Conquer the Dark (31 page)

“That
was
the prayer, Celeste,” Azrael said quietly. “Amen.”

A rumble of amens traveled through the small circle, and as everyone pulled back, Celeste hugged Abdullah and patted his back.

“You are so loved, sweetheart, and you have taught us far more than we could have ever taught you.”

An elderly woman in the back of the crowd stood and made her way to the front of it as each angel stood up. She spoke in a flurry with tears streaming down her weathered cheeks, gesturing with her hands.

Kadeem wiped his cheeks with rough, broad palms. “She says the boy has brought the angels to their knees. He has humbled them on their journey, which is the lesson for us, too. None of us is too great to be humbled. If the angels can bow to the innocence of a child, then we should, too. The children are the future. Women and men together working for the good of the future, like the one crying woman who speaks with the voice of an angel said to us. We have just witnessed a miracle.”

The elderly woman closed her eyes and turned her face up to the sky and beat her chest with her gnarled fists. “My great-grandson is no longer sick. He has the white light around him now. There is no black spot in it. The power was in you all working together, not one trying alone. A bundle of many sticks is not easily broken. We must stand together as people against evil!”

A loud murmur broke out in the crowd as Kadeem swiftly turned to the brothers and then crushed his nephew to his side.

“Grandmother has visions. Everyone here knows her word is truth. Please, look at the boy and tell me—we must be realistic and not have false hopes. I don’t want to not have him treated and then—”

“Wait,” Azrael said, pulling the child away from Kadeem’s side to inspect him. After a moment, two huge
tears rose in Azrael’s eyes. “I can’t feel any sickness in him, nor can I see it.” He reached out to Bath Kol. “Look at him, all brothers. Hope can sometimes make one’s eyes see what we wish for, not what is.”

“Den we’re all going blind,” Isda said on a ragged whisper, and shook his head. “I don’t see it no more.”

“Me either.” Celeste shook her head with Aziza.

Kadeem raised the child’s arm, then lifted him up and yelled out, “The boy is healed!”

Pandemonium broke out in the crowd; Kadeem didn’t even need to translate.

Celeste watched the brothers weakly smile and then let their bodies slump with relief. Jubilant voices rang out and people rushed to go to their homes to bring a spontaneous potluck feast together. Vendors closed their stands. A miracle transcended money as everyone headed to Kadeem’s compound.

Threading her arms around Azrael’s waist, Celeste leaned against him beneath a wing, walking down the dirt path with a hundred festive people skipping beside him. He looked down at her at the same time she looked up.

“I know,” she said quietly.

“If we couldn’t have …”

“I know. But you guys did.”

“We all did, you leading us. … But maybe we should pull in our wings now?”

“Uh-uh, they make the people happy to see them. Leave them out for a little while.”

He released a sigh. “I’m not used to this kind of attention, the indulgence makes me uncomfortable.”

“What have we learned today?” She smiled up at him,
wanting so badly to kiss him, but she would never do that in public among people where such a PDA might deeply offend.

“A lot,” he admitted as they entered the enclosed mud-brick courtyard of Kadeem’s home.

“Then you should also know that people get joy out of giving to others and seeing that they’ve made the receiver happy. Azrael, you all have made these people’s lifetime. They just want to offer you some bread and wine and water to say thank you for touching their lives.
Let them
do that and be a gracious receiver.”

He stopped walking and turned to her, letting the throng pass into the space around them. “Celeste, that’s it. You know how you’ve kept asking me how does one voice, your voice, turn on the lights at the end of days?”

“Yeah …”

“Well, look what you just did.” He glanced around. “It was your understanding of how we should approach these good people and make ourselves known.
You
were the one who had the wisdom to usher us in with the boy.
You
were the one who wept for him first. You were the one who said we had to teach, and then insisted that I try—but the child became the professor and I became the student before an entire village … and that became the lesson for me, for them, for my brothers. And then we had to learn that it was about pooling our gifts, the synergy of combined effort … something over the years we’d slowly forgotten.”

