Daughter of Eve: Argevane Series, #3

By Andrea J. Graham

In this stand-alone finalle to the Argevane Series, Air Force Captain Veritas "Verity" Callaghan laughs at alternate universes until she crashes into one and is severely burned. Prophecy foretold her coming, and she has eighty days to become the pure, spotless, royal bride the matriarchs are expecting. Otherwise, they will feed her to the family's pet miniature T-Rex. Verity seeks to return home, and that means letting a God-fearing men's libber carry her back to where she wrecked on Mount Sacrifice. While that's embarrassing for a God-abandoned feminist, Verity has an even bigger problem: Havan's chivalry is winning her heart. She has a knack for being attracted to sociopaths—and he's hiding something.

 

Daughter of Eve is a book for anyone who enjoys science fiction or alternate world scenarios. The main character, Verity, is a strong female protagonist. Author Andrea Graham masterfully builds a world and plot where Verity grows into a new woman, and at the same time intertwines the truth of the gospel with an innovative approach. Daughter of Eve provides an imaginative escape into another world, and in my opinion it's a trip worth taking.

—Donna Sundblad, author of Beyond the Fifth Gate and the Inheritance

 

 

For those of us that love clean romance, Daughter of Eve delivers. Andrea Graham places the reader along side the main character, Verity, as she is plunged into a new world. The story moves seamlessly between well developed characters. If you're looking for a fast paced story, Daughter of Eve should be added to your bookshelf.

—Kimberli Campbell, author of The Sword of Light: Shayia's Adventures Book One

 

Daughter of Eve is a thought-provoking tale that challenges the reader to examine her ideas about who God is and what the truth is. In this matriarchal society, male and female roles are topsy-turvy, even in language. Andrea Graham creates an alternative universe somewhere-through-the wormhole with a lady astronaut in urgent need of healing before she can fulfill her destiny. With writing that is intelligent, witty, and provocative, this story begs for careful reading and scrutiny.

—Cathi Hassan, editor TeenAge Magazine

• Language: English
• Publisher: Reignburst Books
• Release date: Aug 11, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393122920

Andrea J. Graham

Andrea Graham studied creative writing and religion at Ashland University, has been envisioning fantastic worlds since age six, and has been writing science fiction novels since she was fourteen. Bear Publications released her book, Avatars of Web Surfer, which she wrote with three co-authors. She is the wife of author Adam Graham and edits his novels, including Tales of the Dim Knight and Slime Incorporated. Her own publishing imprint, Reignburst Books, released the Web Surfer Series and the Life After Mars Series. Find her as an author at christsglory.com and as an editor at povbootcamp.com. Andrea and Adam live with their dog, Rocky, and their cat, Bullwinkle, in Boise, Idaho. They're adopting their first child.

Book preview

Chapter One

Air Force Captain Verity Callaghan’s heart thudded as she strapped into her pilot’s chair. No turning back now. Either she would become the first astronaut through a wormhole or space junk.

She opened the space pod’s dashboard storage bin. Through the glove of her orange flight suit, her fingers hit the metal surface of a family heirloom. She brushed the crucifix aside.

Instead she pulled out her autographed photo of her favorite childhood show, Xena: Warrior Princess, and kissed it. Xena, don’t fail me now.

Star-spangled blackness filled her view screen. Verity waved goodbye to home’s tiny blue orb and jabbed the wormhole button.

Space warped around her.

The gravity field alarm wailed in the stale air, and the pod rattled.

Grimacing, Verity clutched Xena the way her mother used to clutch her great-grandmother’s crucifix. Space crunched her in its jaws.

The wormhole hiccupped and spewed her out. In the buzz of the radio’s white noise, Xena fluttered beside her. The northern hemisphere of an earth-class planet loomed ahead. A single landmass peeked through the clouds.

North America?

Verity rubbed her eyes. Had to be a hallucination brought on by nostalgia for home and the rough trip. That simply could not be Earth. It was crazy. A second glance turned the alien world’s barren regions a grayish purple, but the mostly yellow-green continent refused to change its impossible shape.

The gravity alarm blared. Earth’s purple twin had caught her in its taunting grasp. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.

