They Who from the Heavens Came (The Wisdom, #1)

Aidan wasn’t sure he’d heard right. Had Quetzal really just said…?

‘My father?’ he repeated. Those two words blotted out all awareness of Itzy, of the scared look on her mother’s face, of the latest quake felt in the room. He pointed at the giant. ‘You. Yer my da.’

‘In a way,’ Quetzal said, confusing him even more.

Aidan’s head swam. ‘What way?’

Quetzal drew in a deep breath as if he were about to tell a great tale. His broad chest rose, and then fell heavily with the exhalation. ‘I’m a scientist,’ he said. ‘I came here from Nibiru to –’

‘Nibiru?’ Myra interrupted. ‘The fabled tenth planet in our solar system? Where the Annunaki supposedly come from? That Nibiru?’

Aidan and Itzy stared at her in wonderment. Myra threw them a look, as if to remind them she’d been married to Stephen Loveguard.

‘If you must refer to it that way,’ Quetzal said with an exasperated sigh, ‘then yes – although, as far as I’m aware, none of your myths approaches the truth. Up until two thousand years ago, I lived here on Earth, in what I believe is now called Mexico. Nibiru only visits Earth every few thousand years, and I chose to leave with it, as did many of my brethren.’

‘Why?’ asked Itzy.

Quetzal shrugged. ‘Different reasons. I can’t speak for the others, but I wanted to explore. I’ve always had an intensely inquisitive mind. I like to understand the workings of the universe, to know…everything,’ he said with a smug smile, ‘and remaining in one place was never going to help me in that quest.

‘But Nibiru travels. It’s not merely a planet, but a spaceship, the greatest ship ever constructed. It has been transformed many times – I’ve even assisted in some of those transformations – but its essence has existed for billions upon billions of years.’

Myra rubbed her temples. ‘I’m not hearing this,’ she muttered.

‘You’ve…you’ve come for the Wisdom,’ Itzy said more than asked.

Quetzal dipped his head in acknowledgment. ‘The greatest scientific and philosophical enquiry in all the known universes concerns the Wisdom. No one has ever been certain what or where it is – though there have been rumours. Some have claimed to possess it, but they have all been discredited.’ He paused there, and studied his audience’s reactions to his story.

Then he resumed. ‘I had the idea to create a sort of homing device programmed to exist for nothing but the Wisdom. It would scan all reaches of the universe, making its way through star after star, planet after planet, moon after moon, and even the empty space, not resting until it found the Wisdom. And then it would lead me to it.’

‘Hang on,’ Aidan stopped him.

Quetzal blinked his great slanted eyes. His expression suggested he hadn’t been interrupted in a thousand years.

Aidan sensed the hostility in the Ancient’s face. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘but I don’t understand. If ye don’t know what the Wisdom is, how can ye make something to find it? It’s like sniffer dogs; ya need to give them something to sniff, first.’

Quetzal nodded. ‘A good point. You see, all creatures are imbued with an essence – an imprint, if you will – left behind by their…Creator, you could say. It is located in the ethereal realm, where we lead our true lives, beyond the illusions of the material. It doesn’t matter what we are – human, Ancient, Halfling – oh,’ he said, noticing the looks on their faces. ‘Sorry. That’s what we call you. Because you’re human and Ancient. Halflings.’

‘We prefer Descendants,’ Itzy told him in a hard voice that made Aidan swell with pride for her.

Quetzal gave a slight bow of acknowledgment. ‘The point is: in that ethereal realm, we can see the building blocks from which we’re formed. Think of it like DNA, but on an intangible level. It’s more…spiritual, I suppose. I have spent five thousand years studying this essence, and nineteen of your Earth years ago, I discovered that the imprint left on my people differs from that found in other creatures – humans, animals, trees.’

He turned to Myra. ‘For example,’ he told her, ‘I can see clearly that you are not descended from my people – yet your daughter bears our mark.’

Myra balked at this. ‘You’re telling me she isn’t my daughter?’

The Ancient shook his head. ‘Not at all. I’m telling you her father wasn’t human.’

‘Oh.’ Myra collected herself. ‘That, I believe.’

‘Mum!’ cried Itzy. ‘You’re not taking this seriously!’

Myra threw her a weary look. ‘I’m taking it as seriously as I can,’ she said. She turned to the Ancient. ‘Do you mean to say my daughter doesn’t even share the same God as the rest of the world?’

Quetzal glanced at her and took another of his deep, heaving breaths. He looked unsettled by her query.

‘Alright,’ Aidan said in a bid to hurry their speaker along to a point of clarity. ‘So ye found the essence. Then what?’

