Pulse of Heroes (29 page)

She decided to leave Elliot standing in the
living room and let him make up his own mind as to whether he
wanted to follow her into the kitchen or not. All she told him was
that she was going to go feed her cat. Elliot did stand in the
living room for a few seconds before following behind. Once Crumb
was fed Michelle made Elliot wait while she changed her clothes
because she couldn’t stand being in that church outfit any longer.
Elliot was obviously in a surly mood, and she thought that maybe
the extra time alone would help change that. And besides, Michelle
desperately wanted to get into her sweats, although once she
undressed she decided on a comfy pair of jeans instead; she had to
maintain some level of credibility with Elliot around.

“What are those for?” Elliot asked Michelle,
pointing to the books she was carrying with her when she descended
downstairs. She told him that she still had homework assignments to
finish before the next morning, and that she was going to do them
downstairs. Otherwise she wouldn’t do them at all. She was very
tired and her bed would be too much of a temptation if she tried to
do her homework in her room. That’s right; Elliot had almost
forgotten about Michelle being in school and how important that
was. He started to feel guilty about being there at her house to
begin with. His world and Michelle’s might cross paths, but they
lived in two different realms. He asked her how much homework she
had, and she told him that besides reading a chapter in US History
she had a few pages of translating conversational Italian. As
Michelle said the word ‘Italian’, an invisible light bulb switched
on above her head.

“You just came back from Italy, right? You
speak Italian… Maybe you can help me? I am doing really awful and I
tried asking my friend Francesca for help but she’s too old and
doesn’t have the patience to really sit down and help me. Please?”
she begged. Elliot did speak Italian and a number of other
languages fluently. It was true that he and his friends had just
moved to California from there, but even long before that Elliot
had lived in Italy for many years.

“Right now?” Elliot asked in disbelief.

“Why not? You can tell me whatever it is you
came to tell me afterwards. I won’t be able to concentrate anyway,
not until I’m done with this,” she pleaded, innocently batting her
eyelashes. Elliot was glad that she was able to persuade him.

After spending an hour on Italian homework
both Elliot and Michelle were in a better mood. It was actually a
fun lesson, and she listened carefully to what Elliot had to say
about the rules of the language a lot more than she had ever paid
attention in class. She was engaged, finding him irresistible when
he spoke the language of Amoré with such fluidity. Maybe that was
all she needed, one-on-one types of lesson from a godlike creature.
When she asked questions, even if they were repeats, he didn’t make
her feel stupid or inadequate, patiently reiterating the answers in
many different ways until she finally understood. She was even
rolling her R’s better than her pitiful tries beforehand. She loved
listening to Elliot’s voice and watching him as he talked. And just
like that, Michelle’s new fascination with the Italian language was
born. She did space out a few times just watching his lips and all
she could think about was putting hers on his. She had always heard
that French was the ‘language of love’ but she had come to the
conclusion that it had nothing over Italian and needed to be
chucked off its crown title. Elliot agreed with her and told her
that French was a bastardation of Italian to begin with and even
though his French was almost as good as his Italian he always felt
like he was speaking really bad Italian when he spoke it.

By 6:00 PM Michelle was starving and asked
Elliot if he was hungry also, but he wasn’t. He was already feeling
too comfortable just hanging out with her in her home, and to have
her feeding him would just be too much. He didn’t want to get too
relaxed, and besides he still had to tell her about what had
happened with the guys back at
Hekademos
. So he told her to
go ahead and fix something for herself because he had eaten a late
lunch. His kind didn’t feel hunger the way humans did. They could
go without food and water for an amazingly long time. They needed
to sustain themselves, but not as often as humans because they
constantly drew energy from everything around them, and their pores
drew in moisture from the atmosphere or from plant life.

While Michelle was rummaging in the kitchen,
Elliot wondered how on earth he would tell her about what had
happened without making his friends sound like a bunch of jerks.
That evening, when Elliot had arrived back at
Hekademos
, all
the guys were in the living room and it was obvious that they had
been talking about him because as soon as he walked into the room
everyone became suspiciously silent. The crux of the conversation
was about Elliot bringing Michelle there. It wasn’t anything
personal against Michelle, everyone thought she was adorable, but
Elliot had crossed all of them.

Their home was supposed to be a safe haven
away from everyone else and the things they were storing in the
underground library were for their eyes only. It wasn’t just
because of the tremendous value and personal meanings that were
attached to many of the ancient items, but there was information in
there that could be used by others against them. No human was
supposed to know about the existence of the library because humans
could never really be relied upon to keep secrets, and Elliot had
definitely overstepped that boundary by escorting Michelle down
there without asking anyone else’s approval. It was one thing if he
was going to put his possessions and secrets on the line, but quite
another when he did so for all of them. Never before had they
concentrated all their artifacts and knowledge in one place because
it always seemed too dangerous, but it had been Elliot’s idea to do
so now, and they had all agreed.

Adding to the complexity of the situation was
the fact that Elliot was the owner of the land that the school was
built on. He had owned it since the days of the oil press factory.
The story about it belonging to a Portuguese family was true.
Elliot’s descendants and some of their friends had originally
emigrated from Portugal to the so-called “New World” in the mid
1500s to escape the Inquisition. Elliot eventually joined them and
purchased the parcel in the late 1800s. Northern California was so
much like the hills surrounding the Mediterranean that everyone
sought to replicate what they had left in the old countries. His
family established the first olive oil press in Northern
California, just as the Italian immigrants were establishing the
first vineyards in the hills of Napa and Sonoma.