No, it’s not meant to enter an atmosphere! Verity attacked the controls, pressing real edge buttons and switches as well as virtual ones. She cursed out the geniuses responsible for this. Their calculations said she should be midway between planetary orbits. Close enough to release the unmanned probe, take pictures, and skedaddle home. So much for that.

Inch by inch, space crept back into view.

The computer spat hopeless statistics at her. The only way out of gravity’s grip—the wormhole—couldn’t be activated safely. This close, she’d fry every alien life form down there.

Maybe there was a goddess. Her male colleagues would’ve put themselves before untold numbers of innocent creatures and gunned it.

The rate of her fall exceeded the speed of the turn. Earth’s purple twin gobbled up space once more. Flames burst in the window.

Sweat soaked Verity’s body.

Above the din splitting her ears, another alarm sounded the obvious. Too hot! She glanced back at the helmet she’d left strapped to the wall clear at the back of the pod. A helmet shouldn’t have been necessary.

Verity unclipped her seatbelt and grabbed the handgrips on the surface that gravity called the ceiling. Her arms stretched out overhead and her feet landed on the opposite wall, ballerina style. What she got for being so petite.

Walking on tip-toe, she fought her way uphill against the g-force, pulling from handgrip to handgrip. The stale air sweltered hotter and hotter.

Black spots burst in her vision.

She grabbed for the helmet strapped to the current ceiling and fell to the floor. She fumbled to get her helmet on. Flaming darkness encroached. A faint click snapped her helmet in place. Cool hope rushed over her.

A shudder rattled the space pod, lifted her, and hurled her toward the new down. She slammed head first into the view screen displaying North America’s upward rushing purple twin. Heaven help me!

DARKNESS SHADOWED THE purple land and its lilac people. The trumpet blast of trumpet blasts roared in Dr. Hosanni Kristekon’s ears. She stood on the riverbank outside her inn, pressing a hand to the ivory chopsticks holding her puffy coiffure as she stared up at the cloudless sky.

A swirling red and green vortex eclipsed the sun. The lights faded before the noise did as lightning flashed before thunder.

A star winked to life in a clear blue sky.

Hosanni gasped. A star in the daytime?

Was that pinprick of fire in the sky getting larger?

The blaze doubled in size.

A falling star in the daytime.

The fireball grew to the size of the full-term pregnant moon. The flames licked not rock but a metal egg. An airship? Yes, she now shot fire out below her, slowing her descent—to save a world not her own. The daughters of Eve had rediscovered the secrets of the ancients. And launched an airship across the stars between the twin worlds. That was new. The ancients used a portal.

The shofar’s moan rolled over the land.

Across the river, another bison horn trumpet echoed the urgent call to war. At least, when the high queen’s son historically had taken up the shofar and called the sons of Diakrinth to the service of Kristos, it was for war.

Hosanni followed the shofar to the stained-glass windows of the stone assembly hall. Her village thronged it, with the husbands armed with crossbows and more were arriving from the neighboring villages. The males were all in a slave’s ankle-length indigo tunic. Young girls dressed in white linen tunics. The women wore pallas of every color and pattern that the calf-length wrap dresses could be made in.

Her people separated to let her through.

At the front, her elderly father wore his fine plum hair tied in a ponytail and he had one arm flagrantly nestled at the small of Ravane Juris’s back. She leaned on her cane, her lips in a thin line. Father beamed with semi-toothless pride at Hosanni’s twenty-six-year-old son.

Her Havan, named after her father, had his father’s wide nose and coiled hair but medium purple skin. She pursed her lips. Her son groomed himself like the invaders’ rebellious men: makeup, short twin braids, a red tartan kilt, and an off-white drawstring blouse.

While calling Diakrinth to war on the shofar.

The shofar? Hosanni stared at her son as he blew the bison horn trumpet. Havan had taken to his grandfather’s crossbow like he had been born with it attached to his shoulder, but he’d refused to lay a pinkie on the shofar.

In their people’s tongue, Hosanni shouted in Father’s ear, How did you change his mind?

Father sent her a grin and pointed to the falling star. She did.

Hosanni’s son lowered the shofar and caught his breath.