Quetzal slowly tore his gaze from Myra. ‘It is my belief,’ he told Aidan, ‘that this essence, this imprint, is the calling card of the Wisdom. I’ve long suspected the Wisdom was left behind on Earth, thousands of years ago, so I created an organism with Ancient blood, but just enough human blood to dwell here. But this Halfling, who was mostly Ancient, was deliberately missing something.’

He grew silent, allowing his meaning to sink in.

‘The essence,’ Itzy whispered in horror.

Quetzal confirmed this with a movement of his head. ‘For all my scientific mastery, alas I am not the great Creator.’ He said this with heavy regret, as if the universe were unfair. ‘Therefore, I don’t leave the same calling card on my creations. Thus, anyone I should make with my own methods…they wouldn’t hold that essence.

‘But,’ he went on with fervour, oblivious to the disgust colouring the faces of his listeners, ‘the beauty of the idea was that this Halfling was alive and real, and anyone with the spark of life firing should have that essence. That this was missing would always unsettle the Halfling and leave him searching endlessly for that other part of himself.’

Aidan staggered backward. He suddenly knew how this story would end.

‘But that’s – not – possible,’ Itzy broke out in ragged breaths. She drew herself out of Aidan’s grasp and edged away from him. He didn’t think it was because she feared him, but because she feared for him. ‘You were searching for the Wisdom,’ she told him.

‘I wasn’t,’ Aidan said with cold firmness, his eyes steel once more. He retrieved his girlfriend’s hand and held it with fierce resolve. The floor shook again, but he hardly noticed. ‘It was always you, Itzy.’

Eyes flashing, Aidan turned to Quetzal. ‘Maybe ye made me and left me here to find yer precious Wisdom – whatever that means – but it’s not my purpose. I refuse to accept that.’ Every inch of him breathed defiance, making him look more like the god and Quetzal like the desperate child.

As if trying to come to some sort of compromise, Quetzal said, ‘I believe what you mean is you’ve developed. You’ve grown into your own person. You’re not just something I created in a laboratory one day, you’re not part of some greater plan, you’re a regular boy now. Is that correct?’

‘Something like that,’ Aidan said, his voice hard.

‘Yes,’ said Quetzal. ‘I’ll admit I thought that, too. See, I’ve been watching you all your life, with this.’

He produced a smooth black cube from within his velvet cloak. He slowly turned it over in his hands, gazing into it as though he could not help but look.

‘It does many things,’ he said. ‘It allowed me to travel here from Nibiru. It allows me to speak your language. It allowed me to become invisible, so Itzel didn’t know I was in her home, today. But most interestingly –’ he looked up at his audience ‘– it registers energy pulses, again on an ethereal level. I suppose you might say it tracks your souls.

‘A few months ago, you –’ he nodded toward Aidan ‘– started moving south. Any change could have been a sign that something had happened, so I – and a companion named Horace – were sent to investigate. When we arrived, unusual etheric readings registered on my cube. These readings transpired to be that of the Half…Descendants demonstrating great power, unheard of in my time on Earth.’

He turned his eagle’s stare on Itzy. ‘And you are the most powerful of them all.’

Itzy gasped, and her mother drew her to her side, a protective gesture that made Aidan’s heart ache. His mother had never cared about him like that – and if it was true that he’d been grown in some alien laboratory, then he supposed he’d have to give up on his romantic dreams of one day finding a biological mother who loved and missed him.

Quetzal cast his hand over the gleaming cube and it pulsed a thick gold. ‘This is Aidan’s signal,’ he said. ‘It’s stronger when he demonstrates his power. The pulse always changes when one of you…performs.’

He turned to Itzy. ‘Your friend Seth – I watched him port you into one of his inexplicable dimensional bubbles. I watched the way his pulse shifted from yellow…to this.’

He brushed over the cube again and it turned a heavy orange, like the sun.

‘This is my signal,’ he explained. ‘To match it is unheard of, for one of your kind. So you’ll appreciate how disturbing it has been for me to see this.’

He ran his hand over the cube one last time and the orange grew darker, morphing into a disturbing blood red, and then a heavy purple, at last settling in pure jet, like Itzy’s hair.

‘This is Itzel Loveguard’s signal,’ he finished.

Aidan was dumbstruck. ‘It’s just like my dream,’ he said at last. ‘Itzy, that’s what I dreamt.’ He was vaguely aware he was starting to sound hysterical.

Then Quetzal asked the fatal question.

‘Tell me,’ he said to Aidan, ‘what do you exist for?’

Without thinking, Aidan said, ‘Itzy.’

‘Precisely,’ Quetzal said with a private smile.

‘But that doesn’t make sense,’ Aidan said, angrily refusing to catch the implication. ‘Ya said ye created me to live for the Wisdom.’

‘Yes,’ said Quetzal. He turned to Itzy. ‘And here she is.’