Excerpt from Storms Over babylon

Exclusive excerpt from "Storms Over Babylon" - coming June 2018!

Kalanos, who had been with us since India and who had been with Nearchus on the sea voyage, now rejoined us. He was growing frail, and I worried to see him losing his appetite. He said it was old age.

‘Old people don’t sleep, and they don’t eat,’ he said, waving the bowl of lentils away. ‘We’re turning back into the dust that we came from.’ He chuckled; to him death was just another door he would enter.

I told him not to be silly, that he was still a young, handsome man yet, and to eat his soup, please.

He peered at me from under his brows, his black eyes half-mocking, half-sad. ‘You will never learn to accept fate.’ He sighed. ‘For you, life is a battle to be won, not a river to carry you peacefully along. I have tried to tell you this for months. Why will you not listen? When will you learn? We all have to meet our fate.’

I frowned and stared at the steaming bowl of soup, then sighed and ate it myself. ‘What if …’ I began slowly. ‘What if you knew the future? Would it still be fate? If you could change something, would that mean that fate doesn’t exist?’

Kalanos narrowed his eyes. He had the shrewdest stare. He brought to mind the canny gaze of Alexander sometimes, and he’d gotten that look from Aristotle. ‘You cannot cheat fate,’ he said. ‘What changes you think you have wrought would in fact already be written in the great book of fate. Nothing can be changed. Everything has been ordered since the beginning.’

‘But what if I told you I knew what was going to happen?’ I cried.

Kalanos smiled gently. ‘You think you do, child, but it’s like seeing the rapids in the river. You know what rapids are and what they look like, but you’ve never really been in rapids. You know you’re on a river, and perhaps you’ve seen the whole river in a dream, but it will never be the same until you actually navigate upon it. You will see the people, the boats and the fish that the dream cannot show you. You will feel things that knowledge itself cannot make you feel.’

I shook my head stubbornly. ‘It’s not like that at all,’ I said. My eyes were burning. I was in front of an insurmountable wall of belief, and I couldn’t get past it. What I wanted to know I couldn’t ask outright.

‘But it is, and you will see, some day. You must learn to live one day at a time as it comes to you. You must greet each sunrise as a new miracle, and live each instant of each new day as if it will be your last one. Only then can you go forward. Only then can you begin to accept. Once you do, you will find that everything is as easy as breathing. Even dying. From one world to the next, you must learn to go as easily between breathing in and breathing out. Do you remember our breathing lessons?’ He leaned forward anxiously. These lessons had been among the first he’d taught us, sitting cross-legged on the rug, taking smooth, deep breaths. Alexander’s asthma had improved dramatically since he’d learned to breathe.

‘I remember,’ I said bleakly. Two tears rolled down my cheeks and fell with audible plops into my soup.

‘Lentils not salty enough?’ he asked, his eyes twinkling.

‘I want to save those I love,’ I said. ‘It has nothing to do with me. I could let myself go downriver, but I couldn’t go and leave those I love behind.’

Kalanos patted my hand. ‘You’re such a new soul.’

I laughed shakily. I was younger than he by a good three thousand years. My soup got saltier as the tears fell faster.

‘I love too,’ he said. ‘But I have learned to let go. That is the final lesson. You are still too young. No one can ever teach you. It has to be learned alone. When you have learned to let go, then you will be free and you will see that everything that ever held you back from the river’s flow hurt you, and everything that let you go forward was beneficial. Love can be both. Will you listen to an old man who has come to the end of his journey?’

‘Of course,’ I said.

‘Let go. Don’t try to change what cannot be changed. You will just be swimming against the current and you could drown. Who will look after Chiron when you are gone? I told you once before, gold and silver are not the riches of the earth – the real treasures are children.’

I thought of Paul and my sobs redoubled. Kalanos shook his head pityingly. I was a backward, recalcitrant pupil but his patience knew no limits. ‘Child, child. Dry your tears. Perhaps I am wrong. Real knowledge is believing that you know nothing.’

I looked up at him and tried to smile. ‘Well, that’s a relief,’ I said.

He shook his head some more. ‘Ah, I can see that you will do what you believe is right. Didn’t you hear me?’

‘I did.’ I leaned over and kissed his cheek.

‘Hey!’ He rubbed his cheek, glaring at me. ‘You’re not supposed to kiss holy men! ’His eyes were twinkling though.

‘That’s my present to you,’ I said. ‘It’s the only thing I have to give to you.’

‘That’s what you think,’ he said. He took my hand, kissed the inside of my palm and folded my fingers over it. ‘You keep that. That’s the only thing I will give you. You can take it with you downriver, and it will not weigh you down.’