Fire Prophet (Son of Angels) (10 page)
“Jonah Stone.” Samuel said his name loudly, nodding in approval of his new student. Jonah looked up from the table and raised his eyebrow. “It is a real pleasure to have you and your family with us.”
Jonah wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say. “Thanks,” he muttered, eager to get the spotlight off himself after his dismal failure in Angelic Combat. But Samuel continued on.
“Your sister, Eliza, was a pleasure,” he said, almost gushing. “Her knowledge of the Scriptures, for someone her age, is quite extraordinary. I hope that I will find the same is true of you.” Jonah tried to smile and look at him confidently, but accidentally made a noise that sounded like a wince. “You and your sister have made tremendous progress, tremendous progress . . .”
Jonah could feel the stares of the others on him, but he didn’t dare look over at them. He was sure Frederick would have
something to say. The last thing he needed was special treatment from one of their instructors. That was more trouble than it was worth.
“So, ah . . . what are we going to learn today?” Jonah said, although as soon as the words left his lips, he wished they hadn’t. In trying to get the attention off himself, it made him sound like he was returning the compliments with some sucking up of his own.
Samuel beamed. “Yes, yes, of course! Now where to begin . . .” He began thumbing through the giant Bible in front of him, dust flying off it.
“Ah, yes,” he said, “an overview is in order.”
For the next hour, he proceeded to walk them through the entire Bible, talking with more enthusiasm than Jonah would have expected from looking at the angel. He began in Genesis— actually, before Genesis—talking about the existence of Elohim as God Three-in-One.
“We’ll come back to that,” he said with excitement, a phrase that Jonah and the students would hear often from him. He mentioned the creation of the angels.
“We’ll come back to that.”
And then he spoke about the angelic rebellion, a brief shadow tarnishing his glow for a moment.
“And, of course, we’ll come back to that too.”
He moved through the Old Testament in a flash, and Jonah found it hard to stay with him. Each of the kids had a notebook and pencil in front of them, and Jonah tried to write down as much as he could, but it was no use. Samuel blazed through the Old Testament law, the judges, and then the prophets.
“Who can tell me about the prophet Malachi?” he asked,
searching the faces of the five students in front of him, which had just gone blank. “Jonah?”
He waited for an intelligent response from Jonah, but when Jonah heard his name called out, his mind ground to a halt.
“Uhh . . .” was all Jonah could muster. Samuel looked terribly disappointed, but brightened when David spoke up.
“Malachi was one of the minor prophets, around the same time as Nehemiah,” said David. “‘But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings.’ Malachi 4:2.”
Samuel beamed. “Very nice, David. Very nice indeed.”
He spent a lot of time, and his most passionate comments, on the birth and life of Jesus in the Gospels. And when he came to the death and resurrection, his voice grew low, to barely a whisper. The students, even Frederick, Jonah noticed, were leaning forward, listening intently. Samuel spoke of the events almost as if he had actually been there, not merely as some old, out-of-touch professor talking about the history of long ago.
He paused to catch his breath, and for their final twenty minutes launched into his comments on the book of Acts, about the very first group of believers, then the letters of Paul, and finally the book of Revelation.
He looked at his watch. “But we’ll come back to that,” he said, once more.
Finally, Samuel closed his Bible and stepped back, clearly having exhausted himself, as well as the students.
“Wow,” David said as they stood up from the table. “That hour went by very quickly, don’t you think?”
Jonah nodded. “I never thought the Bible would be so . . .”
“Interesting?” said David, grinning.
“Well, yeah, interesting,” Jonah said.
Jonah looked at his watch. 12:03. He stretched his arms out, feeling himself growing tired. He saw the looks on the faces of the other students too. It had been a long day, and it wasn’t over yet. He wondered how they were going to handle late-night sessions.
“You will get used to the timing of these classes,” said Camilla as they passed by, as if reading his thoughts. “Besides, you’ll get to sleep in each morning. Just what you’ve always wanted in a school, right? The chance to sleep late!”
She chuckled to herself and walked over to another group, trying to keep tabs on all of the students at once. She informed them that after their final class, they would gather back together for a time with her. Time to talk through their experiences together, share what they had learned, and hear directly from Camilla.
Jonah watched as Eliza’s group emerged from a door in the hallway across the room and tried to read the looks on their faces. They spoke together in hushed tones as they walked over toward Marcus and Taryn’s area. Before they did, they stopped to pray silently. He saw the glimmer return in each of them, and he knew they’d entered the hidden realm again.
“Well,” Jonah said, punching David in the arm. “Time to meet the mystery teacher face-to-face.”
J
onah and his classmates stood in the hallway in front of the closed wooden door. They looked at each other, suddenly aware that leaving the hidden realm meant that any human who might accidentally walk into the hall would be able to see them.
“What’s this class going to be?” asked Frederick. “Listening to some old guy ramble again, like the last one?”
He laughed, but no one else laughed along with him. Jonah was determined to take the high road and try to ignore him.
“I guess it’s time to come back into sight,” Jonah said. He bowed his head and quieted himself, offering a sincere prayer out loud so the others would also know what to say. He felt the change, and when he opened his eyes, he knew he was back.
The other kids followed his lead, and when they were ready, Jonah opened the door and entered the room.
The soft glow of candlelight flickered against the beige walls. It was a small space but cozy. Tall candles were lit and had been
positioned along the walls. Instead of a table in the room, there was a circle of chairs, six in all.
“Welcome, friends,” a man said softly, standing in the middle of the room. He motioned to the chairs around him. “Please take a seat.”
