Entice: An Ignite Novella (11 page)

After a few more minutes of silence, the birds resume their final songs of the day.

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T
HE DARKNESS OF NIGHT CONCEALS
our work.

We begin simply: I go to work carving words in the soil and curses into the bark of the trees while Azael poisons the roots of every living thing. He uses the sacrificial blood that smells putrid like death to create spells, slashing deep into the soft ground of the Earth to pour the concoctions. We work quickly and efficiently, spiraling our way farther out from the center of the garden and keeping to the shadows in case Naamah, Botis, or Adam are close.

I use my dagger to carve a story into the dirt. The narrative is long and twisting, wrapping around bushes and roots to climb the rough trunks of the trees. It talks of wings and darkness, fire and ice, of the fall of Lucifer and the war of the angels that followed him.

I write about the angels I’ve killed, the ones I know by name or face. I tally the dead, and I nearly add Azael’s name to the list, but the story takes the same sharp turn reality did; he survived, his name replaced on the list of dead by that of Michael’s. I nearly add more about Michael—what I remember of him from Heaven, the way he would speak and walk with an authority unknown to other angels—but I cross that story out. This doesn’t feel like the time or place to tell it. I keep that story folded up inside of me for later.

Instead, I write about Hell. I describe the way it twists down, funneling into the center of Earth, each abhorrent level trying to outdo the last. I mention the armory, our dorm, Gus. I add the hieroglyphs Naamah wrote, the way Botis has silent conversations between his senses and the air.

Then I describe Lucifer’s throne room, a twisted facsimile of the great room in Heaven. I write about the brutal, warped metal throne he sits on and the power and esteem he believes he holds. And in small, sharp letters, I add in the threats he wields to control the fallen.

The warning he gave me burns hot in my mind. He’ll kill Azael if I don’t obey him. “
Seeing your brother die would be much more tortuous than any pain I could cause you.
”

I erase what I’ve written with the heel of my hand. I don’t know how closely I’m being watched.

Azael’s voice interrupts my thoughts. “So it sounds as if Adam’s gotten himself a new wife,” he says, kicking dirt over one of the wounds he’s cut at the base of a tree and sealing in the spell. He pulls his hand across his forehead, leaving a smear of black filth.

“He
thinks
he does.” I use my dagger to carve a new sentence. It’s a simple string of my favorite words, a sort of poem I’ve written. It makes no sense, but the words stir something in me right where my heart sits, motionless.

“What would be the point of that?”

“Well, Gus said Lilith was his first wife, right? And Lucifer stole her.” I push harder into the soil, making my words look violent and angry. “I’m sure man gets lonely.”

“Maybe at night,” he scoffs.

I ignore his comment. “If Naamah could convince him that she is his new wife—that the angels brought her to him as a replacement—why would he question it? She’s beautiful and only the second woman he’s seen. In his mind, it would make sense she was made for him.”

“We should have thought of that.”

“I do not want to be man’s wife, regardless of its truth.”

He’s silent for a few minutes, and I’m sure I’ve upset him. Just before I try to change the subject, he slams his scythe into the ground so it stands up on its own and turns to me. “Think it’ll work? Their... persuasion?”

I look over at him, trying to gauge his mood. He looks tired, his eyelids heavy with exhaustion, but there’s still something in him that burns. Whether it’s frustration or determination, I’m not sure. “Gus believes it will.”

“How does he know for sure?”

“He’s a Diviner. The choices we make put us down certain paths, and he can see the outcome of all of our options. It’s complicated to translate fates and futures, but... He’s experienced. As long as he’s been doing it, he wouldn’t misread something so simple.”

Azael nods once, wipes his grimy hand across his chin, and goes back to work. “I don’t think it will work. Maybe they chose a different course than what they had planned to throw us and Gus off. Man cannot be so gullible to fall for their tricks. It is too easy. And when their plan fails, we’ll be there to rectify their mistake.”

“We will be the perfect safety net.”

We work for a while more in silence. Only the sound of overturned Earth keeps time, the subtle snick-snick of blades through soil. The moon sinks closer to the treetops, and I’m nearly convinced I can reach up and touch it.