A hush fell over the crowd.

Havan extended the shofar to his grandfather.

The old man pushed it back with another grin and said in the Union’s common language, Go on, boy.

Her son lowered his eyes submissively. Ravane, will ye permit a lad unworthy to buckle the sandal straps o’ Kristos to address the convocation?

Ravane cackled. Such a man of honor! She waved to Father. He gave you the liberty to speak for Kristos when he put his shofar in your hands.

Good. Havan’s chin snapped up, he pushed his shoulders back, and he widened his stance. We don’t have much time. If my calculations are correct, the star will touch ground on Mount Sacrifice in less than—

A cheer swept through the convocation. Hosanni joined in the shout, clutching her daisy brooch. The sign! Lady Veritas has come!

Havan silenced the shouts with the shofar. Listen! The force of the impact will leave a crater on the mountaintop and set it afire. We’ll feel the earth move here. Ladies, you have minutes to secure any valuables you don’t want falling. So go!

Full-grown women rushed to obey a mere man, including his mother.

Hosanni beamed as she pulled her dishes out of the cabinets and onto the floor. That was her son. Her precious baby boy. And that was Lady Veritas up there, at long last come to unveil the mystery of Emi’s Sacrifice.

Only prophesy said Lady Veritas would be Hosanni’s heir. Her only son had to remain in her house, so marriage had to join Lady Veritas to her house. Yet her son’s braids meant, I’ll marry when frozen Hades blazes.

Only one thing to do. Protect her daughter the best she could.

Hosanni scribbled on parchment a letter authorizing any man named Havan in her family as her proxy at court. She ran back to her boys.

Her son was laying out plans for plowing a mile-wide dead zone around Mount Sacrifice to create a firebreak. Good move. The mountain was as good as lost, but if Emi’s hand kept the fire from spreading too quickly, they should be able to save the villages in the valleys.

She turned to her adopted brother. Gray grizzled Korban’s beard, but not the dreadlocks he’d inherited from an Erini grandfather. She asked Korban in English, Can you remember all of his plans to save the villages?

Korban nodded. Don’t fear, little sister. The fire won’t be comin’ here.

Good. This battle will have to be yours. Hosanni snatched the shofar away from Havan and handed it to Korban. Havan’s going to court.

Havan glared. You’d send me to the City of Trees to marry a star?

She winced. No, to adopt a foundling on my behalf. I’m naming my new daughter Aletheia Enagape Kristekon, in honor of Mother.

Mum, you’re trying to trap me into marrying her. Admit it.

No, I’ll accept whomever you choose, son.

We’ve been over this! I need a wife like a fish needs fur.

Father said, Even so, Lady Veritas does need her bridegroom to fulfill the prophesy.

Pain haunted Havan’s eyes as he folded his arms.  Grandfather, ye know what I’ve done, how unworthy I am. How can ye believe I am he?

This is finished. Father took the authorization letter from Hosanni’s hand and headed in the direction of the highway.

Her son followed his grandfather. Where are you going?

To court alone, if ya will leave an old man to the robbers.

Havan hurled a curse word. Hosanni cringed. She hadn’t heard such foul language since she was thirteen and in the company of enemy soldiers.

Father shuffled on as if her son had meekly agreed to go. Fetch out the chariot and pack our things. Hurry, and ya can catch up to me before I reach the highway.

This isn’t fair! Havan ran toward the barn, calling back, This isn’t over! I am not marrying Lady Veritas!

The Star of Veritas alighted on Mount Sacrifice with an ear-piercing roar.

A column of black smoke and debris rushed skyward ahead of gusts of the inferno engulfing the peak. Screams circled all around Hosanni as the purple earth convulsed and knocked her to her knees.

PINE TREES BLAZED ALL around Hosanni on the slope of Mount Sacrifice. Her mount trumpeted nervously, but the mastodon pushed on, weeding his way through the maze of fire. She stroked Jeschuron’s hairy neck, feeling the fine wool beneath. Good boy.

Now she knew why her people favored mastodons for travel. She never could’ve persuaded their mare to head up into a raging forest fire.

