First Meeting
“Again, when a wicked person turns away from the wickedness he has committed and does what is just and right, he shall save his life. Because he considered and turned away from all the transgressions that he had committed, he shall surely live; he shall not die.” Ezekiel 18: 27,28
Zombie-like, Atarah lifted her arms and allowed Mother to slide a silk tunic over her freshly-washed hair. The tunic dropped around her torso and ended in a soft fullness around her ankles. The attention from Mother felt strange. Atarah couldn’t remember a single time during childhood when her mother had done so much as pick out her daughter’s clothing or wipe a smudge from her face. Mother had rarely, if ever, even dressed herself.
It wasn’t that her mother didn’t love her, nor was Mother lazy. Mother had feared not pleasing Father and he insisted Mother conform to cultural expectations in order to garner the favor of his associates. Society dictated that wealthy women assign care of their children to household slaves. Mother had obeyed. Still, even though Mother had complied with his wishes and left the care of her daughters to slaves, Atarah had never felt unloved. At least not by Mother. Nor had Mother’s character changed.
Circumstances had changed. That was all. Today society demanded something different.
Early this morning, Father had instructed Mother to deck out Atarah in her fanciest clothing. Still desperate to make him happy, Mother was doing exactly that. Even though they all knew this would be the last time she and Mother would spend together.
Atarah absently stood by the bed in Mother’s bedchamber fiddling with the beads on the sleeve of her tunic. Mother fussed over her as though she was preparing for her wedding. Or funeral.
In a way, the older woman was doing both.
Though Atarah could hear people moving about the house and the aroma of fresh bread drifted in through the window from the slave kitchen beyond the garden, she hadn’t eaten and had talked to no one but Mother since arriving home the day before. After their initial emotional reunion, the older woman bustled about cheerfully as though life flowed past worry-free.
Of course it didn’t. They both knew Dagaar would own Atarah by day’s end. Atarah shivered. She had sealed her fate by rebelling against Father and the city elders. Mother’s decision to go along with Father’s wishes to have Gadreel sacrificed felt like the ultimate betrayal.
Worse, Mother seemed unaffected even though she knew her grandson would die.
As thoughts of Gadreel knifed into her, Atarah’s back stiffened and her nails dug into her palms. She looked past the mahogany-paneled fireplace to the open double balcony doors where she could see the backs of not one, but two sentries. The rabble who had helped Dagaar capture her, stood guard around the house making certain she didn’t leave. They would execute her if she even attempted escape, though most would avoid that if possible, preferring instead to witness the fate planned for her.
What mental and physical torture had he planned for her? Her mind plunged into a whirl of possibilities before she succeeded in pushing them away by visualizing the soft skin of the baby’s rosy cheeks.
She was despised. Untouchable. But the disdain of the city didn’t faze her. Only Gadreel mattered right now.
Her brain shuffled through the dreaded impending events, struggling to sort through them. She spread the facts out before her, hoping to organize them into a plan of action. She wasn’t aware of everything, but she knew a few things: Dagaar and Father were off organizing events. Very soon guards would escort Mother and Atarah to the statue of Ninlel. In an elaborate ceremony intended to mimic a wedding, Father would hand Atarah over to Dagaar while the crowd cheered. But that would be only after Gadreel . . . Atarah shook away her angry fearful thoughts.
Mother’s eager chatter darted around outside the bubble of darkness surrounding Atarah. “That shade of blue matches your eyes perfectly.” Mother fingered the pearls sewn at regular intervals into the embroidery at her daughter’s neckline. “I had them attached while you were gone because I hoped you’d come back and you’d need special new clothing.” She beamed at Atarah and gave her shoulder a quick hug.
The lilt to Mother’s voice bewildered Atarah.
“Mother!” Atarah took the older woman’s hands in hers and forced eye contact. Was it possible Atarah had misjudged Mother and the older woman didn’t comprehend the horrors about to transpire? Or was she so happy to have her daughter home she’d determined to enjoy their last few moments together? Was she in denial about everything?
