“I will pray.” Elam nodded downstream. “You’d better get going.”
He gave Elam a military salute and chased after Hannah. As his horse disappeared into the thick forest, Elam waited, listening to the approaching hoofbeats. He let the bloody bandage dangle over the ground for a moment, then rode along the creek’s muddy shoreline, following it upstream as he squeezed more blood onto the ground.
“That should do it,” he said out loud. “We’ll see if Devin takes the bait, and then we’ll try to find Valcor.” After patting the mare’s neck, he gave her a gentle nudge with his heels. “Okay, Legossi, let’s make tracks!”
Sapphira bolted upright in bed. Sweat dampened her nightgown and plastered her sleeves against her skin. The dream was awful. A man jumped out of a window with a sword and swung it at Elam and Hannah, but the dream suddenly ended. She never saw what happened.
Sapphira focused her bleary eyes on the portal screen, now just a vortex of fuzzy orange light. How strange! Had she shut it down and not remembered? Waving her hand at it, she whispered, “Expand,” but the dim eddies just swirled like deaf pixies, dancing on without a care.
Sapphira stared at a stubborn rash that had recently invaded her palm. Could the irritation be hampering her power? She touched it with her fingertip, reinflaming its awful itch, but she resisted the urge to scratch.
She pushed gently on Acacia’s back. “You’d better get up. Something’s wrong.”
Acacia rose to her elbows, barely opening her eyes. “What? What’s wrong?”
“The screen is off, and it won’t come back on.”
Acacia lifted an eyebrow. “Didn’t that happen once before?”
“Yes. Elam got a bunch of tar on the Ovulum. But it’s not black this time. It won’t expand at all.”
“Don’t worry about Elam. He’s been around for a lot of centuries. He knows what he’s doing.”
“Maybe you’re right.” Sapphira scratched her head and yawned through her reply. “I’m going to get ready for the day, and if the screen’s still blank, I’ll start worrying about Elam.”
“You do that.” Acacia turned over and nestled into her pillow. “It’s Easter morning, so we’re allowed to sleep in.”
“But we still have to eat.” Sapphira shoved her again. “And it’s your turn to get food today.”
Acacia sat up and frowned. “It is my turn, isn’t it?”
“I’m afraid so.” Sapphira rose to her feet and, with her vision still blurry, stumbled toward the museum, ready to step through her routine wash her face from the basin, measure the tree’s growth, pick out the new books she would read, and sit in front of the portal to watch Elam for a few hours before kicking back for a quiet afternoon of reading.
After splashing in the basin and drying her face, she picked up a measuring tape from a shelf and set one end on the ground near the slender trunk. Then, pushing her face in among the lush green leaves, she unraveled the tape against the trunk, moving it upward until it reached the top of the growth core, a height that roughly equaled her own. She pressed her thumb on the mark, and, after extracting herself from the foliage, read the tape and sighed. “Still sixty-three inches.”
Gazing at the surrounding shelves, she located the magneto bricks she had installed and counted the bright rainbow colors. All seven seemed to be working, but whether or not they did much good from so far away was impossible to tell.
She grabbed a pencil and a nearby scroll and marked down the tree’s measurement. “You haven’t grown an inch in three years now.” Rolling back to the beginning of her records, she tapped the pencil on the parchment. “I almost forgot! If I’m marking time correctly in the upper world, today marks one thousand years since you sprouted!”
Sapphira closed the scroll and put it away, smiling as she turned back to the tree. “Shall we have an anniversary celebration, or ” She stopped and stared. Something new hung at the end of one of the branches, something white and spherical.
Sapphira sang out her sister’s name, extending the syllables. “Acacia! You need to see this!”
“Coming!” Acacia called.
Sapphira set her palm under the fruit and slowly lifted. It was light, much lighter than she expected. Caressing it with her fingers, she marveled at its tactile surface, more like the lumpy buds of cauliflower than the slick peel of an apple or a pear.
Acacia hummed a lively tune as she entered but suddenly stopped and smiled. “We have fruit!”
