Dragons and Stars, Chapter 10: The Eve’ing Tales

Mrs. Silver nodded her head.

“In those days,” said Emmaline, “There wus lots o’ talk about deems in the space.”

“Deems?” asked Mrs. Silver.

“Dark cree-atures what would hide on your ship and attack when ya was at the loneliest place on yer journey,” said Emmaline. “Some myners bought little things what with to protect the’selves. Little crosses or mayhaps some stranger things. I knew one man whut carried a necklace of baby’s hair ‘roun his neck at all times. Some said babies was special protected from deems.”

“I heerd that once,” put in one of the miners.

“T’weren’t true,” said Emmaline. “He was one of the ones what didn’t make it.”

“What happened?” asked Mrs. Silver, leaning forward.

“Accordin’ to me mother, midway on our journey in the lon’liest place, the night fears started to come upon us. People became fri’tened for no reasons et all. They’d tape paper over the portals into space, afraid som’tin was coming in it to get ’em. Even grown men start’ed to sleep in ‘de same rooms together, afraid te’ sleep alone.

“And the strange’st thing of it wus that the ship lights seemed dimmer ever’ day. The cap’n checked ’em hisself, and there weren’t nothin wrong wit’ the lights, but ever’ one agreed they seemed clouded and durk.

“Then the noises started, creakings and groanin’s in the ship. It were an old ship, and some began te’ wonder what things had come to pass on it in beforetimes. Then the wurst thing of all began. People began to fighten and quarrelin’ with each ot’er. My mother said she found herself screamin’ at my father and he screamin’ back, she cryin’ fit to break, over the littlest things.

“She sed’ she once’t handed him a book and he didn’t say thenk you fer it, and she commenced to screamin’ at him for it till she stopped herself and asked why. Well, things went on like this for nigh unto a week. The folks was haggard from lack of sleep and scared of their own shadows. Two or three of them started in talking about wantin’ to kill themselves. My mother told me it were the durkest moments o’ her life, even durker than the pirate attack which took me father years later.

“More n’ more of the folks jus’ wanted nothin more than to turn back to the moon and all the friends they’d left behind. That warm life of happiness seemed like a dream thet weren’t even real anymore in the horrible place they was in then and the shadows they lived in. My mother said she was afeared the lights on the ship would jist get dimmer and dimmer ’til they went black and never came on again for any’one.”

Neal felt Hanna reach for his hand in the shadows. He realized that Grummel was holding his other hand already, though he couldn’t say which of them had reached first.

“What happened?” asked one of the miners, twisting his hands.

“Wahl,” said Emmaline. “There wus a few religious people on board, follo’ers of Jesh’us. They ask’d us all to stop eatin’ and ju’s pray to God for help. In the state we wus, we didn’t feel like eatin’ anyways. So we nearly all of us started to fastin’ and a prayin’. There weren’t a one of us what didn’t turn religious then except a strange old man named Greems. He were a slimy sort what would always stare at the girls and kept to hisself. He were the one wid’ the baby-hair necklace. Someone even rumored about thet he kept some bones o’ a baby in his carry bag for their power.

“Wahl, one day he were in an airlock checkin’ a panel with my father, and the door closed all mysterious. They was in there without helmets on, and the next thing ya knows, the outer door unseals.”

Gasps went up from the miners.

“It were ten minutes before the crew could get the airlock closed again and the inner door opened. It was strangerly jammed. When they opened it, they was both in there. Greems’ face was perfet’ly white and horrified, wid’ the strange lines o’ his blood vessels bulging under his skin, dead as a corpse. But me dad was asleep on the floor, calm and peaceful with no helmet either. They poked him and he woke up. Me dad said a large man had come in the room and given him a helmet, tho no sign of any such helmet was there. We knew then that deems and ainjells were both about.

“Still people never knew whether Greems done it hisself as a suicide or whether it were a deem what done it. Several folk got serious to God et thet point, however. Some people confessed to their sins. One man confessed an affair he were havin’ wid’ another woman on board. They took all the belongin’s of thet man Greems and threw them out the airlock wid’ him, and other people threw out charms or things they had which they oughtn’t to of had. The air seemed to get cleaner, and the lights grew brighter. The folks could again remember the good things in life and told the cap’n to keep goin’ on to Ceres and their new life there. Thet were how my mother an’ dad became Christians then, tho me dad didn’t become a Christian till a year or two laters.”

Everyone was silent for a few moments. Mrs. Silver sighed deeply. “Oh, my,” she said.

Neal, floating between his two friends, felt the stillness of the cylinder, felt the gentle turning of the great asteroid, felt in his heart the great blackness of space above them on this far-off place. Sometimes it put a loneliness in his heart that stung and ached.

“‘Ainjells’ and ‘deems’ are real,” said Mrs. Silver. “And so is the God who lives in heaven. He sends his ainjells to protect his children and do his will. And the deems weren’t always so evil,” she said.

“No?” said a miner.

“No,” said Mrs. Silver, shaking her short red hair in the firelight. “Long ago in the earliest days of the universe, all the ainjells lived in heaven, worshipping God. They were like the stars of space shining in majesty before the One who made all things.”

She shifted in her seat. “The greatest of the ainjells was named Lucifer, the light of morning. He watched as the Son of Heaven, God’s only child, spoke all planets and moons into existence with the breath of his mouth. He watched as the Son descended down onto Earth and knelt in the dirt and formed the first man and woman. And he watched as the Son appointed the angels to be servants to the humans.”

All was quiet except the crackling sounds of the fireplace.

“A terrible thing happened,” continued Mrs. Silver. “Lucifer, the brightest of the stars, grew prouder and angrier in his heart. He thought he should be God, equal to the Son of Heaven, ruling all things from the Throne. In his pride he began to change into a dragon. His ears turned into horns, his teeth grew longer and his hands grew claws until he was a large and horrible beast.”

She grew quiet, thinking.

“But the Son again returned to earth,” she whispered. “This time he was born as a human himself. But the dragon ran in front of the woman who was to give birth. He ran to the Jewish people to destroy them.”
Beside him, Hanna sucked in her breath.

“But the Son was snatched up to heaven and to God, and the woman was protected in the desert for 1,260 days. And such a war there was between Michael, God’s archangel, and the dragon and his angels! They fought against the dragon and his angels. Lucifer was not strong enough, and he was hurled down to the earth with his angels. They are the deems we know today, and they roam about like roaring lions seeking to steal, kill, and destroy with their lies.”

Neal felt the story sounded familiar. He couldn’t quite understand it as he turned it back and forth in his mind. He felt strange.

“Wuhl, I don’t rightly understand,” said one of the miners to Mrs. Silver.

“To put it in a nutshell, my friend,” she said, “The deems used to be ainjells. They rebelled against the only true God who made all things, and now they run amuck causing terror and trouble. We don’t usually see them, but they do what they can.”

Some of the old timers were nodding their heads. “I hev seen enough in one life to believe et’s true,” said Emmaline.

“What did she say about the Jewish people?” whispered Hanna, curiously. “The dragon wanted to destroy them because of their son?”

“I don’t know,” said Neal, a little shortly. Not only did his stomach and body ache, but his heart was exhausted from too much emotion in the day. “I’m heading to bed.” He shoved away from the group gathered by the firelight and pulled himself out through the dark hatch nearby.