Atarah spoke slowly and deliberately, trying to make the other woman understand. “Gadreel is going to die. I’ll belong to that vile slave!”
A flicker of sadness glimmered in the older woman’s face before she erased the expression and withdrew her hands. “Let me get you a covering.” She hurried away and returned with a robe of lightweight white wool interwoven with silver threads. “Talking about things only makes my chest hurt and it can’t help.” So Mother did understand.
Atarah wondered what Father had done to Mother when he discovered she had helped her. He would have punished Mother somehow, even if it was no worse than further withdrawing his love.
“There’s no point to talking.” Mother pulled the garment over Atarah’s arms and smoothed out the shoulders. “There’s nothing either of us can do. Your father says I am to take you to Gadreel’s dedication this afternoon.”
Mother’s lifeless acceptance shocked Atarah. Anger rose in her. “No! I won’t!”
“You know full well there’s no escape.” Mother’s face hardened. “If you run they’ll kill both of us before you step foot out the door.”
Atarah involuntarily glanced toward the hidden exit at the end of the room.
“Your father closed that off as soon as you left.” Mother was matter-of-fact. “Even if by some miracle you could get out of here alive, I have no idea how to find Zaquiel and neither do you.”
“He has Gadreel?” Atarah didn’t inquire about Nympha. She’d heard her sister in the corridor with a gentleman earlier.
“Yes. Zaquiel has Gadreel.”
“And Shua’s with him.”
“Yes.”
Pity for the slave battled with Atarah’s anger. Atarah firmly believed Shua loved Gadreel and didn’t want him harmed, and she knew the Nephal was using her former slave for his own purposes. She also understood the near-impossibility of resisting any Nephilim.
Still, Atarah had avoided Zaquiel’s control when she steeled herself not to look at him or listen to his voice. She didn’t understand how, but resisting evil worked when she made up her mind ahead of time not to succumb. Shua had seen Atarah resist him and other Nephilim for years. She’d warned the slave about the Nephilim. Why couldn’t Shua have cared enough about the baby to do the same? If she had, they might have saved precious Gadreel.
No! She must not think negatively. She had to stay hopeful. Positive.
Mother cut into her thoughts. “We have to go to Gadreel’s ceremony. Dagaar told your father he expects you to attend and your father ordered me to get you there.”
“Dagaar! How can he tell Father anything?”
“Your father is older. Changed. Especially since the giant attack. Dagaar conscripted every man in the city and stationed armed men at all vulnerable places along the city walls and at the gates. He’s the one who came up with the solution of dropping the children over the wall to appease the giants. And it worked! They left.”
“Children? Over the wall?” Atarah felt a shudder, like someone had walked over her grave.
“If not for Dagaar’s ingenuity we’d all be dead. So of course you father can’t spare Gadreel with all the other children gone.”
“The giants are cannibals, Mother.” The taste of bile rose to the back of Atarah’s throat.
Mother gave her a hard look. “Everything’s different now. I’m a little confused about how it all happened so quickly, but the strange sky, the earthquakes, the economy and . . .” She shrugged.
The implication of her mother’s unfinished thought bored painfully into Atarah. Mother blamed her. She was telling Atarah that though she had done so unintentionally, her rebellion had strengthened Father’s bond with Dagaar and sealed her own fate. The power curve had finally flipped upside down when she fled with Gadreel because Father needed Dagaar to find his daughter and bring her back. Only the baby’s safe return would allow Father to maintain his position in the community.
“Don’t judge your father. He feared losing all this.” Mother’s gesture swept the room, but Atarah understood she referred to the whole of Father’s possessions. “Your father is a loving man. He wouldn’t have signed the documents turning you over to Dagaar if you hadn’t run, but when you did you left him no choice. You can see that, can’t you?”
“Yes, I can see that,” Atarah admitted reluctantly. Maybe down deep her father possessed a loving character. Unfortunately, fear of losing his money and position had changed him, sapped his courage, rendered him cruel. “But that doesn’t make it right. There’s no excuse for selling your daughter or killing your own grandson. Surely you see that.” The defensive expression on her mother’s face told Atarah the older woman didn’t understand at all. “Never say that again! Your father loves the boy. I love the boy.” Father’s decisions seemed logical to Mother. Atarah may as well have spoken in a foreign tongue.
