#lydias

It was the seventh day of the world, and you were growing rather tired of the view ahead of you. Sand, blown by wind and shaped into haphazard dunes for miles upon miles upon miles. As to why anyone would put an oasis of a garden here was beyond the celestial being, but that must be part of God’s “ineffable plan” the angel in white next to you continues to muse over. This angel, so pure and built to God’s image perfectly, but you could sense an ounce of speculation in his heart.

Good, you’d think when you’d notice him think for himself. Be you.

Your eyes focused on the two humans walking. It hurt your heart, watching those two first humans be forced from Eden. Your heart ached, not for their punishment, but for the trickery- the warping of free will for an agenda evil. Or maybe, more than Hell’s doing, you were more upset with God Herself for placing a forbidden tree in the center of a luscious garden with no way of stopping a new creature with free will.

Yes, that you were made about. Temptation, from both sides. 

More than most, you were aggravated at yourself for not catching the serpent on time. The serpent, a demon no doubt, gliding across the Garden floor growth to the fate of humanity. You were upset you weren’t around to remind Adam and Eve they could make (and should make) their own choices for their own good.

“Well, that went down like a lead balloon.” 

You turned her head to glare at the demon next to you. A newer face, but familiar somehow. He stands tall with his shoulders back, looking in the same direction you had been gazing at moments ago. His hair, long and red and tucked into curls, was blown behind him gently by a wind coming from the east. The most peculiar of all was the stark resemblance of the snake he had just formed from; the serpent that tainted the Garden of Eden, you recognized. His eyes were slated down the middle, a jaundiced yellow around the black crevice. Snakes adorned his face under his sideburn, and you found it amusing. What struck you most were his pitch black wings, a standing contrast between the angel’s white wings and your own brown ones. His feathers looked soft, but they seemed burned at the edges.

Oh, right- you think- the fall.

“Sorry, what was that?” the angel, Aziraphale, asks. He, too, watches the humans in worry. You found it humorous the immediate difference between him and the demon- two sides of two very distant coins. You were somewhere in the middle- you were the middle.

“I said, ‘Well, that went down like a lead balloon,’” the demon repeated. You still stare at him as he looks past you to the angel.

“Yes, yes, it did, rather.” Aziraphale’s voice is laced with concern, and it’s rubbing off on you. Your eyes travel back to Adam and Eve.

“Bit of an overreaction, if you ask me.” The angel looks at the demon with a side eye. “First offence and everything.” You understood though, you would almost say you agreed. “I can't see what's so bad about knowing the difference between good and evil anyway.” You furrowed your eyebrows at that, thinking about the fallen’s words.

“It’s not about knowing the difference, it’s about falling for temptation to act upon a side.” Your first words aloud grab the demon’s attention, and he cocks his head ever so slightly as he looks at you. Studying, you would say, but he looks away before you can pin the look.

“Well, it must be bad…” the angel started.

“Crawley,” the demon informs him.

“-Crawley. Otherwise you wouldn't have tempted them into it.”

“Oh, they just said, ‘Get up there and make some trouble,’” he says nonchalantly, and you chuckle shortly. 

“Well, obviously. You're a demon.” The nerve of the angel, you swear. “It's what you do.”

“Not very subtle of the Almighty, though,” Crawley begins. “Fruit tree in the middle of a garden with a ‘Don't Touch’ sign. I mean, why not put it on the top of a high mountain? Or on the moon? Makes you wonder what God's really planning.” You avert your gaze back to him, and he’s already looking at you. Studying, indefinitely, you decide. He knows you agrees.

No wonder this one fell, you think.

“Best not to speculate. It's all part of the Great Plan.” Aziraphale, in every way, looked like he was trying to convince himself the same. “It's not for us to understand, it's ineffable.” And he looked mighty proud of using that word to a new person.

“The Great Plan's ineffable?” Crawley asks. Now he was studying his angelic counterpart who still has not made direct eye contact.

“Exactly. It is beyond understanding and incapable of being put into words.”

“Awfully funny was of having a plan if you can’t share it,” you mumbled, and Aziraphale shot you a look of caution. “Oh, I’m down here for a reason-”

“Didn't you have a flaming sword?” Crawley asks, and you look to Aziraphale. 

