Title: The Host's Tale, or In The Beginning

Rating: PG

Book/character: Genesis and Psalms/God, OCs

Warnings: altered Bible text

Wordcount: 2300

Summary/notes: Crossover with Highlander: The Series. This is the fifth part in a series of stories called The New Canterbury Tales. The frame story is that Duncan, Methos, Joe and Richie are on a road trip to a place called New Canterbury. They are snowed in along the way at a diner and pass the time by telling stories. The only other person in the diner is the proprietor, who has listened with interest to their stories and now tells one of his own. You don't need to read the other parts to understand this one, any more than you would need to read The Pardoner's Tale in order to enjoy The Wife of Bath's Tale. My huge thanks go to DesertRat for all her help and suggestions over the *cough* years it's taken for this to gel.

Disclaimer: I have nothing to do with the creation of Highlander: The Series

"Hey," Richie said, "the snow's letting up. Look." Beyond the large window, the swirls of white retreated. Their car came into sharp focus and other buildings on the street emerged as silhouettes brightening with each moment. Joe began the process of standing and Methos threw back the last of his beer. Duncan rose and turned to their host, preparing to pay the tab.

The man got to his feet and moved behind the counter, Duncan following him and standing before the cash register. But rather than meet him there, the man removed his apron, opened a cabinet, and took out a thin book. "Don't I get to tell a story?" he asked, turning to Duncan.

"I'm sorry, but we need to go." Duncan smiled.

The man shook his head, regretfully. Richie was at the door, only his reluctance to abandon the warmth of the diner kept him from being already through it. Joe joined him there as Methos stood at the table.

The man set his small book down and tapped it. "I can guarantee you haven't heard this story before."

Duncan gestured with his cash. "Some other time," he said. Methos drifted up behind him, his gaze on the art deco wallpaper design of the book's cover. The man took Duncan's money and gave him change. "It's about immortals," he said.

He acted blithely unaware that he had captured the attention of every man in the room. "How they were created, what God intends for them." He closed the cash drawer of the register.

Duncan glanced at Methos, who scowled at the man. Joe made his way toward them, Richie hovering behind. "But, like you said, you need to go." The man took the book and put it beneath the counter.

"What do you mean, 'immortals'?" Richie asked.

"Oh, so you do want to hear my story?" The man took out an empty beer pitcher and began to fill it at the tap. Behind his back, the others exchanged looks; startled, wary, curious, impatient. "Stay," he said, turning back and banging the filled pitcher on the counter. "The beer's on the house."

The room was still for two beats. One, two. "Good enough for me," Methos said, carrying the pitcher back to their table. "Adam," Duncan protested, "it's getting late."

"I want to hear his story, Mac," Joe said. "Yeah, me too," said Richie.

"It's your trip to the auction house," Duncan said to Methos with a shrug, joining the others back at their table. Their host filled glasses for them as they sat—except that Duncan refused the drink on the premise that he should be driving soon -- then returned to the counter, produced the book and began to read.

When, in the beginning, God created earth and heaven, He created man and woman from the stuff of the firmament. He blew into their nostrils the breath of life, and they became living beings. He placed them in Gan Eden to till it and to tend it and commanded them, saying, "Of every tree in the garden you are free to eat; but of the two trees in the center of the garden you may not eat, for on the day you eat from them, you shall surely be cut off in ignorance."

The travelers glanced around the table at each other – even Richie looked puzzled. Methos slouched back, drained his glass and refilled it. The host continued.

And the Lord God brought before them all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the sky and taught them their names. He taught them the names of the trees and the plants. The man and the woman communed in the garden with every beast of the earth, but there was no serpent.

Now the man and the woman climb high in the trees, the man stretches out his hand and the woman is struck; she falls. Rakia fears the pain of loneliness.

"Who's Rakia?" Richie whispered. The others shook their heads, gazes glued to the man with the book.

"You are losing breath," he says. "I know a tree named Life." He takes of the fruit of the tree which God had forbidden him and gives to the woman to eat. "We shall surely be cut off in ignorance," she says to him. He eats and gives to her again. "Now I am alone with God." She eats and is healed.

They felt the Lord God moving about in the garden at the breezy time of the day. The Lord God called out to Rakia and said to him, "I feel my breath in you. Did you eat of the tree from which I had forbidden you to eat?" The man said, "The woman knew pain and I feared to be alone. I took from the tree called Life and we ate." And the Lord God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?" "You were not here," she said. "I desired to live."

To one the Lord God said, "Because you ate of the tree about which I commanded you, 'You shall not eat of it,'

You shall know neither father nor mother.

You shall not know from whence you came.

Destruction to your own kind

Forever a stranger in strange lands

Lonely."

And to the other He said,

"Because you lusted for immortality,

Though the life within you is eternal

Your own days will come to a head.

Your existence shall be struggle and enmity.

You shall not be fruitful, but shall diminish upon the earth.

In the end there shall be only one."

And the Lord God said, "Now that this man also has become like one of us, living forever, what if he should stretch out his hand and take from the tree of knowledge, and eat and seek wisdom!" So the Lord God drove the man out, and stationed west of the garden of Eden the cherubim and fiery ever-turning sword, to guard the way to the tree of knowledge.