Mother walked to the balcony door and when the man on guard turned to look at her, she smiled and raised her voice so he could hear through the glass. “Everything’s fine.” He moved off to the side, still vigilant.
The older woman stared into the garden. “I can’t help you again. They’re watching me as closely as they’re watching you. Besides, I couldn’t do that to your Father.”
Fear assumes many forms, none of them attractive. Before her eyes, Atarah recognized fear in the shape of selfish weakness posing as love. Mother took Atarah’s face into icy hands. “I think Dagaar is just a scared little boy underneath. Try to remember that. It might help.” The fear had changed into a lie masquerading as tolerance.
Atarah pulled back. It didn’t matter to her why Dagaar was who he was. He could have chosen good instead of evil at every decision-making turn in his life. Even if he had been victimized.
“You know what your father has done for us, Atarah?” A gentle smile glowed on Mother’s face. “He made Zaquiel promise to sedate Gadreel. The little guy will go painlessly into the arms of Ninlel without feeling a thing even though he is a young giant. You should be so grateful to your father. He is making a great sacrifice for us all.”
Atarah stared numbly at her mother. Who was this woman?
“If you’d seen the giants, you’d understand.” Mother’s voice deepened as if to assert authority and force her daughter to see things her way. “We’re doing the community as well as Gadreel a favor. You wouldn’t want him to grow into one of those monsters.”
The sight and sound of her mother made Atarah sick.
*****
The shouts grew ever louder until, at last, Shem saw the people. What appeared to be the entire population of the city crowded the area surrounding the tall bronze statue of a grinning god. A cloud of black smoke bellowed from a vent at the top of the god’s head and swelled over the crowd. Two parallel bronze arms reaching toward the crowd led to an opening in the torso which revealed a hot blaze flashing orange and yellow in the statue’s belly.
An invisible black oppression Shem could understand only as spiritual crept along his skin like the legs of a spider.
On a platform beside the statue, agitated priests chanted fervent prayers, some kneeling, others grasping snakes and gyrating suggestively in a feverish serpent-like dance. A few of the priests, bare to the waist, gazed up at the god in mesmerized worship, gashing their own shoulders and backs with long knives or flailing themselves with whips. One of the priests flung his bare torso against the statue and fell backward writhing in pain. The acrid odor of fire and scorched flesh assaulted the air and the crowd shrieked louder.
A ring of men and women dressed in the expensive clothing and jewels that proclaimed they belonged to the ruling class, pressed close to the stage leaping and shouting. Some chanted in concert with the priests. Others appeared dazed.
Few children dotted the group. If the entire population of the city was present as Shem suspected, what had happened to the children?
Residents in drab garb composed the circle directly behind the wealthy group. They looked like slaves, though a few of the better-dressed of these were probably pampered house slaves. The hysteria in the second group rivaled the frenzy of the privileged spectators in front.
At the very back of the crowd men wore only loin cloths. These were the lowest of low, the slaves who worked the roads and mucked stalls. In hypnotic imitation of the priests, they flagellated themselves in worship. Allowing them to gather with the rest of the populace today indicated a momentous occasion.
*****
The crowd in front of Atarah wriggled in ecstasy, a mass of maggots on a smear of excrement. She stood apart from them, near a group of slaves wearing only loin cloths. They struck themselves with whips and cut their own arms and legs with swords. Dagaar’s cronies encircled her. Mother stayed at her right. The leering image of Ninlel filled the sky, dwarfing the guards while puffing-up their authority.
The smell of blood from self-inflicted wounds hung around the men. Atarah crept further into the crowd to avoid it. Mother stayed beside her and the circle of men moved with them, hedging her in.
Evil held Atarah hostage.
