Book 2: Naamah and Tubal-Cain

No one would protect me. Not like they had in Hell, or from Samael, or... from anyone. Couldn't expect any better from Yeshua the trickster, who I had never trusted since I read in first grade that he cursed a fig tree and drove demonic pigs into the raging sea. In truth, my passenger and Yugo collector was... kind of a roaming delinquent. And Cain was the original delinquent. So I was tasked with two children, in essence, when I was the youngest one in the room.

Some changes had to be made.

"Stop with the pedantry, Cain, and more pleasantries," I sighed. "Ghent Altarpiece. Why is that familiar."

"Because you love art, Shana," Yeshua practically crooned.

"Ah... van Eyck. Belgium? Belgian waffles?"

"Fancy some after dinner?" Yeshua asked, clearly delighted by the prospect of Belgian waffles.

Cain laughed slightly.

"Sure, but cut the crap, Yeshua. Your true form, no more of this baby Jesus shit. I know exactly what you look like, I'm a lapsed Catholic. Y'know, Passion, Cross, loincloth? I'd rather be dealing with adults."

Yeshua shrugged. "As you wish."

He bloomed, 33, long brown curls like Da Vinci's Fibbonacci spiral, hazel eyes like woodsmoke, strong carpenter's lean muscles, smuggler fingers to coax a piano out of death. He wore white robes, and his beard was impeccably groomed.

"How do I look?"

"Like an icon."

"Good. Now can we please go feast. Get me some water, I'll turn it into wine. We'll get ourselves stupid drunk before the waffles and quest. Quests always need Belgian waffles, if my Lamb blood is going to be involved, I have to get my blood sugar up."

"This way, down the primrose path..." Cain said, and as he did, the trees and witch chimes cleared, primroses bloomed as he walked barefooted down a dirt path, Yeshua practically danced after him, and I looked at my widow's mark with hesitance, wondering at it's meaning, and wandered on.

Cain's hut was like a witch's tabernacle, full of twine-hung spices and herbs, glass bottles in fish netting, a cabinet full of witchcraft supplies, a raised thatch roof with beams old and bent like a widow, the scent of freshly baking bread coming from the great clay fireplace, a doeskin bed frame and trundle bed below, where a child named Tubal-Cain played, and busy at the old iron stove, Naamah with dainty ankles and beauty the wildness of an enchantress. I looked in awe at the quaint home in Nod, how Cain had built a homestead in desolation, and beyond the open windows, rolling fields of heather, wildflowers, and lavender, and trees whipped by wind into fantastical shapes. The prairie seemed to spread out forever like God's hands unfurling, and love radiated from his wife and toddler.

"Da!" Tubal-Cain chimed as he put down a corn dolly. He toddled over to Cain, chubby-cheeked, with Cain's green eyes, and Cain laughed, picking up his bonny wee babe, as us Irish liked to say, and kissed his plump cheeks.

"Bali, have you been a good boy while I was away gathering dinner?" Cain crooned.

The slightly chubby toddler in a cloth diaper laughed. "I'ze made mud pie for dada!"

"And we will share them with Brother Worm," Cain said, setting Tubal-Cain down, who ran to the feet of Jesus. Jesus looked quite bemused and picked the child up, then kissed him on the nose and tickled him.

"Blessed are the children," he said, smiling rapturously. "Naamah, lovely as ever."

Naamah gave a hearty laugh. She was plump and beautiful, with coconut bark skin and dark black eyes, her curls thick and juicy.

"Oh Yeshua, got your driver's license? It's been a while since I've seen you past puberty. Now you can drive your hobby Yugos."

"Right in time to get Belgian waffles."

"Oh, you're going to Belgium?" Naamah perked up, stirring a bubbling vegetable soup. "Vegetarian, so I approve. Please, we have Cain's salad and my pottage soup for dinner. You'll have to tell Bali about what the animals in Purgatory are up to, we so rarely get deer here, barren yet hardy land it is, and mostly, he has the grasses as his companions. Odin's motorcycle gang stops by occasionally, and all we have is the Galactic Diner Siduri runs where we tend to get veggie omelets. Ah Siduri, barmaid for 5,000 years and then she decides to open a grease joint. Love her spunk."