When mankind began to increase upon the earth and sons were born to them, the sons of Rakia saw how beautiful were the daughters of Adam and took wives from among those who pleased them. It was then, and later too, that the Nephilim appeared on the earth – when the sons of eternal life cohabited with the daughters of knowledge, who bore them offspring. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.

Richie had not touched his beer. "Wait," he asked, "so there were two trees?" Joe nodded and Duncan said, "That's right," still watching the man with the book.

"That part's right, anyway," said Methos, still frowning, like a musician hearing his student play a piece badly. The host continued:

The Lord saw how great was this wickedness, that soil and firmament mingled; how knowing neither good nor evil, the sons of Rakia devised nothing but evil all the time. And the Lord regretted that He had loosed mankind on earth, and His heart was saddened. The Lord said, "I shall destroy the firmament that I created – the Most High above and the sons of Rakia below – and the waters will blot out from the earth the men whom I created – mankind together with beasts, creeping things, and birds of the sky; for I regret that I made them. As for the sons of firmament,

They neither know nor understand

They go about in darkness

All the foundations of the earth totter

I had taken you for divine beings

Sons of the Most High, all of you

But you shall die as men do

Fall like any prince

But the Nephilim found favor with the Lord. They knew good from evil and performed mighty deeds. They were of large stature and became powerful hunters, admired leaders.

And when God destroyed the firmament, both the Most High and the sons of Rakia, all the fountains of the great deep burst apart. The floodgates of the sky broke open.

When the waters swelled upon the earth, all the highest mountains everywhere under the sky were covered. And all flesh that stirred on earth perished—birds, cattle, beasts, and all the things that swarmed upon the earth, and all mankind. All in whose nostrils was the merest breath of life, all that was on dry land, died. All existence on earth was blotted out—mankind, cattle, creeping things, and birds of the sky; they were blotted out from the earth. But the Nephilim were covered and did not die, for the eternal breath of life was in them.

At the end of one hundred and fifty days the waters diminished. The waters went on diminishing until the tenth month; in the tenth month, on the first of the month, the tops of the mountains appeared. And in the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dry.

God said to the Nephilim, "Though you have been granted life, you shall not be fertile and increase, you shall not abound on the earth and increase on it. In hiding shall you destroy your kind, and in ignorance will you come into being, for your parentage was forbidden. The quickening breath of life that is within you shall not diminish as your numbers diminish, rather it will gather into an ever greater whirlwind until the final holy storm abides in only one."

And God's bow appeared in the clouds, a promise of his covenant, a sign that He was done with cursing His creation. Thus it is that the immortal giants of old are no longer seen beneath the sun.

The host closed the book and looked up at the others. "What was that?" Duncan demanded, drawn to his feet.

"It's from a little known story called the Book of Enoch," said the man.

Methos, too, was on his feet, beside Duncan, the two of them closing upon the man at the counter. "No, it's not," he said. "I know the Book of Enoch."

"Well, there is more than one version," said the man, calmly.

"Isn't there any more to the story?" asked Richie, sounding plaintive.

"There are three versions," said Methos. "There is a Greek version, a Qumran version, and the one James Bruce brought from Abyssinia."

"Ethiopia," Duncan said.

"Ethiopia," Methos agreed. "I know all three, and nothing like that is in there."

"Then, obviously, there must be another version. Here, keep it." As Methos reached to accept the book, Joe, who had arrived at the counter, snatched the man's wrist and turned it over. It was unblemished. The man released the book but yanked his hand free.

Methos turned the book over. The front and back were unmarked, with a repeating abstract pattern all over it. Duncan bent his head, too, over the book in Methos's hands. "It sounded like Genesis," Duncan said.

"You'd better go now," the man said, casting an annoyed look at Joe and locking the drawer on the cash register, "if you want to get to New Canterbury before dark." He turned and headed for a door to the back.

"Where did you get this?" Duncan called after him, but the man went through the door without replying.

The travelers looked at each other. "You want me to go get him out here?" Richie asked. "No," Duncan replied after a moment. "We've got the book. Let's go." He led the way out to the car. Richie held the door for Joe.

Methos climbed in the shotgun seat, gripping the book. Duncan steered the SUV down the main street toward the highway. Beside him, Methos swore. "What?" chorused the others.

"It's blank," he said, holding up the empty book. "It's just one of those blank journals."

"Guys," Richie said, leaning forward, "we never told him where we were going, but he knew. Did you catch that? This is so creepy."

Behind them, the neon "Open" sign on the diner flickered into darkness.

Endnotes:

Genesis text adapted from the new JPS translation.

"Stranger in a Strange Land" is used in canon as a description of Moses, not of the Nephilim. But maybe Moses called himself that in a reference to this alternate Genesis version in order to signal his true origin. After all, he was a foundling (a back-justification of his Hebrew birth notwithstanding), he was an outsider, he outlived at least two generations of his people, no one knows where he was buried, and somehow he wrote about events that occurred after his "death." Of course, he did have a son, but Zipporah could have been unfaithful. I'm sure the whole blood bridegroom incident could be sorted out as something to do with the problem that it might be unusually tricky to circumcise an immortal. Not that I've worked that out, yet. Maybe that'll be another story.

Psalm 82, with no alteration from me.

The Nephilim were giants, or "of large stature," but that would eventually lead them to look ordinary-sized as humanity grew larger over time.