Anxiously, her gaze raked the crowd, her heart thudding painfully in her chest. Where was Gadreel? From a group of men directly opposite her, Dagaar caught Atarah’s eye, pumped both fists above his head and hooted triumphantly. Mother shifted closer to rest what she intended as a comforting hand on Atarah’s back. Instead of soothing her daughter, her touch burned hot and repulsive.
Atarah felt rather than saw several Nephilim saunter to the edge of the group behind her. The air pulsated with malevolence. Thick smoke pouring from the bronze god momentarily cut off Atarah’s view of Dagaar and she covered her mouth with the scarf Mother had added to her outfit at the last minute to keep from breathing it in. Fits of coughing seized the men around her.
*****
Shem nudged his elephant cautiously forward. Engrossed in the insane worship onstage, no one in the crowd seemed to notice the newcomers behind them. Occasionally, smoke from the bronze god would billow across the crowd obscuring Shem’s view.
A group of ten or fifteen Nephilim approached from the back of the crowd facing him. Shem had never seen the Nephilim before, but their extreme height and stunning physiques made them easily recognizable as the wicked beings Father had warned about for years. Even from a distance Shem could feel the hypnotic spirit of pure evil emanating from them. Power sizzled around them like an invisible fire.
Yet the people thought of these fallen angels who had rebelled against the One True God and been cast from heaven as gods. The inhabitants of the place had so seared their consciences they had no ability to recognize evil unless it came in the form of the Nephilim’s offspring – the giants. The evil hidden deep inside the Nephilim shone outwardly on the visages of the giants. Those monsters were evil inside and out.
He fought a strong urge to turn his elephant toward home and get out of there. Fast. But a feeling in his gut told him to stay.
Bavai spread her ears and fanned them in warning. She rocked back and forth moaning, a reaction Shem had never before observed in his elephant. Her vocalizations mingled with the tumult added to the overall confusion.
In response to the elephant’s loud cries, one man near the middle of the group closest to Shem turned and mouthed, “Mad elephant!” With terrified eyes fastened on Bavai the man tugged at a worshiper beside him. His companion, a man with a serpent tattooed on his neck, roughly shoved him away while maintaining rapt attention on the performance of the priests.
*****
In the midst of the confusion caused by the coughing, a whisper of fabric brushed Atarah’s arm. She spun to find Shua staring into her face. Rivulets of horror and remorse coursed down her cheeks in the form of tears. Atarah glanced quickly around for Zaquiel. He was no where in sight and neither was Gadreel. Shua’s expression and posture told Atarah that Zaquiel’s absence had removed his control of the slave. At least for now.
“Gadreel?” Atarah hissed.
“Up there.” Shua nodded toward the stage. “He’s with Nympha and Zaquiel, waiting for the priests to call them up.”
“How soon?”
“The other Nephilim are here. It’s time now.” Even as Shua said the words, Zaquiel rose to his feet and stepped onto the stage with Nympha. A wave of horror enveloped Atarah. She could hear a woman’s voice screaming, “No! No!” but didn’t realize the screams came from her own mouth.
*****
Shem watched a Nephal step onstage with a woman who held a young boy to her breast. Eyes glazed, she handed the baby over to a priest amid the crowd’s wild cheers. With the applause, a radiant smile broke over her face and she bowed to the people. The Nephal beamed magnificently at the woman before he led her, waving regally, away from the stage.
The priest held the baby aloft, turning slowly, displaying the child for the appreciative crowd. The baby hung limply from the priest’s upraised arms. The priest shouted something, an enraptured expression spreading across his face, but clamor drowned out his voice and Shem couldn’t make out the words.
A disruption from the far edge of the crowd drew Shem’s attention. Continually shifting his body to maintain his balance on the agitated elephant’s back, he watched the most beautiful woman he had ever seen draw a serpentine line of movement through onlookers with her body as she pushed to the front.
*****
With thick smoke acting as a screen, Atarah sprang from the guards and shoved through the crowd. Onlookers reached for her. She ducked and bobbed, avoiding hands and arms with new-found agility and strength. A man with a gap between his front teeth grabbed her arm, twirling her around. The sight she saw behind chilled her.