"Just like I love your spunk, dearest Naamah of the cymbals."

Cain relaxed in a leather chair. "Yeshua, please stop flirting with my wife."

Yeshua looked like a Cherubim with a toothache. Why did that remind me of Samael?

"I'm hungry, my apologies, Cain. I love all God's children."

"Love them a bit too much, don't you," Cain sighed, opening a can of Coke. Where he got a Coke from (Siduri the Sumerian beverage queen?) I wasn't quite sure, unless Yeshua was smuggling human goods across the border in his gypsy caravan of Yugos.

"I have... well, I'm not going to answer that," Yeshua laughed, then gave me a certain look, one I couldn't quite place.

The soup started to boil. "Pottage is ready! What Esau would have killed his twin for."

Cain winced. "The twin jokes. Again, Naamah, you are relentless."

Naamah shrugged. "It's your weak point. Wives always target weak points. It shows our love for our sinful husbands."

"I like you, Naamah, I think we could share some pointers on our respective partners, er, well, whatever Sam is to me," I mused, setting into the oak slice table as Cain doled out salad, Naamah arranged the bread and cheese plate, Yeshua magicked red wine out of well water, and Tubal-Cain sat in his high chair, eating pretzels.

Pottage served finally, we all dug in. The fare was salt of the earth, filling, and good and righteous as fresh tilled dirt.

Not that it tasted like dirt.

We talked of little things, household affairs, Tubal-Cain's latest adventures with Hnossa and Gersemni as Freyja seemed to bring her daughters in the Viking Motorgang occasionally, and Cain finally answered the question on everyone's tongue:

"God is broken. Shattered. When the Ark of the Covenant fell, he split. And all, all of them, are on Michael's side, serving a divine purpose. The Seven Names of God, one for each of the seals. The one in Belgium is a Gothic LARPer, as far as I can tell. His Names possessed vessels in willing humans and gave them superpowers. Bella, the Gothic girl, can raise the Dead now. Only, she doesn't realize it. You'll find her in Brussels, on the exact day she studies the Ghent altarpiece. She has revenants of her own now. That is what my Mark tells me."

I reeled. "God is a girl?"

Yeshua laughed. "It's not like my Father was ever, well, a man. Always a woman, in the way Ur-Genders work. Only women can have bits and bobs of Seals and Names floating around in them. I am the only Son of a Virgin."

"How's Mary doing?" Naamah asked. "You never bring her over for tea anymore."

Yeshua looked out the window. "I think at this moment, my mother is getting a pedicure with Elizabeth and Mary Salome and Mary Magdalene. The Silver City would turn into a salon if it was for those four alone. Only Michael kept them in line, we have no one as efficient as Mulciber, and well, now that Michael and Father are broken by the seals and on a rampage, and Metatron, the voice of reason, has proven a traitor and retreated to the elusive Shamayim, that only an ascendant - cough, SHANNON, cough - can reach, well, it may well turn into a beauty parlor as Father and Michael are gone, Metatron's organizational skills at keeping the Queen of Heaven in line are now missing, Michael's resistance to manscaping, metrosexuality, and anything French is gone, and well, Father is in seven young women, so you know, beauty parlor throughout Heaven. Peter and Paul will not be very happy, but I'm sure John will go along with it."

Naamah raised her eyebrows.

"I'll bring her over for tea!" Yeshua declared, fancying a glass of red wine as his reflection of the world.

"Well, we got the information we came for, on whatever bonkers quest this is..." I said slowly, choking a bit on some tough pottage. "Thanks... son."

Cain smiled.

"Oh, Eve, er, Shannon! Well, that is your name now, is it? How is my cooking? Like you remembered in Babel?" Naamah chirped.I smiled. "Delicious."