“He did,” you muttered, scanning the garden.

“It was flaming like anything. What happened to it?” Aziraphale releases a soft “uh” and you chuckle again. “Lost it already, have you?”

“Gave it away,” you informed him.

“You what?” the demon gasps. 

“I gave it away!” Aziraphale says, standing his ground. “There are vicious animals, it's going to be cold out there, and she's expecting already.” Again, trying to convince himself.

“And heavenly said, ‘Here you go, flaming sword. Don't thank me!’” you half-mocked.

“‘And don't let the sun go down on you here,’" he added, and you nod to confirm the tale. “I do hope I didn't do the wrong thing.”

“Oh, you're an angel,” Crawley whole-mocked. “I don't think you can do the wrong thing.” In your mind, you ask as always, what makes wrong so wrong? But it’s a question for another time, a question for possibly other entities rather than the ones on each side of you.

“Oh, oh, thank you,” the angel stammers. “Oh, thank you. It's been bothering me.”

A lion roars across the dunes, and you gaze to the beast in front of the humans. You shifted your footing, watching anxiously. The flaming sword in the man’s hands adds strength to the felt fear, and you frowned deeply. Oh, how badly you wanted to go and help them.

“I've been worrying, too.” You look to the demon on your left at the sound of concern in his voice. “What if I did the right thing with the whole ‘eat the apple’ business? A demon can get into a lot of trouble for doing the right thing.” What makes right so right?

More importantly, you thought, Is this free will speaking? But you pushed the thought down, saving it for a day long away.

The man lands a fatal blow to the lion’s neck, and it falls heavily. You relax your shoulders, shifting back to your previous stance. 

“It'd be funny if we both got it wrong, eh? If I did the good thing and you did the bad one.” Both chuckle at the demon’s words, but you remain silent. Both of you could do what you want, not what you think home office will want.

Aziraphale stops laughing as soon as he realizes the implications of consequence behind the joke. “No, it wouldn't be funny at all.”

Suddenly, thunder sounds over the dunes behind Paradise. You flinched, and quickly look at the demon beside you. You raised your wings, one over Aziraphale and one over Crawley, more worried about whether or not what’s about to fall is holy water, worried if this being next to you might singe and wither at the slightest raindrop. 

Lydias hero-worships Hephaistion, and after his death, is adrift, although he still serves Alexander until Alexander’s own death, when he’s then co-opted by Ptolemy, who he eventually comes to respect and chooses to serve.

If the novel contains plenty of adventure and some battle scenes, the main focus is on the fates of officers like Lydias who weren’t high enough to take a stab at empire, but were increasingly forced to choose sides in the chaos. For the most part, Lydias is just trying to survive, but to do so with honor and dignity. Even before he loses his beloved commander, he also suffers a personal tragedy that leaves him understandably melancholy and a bit fatalistic.

As the novel is historical fantasy, magic is real, but like Judith Tarr (who also wrote a novel on ATG) the magic depicted is a natural extension of what the ancients already believed. It simply works. (This is in stark contrast to some of the poorer examples such as David Gemmel’s befuddling Lion of Macedon and Dark Prince, which amounted to Dungeons-and-Dragons Does Greece.) In any case, Graham’s use of magic felt organic and natural, and appropriate to the cultures (both Macedonian and Egyptian). It’s also the second in her “Numinous World” series, which involves the fates of certain souls across various reincarnations, but this is not a strong theme and the novel can easily be read without reading Black Ships first.

Graham also shows her familiarity with the messy muddle of sources for the early wars. Her depiction of the confrontation in Egypt between Ptolemy and Perdikkas, after Ptolemy absconds with Alexander’s body, follows closely on Diodorus’s account in Book 18. If I had any complaint about the politics, it’s that I’d have liked to hear more about what was going on in other places, including the rising dissatisfaction with Perdikkas from Antipatros, Antigonos, and Krateros. But that would have taken the focus off of Lydias, who had less reason to know these things, so I understand why her description of the rising civil war is truncated.