Shua was following Atarah, pushing people back, doing everything she could to protect her friend. As Atarah watched, two of the guards drew up even with the slave. Kicking and shrieking, she threw her body into them, knocking one man sideways and throwing the other off kilter. He stumbled and drew his sword. Shua crumpled to the ground in a pool of blood. Her still form told Atarah help would be futile.
Wrenching free of the gap-toothed man holding her arm, Atarah zig zagged toward the stage, focused on Gadreel.
*****
The volume of the furious mob swelled. Men and women alike clawed at the woman’s clothing and arms. With superhuman strength born of frantic purpose she broke free of them and continued to advance on the stage, her face set like flint. Smoke blew through the crowd again and the next time Shem saw the woman she had reached the stage. She rushed the stairs and grabbed at the priest holding the baby. The priest fell backward as she snatched the child from him, clasping the baby to her breast.
She must be the child’s mother!
With a dawning horror, Shem finally understood the priest’s vile intention and urged his beast forward through the sea of open mouths and angry faces. Spectators charged them, throwing large stones. A few found their mark, hitting Shem and the elephant. Bavai trumpeted with pain. Shem beat away the closer attackers with his long stick, protecting his elephant as best he could.
Shem was only vaguely aware when Bavai, sensing her master’s distress, lifted her trunk and trumpeted with rage. Shem saw the elephant flail with her trunk, blocking blows, lifting men and hurling them over the crowd. He watched the crowd part at the approach of the rampaging elephant and her mad master.
Yet with his eyes fixed on the woman Shem heard nothing. With a certainty he could not explain, Shem knew he was looking at his wife. In slow motion, man and elephant surged as one toward the woman and her child. He saw her eyes find his and lock onto them, but before Shem could get to her, three priests descended on her with murderous wrath and yanked the babe from her arms.
Her face contorted and she dived for them. The priests twisted away, and in one smooth motion, dropped the baby onto the outstretched arms of the burning statue. Apparently unconscious, the innocent rolled to his death in the fiery belly while worshippers, fists whipping in celebration, hugged one another gleefully.
The mother collapsed onto the platform, her screams sounding as though her heart had been ripped from inside her. An instant later, Bavai encircled the woman’s waist with her long trunk and lifted her above the mob. Shem had no idea how many people the elephant trampled in her rush to escape and he didn’t care.
Just outside the city gate, Shem ordered Bavai to sit and lower the hysterical woman to the ground. Bavai complied, still muttering protectively and continuing to sway sideways as she sat.
Shem, heart bumping in his ears, slipped from the elephant’s back and stroked her neck calming her while the young mother emptied the contents of her stomach onto the middle of the road. Empathetic nausea rolled through him, but he held back. Though the sight he’d just witnessed had shaken him to his very core, he dare not give into his emotion. Not yet. Keeping a wary eye on the gate, he took two steps toward the woman, hoping not to frighten her further. She glanced wildly from side to side and backed away, poised to flee.
Before he could get any closer to her, Shem spotted a mob pouring through the city gate. They shouted obscenities, brandishing swords and whips. Shem had only moments to get the woman on the elephant.
“I won’t hurt you.” Shem tried to keep his voice calm, but his words blurted out strident and commanding. The woman stared at him with wide terrified eyes. She didn’t move.
The pursuers approached rapidly. Shem could see their faces and hear their
threats. “That’s Noah’s son!” “Kill them both.” Within moments the men would be on them. A whip cracked. Bavai moved as though to stand. Shem commanded her to stay in place. He patted her neck to calm her.
“Hurry!” Shem’s voice rose with urgency.
The woman tensed. He was scaring her further.
The muscular leader of the mob, a man with glittering black eyes and a serpent tattoo on his neck flourished a long curved sword. “Don’t hurt the woman,” he shouted. “She belongs to me!” She glanced back at him, obviously terrified.
Shem stretched his arms toward the woman and barked. “Let’s go!” Too late he realized his mistake. He’d reached for her exactly as the bronze statue had reached for her babe. She turned and ran from him.
