brilliance that I usually admired. “I had no idea that it existed.”
“When was it written?” I asked, not a little jealous that Gabriella was once again ahead of the
game. “Is it modern?”
“It is an apocryphal prophecy written by a direct descendant of Noah,” Gabriella said. “Enoch
claimed to have been taken into heaven and given direct access to the angels.”
“In the modern era, The Book of Enoch has been dismissed as the dream vision of a mad
patriarch,” Dr. Seraphina said. “But it is our primary reference to the story of the Watchers.”
I had discovered a similar story in our professor’s journal and began to wonder if I had read the
same text. As if detecting my thoughts, Dr. Seraphina said, “I copied some sections of Enoch into the
journal you have been reading, Celestine.” Picking up the journal with the angel clasp, she turned it
over in her hand. “Surely you came across the passages. But The Book of Enoch is so elaborate, so
filled with wonderful information, that I recommend you read it in its entirety. In fact, Dr. Raphael
will require you to read it in your third year. If, that is, we will be conducting courses next year at
all.”
Gabriella said, “There is a passage that particularly struck me.”
“Yes?” Dr. Seraphina said, looking delighted. “Do you recall it?”
Gabriella recited the passage. “‘And there appeared to me two men very tall, such as I have never
seen on earth. And their faces shone like the sun, and their eyes were like burning lamps, and fire
came forth from their lips. Their dress had the appearance of feathers: their feet were purple, their
wings brighter than gold; their hands were whiter than snow.”’
I felt my cheeks grow hot. Gabriella’s talents, which had once made me love her, now had the
opposite effect.
“Excellent,” Dr. Seraphina said, looking both pleased and circumspect at once. “And why did that
passage strike you?”
“These angels are not the sweet cherubs standing at heaven’s gate, not the luminous figures we see
in Renaissance paintings,” Gabriella said. “They are fearsome, frightening creatures. I found, as I
read Enoch’s account of the angels, that they are horrible, almost monstrous. To be honest, they terrify
me.”
I stared at Gabriella in disbelief. Gabriella returned my gaze, and I sensed—for the briefest
moment—that she was trying to tell me something but could not. I longed for her to say more, to
explain herself to me, but she merely turned a cold eye on me once more.
Dr. Seraphina thought Gabriella’s statement over for a moment, and I wondered if she might know
more about my friend than I. Standing, she walked to her cupboard, opened a drawer, and removed a
hammered-copper cylinder. After slipping on a pair of white gloves, she twisted it, popped off a
wafer-thin copper lid, and tapped out a scroll. Flattening it on the coffee table before us, she lifted a
leaded-crystal paperweight and anchored one end of the scroll upon the tabletop. The other she held
with the palm of her long, thin hand. I stared at the yellow, crinkled scroll as Dr. Seraphina unfolded
it.
Gabriella leaned over and touched the edge of the scroll. “That is Enoch’s vision?” she asked.
“A copy,” Dr. Seraphina said. “There were hundreds of such manuscripts circulating during the
second century B.C. According to our chief archivist, we have a number of the originals, all slightly
different, as these things usually were. We became interested in preserving them when the Vatican
began to destroy them. This one is not nearly as precious as those in the vault.”
The scroll was made of thick, leathery paper, the rubric in Latin and the words drawn in precisely
articulated calligraphy. The margins were illuminated with slender golden angels, their silver robes
curling against folded golden wings.
Dr. Seraphina turned to us. “Can you read it?”
I had studied Latin as well as Greek and Aramaic, but the calligraphy was difficult to make out and
the Latin seemed strange and unfamiliar.
Gabriella asked, “When was the scroll copied?”
“The seventeenth century or so,” Dr. Seraphina said. “It is a modern reproduction of a much older
manuscript, one that predates the texts that became the Bible. The original is locked up in our vault, as
are hundreds of other manuscripts, where they are safe. We have been scavengers of texts since our
work began. It is our greatest strength—we are the holders of the truth, and this information protects
us. In fact, you would find that many of the fragments collected in the Bible itself—and many that