“Yes.” Sapphira rubbed the fruit with her thumb. “It’s kind of strange, though. It feels sort of fibrous, like it might be soft and flaky.”
“So, shall we have it for breakfast?” Acacia asked, reaching for the fruit.
“Wait!” Sapphira grabbed Acacia’s wrist.
Acacia pulled back. “Wait for what?”
“If this is the tree of life, it might make us live forever without ever getting hungry.”
“Right. I thought that was the idea.”
Sapphira cocked her head to the side. “Well . . . do you really want to live forever? I mean, this isn’t exactly heaven. I know we’re not aging now, but maybe we will someday, and from what I’ve read about heaven, I’d like to get there eventually.”
Acacia scratched her scalp through her tangled white hair and laughed under her breath. “All this time we’ve been begging the tree to produce fruit, and now that it’s here, are we going to change our minds?”
“Sometimes you have to when reality kind of smacks you in the face.”
Acacia tapped the fruit with her finger, making it swing back and forth. “So what should we do with it?”
Sapphira laid a hand over her heart. “Let’s promise each other that we won’t eat it unless we’re truly starving, like if for some reason we can’t get any food from the upper world.”
“That doesn’t make sense. Even if we were starving, we still wouldn’t want to live forever, would we?”
“I don’t know what I’d do if I were starving.” Sapphira caressed the fruit with her fingertip. “But it can’t be a coincidence that it showed up after exactly a thousand years, can it? It has to mean something.”
“True, but we don’t have anything but guesses.”
Sapphira leaned to the side and peeked at the portal screen. “Maybe we’ll see something today that will make it all clear. We always seem to get messages from the Ovulum whenever we really need them.”
Acacia leaned with her. “I don’t think we’re going to learn much from it. It’s still just a column.”
“I noticed.” Sapphira crossed her arms and began tapping her foot.
Acacia wrapped her fingers around Sapphira’s wrist. “I can read your mind, Sister. You’re not going to traipse over to Glasgow to see what’s going on.”
Sapphira stopped tapping. “Why not? With our disguises, we could get there without anyone noticing us. We’ll be wearing our sunglasses.”
“Oh, sure,” Acacia said, rolling her eyes. “I can see the people on the train, pointing at us. ‘Look at the poor little blind girls all dressed up in their frilly bonnets. Aren’t they cute?’”
“But today is Easter, so no one will think anything’s unusual. And maybe we won’t need bonnets at all. I read about a new hair dye that might work.”
“Another one? Those chemicals did nothing but give you a rash, and, besides, we can’t color our eyes. Wearing sunglasses might raise a lot of pity, but it’s not going to get us to Glasgow.” Acacia took Sapphira’s hand. “Look. Even if you could get there, how would you ever find Elam?”
Sapphira heaved a big sigh. “I guess you’re right, but when I can’t keep an eye on him, I just ” She pulled her hand slowly away from Acacia. “My palm! The rash is gone!”
Acacia touched Sapphira’s clean, healthy skin. “It healed overnight?”
“No, it itched terribly this morning.” Sapphira swung her head toward the tree. “The last time I remember scratching it was right b
efore I touched the fruit.”
“How could fruit heal your rash?”
Sapphira caressed her palm with her finger. “Maybe it has medicinal properties.”
“And maybe it was a miracle.” Acacia touched the cross resting behind the waistband of Sapphira’s long gray skirt, part of the dreary outfit she had scavenged from a charity box. “After all the miracles you’ve seen,” Acacia said, “I don’t understand why you get so jumpy about Elam.”
Sapphira pulled out the cross and gazed at its seemingly invulnerable surface. “I guess you’re right.”
“I know what we can do!” Acacia whirled around and marched toward the exit corridor, her own mousy skirt spinning around her legs. “Let’s go visit Yereq. Maybe the screen will be on by the time we get back.”