He let out a deep sigh as he touched her face and let his hand fall away for the sake of propriety. “The layers of this are profound, Celeste. It was your prayer, your out-loud, heartfelt request that Heaven hear you that made
her open her gates to the boy and rain down mercy on him. I felt it as you were speaking. Ask any of the brothers, we are attuned to that vibration. And it was the boy’s very simple acceptance of his circumstance, without anger or self-pity, that made the lesson even deeper for us, and that child’s transcendence—”

“It wasn’t me,” she murmured, then bit her lip as she thought about it. “He came to you wide-open, unafraid, and
knowing
there was something else out there.”

“Yes, there was that, as with all the children, which is why we are told to come to the Light as a little child, trusting,” Azrael said. “But it was
you
who saw all the elements of this lesson unfolding and knew how to blend them together across cultures and across varying levels of understanding—without judgment … and the people felt that. Even as they laughed at you, you stood your ground, and you did not judge them. Just as when we first met, you did not judge me.”

“How could I judge you, Az? With my past, I definitely can’t cast the first stone.”

“You could have, but you didn’t, and more than that, you accepted me and my difference. Even today, when I so bitterly disappointed your hopes to heal that child on the boat, I didn’t feel judged or that your disappointment was aimed at my failure. You were disappointed for the sake of the child alone. That is a pure emotion. A selfless one. I now better understand your gift, Celeste. You convert the darkness into the Light … even I cannot do that.”

“C’mon, you guys,” Bath Kol said with a wide grin as he bound toward them, “you’re missing the party!”

Pushing them forward, Bath Kol entered the wide
mud-brick room with them and the space had become an instant house party. Sky-blue and white paint made the small, lantern-lit area bright. Murals of pastoral scenes and butterflies added to the gaiety indoors. Wrought-iron chairs, wooden benches, and rusty three-legged stools balanced precariously on the uneven dirt floor. A large steel washtub rested under a well-pump spigot by the door so people could take off their shoes and wash their feet upon entry.

Every age range of women brought food to the tables—fruit, honey, warm whole-wheat pita bread, dried dates, olives—and the buffet just kept coming. Spice vendors left fragrant fresh-ground peppers and herbs in small stone cups, then backed away from the table and the angels with a deep bow. Men brought over bottles of homemade beer and wine and shyly left them for the brothers. Aromatic tea and strong coffee were offered in a way that made it impossible to say no. Incense was left in bundles, some set to burn around the room. Fabrics got left on the chairs, and even small children brought beaded goods and candles to leave on the buffet, which was quickly turning into a makeshift altar. People had emptied their homes and their larders.

Then Kadeem bowed and yielded the floor to Azrael to bless the meal. Each person who was crammed into the room seemed as if he or she were holding his or her breath in case Azrael made another miracle occur while their eyes were closed.

Then the music played.

With eating and dancing and clapping, a celebration of life was in full swing. Finally the old seer came to
Kadeem and whispered something in his ear, and he came to Azrael and Celeste to murmur confidentially.

“She wants to speak to you alone in the back. Is that all right?”

“Of course,” Celeste said, standing quickly with Azrael.

“Good, then come this way.”

Following Kadeem past the partying throng, they left Abdullah to translate for the group. In a small courtyard behind the main building was a little mud home with a piece of red fabric serving as a front door.

Gesturing with her hands, the old woman smiled a toothless grin and sat her bent frame down on a hard wooden stool with a grunt. She smoothed her gnarled hands across the white, embroidered tablecloth, then held both Celeste and Azrael in a cataract-impaired gaze.

As she spoke slowly, Kadeem interpreted, glancing between the old woman and Azrael and Celeste.

“She says you are the ones Daoud had prayed for, but never lived to see. My grandson was a good man and he said the angels would protect what he has guarded.”

The old woman wiped her eyes with trembling hands and let out a soft sigh.

“Grandmother says … there is a guard at Abu Simbel, not far from here—an honest man that Daoud once helped. She says my brother helped bring in the doctors through the priest when his wife was very sick. She almost died and could have taken the unborn child with her when trying to give birth to his first son. This man had Daoud say a prayer and his wife got better. This man swore allegiance to Daoud, if he ever needed help. On the life of his
firstborn son, this man would never betray Daoud. He is the keeper of the key.”