I sit back on my heels and wipe my hands on my knees. “Does this garden remind you of the one in Heaven?”

“There was a garden in Heaven?” He doesn’t even turn around when he speaks to me, too preoccupied with the task at hand.

“You really don’t remember?” I wait for a response that never comes. “There were these white flowers everywhere, green hedges. It glowed at night, and the flowers would move when the mood struck them, like they sensed company. I used to read in there.”

He makes a noncommittal noise.

“It smelled like moonlight.”

“Moonlight doesn’t smell like anything.”

It does if you pay attention
, I think. I go back to writing more of my story, but this time I add in lies. Lies that whoever is watching me would want to read. About the corruption of Heaven and the noble cause of Hell. I don’t know if Adam will make it this far out from the center of the garden to read it, but I write it anyway.

Our work takes all night. We fall asleep on the edge of the garden, Azael cradling his scythe and me retracing my words with fingers stiff with dirt.

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I
’
VE NEVER EXPERIENCED A SUNRISE
on Earth before. I’ve only ever watched it rise and slide across the planet from above. So when the sun climbs into the sky above me, I’m terrified.

I wake with my dagger poised to strike, thinking the angels have arrived early. That we did something to signal our appearance, and now they’re vengeful, as angels so often are. My eyes fight against the brightness, turning the world into blurred shapes that ring in my ears. I’m sure that when I open my eyes I’ll find Uriel armed and angry.

It takes me a few minutes to realize there are no shadows of wings, no flaming swords poised to cut me down. It’s only the sun.

The large ball of fire appears much too close to the edges of the garden. A bright, hot star. It rises peacefully, quietly, keeping my presence—and also my fear—a secret from the angels above and devils below.

Azael is still asleep. The light doesn’t seem to rouse him in the slightest, so I watch its journey across the empty sky alone.

As it finally clears the reaching leaves of the tallest trees, it illuminates the story I spent all of last night writing. The letters glow, sentences transforming into thin rivers of gold. The garden is flooded with words.
My words
. It’s beautiful.

Adverbs twine with nouns and complex sentences lead way to repetitional poetry. The story looks alive, surreal. From my view, every inch of ground is covered.

I glance around me and notice the plants that hide us from the others. Last night, they were sweet-smelling and green, their leaves filled with clear, sticky juices. The copse of trees at our back were heavy with low-hanging, swollen fruit. But today, it’s all different, the garden changed. Everything is dead or dying. The spells are beginning to work their magic.

Reaching out, I pluck one of the purple fruits off of the closest tree. It’s mushy in my hand, its skin wrinkled and warm. I puncture it with my fingernail and it oozes sludge.

Somewhere close to us—closer to the edge of the garden than I would have guessed he’d wander—I hear the muffled sounds of man approaching. I wonder if he’s tried to decipher the words he walks upon.

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A
ZAEL SLEEPS
,
AND
I
MAKE
no move to wake him. When I get the first glimpse of man, I don’t want to hear his commentary; I want to make my own judgment of him first.

Man is not quiet. His footfalls are loud and careless, which makes sense, as he’s probably never had a reason to be stealthy. The noise makes him easier to track.

I leave the cover of trees, roots, and shrubs to climb somewhere higher up. A bundle of spindly white trunks that twist together into one fat tree gives me the perfect vantage point. Grabbing the dark handholds that appear to be burned into the tree, I pull myself off of the stiff ground of the garden. I climb high into the lifeless brown leaves until I’m sure I’ll be hidden from view.

From this high up, I can see more of the garden. It’s dying—everything. From the center of the garden spiraling out, the trees are turning black, the fruits rotting off the branches to fall, broken, to the barren soil below. The outer edges of the garden are still in an early state of decay, the life just starting to sap from the leaves. If the fruit I picked earlier this morning was just starting to rot, I can only imagine the state of the darker, drooping plants farther in.

