The name of Lucifer was also all too familiar: the fallen archangel who founded the mythic Hell. Bael, who seemed to exist outside my dreams, had been his son.
Eliom seemed to be both the name of the village we lived in and the name of the land itself. It seemed to be an agrarian culture with huge plots of cultivation people tended as farmers—no, gardeners. I saw no equipment, no mass production. The people worked with small tools and their hands. They even called the rolling expanses of fields and groves the Garden, verbally capitalizing the name, almost reverently.
But it surely was unlike any mortal garden ever known. Bael and I had worked on a section of small pepper-like plants. The peppers grew plumply, but were a soft periwinkle blue. I remembered thinking how good they would taste when harvested.
Weedlike plants, with triangular leaves and small yellow flowers crowded the peppers, but we made no move to pull them. Instead, they received the same reverence we offered to the pepper plants.
We cupped our hands around the base of each plant, concentrating until a shimmering white mist appeared within them. The mist seeped upward to bathe the entire plant in a sparkling cloud. Energy the angelfolk generated daily to the flora of the habitat known as the Garden.
I saw no fauna in the dream, but heard the chatter of birds and insect sounds in the canopied forest glade where Bael kissed me.
“Good morning.” Ginnie studied me with half-shut eyes and yawned, stretching in bed. “You looked like you were a million miles away.”
I lay there, quietly regarding her, then asked, “Ginnie, do you believe in the stories about Heaven?”
“I, um, just woke up, and you want me to discuss religious philosophy.”
“The best time. Just pluck your answer from your fading subconscious.”
Gin gave me a small crooked smile. “Before rationality returns, you mean. Okay. Yes, I believe in Heaven. Most humans have, since history began. And even today, with all our scientific breakthroughs, people still believe, both educated and uneducated and from different cultures, in some sort of Heaven.”
“And Hell? What about Hell?”
She cast me a doleful but forgiving look. “Oh, God, Leigh. You’re getting too heavy now.”
“Well?”
“From what I’ve read, it’s a dumping ground for old deities which people used to worship hundreds of years ago. The newer religions turned them into devils and demons and stuck them in Hell. Made it taboo to worship them.”
“Gin, the concept of Hell existed long before modern theology.”
“Yes, but it wasn’t evil. Everyone went to Hades or whatever name each culture called their afterlife world. Honestly, Leigh Ann, I think I’ve studied more mythology than you have. I don’t want to get into a heavy debate, but listening to you and Mother chatter on endlessly about ghosts and ghoulies, I got curious. And while I don’t seriously believe in this stuff, but I do enjoy reading it.”
“You do?”
“Sure,” she grinned. “I’ve always liked fantasy.”
I threw my pillow at her. She caught it deftly.
“So you don’t,” I said, “believe in Hell and the concept of eternal damnation. Lucifer, Satan, and all that.”
“No. It’s not a Jewish belief. Other religions arbitrarily condemn people to Hell simply because they don’t subscribe to their particular religious doctrine. How could anyone believe that a good soul who loves God in his or her own way could be condemned for that for all eternity?”
“But what about really evil people?”
“I didn’t say God wouldn’t condemn people who commit acts of evil, just not for all eternity. If there is such a place as Hell, maybe they condemn themselves to it, knowing that their actions make them unclean in the presence of God until they change and repent. But Lucifer’s Satanic hierarchy lists quite a few gods and goddesses who predate Christianity and competed with Judaism’s monotheism, rival deities who were turned into Lucifer’s fallen minions. Ashtoreth, a Canaanite and Phoenician fertility goddess also known as Ishtar in Babylon, changed into a handsome, blond, blue-eyed, male devil with great wisdom of the sciences, especially the medical arts. He also knew all events throughout all of time.”
“Was Ashtoreth a fallen angel?” My mouth felt dry. “I mean in the Christian myths, about Hell.”
“Yes. He became a demon prince.”
“And who was Azmodeus?”
“How did you know about him?”
“I . . .” What could I tell her? “Oh, never mind. You’re right. This is getting too heavy.” The alarm clock buzzed. I leaned over the bed to check on Daniel. He was awake, quietly resting in the converted laundry basket. “The baby’s up.” I got out of bed and took him in my arms.
Gin got up and turned off the buzzer, looking at me strangely. “Azmodeus was a demon prince of lust and lechery. Old legends say he was the get of Adam and Lilith, Adam’s first wife.”
“I thought Eve was his first.”
“The sources are murky, but Genesis 5.3 says Adam was 130 years old when he had his first child with Eve, a son. Apparently Azmodeus and a host of other little devils came earlier, through Adam’s union with Lilith.”
“Mother and I never dealt with demonology. What really made you read up on all of this?”
“Are you kidding? All of that constant white light protection stuff? You never gave the bad guys a name, but it scared the hell out of me when I was younger. So, instead of looking for bogeymen in the dark, I decided to study up on it. And found it was all a bunch of rewritten religious hogwash. To the victor goes the edit job. Come on, let’s go down and get breakfast. I’ve got a class at eleven, and I can’t be late.”
“Just let me check Daniel’s diaper . . . wet. You go ahead. I’ll change him and be down in a minute.”
“Okay. Morning, Danny.” She tickled his chin lightly, making him smile. “You want coffee and toast?”
“That’s fine.” I laid Daniel on his bassinet, unsnapped the bottom of his sleeper and drew his feet and legs from it. I removed his rubber diaper — disposable diapers hadn’t yet flooded the market and conversely the landfills — and unpinned his soiled cloth diaper. Only urine stained it. I chucked it into the plastic diaper hamper beside the bassinet.
Ginnie’s answers plagued me as I rediapered the baby. Aside from the typically irritating behavior of the pre-adolescent Azmodeus, none of it jived with my dream. Of course, there was the myth of Lucifer’s fall from grace, from Heaven. Was Eliom symbolic of Heaven and Lucifer portrayed in the dream before his infamous exile?
I pulled Danny’s rubber diaper and sleeper bottoms back on, picked him up, and went downstairs to join Ginnie. Mother and I hadn’t mentioned Bael’s name to her, perhaps because of Mother’s penchant for exactness when dealing with Ginnie’s skepticism.
I wanted to ask Ginnie the etymology of that name. I was also afraid to.
Coffee was waiting on the table, and Gin was putting bread into the four-slice toaster. I put Daniel into his highchair, took a sip of coffee, then mixed the baby’s powdered formula with water for his bottle.
The coffee had been made earlier by Dad, who had left for work at eight. Fred was already on his way to school, and Mother was still asleep, a privilege she insisted on three days a week—Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays—now that her children were older. Today was Tuesday. Later on, she and I would shop for that new crib for Daniel.
Gin had warmed the coffee. Our toast popped, and Daniel’s bottle