomed lawns. ‘His wife loved this garden. I remember her planting the row of iceberg roses over there some fifty years ago.’
I looked over to where the rose bushes with their white buds were once more coming into chaste bloom. The established canes at the base were thick and gnarled with age, the new growth climbing amongst and intertwining with the ivy creeping along the high wall, and wondered at the woman who had gardened here, planting them in their infancy with such loving care.
‘You sound like you remember those days well. Were they happier times?’ I asked, intrigued because I still knew so little of his past – and perhaps now would never know.
‘Simpler times. Happier perhaps for him. He had found his soul mate ... He accepted that she did not share his immortality. He would tell you that regardless of the brevity of time they shared, it was more than enough for him.’ St. John’s voice was dreamy in the garden’s darkened setting. ‘I sat here so many nights, wondering how my brother could bear the knowledge of her inevitable demise.’
I bowed my head, keenly aware of the fact that St. John and his brothers had lost so much, cursed as they were with their angelic genetic inheritance. Time was cruelly sluggish and hoarded its many secrets, but when it desired to share them, it raced madly to the finish line.
St. John had not spoken of the poison or Ellen Jacobi – but what was there to say? I knew he loved me and that he had carried a terrible burden of duty these long years. I could only help him bear it in the days to come ... at which point his diseased mind would collapse, having rotted like
an apple from within.
Choked with emotion, I whispered, ‘When ... when did she die?’
St. John did not answer and when I looked at him, I realised he was not listening. He was staring across at the climbing roses, at the new buds unfolding innocently, with a strange look on his face. ‘Her babies outlived her. They are well tended.’
I started, but then understood that he was referring to the roses.
He was lost in his memories. ‘There was a long, wet season the year she passed. Winter seemed to be never ending ... March, 1994 ... But she wasn’t aware of it ... She was long gone. She was only in her forties when the doctors diagnosed Parkinson’s.’
‘Oh.’ My breath caught on a sad moan.
Sighing, he heaved a breath and the grief and regret eased as he said, ‘You would have liked her very much, I expect. There was something about her ... the brightness of her spirit.’
And now I understood why St. John had brought me here.
‘Your brother has an eternity in which to mourn her.’ My voice held pity and a lament.
He gave a hoarse, bitter laugh. ‘Sage, you fear what you cannot understand nor control. But it is not within your power to change what must be. Gabriel, as cynical as he often is, believes in Providence.’
I frowned, promising fiercely. ‘I will save you. I will find a cure.’
Whatever he saw on my face made St. John offer a soft oath. ‘Mon cœur, there may have been regrets if I had lived my lifetime without finding you, my soulmate, but finding you – loving you and you loving me in turn – has given me the strength to fulfil my sworn duty.’
He reached out to stroke my cheek with the back of his fingers. Involuntarily, I shivered and his gaze swept over my slim frame, under which my skin tingled in sensitive awareness. I reached out to push a damp lock of brass coloured hair from his forehead and he caught my hand and kissed it before saying, ‘Sage. Whatever happens, you will not fail. Not this quest. Not me. Do not fear what others tell you about the darkness; for there is no source of darkness in this universe. The Creator would have it no other way. There is merely the presence of light and, in the visual absence of it, there is shadow.’