“Of course not.”
“Good.” He clapped his hands once, and the room turned black, and a small light flickered, illuminating his hand as he held it out palm facing up. “I wouldn’t trust me either, but this, my dear girl, is something you must know.”
I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me.
The figures around us offered protection, meaning Adonis and the rest of them couldn’t see or hear anything that was going on. For that, I was semi-grateful. If this was my mission, I was the only one who could be trusted, not them.
“Shall I tell you a story?” Cronus asked.
“Well, I did come down here for something.” I smiled.
“Good girl.” He snapped above the little cloud of light and another light burst forth and another, repeating until there were twelve stars all together. “We watched, for thousands of years we watched. We watched while the selfish human race did nothing but destroy everything El gave them. We stood by and did nothing when women would leave their husbands for each other. When children would slaughter their parents and slander their Creator. We did nothing.”
I felt my lips tremble. I wanted to weep for them, but I couldn’t. I kept listening.
“We were all given free will. Even the angels. For what creator wants to be served out of duty? No, El deserves to be served for the simple fact that El is everything.” Cronus paused. “I admit that I became angry with El.”
“Angry?” I asked. “Why?”
“He saw that the humans were wicked, saw that they were making a mess of things, and He still loved them. He loved them more than us.”
I felt my heart slam in my chest. “You were jealous.”
“Jealous?” he roared. “I was much more than that, my dear. How could He love them? How could He love such an insignificant race? A race that was so dependent on him that they could do nothing, yet had such arrogance that they claimed they didn’t need Him. Yet they ignored the sun and moon, ignored the magnificence of their own bodies. Jealous does not even begin to describe it. How do you become jealous of something so insignificant as an ant? Or a flea?”
Harsh, but okay.
“I fought with myself. I said nothing. Then when Lucifer, my brother, took angels with him, it became harder and harder to keep my silence.”
The lights shifted, and suddenly I saw something I hated. A human girl was sitting by a pond sunbathing. She was naked and beautiful. Her hair fell back against her shoulders, and water droplets seemed to flicker across her golden skin.
“Hello,” a dark figure said over her. He was gorgeous. Bright blue eyes and pale skin framed a perfectly chiseled figure. The woman laughed.
“Are you an angel?”
“Do you want me to be?” the man asked.
“No.”
“Why not?” He knelt down beside her and began rubbing his hand up and down her arm.
“Because, then I could not lie with you.”
“And is that what you want?” He purred in her ear.
She laughed and lay back. “Yes, after all, this is merely a dream. I have just fallen asleep and will wake up in a little while. For I have never seen a man more beautiful in my waking. It must be a dream.”
“Oh, it will be much more than that.”
I watched in horror as the angel who had clearly taken the shape of a normal human laid claim to the woman and quickly left her. She took pleasure in his touch, then as quickly as he appeared, he disappeared. The woman laughed and told herself to wake up.
Only, after a few minutes, she realized she was awake.
It had really happened.
The light changed again. The man took on his normal form as a heavenly being. It was Cronus. Only he seemed aged, different. He slowly appeared back in the sky but wasn’t as bright as his brothers.
“They are wicked creatures,” he said. “And I will prove it to El. I will gain his attention once and for all. Who will follow me?”
His brothers argued with him for twenty years. And in those twenty years, the woman had a child.
His name was Atlas.
Nausea overtook me as I watched the child come into the world. The mother died, and immediately everyone could tell the child was different. Not of this world, they said as they passed him off and finally left him in the desert.
“I went in search of him,” Cronus said. “I could not abandon my flesh and blood. Never have I felt so enraged as when the humans discarded this innocent creature. It was my jealousy, my bitterness that created the half-breed; it was no fault of Atlas. It still is not Atlas’s fault.”
I nodded. “I like Atlas too.”
He smiled. “Most do, my dear. After all, he carries a great many things on his shoulders. It is easier to feel light around the boy.”
I sighed and watched as Cronus again snapped his fingers. The picture in front of me made me want to weep. Cronus walked up to the small innocent child and picked him up in his arms.