Readers may also be pleased to hear that Graham doesn’t shy away from both homoerotic and heteroerotic relationships. Lydias is comfortably bisexual, and Alexander and Hephaistion are definitively lovers. Bagoas is even in the novel, and takes a lot from Renault’s version, although more the Bagoas of Funeral Games than of Persian Boy. If published in 2010, before a lot of trans and queer awareness, Graham expertly navigates Bagoas as a non-binary character. If I may personally doubt Bagoas was anywhere near as significant as Renault and some subsequent authors have depicted him, I liked this Bagoas far better than Oliver Stone’s post-Renault take.

And of course, Hephaistion. He gets to have a personality here! And while we see him always through Lydias’s love-soaked gaze, he does genuinely seem like an admirable person. He treats Lydias well from the start (which has something to do with Lydias’s devotion to him), and is depicted as competent as he rises increasingly higher during Alexander’s campaign.

So if you’re not already familiar with Jo Graham, give this one a read, and then pick up Black Ships and Hand of Isis, too.

Eternity was, indeed, a long time. The word sounds short, and the meaning sounds fake, but living it in holiness makes eternity last forever.

Heaven is as the saints make it out to be: pure. The Promise Land is white and bright and unaltered from God’s image, formed after the birth of the first white star. Heaven was not hot, though rather chilly. Coats were made of fresh atoms and stayed pristine forever (or so Samandriel claimed when he handed them out). The air was fresh, and by fresh that means empty. Heaven was a vacuum of sorts, no impurities allowed of any kind, even in the form of carbon dioxide. Heaven was safe, Heaven was holy, Heaven was clean.

But somehow, along the line of eternity, free will slipped into the air. Some celestial beings, dubbed angels, got a whiff and let it take over. The first was Lucifer. The creation of a lesser form, the humans, angered the archangel and many below him. Full of wrath, him and his followers stormed the gates to destroy what had been made. God caught wind rather quick, and they fell. Fell is a nicer word for the experience of having your wings plucked from your back and being kicked to Hell from Heaven above, catching fire and landing at impeccable speeds into the underworld. No wonder the demons are always mad. 

Among the Rebellion were the popular kids: Lucifer, Hastur, Beezlebub, Crawley (who claims it was all a matter of “hanging with the wrong crowd”), Aleister, and many more. Hundreds of angels kicked from home in a fiery descent on the second day of the world surely left a mark on God’s temper. 

What happened next surely didn’t help.

A curious, free-thinking angel named (Y/N), the angel of the Fourth Day (as called by her quieter descent), approached God Herself alone. This free will she had experienced through angels that had fallen, it was something to be given to the humans, she knew of it. God asked why, and (Y/N) answered simply because they deserve to be their own beings. She was the first and the only to survive standing up to God. 

How will the will be maintained, with those new evils lurking in Hell? asked Almighty.

Send me down, (Y/N) offered. 

Dismiss you? Have you fall?

No, not fall. Let me wander.

No longer an angel, you’ll be.

So be it. Let me be their guardian.

Guardian, God thought. So be it.

On the fourth day, (Y/N) was sent down to join the first two humans, Adam and Eve. She was to foster free will, thwart evil and good alike so that the humans’ actions and choices will be their own, so that they will be their own beings. Being sent down meant changing, but not getting wings ripped or eyes distorted. Her wings, once pure white, now the color of the dirt that dressed Earth, and her body immune to the weapons of Heaven (holy water) and Hell (hell fire). 

She was her own being, the middle ground. She was mostly human. She was free.

Her first day on Earth was spent in the Garden. She greeted Adam and Eve with glee, the humans happy to see a new face. She introduced herself, introduced the concept of choosing, of being in charge of your own actions, introduced the vague and subjective ideas of good versus evil. They spoke until the sun went down, and with a heavy heart, (Y/N) stood.

This will be the last time we speak, she informed them. Your actions are yours to choose. I will be here for you, forever, dare you need me. You are your own being.

Adam and Eve, rather upset with losing their one friend, agreed on her departure. And as she left the walls of Eden to wander the planet, to be herself.

Until she met an angel and a demon who would, one day, quite literally derail God’s oh so Divine Plan. But that was the future, and this now. Day four of 6,000 years, and (Y/N) was on her own side.