“Um, where is Mr. Humphries?” Callie asked, trying to regain some sense of normalcy.
“He’s on a leave of absence. I’m afraid I can’t go into personnel details, but he won’t be back for the rest of this year. I’m here to guide you instead.”
“So,” Callie said, her heart pounding. “You were talking about the necklace, right? I got it from an owl.”
Mrs. Scribner smiled and said. “It was my job to keep it for you.”
Callie looked at her, stunned. “Keep it for me? I don’t understand. Mom said it was a family heirloom, but it’s been missing since World War II.”
Mrs. Scribner laughed. “No, not missing. I’ve had it since Lily.”
“My great-great-grandmother Lily? I didn’t even know her name until yesterday. You couldn’t have known her. It was like eighty-five years ago.”
“Is that all?” Mrs. Scribner asked. “So, a short time between incidents then. Why one time I held onto the necklace for four hundred years.”
“Four hundred years?” Callie’s eyes went wide. She clamped her mouth shut when she realized her jaw had been hanging open.
“Oh, I’m much older than I appear. I’ve been visiting your family for a long, long time. It’s great to finally meet you. Only five generations this time, and you look exactly like Lily, but I wouldn’t have expected anything else. Same eyes. Same little freckles on your nose.”
“I saw her picture last night for the first time,” Callie said. “But—” She stopped.
“Go on,” Mrs. Scribner said. “What were you going to say?”
“You’ll think I’m crazy.”
“Crazier than wearing a pendant that gives you perfect vision overnight?” Mrs. Scribner asked, a smile turning up the corners of her lips.
“Good point,” Callie said. “Ok, well, I thought—maybe—that I saw her in the woods when I was out hunting. She was almost like a ghost, but not a ghost. Not cold. Her hand felt warm. She told me she’d been watching me. So, was that my great-great-grandmother somehow?”
“So, you did see her?”
“Yes, I just said I did.”
“How did she look?”
“Beautiful,” Callie said. “She only looked a little older than me, actually.”
Mrs. Scribner chuckled. “Well, she is ageless,” she said.
“My great-great-grandmother is ageless?”
“Oh, heavens no. I’m sorry. That wasn’t your great-great-grandmother.”
“Then who was it? Another family member? She looked like Lily. Like me kinda.”
“You could say that,” Mrs. Scribner said. “She’s the one who started your family legacy. She’s the beginning of it all.”
“Who?” Callie asked.
“That’s a very long story,” Mrs. Scribner said.
“I have the whole period free,” Callie said.
“It will take more than just forty-five minutes,” Mrs. Scribner said. “But I can summarize.”
“Please do,” Callie said.
“Very well, Mrs. Scribner said. “But I never know where to begin with these. Hmmmm. Have you heard of the nephilim?”
“I don’t think so,” Callie said.
“Let’s start there, then,” Mrs. Scribner said. “Do you know of the account of Noah from the Bible?”
“Yes. But you’re going to quote the Bible to me?” Callie asked. “I thought you couldn’t do that in school.”
“Of course I can,” Mrs. Scribner said. “Besides, it’s necessary for the story. Chapter six of Genesis is where the account of Noah begins. God finds that the world has become evil and he intends to destroy it with a great flood, saving Noah and his family.”
“Right,” Callie said. “I know the story about the birds and the forty days and forty nights of rain.”
“Well, it did kill most people back then,” Mrs. Scribner said. “But the interesting part of that story, as far as you might be concerned, is the first few verses of that passage. When people began to populate the world and their numbers increased, God’s angels found human women to be beautiful and some decided to marry human woman.”
“Angels married humans?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Scribner said. “Now, how much do you know about your Greek mythology?”
“A bit,” Callie said, “I guess.”
“So you know about the two primordial spirits Uranus and Gaia, right?”
“Sure, they created the titans, and then the titans created the gods,” Callie said.
“What if I told you that Uranus and Gaia were not single beings, but were plural instead. Uranus, the god of the sky and Gaia, the goddess of earth. Suppose with me for a second that this is where those two stories intersect. What if I were to say that Uranus was plural and was a reference to the angels. And what if I were to say that Gaia was plural and was a reference to the daughters of humans?”
“You’re suggesting,” Callie said. “That multiple sky gods and multiple earth goddesses made the titans, rather than just one of each, and that they were really just angels and human women.”
Mrs. Scribner nodded and continued. “The book of Genesis says that ‘The nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.”
“That’s in the Bible?” Callie asked, astounded.
“It is. Now, you know that almost all of humanity was killed by the flood, save for Noah and his family. But notice in the text here that it says, “The nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward,” meaning that there were nephilim who survived the flood. This is because the nephilim, children of of immortal angels and mortal humans, were immortal themselves, and they were known to be heroes, if you will.”
“Okay,” Callie said.
“So there was this hierarchy. God, the creator. Then his angels. And then the children of angels and humans, called the nephilim, also immortals.”
“Got it,” Callie said.