Celeste and Azrael shared a look. The old woman nodded.

“She says Daoud wouldn’t tell her exactly, for fear bad men or demons might try to come and wrest it out of her. She says, ‘I am old and weak, they are big and strong. My great-grandson didn’t want me to be in jeopardy. So he told none of us where this thing is that you seek. He didn’t tell the boy, either, but the boy knows what it looks like.’ “She waited until Kadeem nodded. “It is an alphabet—words, carved in gold inside thick, thick, clear stone. This is what Abdullah says to her when he dreams and cries for Daoud. Then because of the child’s constant lament, she dreamt of this thing, too. It was down deep in the Nile and in a locked chest. A man with a key opened it using a life symbol. That is what she saw in her dreams.”

“A life symbol would make sense as a dream interpretation,” Azrael said, glancing at Celeste.

But the old woman shook her head and frowned when Kadeem translated Azrael’s statement. In a flurry of Arabic she called for a pencil and paper. Once Kadeem had produced it from a kitchen cupboard, she leaned over the paper closely and painstakingly drew the symbol of an ankh.

Pointing at the paper, she stared deeply into Azrael’s eyes and spoke in a firm, confident tone.

“She says this is what the key itself looks like. A man has this key for his job and also around his neck in metal. He works at Abu Simbel. Take Daoud’s prayer cloth to him and show him your wings. That is the only way he
will take you to the place in the water where he dropped the chest that holds the glass and golden book.”

“How far is Abu Simbel from where we are just outside of Aswan?” Celeste looked between Azrael and Kadeem.

“Two hundred and seventy kilometers, roughly,” Ka-deem said.

“I’m not good on the conversion.” Celeste looked at Azrael.

“That would be about one hundred and sixty-eight miles, give or take,” Azrael said. “About three and a half hours, based on the state of the roads and assuming Isda can get us reliable transportation in short order.”

“I know people who have vans and minibuses. They make money from tours. I can ask them for a family emergency,” Kadeem said.

“We would compensate you and your friend if you could make that happen quickly,” Azrael said. “Plus if you could provide a map.”

“No compensation will be accepted,” Kadeem said, slicing his hand through the air. “No. Your money is no good. I am in the presence of the divine who has come to avenge my brother’s death.”

“You saw in the market back at Edfu, we have people, and demons, chasing us.” Celeste reached out and held Kadeem’s arm. “You have a family, and you have Abdullah, and—”

“And you saw that I am not afraid to fight or die, yes?”

Neither Celeste nor Azrael answered, not wanting to be responsible for the injury or death of an innocent man who’d so quickly come to be their friend.

“You are very brave,” Celeste hedged.

“I am a believer. My little nephew says to me, the good people in the carriages are in danger to bad men and demons, and without a thought I run to not allow this. I know what they did to Daoud—they spilled his blood for money and make my family weep. I know these roads, and the guards at Abu Simbel know me. They will be wary of you but I can get to Daoud’s friend to coax him somewhere private so he can see the truth. I can come up with excuses and speak in Arabic to the guards so he can slip away to take you where you must go. I am useful to you, and if I die or get hurt, it is my honor to die for the cause of angels … and for my brother.”

N
ubian villagers sent them
off as if they were soldiers going off to war. Tears and hugs, food and back pats, everyone touched them, sending love and energy that needed no translation. One could feel their hope for success through every gentle and not so gentle hug. Village women bitterly wept, loudly so, as a purge for everyone’s soul, while men echoed their well-wishing by loading the vehicle with supplies that they’d never use, and children jogged beside the bus waving good-bye.

For the better part of the three-and-a-half-hour drive, no one spoke, their emotions still raw and the revelations at the village from simple, good-hearted people still unfolding within them.

One thing was clear, even though it went unstated: they didn’t want Kadeem there. It had nothing to do with his bravery or skills or his integrity, but everything to do with vulnerability. If something happened to him, no one
on that bus would be right with it—just as if anything happened to the village, there’d be no way to accept it.