Leianna with an air of concentration normally reserved for frogs and bugs.
“He’s too young to take an interest in such things,” Lucifer said.
“That’s not true.” Affaeteres regarded the boy with more than a hint of maternal pride. “I’ve begun teaching him phonics and lettering while you’re away sharing your own brilliance with the Council. He enjoys learning.”
Lucifer’s pale brows rose, his lips played at the idea of a smile. “My industrious wife. But then you’ve always been fruitful with time and talent.” His smile ripened; she smirked meaningfully back at him. Michael and Eve watched their repartee, sensing a hidden layer of meaning behind Lucifer’s jest.
Eve raised her own inquiring brows to Affaeteres, who laughed goodnaturedly and said, “I suppose we should tell them.”
“Aff is with child again,” said Lucifer. He moved to kiss his wife’s cheek. Bael, in her arms, leaned forcibly outward, his parents quickly grasping him.
Bael’s chubby arm continued reaching downward, wriggling toward the cradle, the newborn within it. “Uh,” he gibbered, fingers pointing toward Leianna.
Affaeteres tightened her grip on him. “Whatever Ashtoreth finds interest in, he wants it, too. That’s Leianna, Bael. Lei-an-na.”
“Lehn!” Bael mimicked, his small hand stretching insistently toward the infant.
“Perhaps he’s in love,” Lucifer grinned.
Michael tickled the soft flesh under Bael’s dimpled bantam chin. “Perhaps.” A soft gurgling laugh erupted from the child, and a new voice sounded from the doorway.
“May we enter, Michael ben Zoras, in peace and friendship?”
Quatama, short and slight of build, wearing the unadorned brown robe of a master, waited before the threshold of the thachka, his dark eyes reflecting his illimitable patience. By his side stood a man identical in face and figure to Michael.
Michael greeted them both. “Enter, Quatama, my revered mentor. Enter, my worthy brother Gabriel. Enter and share with us the sacred gift of life.”
He held both hands out to Quatama.
Quatama clasped them in his own in a dignified but warm manner, then broke the hold. “The Creator has blessed this child,” he said, walking past him to the cradle.
“Every child is blessed.”
“No, this child is special. But I do not know the purpose of this blessing or how it may manifest itself in her life.”
Gabriel moved stiffly over to view the infant. “This child has goodness within her.”
“As do all children,” Michael repeated, more gently than he might have, had Gabriel not been his brother.
“Not all,” Gabriel replied. “Not all with goodness centering from the core of her soul, undimmable.” He, too, wore the brown robe of a master; his bearing and tone defied argument.
“I thank you for your praise in my daughter’s name,” Michael deferred, “being she cannot do so herself. May we all benefit from that goodness.”
“It is time for this very good child to be presented to her maker,” Quatama murmured with wry amusement.
Leianna, in her infant’s robe of gossamer, looked up as he wrapped her light blanket of lambs’ wool around her and lifted her from the cradle. He held her gently, her small head resting against his chest. Her tiny mouth opened in a yawn, then closed.
The spirit master led them in ceremonial procession, Eve and Michael following side by side, and Gabriel and Adam, Leianna’s blood uncles, behind them. Deianna walked regally behind them, unperturbed by the absence of Mercurius, her one-time consort and father to her children. Behind her walked Lucifer and Affaeteres, Bael wide awake and squirming once more on his mother’s hip, her arms locked tightly about his bottom and back. Lucifer carried Ashtoreth, his head resting sleepily on his father’s shoulder, his legs dangling down.
The celestial sun, descending, filled the sky with soft hues of blue, rose, and lavender against lingering filaments of gold.
Along the cobbled road, other friends and neighbors stepped out of clay thachkas to join the procession with nods of greeting to the principal celebrants. The assemblage became a pious parade, for Michael and Eve’s cottage was the farthest from the fields and forest they now headed into, stepping onto a pathway of flat multihued stones of orange, brown, yellow and red.
The Garden’s beauty, rich with maturing summer, accompanied them as they strode, men, women and children, along the ceremonial pathway. Its stones glinted with sunset, and one lone singer, the canehya, began the evocation, her voice swelling out, her tones as dulcet as a wooden flute.
“Adenoy Dominey,
Tu laleh a bin ay,
see bashtay e nah dinay
n see dahnay e ta leh
been tah n cuwh.”
[Translation from the Eliomese:
“Oh, Creator Supreme,
the Light that guides our way,
we greet You on this day,
and we pray for Your Blessings
of praise and love.”]
Other voices threaded around the canehya’s, blending magnificently. The musical prayer travelled with them on their long trek through the Garden, its fields, meadows and forests.
They sang of using their creative powers to honor the One who gifted them with those powers. They sang of their work in the Garden, of its fruits and fibers and grains, of the life force within the sacred soil. They sang of the harvest and the energy the bounty of the harvest brought, and of their dispensing of that energy in work, in meditation, in craft, in dance and song, in love and in marriage. They sang of the most sacred act of creation: the quickening and birth of offspring, the vessel through which the spark of life grew and expressed itself.
They sang of the soul’s sojourn, maturing from childhood to adulthood, walking its own creative path, guided by the One and the teachings of parents and Elders in Eliom, the difficult journey of learning, growing wiser and applying knowledge and wisdom.
They reached Garden’s End. The canehya chanted the ending verses of the Song of Creation, speaking solemnly of the newborn asleep in Quatama’s arms, of Eve and Michael, their family and friends among the angelfolk, of the Creator blessing their child and acknowledging her eternal name.
Behind them lay the stone pathway and the cultivated lands it ran through, from which they drew their sustenance; before them stretched a large prairie, its ecology unaltered, pristine. In the far distance, a forest outlined itself against the sky.
Quatama bent down, the child nestled fast against his robe. The others silently followed his example, going down on one knee, eyes lowered reverently.
“Adenoy Dominey. See nee ha,” the spirit master intoned. His voice