“Wait for me!” Sapphira hustled to catch up, whispering to her cross, “Give me light!” Instantly, a bright flame danced across the slender wood, smokeless and reaching tiny yellow limbs toward the cave’s ceiling. As the two walked silently through the tunnel, Sapphira reflected on the cross’s eerie glow and repeated the words to herself, “Give me light.” Though she hadn’t spoken them out loud this time, the command seemed to echo in her ears. “Give me light. Give me light.” She blinked at the undulating flames and shook her head. If there was a deeper message hiding behind those simple words, it wasn’t ready to show itself yet.
Now accustomed to the once forbidden path to the mobility room, Sapphira took little notice of the empty growth chambers lining the final corridor that led to the massive vault-like room. Even the bones of dead giants were easy to skip around. The stench of their rotting flesh had long since diminished, so they were just a morbid collection of stones the girls could easily dodge.
Now, marching right into the room seemed easy, almost too easy. The once prohibited journey had become like a stroll to the library, a way to pass the time. Sapphira raised her cross near Yereq’s growth chamber, illuminating the ten-foot-tall giant floating within the recess of the stony wall. “Hello, Yereq,” Sapphira sang. “It’s me.”
The sleeping giant’s face remained stony at first, but slowly, ever so slowly, a weak smile appeared.
“Someday I’m going to wake you up,” she continued, “but I can’t yet, not until I figure out the code in Mardon’s journal.” She turned to Acacia and let out a heavy sigh. “Do you ever get tired of hearing me say that?”
“I got tired of it after the tenth time.” Acacia nodded at the chamber. “But Yereq seems to enjoy it.”
Sapphira lifted the cross higher, sending the light over Yereq again. His smile spread across his face. She lowered the cross and gazed at her twin but didn’t want to ask her burning question for the hundredth time. Though it remained unspoken today, Acacia answered it anyway with her usual gracious tone. “Don’t worry. If we ever wake him, he’ll love you.”
Sapphira knelt at the base of the growth chamber. The counter now read “8550,” just a few ticks lower than the previous reading. She tapped the counter with her finger. “I think it’s still dropping at the same rate.”
“It’s moving so slowly,” Acacia said, “we’ll have to wait till the twenty-first century to see it hit zero.”
After rising to her feet, Sapphira waved the burning cross at the seven or eight chambers within reach of her light. “Maybe, but if Yereq and these giants wake up in a foul mood, I don’t want to be around.”
Acacia raised her finger. “If we take a meter, we won’t have to be anywhere near them. We’ll know when they’re about to hatch.”
Sapphira knelt in front of the chamber’s hearth again and pried the meter loose. “That’s strange.” She turned it over and examined the back. “No connection wires.”
Acacia crouched low. “So it doesn’t do anything?”
Sapphira flipped it to its digital side. “Maybe it’s just a visible timer that matches controlling timers embedded in the magneto bricks themselves.”
“How do you know so much about magneto bricks?”
Sapphira slid the meter into her pocket. “I helped Mardon with his experiments a lot more than I care to talk about.”
Devin stooped next to the stream and pinched a clump of blood-stained mud. “Only one set of tracks follows the trail.”
Palin guided his horse into the stream. “The other two might have stayed in the water. The bed is solid enough.”
Rising to his full height, Devin shook his head. “If they wanted to throw us off that way, all three would have stayed in the creek. The blood trail was meant to steer us away from the demon witch.”
“Shall we separate, then?” Palin pointed upstream. “The boy is wounded. It won’t be hard to catch him.”
“He is of no consequence, and I will need your help until my next infusion of power.” Devin limped toward his horse, a muscular roan gelding with a cropped mane.
Palin jumped down and gave Devin a boost onto its back. “When will you perform the next infusion?” Palin asked. “Your limp is getting worse every day.”
“Do you think I haven’t noticed?” Devin pulled out the candlestone’s chain and dangled the gem at his chest. “The blood we have is getting old. I want to wait until we can use Thigocia’s blood.”
“I see. New life from new blood.”
Devin guided his horse into the water and pointed downstream. “The witch will probably head for the River Clyde. She’s a crafty devil, so we’d better hurry or we’ll lose the trail.”
“Any more ideas about the man who came out of that egg?” Palin asked.