After World War II, Elliot’s family moved to
the re-established state of Israel. Elliot helped his descendants
return to their true home, as they had been strangers in foreign
lands since the Romans had taken over Judea more than 2000 years
earlier. But he never sold the California property. The whole
argument about the school wanting to establish itself in Saint
Alodia was just an elaborate way to distract people from noticing
that the land had never changed owners, and had remained in the
same living trust that Elliot had established over a hundred years
earlier under a different name. Elliot’s recent return to
California coincided with his thinking that anyone who could have
possibly recognized him from the early 1900’s had passed away. And
he was almost right. They all had, besides Francesca, but he didn’t
know about her.

Michelle emerged from the kitchen with a
large bowl of salad and Elliot teased her that for someone who
claimed to be starving, she didn’t make a very credible case
standing there holding a bowl of leaves. But like most girls,
Michelle was still worried about being seen as a pig in front of
people, especially if they happened to be a super-human guy she
liked… a lot! Michelle rolled her eyes at him and sat at the dinner
table crunching away. “You sure you don’t want some?” she said
stretching a forkful of lettuce dripping in salad dressing in his
direction.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” he politely declined.
Michelle knew that at some point she would have to listen to
whatever it was that Elliot had come there to tell her, but she
just wasn’t ready for anything negative yet, so she decided to keep
talking about other things until she ran out of topics.

“I read tons about Eridu last night.
Fascinating. I can’t believe you were there at the beginning, that
you’re that old… I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it that way,” she
corrected when she saw Elliot frown at her.

“No, no, you’re right. I am ancient. If I
were human there would be nothing left of me but dust, maybe a bone
or two.” Elliot looked at Michelle to see how she reacted. Her face
turned white, just as he had expected. “Quite amazing that I don’t
feel anything close to feeling old, not physically at least, not
even one bit. My mind is a whole different story.”

“What does it feel like? To be alive for so
long… I mean how did you figure it out?” Michelle asked from the
kitchen while rinsing her plate. She walked back to the living room
and sat next to Elliot on the couch. To her surprise he didn’t seem
to mind that she slid right next to him and that their thighs were
touching. “I’m sure you’ve been asked that question plenty of
times,” Michelle looked at her feet feeling silly.

It was true. Elliot had been asked that
question many times before, and mostly by women. But the answer
always changed a bit because he himself saw things differently as
time moved on. He told her that he wasn’t sure when he had actually
stopped aging; it could have been when he was 20 or 26. But it was
in his mid-thirties when he began noticing that his human friends
were showing signs of aging while he and Devin looked exactly the
same as they had the day they met. They both still had the same
energy and excitement as any other young men might. At first it was
great because not only did they have their special abilities that
they were learning to control and enhance, but everyone, men and
women alike, would compliment them for not succumbing to the harsh
punishments of time or the sun as they crossed the trade routes
back and forth. They were definitely blessed. But eventually
compliments turned into taunting and some friends even questioned
his masculinity, which did not fit well with Elliot’s personality.
He had gotten in many fights and had hurt people more than he had
meant to because he didn’t realize his strength until it was almost
too late. He slowly began shunning human interactions.

Then there was the last straw that broke the
camel’s back, which was when he realized that he didn’t belong
amongst humans. It happened when he returned to Eridu to bury his
grandparents, and later his beloved aunt and uncle. Seeing that he
looked no different than when he had left, the townspeople turned
against him once more and the memories of their cruelty to him as a
child resurfaced. They called him all kinds of names like
‘demon-spawn’ and ‘monster’, and they even managed to turn his own
cousins against him. They used the fact that he did not know who
his father was to justify their spurning of him, telling him that
he didn’t really belong to their family. It hurt him that the only
people he loved had turned against him.

“After that I never went back.” Elliot took a
deep breath, letting his emotions catch up with his words. Michelle
sat there paralyzed and didn’t say a thing. She felt so sad for him
and was very angry at what his family had done to him. She told him
that if she was there she would tell them what was on her mind, and
Elliot laughed at her because she got funny wrinkles on her
forehead when she got so upset. He liked how she got so protective
over him and wanted to take her in his arms and tell her how
adorable she was but he decided against it; he was obviously
getting carried away.

Now Devin, on the other hand, had a
completely different experience, and insisted on Elliot going back
with him to Dwaraka, a most amazing and wealthy city port in
Harappa.

“Devin was venerated as a gift from the Gods,
as an avatar walking among the multitudes.”

“Avatar! Like the movie?” Michelle asked
excitedly. Elliot answered that the movie had borrowed the word
‘avatar’ from Vedic scriptures. Avatar was a word to describe a
living incarnation of a God born into the body of a human or
animal. He explained to her that under Vedic beliefs Jesus Christ
was also an avatar. Being God-like, Devin had quickly risen to
power, and when he married a princess he established Elliot his
right hand man. In India their kind had no problem being accepted.
When Michelle heard the word ‘princess’ she swallowed hard. She
contemplated that if Devin had taken a princess wife, then what
would have stopped Elliot from marrying a royal as well? She
realized that Elliot must have had many beautiful wives in his
past, or at least many girlfriends, and her heart sank. How could a
nobody, an ordinary girl in jeans ever compete with a beautiful
Indian princess wrapped in miles of silk? When Elliot noticed
Michelle’s sad expression he knew immediately what she was thinking
about and decided not to mention Devin or his wife anymore and just
continued the story of where he traveled to from there.

Elliot told Michelle that eventually he
decided to head back out on the road. And that was when he first
went sailing and fell in love with the sea. On the water he felt
safe, he felt the energy of the waves and for the first time it
made him feel complete. He traveled the water trade routes, only
this time he did so as the wealthy merchant himself. He had his own
bodyguards, and numerous sales people strewn amongst the best
markets. He traded and sold ingots of glass, which were just
starting to become popular at that time and taught the Egyptian
artisans how to perfect the art, even to the point where later
scholars thought that they were the first to develop glassmaking.
His main ports of docking were Dor, Surat in India and later on at
Sabratha.