A few yards from the summit, the earth beneath them groaned and shifted precariously. The mastodon trumpeted, backed up, and laid down.

Hosanni swallowed. I take it I’m on my own.

She slid off Jeschuron and inched up the creaking mountainside. At least the underbrush fires had burned out this far up. The mastodon’s footfalls put the fire out before it could burn him, but she was another song.

The summit yawned into a sulfurous pit filled with bubbling melted rock. The star ship lay in the center, split open like an egg despite its thick walls, and it was sinking into the liquid fire—no, melting into it.

She scoured the crater for any sign of life. Amongst the wreckage lay a black lump of charcoal that might have once been human. She glanced down at the pit full of liquid fire between her and a dead subject. The heat of the forest fire blazed at her back.

I have to be completely out of my mind!

That wasn’t from her. It was a howling devil. She needed the protection of Emi’s only Son. She raised her hands as she looked up to Heaven. Amen, amen, you’re with me always, but please permit me to feel your spirit now, oh High King Soterion, the Logos of Emi.

His mystery engulfed Hosanni. Go down into the pit, carry up the bones, give them breath, and for a wife unto your son, even unto Kristos. Behold my hand. You will pass through the fire and not be consumed.

What the mysterious High King said to his bride in the Gospel Song. She stared at the liquid fire. Invisible icy fingers ran through her hair and clawed her neck. All the wrong choices she’d made in her youth flooded back.

Hosanni crept down into the crater. I failed to obey Logos every time he spoke then. But I am not going to fail now. If I perish, I perish. But I know my bridegroom has the power to save me from the flames.

She set a firm sandal down on liquid fire.

It held like solid rock.

She kept her eyes on the bones, not on the liquid fire beneath her feet, until she reach the wreckage. She stepped on it, shoved splintered scrap metal aside, and scooped up the charbroiled corpse like a baby snatched up from death’s gate.

Hosanni turned and trembled at the lake of fire she’d walked across. Now to find the faith to walk back. Amen, Amen, I pray you, if your servant has found favor in your sight, make a way for me through the flames, oh High Queen Emi, the lady of Heaven’s vast armies.

Carry up the bones. You will pass through the fire and not be consumed.

Hosanni drew in a deep breath and jumped off the wreckage.

Liquid fire splashed like water and parted like the Puget Sound did when the armies of her mothers’ masters had cornered the children of Diakrinth in ancient times.

Carrying the corpse, Hosanni walked through fire on steaming bedrock, scrambled up out of the crater, and fled back to her mastodon.

LATE THAT NIGHT, HOSANNI laid her burden on the wool blanket covering the suede pillows piled on her woven-straw, legless kitchen table. What she’d done earlier flashed by her. Frozen Hades blazed. She crumpled to the cement floor.

Hosanni wiped her face. This ordeal wasn’t over yet, was it? She pulled herself up, sighing. How did Soterion expect her to resuscitate charcoal?

Best to boil a disinfecting bath in a kettle. It’d release the medicines in the herbs, plus the healing rites required she bathe her subjects in male urine, and it’d be foolish to use it straight out of the urinal. Her boys sometimes forgot to put the lid back on, and its contents went rancid quickly when left uncovered.

She prepared the bath and added to the kettle herbs that would soothe the excruciating pain her subject would be in. If she ever figured out how to revive such disgusting bones.

Once the bath cooled to lukewarm and was waiting in a basin on the counter, Hosanni sighed. Forgive me, Soterion. I want to obey, but how am I to attempt cardiopulmonary resuscitation? Where were her heart and lungs?

Beloved, say unto her, Daughter, arise. Kristos commands you.

She repeated her bridegroom’s words. Oh dear, what if a daughter of Eve didn’t speak Diakrinthian? She added in English, Daughter, wake up!

Half the charcoal transformed into a sunburnt, bald, and naked pink lass of seventeen, maybe older. The remaining charcoal now resembled legs.

BREATH LIKE A FLAME filled Verity’s lungs and a scream split the darkness. Hers. She felt like a VW Beetle convertible crushed in a monster truck rally. She forced her heavy eyelids open.

Only shadows greeted her. A darker one grew.