Jonah and the others stared at him for a few seconds. He wore a black T-shirt, and his hands were slid comfortably into the pockets of his dark jeans. His hair was as black as his shirt, and it swept across his forehead and down almost to his shoulders. A goatee covered his chin. Tattoos covered the brown skin on his left arm down to his wrist. Lania and Hai Ling hadn’t blinked at all and seemed suddenly taken with the new instructor.
He sized them up with warm brown eyes and an easy smile. The quarterlings quietly found a seat. A silver cross hung around his neck, drawing Jonah’s eyes. The candlelight glistened against it, causing it to shift from silver to crimson red and back again.
“My name is Reverend Kareem Bashir,” the man said. “Please, call me Kareem.”
As he spoke, his bright eyes shone, and he bore them into each of the kids intently, as if searching for something beneath their skin. Jonah met his piercing gaze for a few seconds. Soon, though, he found himself glancing away uncomfortably.
“I live here in New York, where I pastor a church my wife and I began seven years ago,” he said. “But as you may be able to tell from my accent, I’m not from here originally. I am Pakistani by birth. In fact, most of my family still lives there.”
David raised his hand. “How did you get here, then?”
Kareem folded his arms, his smile turning into an easy laugh. “It’s a long and crazy story that perhaps I’ll tell you sometime. My family is Muslim, but I was able to come to college in the States.
I found Jesus—or rather, He found me—one night through a conversation with a friend in my college dorm room. That night I became a Christ-follower. Not long after that, I was called to start a new church in this amazing city.
“I’m friends with Sister Patricia,” he continued, “and she told me about you extraordinary kids and requested that I come. I sensed that Elohim was moving mightily here. How could I refuse? My job is to help you learn how to practice what are called the Spiritual Arts: those practices, the disciplines of the spirit, that can lead a person to a deeper communion with Elohim.”
Jonah glanced over at Frederick. In spite of their new instructor, he already looked bored. Kareem was acting as if he didn’t notice, but Jonah wasn’t so sure.
“I’m sorry,” Frederick blurted out, “but what can someone like you possibly teach us about prayer and this other stuff?” He seemed to be staring at Kareem’s tattoos.
Kareem glanced down at his arm but continued smiling. “There are no experts in the spiritual arts, my friend. Just learners. We will learn together. I will say, however, that I do have some experience that will be helpful to you. I began our church with only prayer, after all.”
“What is it up to now?” scoffed Frederick. “A dozen people or so?”
Kareem pushed his fingers through his hair as he thought. “I think around three thousand. Now, shall we get started?”
Frederick snapped his mouth shut, and the others nodded.
“Now, you all look human to me,” Kareem said, causing Hai Ling and Lania to giggle. He sat down with them and began to speak a little lower. “Of course, I know your true identities. That each of you is part angel, offspring of both human and nephilim.
You are amazing kids, with much to offer this world. Just like all of Elohim’s children. I’ve heard that some of you have already been using your gifts quite effectively.”
He glanced at Jonah and nodded. Jonah blushed, and Kareem seemed to get the hint and moved on quickly.
“I must confess I’ve never been around quarterlings before. It’s a pretty cool experience for someone like me. But just like the rest of us,” he said, “prayer is the central connection we have to Elohim. You will never realize your full potential to engage in the battle between good and evil if you can’t, or won’t, pray. So why don’t you join me now?”
He reached out and extended his hands to the right and left, grabbing the hands of Frederick and David. Frederick looked as if he was going to pull away but didn’t. Jonah, Lania, and Hai Ling followed suit, each reaching out to hold hands with the kids next to them.
“Close your eyes, friends,” he said, and they obediently followed his direction. “This will allow you the least amount of distraction. Let everything that is worrying you, all of your cares, all of your fears, your doubts . . . let it all blow away, like a dandelion in the breeze. Now, turn your mind to Elohim, think about Him, invite Him to come into view, and ask Him what He wants to say . . .”
Kareem kept speaking softly, not so much praying as encouraging the students to pray themselves. Jonah kept his eyes closed, trying to concentrate. But his mind kept wandering off in a thousand directions. His parents, the flood in the school bathroom, his house and all the things he wished he’d brought from his room—when he tried to concentrate on Elohim, all of these random thoughts kept interrupting.
He took a deep breath.
Let those things go, Jonah . . . let them
blow away.
He pictured each of his worries blowing away like one of the dandelions in his backyard, caught up in an autumn breeze.
Suddenly, Jonah sensed that something had changed.
Thud, thud, thud. Thud, thud, thud.
What is that noise?
It sounded vaguely familiar. And then he heard a faint roar that grew steadily louder.
He opened his eyes again. The room around him, along with the rest of the quarterlings, had vanished. Jonah found himself standing in the center of the Granger Community School basketball court.
Thud, thud, thud.
The thudding noise was the basketball he was dribbling. The growing roar now filled up his ears. He looked up, and on both sides of the court, bleachers full of fans were screaming. He found himself momentarily captivated by their faces. Because even though they were looking at him, they weren’t cheering. Some of them were weeping uncontrollably. Others wailed from pain, or grief. All around him were faces of human suffering.
Why are these people at a basketball game?
Quickly, though, his attention was drawn back to the court. There was a boy guarding him, and other kids running around on the court, calling to him. His teammates were yelling frantically, urging him to move the ball down the court.
He looked at the player crouched in front of him, a boy who looked about his age. He could have been any kid at Jonah’s school . . . except that his eyes flashed yellow. He quickly glanced at the other
four kids on the opposing team. They were moving around the court, but in each of them, he saw those same yellow eyes.
Out of instinct, he glanced up at the game clock, and just as he did, he heard the voice. It was barely a whisper, and yet it somehow carried over the screams coming from the stands.