The only pure shade of life left in the entire garden is the Tree of Knowledge. The leaves are just as vibrant as the first night I saw them, the red so saturated I wonder if it’s painted with blood. Even the amber fruit still glows brightly, completely untouched by the death that surrounds it. I can make out some of the curses I’ve carved into the trees ringing the Tree of Knowledge, pleased to see the lethal effect has been confined to its roots.

Our plan has worked. By this afternoon, man will have no option but to eat from the forbidden tree. He’s probably only out as far as he is now in search of some berries that haven’t completely molded through. But he’ll have no such luck. The fruits were the first to die.

Winding through the decomposing vegetation are my words. The golden river it becomes in the sun looks bright against the blackness of death that hangs upon everything else, impossible to miss.

A reluctant smile pulls its way across my face. Azael will be proud to see what we’ve accomplished. There’s no way we won’t be offered a seat on Lucifer’s council now that we have destroyed Eden. We’ve spoiled it entirely.

Just as man—Adam—turns the corner of wilting flowers and comes into view, I lie flat on my stomach, pressing myself into the narrow branch of the tree and locking my ankles behind me so I don’t fall.

He’s taller than I expected. Tanner, too. And, like Naamah the other night, he is completely nude.

That certainly explains Naamah’s state of undress.

He has broad shoulders and tawny hair that reminds me of the fruit he’s forbidden from tasting. There’s nothing particularly remarkable about him; in fact, he could easily blend in with any of the middling angels. All he’s missing is the wings—his shoulder blades look strange without them.

I lean over my branch to watch his progress under me. He walks by the ditch where Azael sleeps without a second glance, but when he reaches the knobby knuckles of the roots of my tree, he pauses. I inch out of view again, moving slow enough to not disturb any of the leaves.

He looks up at the brown, crumbling leaves, his eyebrows knotted in the middle of his forehead. With a tentative hand, he reaches out and snaps off a thin, low-hanging branch. Several leaves fall to his feet.

“
Tree
.” The word is quiet from his lips, drawn long and thin, as if he’s trying to pull the letters apart from one another.

Excitement twists my stomach into knots. He has been reading my words—or trying to, anyway.

I remember what I wrote in the center of the garden, the short, simple words I carved into the soft dirt. If he followed the text far enough, he would see it turn into longer, complex script. One syllable at a time, I introduced language to him, unlocking the grain of knowledge that would have lain dormant in his mind without the right key. It doesn’t take much to play into his curiosity—just a small nudge in the right direction.

He breaks the branch into small twigs, sitting on the ground. When he catches the familiar letters of his name below him, he stops.

ADAM
.

His story waits to be read, just under his feet, and he doesn’t even realize it. Here, on the outer edges of the garden, is the story of his creation, his wife, and then his ruination. He traces his name with his finger then picks up one of the sticks and traces it again, slowly following the curve of the M. Does he recognize Lilith’s name? Can he guess that his fate is one not too far from hers?

Dropping the sticks into a pile, he tries to copy the pattern of my letters. Three pieces for the As, four for D, and four more for the M. He stares at it for a few minutes before wiping his hand across the word, jumbling the twigs into a mess. He writes another word, ten sticks in total:
MAN.

“Man will fall,” he whispers. The words are flat and halting, and when he speaks, he tilts his head to the side as if he doesn’t understand his own tongue.

I bite my tongue to stop from speaking. There is so much more I want him to know. All the stories of the world are at his fingertips, just waiting to be read, but he can only understand the smallest fraction of it. If only I could—

There’s a deep hissing sound that pulls the man’s thoughts from his new letters. It stops me from nearly dropping to the ground to talk to man; I reign in my carelessness and tighten my ankles around the tree, locking myself in place.

There’s another hiss. I look up at the noise, arching off the branch to see farther into the garden. Botis, still in his serpentine form, snakes his way through a pair of thinning hedges, leaves scattering behind him. His body is fat and slow. Lazy, almost, as if he’s in no rush to find man. He must be under the illusion that he has all the time in the world, that no matter how long it takes him and Naamah to sully man, they’ll still beat us. Apparently, the state Azael and I had left the garden in after last night has no effect on him.