Into Eden: Pangaea - Book 1 Read Online Free

gate was closed, and Abijah’s father Asa stood by to open it.
    “Asa,” yelled Jesse as the carriage waited for Asa to swing the gate open. “Who ordered the gates to be shut?”
    “Why your brother, of course. He’s heard tales of lions from your brothers and sisters that have come up from the south to see your father.”
    “Has anyone actually seen these lions?” Jesse demanded.
    “Why no…I think not,” Asa replied. “But everyone says it’s so.”
    Jesse gritted his teeth.
    Enoch couldn’t resist a little smile.
    The carriage pulled up to the estate’s main entrance and Jesse could see perhaps a dozen horses tethered to a hitching post outside of the stable, as well as three buckboards and a carriage. It made for a crowded courtyard. As they approached the mansion, Jesse jumped out, with Enoch following close behind.
    “Jesse!” yelled Enoch. “I need to speak to you a moment.”
    “What is it?”
    “In private.”
    Jesse crouched down so that he could look the dog in the eyes. “I’m sorry,” Enoch told him, “perhaps it’s better if I keep a safe distance. Your father may not be able to focus clearly if there are two dogs in the room.”
    Jesse started to protest, and then considered the matter. Enoch had raised a frightening prospect. How many spirits could inhabit a host at one time? He’d heard stories of gi-nefs in Atlantis who had died and “leaped” into hosts that were already inhabited. The result had been insanity, for many dogs could not accommodate multiple spirits.
    “Perhaps you’re right. You can spend the night with Abijah.”
    Jesse then pulled Abijah aside and asked that he let Enoch spend the night with him.
    “Sure!” Abijah said loudly. “He can spend the night at our quarters.” Then, turning to Enoch he declared, “They’ll let us know if anything happens.”
    “You bet we will!” Jesse exclaimed. “And Abijah: Make sure Enoch gets let out in the morning!” At that Enoch looked at Jesse and growled. The indignity of living in a dog was one thing. Discussing his necessaries in public was another.
    When Jesse opened the massive, high doors that opened into the mansion’s main entryway, he was faced with a couple dozen of his half-brothers and sisters. So many people jammed the room that it was impossible to move through the crowd to get to the stairway that led to his father’s room. In his haste to reach his father, he had forgotten that the doctor was with him until Doc Paron spoke in his ear, “Tell them to move. I have to get to him.”
    “Make-way!” Jesse yelled. “The doctor’s here to see Father!”
    With that the crowd parted just enough to permit Doc Paron and Jesse to squeeze through and make their way up the stairs to the right. Halfway up Jesse paused and took in the scene below. He was seeing, he thought, a testament to his father’s life crowded into the alcove below. Men and women—many of them separated by centuries in age—who were there to spend one last evening with the father that they loved. Even the room in which they gathered screamed of the life that their father had lived. Above the doors through which he and the doctor had entered was a mural of his father representing his days as a general with the Atlantan legion. It depicted a scene from the An-nef War. In it, his father was painted in full battle-gear, gray armor and winged helmet. He triumphantly held a bloody sword in his gauntleted hand held high above his head, and his foot rested on the body of a slain jackal-head: Nashon the warrior. Just beneath the stairway opposite him was another mural. In this one his father—now dressed in wool pants and cotton shirt—was shooting his longbow, its arrow piercing a large pterodactyl with long, dark green leathery wings. The creature’s nostrils still billowing smoke, and fire was flaring from its mouth as it fell to the earth: Nashon the dragon-slayer. Beneath him, below the stairway on which he was standing a third mural