“What if I told you that’s where all of the various pantheon throughout the world came from? What if I told you that Zeus was a nephilim? What if I told you that Odin was? What if I told you that Buddha was? What if I told you that all of the African, Aztec, Native American, Japanese, Sumerian, Egyptian, Irish, Greek gods were all part of the nephilim, immortal children of angels who were deified in the minds of humans and writers of mythology?”
“Interesting idea,” Callie said. “But I don’t get the point.”
“What if it’s not just a bunch of stories, but real?” Mrs. Scribner asked.
“It can’t be real,” Callie said, “Or we’d have immortal nephilim and angels still walking amongst us.”
“Let’s say that God removed the immortals form the world,” Mrs. Scribner said. “Let’s say he did that thousands of years ago to reduce their influence on humanity. Some of them were still good angels, still worshippers of God and are now in heaven. Some of them rebelled and are now elsewhere. But let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that they are no longer on Earth.”
“Then they are gone and that’s why we have just mythology left,” Callie said. “The immortals either went to heaven if they were followers of God, or they went to hell if they were fallen.”
“Quite so,” said Mrs. Scribner, smiling.
“I don’t really understand what this has to do with anything,” Callie said.
“What if the nephilim left children behind? Children that lived a long time, but weren’t immortal. Children that still had some angelic powers, but weren’t gods. Then you’d get heroes, wouldn’t you? Heroes that showed up in our early mythologies around the world. Gilgamesh, let’s say. Or Hercules, or Rama, or Beowulf, or Alexander the Great.”
“Fascinating thought. That perhaps some of these heroes still had a touch of divinity,” Callie said.
“Well,” Mrs. Scribner said. “According ot the Bible, the nephilim were real, and they still took wives post flood for some time before God put a stop to that. And they had children. And heroes exist in our mythology. And now thousands of years have gone by. Let’s say that’s all true, wouldn’t there still be a drop of divinity in some descendants?”
“I suppose,” Callie said. “But then we’d see people who can do more than others.”
“Olympians? Great leaders? If the nephilim created giant offsppring like Goliath and Og, back then, or entire giant people like the Rephaites. What if today, that only shows up in rare men that are over seven feet tall and play in the NBA? What if it shows up today in rare women at six-foot five, who can jump thirty inches and play professional volleyball?”
“And what if,” Mrs. Scribner continued, narrowing her eyes,”That it isn’t just giants, but people more capable than others in various walks of life. What if, let’s say, there is a girl in northern Maine who can hunt like no other person? What if that girl is the descendant of Artemis, a nephilim, who passed down a necklace of power and started it all? What if she has a tiny drop of divinity still in her despite generations going by with no sign of it?”
“Artemis? Like, the Greek goddess, Artemis?” Callie asked. “What do you mean about Artemis starting it all?”
“I should think that would be obvious by now,” Mrs. Scribner said, almost indignantly.
“Let’s pretend I’m slow and don’t understand,” Callie said. “Enlighten me.”
“You, Callista Eleanor Thorne, are a direct descendant of Artemis. Yes, that Artemis. The pendant you are wearing is called the Silver Crescent of Selene, a gift from Selene to Artemis a very, very long time ago.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Your family line up through your mother and her mother are all descendants of Artemis.”
In the midst of it she heard a distinct noise, a buzzing she recognized. She smelled a scent which she somehow identified as the pungent smell of cuticular hydrocarbon and knew what it was before she saw it. She saw it first as movement out of the corner of her eye. A housefly passed by her right side as if in slow motion.
Before she knew what she was doing, she snatched the creature out of midair, crushing it in her hand. She felt her heart rate slow again and the sounds and smells faded. Nonchalantly, she grabbed a tissue from Mrs. Scribner’s desk and wiped her hand clean, before dropping the tissue and dead fly in the wastebasket along the wall.
Callie lifted her eyes to look at Mrs. Scribner and realized that for the first time in the conversation, it was Mrs. Scribner who was showing signs of surprise. The old lady closed her mouth and then smiled.
“What?” Callie asked.
Mrs. Scribner said, “The Huntress has awoken.”
“I killed a fly,” Callie said. “It’s not that impressive.”
Mrs. Scribner just smiled at her.
“Not convinced of any of this,” Callie said.
The bell rang, indicating three minutes before third period was to begin.
“I gotta go,” Callie said.
“Best if we keep this between us,” Mrs. Scribner said. “You never know who is listening.”
“Who could be listening?”
“Don’t worry about that,” Mrs. Scribner said. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
Callie left Mrs. Scribner to go to history class but had a very hard time concentrating for the remainder of the day. It had to all be nonsense. Right?
Except she could sit in the back of the room, sans contacts and glasses, and see everything perfectly.
Stephen B. Anthony is the author of Transmigrant, an epic science fiction thriller, available on both Amazon and Audible. The first seven chapters are available on this website for free.
Whoa !! I did not expect the nephilim to show up in this story. What an interesting turn