Feminine hands covered her eyes. "Dianoicquhti! Be opened!"

A nymph with fine lines and wrinkles rose to her feet, her eyes widening as she shirked back. In the pastel lighting, the middle eastern woman’s skin tone appeared lavender, a shade darker than her knee-length toga. It sported a daisy brooch. A fringed leather sash belted off an empire waist.

The lady turned with a dancer’s poise and fetched a ceramic basin off a stone counter. Both were the color of a clear winter sky. Beside Verity, the aging nymph knelt, reached up, and pulled spiraled ivory chopsticks from the nymph’s carefully arranged swirl of plum locks.

That had to be the one hair dye Verity hadn’t subjected her spikes to yet. Blue, yes. Green, sure. Orange, hmm, kinda close to her natural color, but why not? But purple? No. Too girly.

The unearthly woman dipped her waist-length tresses in the basin and wiped Verity’s arm with the balm, chanting rhythmically in a local language that sounded an awful lot like Ancient Greek. Wow, she was the Bible geek sort of kid last time she heard anything like it, before she out grew believing in fairy tales.

Coolness eased the crushed VW Beetle feeling. A dim awareness she was nude tugged at her. Laughter swelled, wanting out despite the harsh climate in her throat. Must’ve had too much partying. This was one weird trip.

But she’d been on the space station for most of the last two years. For that matter, the regulations required wearing her spikes in natural colors.

Where . . . am . . . I? She stiffened. Woman, her voice sounded like it did after waking up in the hospital at age eleven.

The nymph smiled maternally. Rest now, my love. We’ll have time for questions later.

Something about the melodious quality of her voice made Verity sleepy.

A CHORUS OF SONG AWOKE Verity like a late spring morning on Grandad’s farm in rural Idaho. Eyes still closed, she drank in the warbles and tweets of magpies, chickadees, sparrows and robins, and a few she couldn’t identify. Every bone in her body basked in the impossible feeling of being home.

An inhuman shriek blasted, invoking Jurassic Park, Lord of the Rings, and elephant all at once. Another such trumpet answered.

Screaming, Verity clutched her lavender sheet. Where—when was she?

She strained to sit up and peered around a circle of stucco: a positively medieval kitchen with modern cedar cabinets, one semi-circular cedar door, and five crystal windows that let in daylight but obscured the view.

A third trumpet blast provoked another yelp. Verity covered her mouth. She’d better not be getting another phobia. Bad enough that reptiles made her scream like a girly girl. Well, reptiles, sociopaths, and pure agony, but the last two weren’t irrational fears.

Out of a loft swept the aging nymph in violet, knee-length leggings and a matching fitted tank top. The nymph pressed Verity back into the soft pile of wool and suede. Be still. You act like you’ve never heard mastodons calling!

Wormhole—caught by a holy grail planet’s gravity—falling—ouch. The babbling nymph soothing the pain. The lady was purple. She had a warm lavender skin tone to be precise.

Verity said, Mastodons are extinct.

Oh, that’s a terrible tragedy. On the corner of Verity’s suede nest, the nymph folded her legs under her like in the far east. How did it happen?

Man’s greed. Our ancestors hunted them until there were none left.

Only a wolf is so greedy. The nymph tsked, shaking her head. If all of your men are such, then Eve must be a terrible place.

Excuse me?

The nymph blinked. Our first mother’s name, Argevane, is used in my people’s tongue to denote both womankind and the planet itself. Oh, and add Teacher and Granny. Ravane and Aggie also derive from Argevane.

"Well, Eve is a personal name, derived from Havah, means life."

Patience, I was taking a breath, let me finish. Ravanes use Eve’s name to refer to your planet and people. The Sacred History calls you Adam due to your red-brown coloring. What do you call your planet?

This primitive, humanoid alien understood what she was? Earth.

Of course, Xenos tongue, Xenos logic! The nymph giggled, slapping her thigh. In English, you remain on Planet Dirt!

Verity grunted. Xenos as in foreign or as in strange? And who are you?

Hosanni, mother of Aletheia Enagape. But the question you should ask is who you are.

Okay, she’d play. Who am I?

Aletheia Enagape, daughter of Hosanni.