“No, but if he tries to stop us” Devin wrapped his fingers around Excalibur’s hilt “his head will be looking up at his body from a pool of blood.”
Chapter 3
Gabriel’s Gift
January, 1949
Elam fastened a pin on the diaper and poked the baby’s fat little belly. “Feel better now?” The baby made a splurting sound from underneath his diaper and giggled.
“Rupert!” Elam moaned. “Not again!”
A woman’s voice sang from across the room. “I’ll do it, Elam.”
Elam smiled at Mrs. Nathanson as she crossed the enormous nursery, sidestepping coloring books, a plastic baseball bat, and three toddlers snuggling blankets on the soft carpet. He nodded at the snoozing children. “Except for Rupert and those three, all the under-twos are changed and in their cribs.”
“You really are a gentleman!” Mrs. Nathanson said, taking Rupert from Elam. “Just like” she suddenly turned her head “just like always.”
Elam wondered about the strange hesitation but chalked it up to her frequent state of emotional upheaval, the longing for a child that she and her husband had never been able to have. He watched her loving hands as they laid the six-month-old boy down her fingers tender as she caressed the wiggling body, deft as she kept the pins from sticking soft flesh, and playful as she tapped Rupert’s nose and cooed at him.
He let out a quiet sigh. Had his own mother been so loving? Had she protected him from pain and exposure? How many years did she weep for her lost son? Did she die in grief, never able to break free from the pain of a mother’s empty arms?
After four thousand years, only a shadow of his mother’s image remained. Still, this childless woman’s care for orphaned babies brought a familiar warmth, something he longed for that had gone wanting for too many centuries. Even her eyes somehow seemed familiar, like those of a friendly stranger who had smiled for no reason and then walked away, disappearing into the passage of time.
Mrs. Nathanson patted his hand. “Don’t worry about checking the escape tunnels tonight. I don’t think it will rain, so they should stay dry.”
“I’ll check them anyway. I’m trying to memorize all the paths in the maze.”
She gazed toward the ceiling, and her voice changed to a dreamy whisper. “I memorized them a long time ago. It’s fun to explore.”
“You memorized all of them? Why? They?
??re only for emergencies.”
“I sort of feel at home down there. It’s so peaceful.” She shook her head as if casting off her dream, but she kept her smile. “You’d better hurry to the meeting now. Patrick will want to begin on time.”
“Oh, yeah. Right!” Elam bolted toward the door. “Thank you!”
“Dress warm!”
“I will!” He grabbed a sweater from the back of a chair and rocketed from the room, sprinting down a long, high corridor as he slid his arms into the sweater’s sleeves. Although the mansion seemed designed by a stuffy aristocrat, with marble floors, brass doorknobs, and sculpted columns, neither the master of the house nor his wife would ever scold him for his mad dash down a hallway. After all, with about sixty orphans of various ages, shapes, and sizes living in a human beehive, the house always seemed abuzz with activity. No one would take notice of a multi-thousand-year-old teenager breezing by.
Elam slowed and turned down another corridor, a narrower one with a low ceiling and rough walls. Grabbing a lantern and a matchbook from a shelf along the way, he stopped at an entry to a dark hall. A heavy oak door, usually closed and locked, stood open, probably in anticipation of his arrival.
Striking a match, he touched the flame to the lantern’s wick. The fire crawled across the braided cotton and leaped upward into the glass chimney, giving rise to a beautiful image in his mind Sapphira Adi, her white hair igniting and the flames spreading down her lithe body just before she brought Acacia back to life. Though tears filled his eyes, he smiled. He would find her again someday . . . somehow.
He stepped through the doorway into another corridor. Its ceiling was so low, he instinctively ducked, though he knew he could stand erect without scraping his scalp. A few of the ceiling’s ancient, wooden beams bent toward the floor, and a musty odor hung in the dank air.
The corridor ended at another open doorway that led to a much larger room. He soft-stepped in and found Patrick seated where he expected him to be, in one of seven chairs at a round table set precisely over a circular compass etched into the floor. Two lanterns sat on the table, their wicks burning brightly.