Huh?

Hosanni waved to Verity’s lavender sheet. I’ve covered you with my palla and bathed you as a mother does her newborn child. Father has gone to court on my behalf to complete the adoption according to the invader’s law.

Lovely. I appreciate the thought, really. And saving my life, gotta appreciate that. But my name is Verity Callaghan, and I’ve got to get home. A chill snaked up her spine. You don’t have any way to get me home, do you?

Hosanni shook her head. Diakrinth is home.

I thought you said we’re on Argevane?

Diakrinth is our nation, Alethe.

Look, I told you, my name is—

The glint in Hosanni’s violet eyes stopped her. Daughter, you have been purchased from the dead. You are Truth In Love, alive through the sacrifice that cleanses us all from Bion’s fall.

Verity snorted. Let me guess. Bion is Argevane’s husband, and the woman brought all the evil into the world.

Not the woman, the man. Hosanni replied, grimacing like she had a bad case of indigestion. Bion opened the portal that brought death and the wicked Cain into this world.

Could these people have a real life Stargate buried somewhere? How did this  ‘Cain’ cross between our worlds?

We don’t know how Bion’s forbidden machine worked. It was destroyed in the flood.

I am not hearing this. Flood?

Due to Cain’s influence, the sons of Bion overthrew their ladies’ rule and spread oppression until the thoughts of all—

—were evil continually, so God killed everybody but one man and his sons. I heard that myth in Sunday school.

No, one woman and her daughters. Apparently Emi’s promise not to bring such a cataclysm again only applied to us.

Nah, the rainbow covenant is in our scriptures, too. Covenant? She’d forgotten she knew that word. Am I right that the hand that rocks the cradle rules this world?

Why wouldn’t it? Emi created the man to serve Argevane, not the other way around. It is an outrage for any king to rule in his own name, rather than in the queen’s service.

Cue little orphan Annie: I think I’m gonna like it here.

But how was here possible? Okay, the flood’s a popular myth that most ancient cultures have, but this is a different galaxy. Verity frowned. Unless the fruitcakes are right and the wormhole led to an alternate universe.

Her radio had died after the silence of the Moment of Truth. It had no one of its kind to talk to in this universe. No, there had to be a reasonable explanation for how a close replica of Earth existed in her universe. Besides, the odds of life existing at all were next to absolute zero, right?

She yawned and stretched. Flames shot up her spine. Woozy, she settled into a more horizontal position, but the blaze in her back only worsened. She cried out. Hosanni gasped and rushed to the counter, hopefully to get the balm that took the pain away last night. Verity rolled over on her stomach.

Black fire spread. Oblivion claimed her.

Chapter Two

The clamor of a mob pierced Verity’s ears. Her upper body felt like it had a bad sunburn. She peered into the early morning light. Hosanni stood at the rounded door that she held open a crack, pressing like she might slam it any moment. Hosanni barked in her odd, Greek-like language.

A cacophony of voices flooded over hers.

Verity yawned. What’s going on?

She speaks! squealed a teenaged female voice.

Let her alone. Hosanni glanced at Verity and then out the door. She’s ill, in and out of consciousness and incoherent. I’ll let everyone know when she’s well enough to receive visitors. Hosanni pressed the door closed.

A tumbler lock clicked and a chain lock slid into place. Hosanni turned, shaking her head. And here I thought Havan was being silly.

Um, who’s Havan? Verity asked.

Hosanni stiffened. Her eyes darted to the right. Never you mind about Havan! I just never thought I’d need to lock up in Diakrinth, of all places.

Verity frowned. Hosanni was hiding something from her.

Drowsy heat inched over Verity. She’d worry about this mystery man when nearly everything stopped hurting.

A SAINT BERNARD-SIZED roar with a distinct reptilian flavor jarred a shriek out of Verity’s throat.

Verity’s eyes flew open and zeroed in on the Jurassic Park attraction. The real-life, miniature T-Rex bounded like an excited hound through the circle of stucco’s open semi-circular door.

Mini Rex eyed its lunch—her.

VERITY’S HEART RATE slowed from Mach 3 to Mach 2. Halfway up