It Starts In Fifty-Five AD... (Far Too Long Ago To Speak Of.)

"If we were to truly go back to the beginning we would have to go back to the dawn of the universe, but for our purposes, we will start a bit more than one-thousand-nine-hundred-sixty years ago." Miss McIlvaine says and then begins the long explanation.

Picture yourself in the year of our lord fifty-five: full stop. Our Lord and Savior Jesus of Nazareth has been crucified a little less than 2 dozen years earlier. Nothing unexpected so far, right?

Well, here is where we start getting into the secret lore that most people don't know. You see, for several years before he was crucified Jesus had been Married, married to Mary Magdalen. She had borne him three children, Judah, Bilquis, and Mary, ere he was killed by the Romans, and fearing for her children's lives she fled with them into the distant lands of Africa beyond the reach of Rome. There they lived for many years, growing strong and mighty, sometimes visited by their sire, Jesus. However, one night, in around fifty-five AD, A roman Centurian named Septimius found Mary and her children and begged of them shelter. They took pity on him, for it was a very dry summer and the lions were hungry in the night, so they let him into their hut and gave him some of their meager food. But Septimius was no ordinary lost Roman, he was possessed by the demon contained in one of the thirty blackened denarii which had paid for Christ's **** and rose in the dead of night to **** Mary Magdalen and the children as they slept. However, Jesus foresaw this treachery and made his power manifest as a mighty unicorn which killed Septimius and carried his wife on it's back up to heaven. He then appeared in his children's dreams, (All of them now grown to adulthood.) and told them that it was time for them to part ways. Now that the legions of hell knew where to find them, they would send unending waves of possessed men and women to attack them, their only recourse was to flee. He gave each of them specific instructions what direction they were to travel in and where they were to come to rest.

Bilquis he sent to the lands of the Yoruba, where she married a prince and had many sons and daughters. These children traveled across Africa, sharing the gifts their mother's father had taught her, and they became respected wherever they went.

Judah went to the distant East, 'beyond the great gates of dawn', where he settled on a cold and mountainous island that today is known as Hokkaido and gathered about himself a mighty tribe of far voyaging wanderers who in the modern age are known as the Ainu. He too had many sons and daughters and they, in turn, traveled far across Asia, living lives as wise men and healers.

Mary Cross-Born, so named because she was born on the day of Jesus ****: had the furthest voyage to travel. Her he sent to the shores of North America, to preach to the people who lived there and show them the glory of God. However, along her way, Mary was instructed to meet seven mighty kings and carry a pregnancy with each of them, children whose bloodlines would ennoble the lands in which they would come to live. In Exchange for this sacrifice, she would have eternal life with her father and mother in heaven without ever experiencing the pangs of ****. The legend does not tell if she attained that prize or not, for her third stop was in Ireland, where she lay with two kings: The King of Leinster, and the King of the Fairie, who were yet abroad in the land in those days. Mary Cross-Born bore each of them fraternal twins, a son and a daughter. Her son by the King of Leinster was named Cogura and their daughter Mariah, but the names of the children she bore for the King of the Fairies are not recorded, for their father cast a spell over them in the very hour of their birth that no man or woman of Adam's line who was not also of their mother Mary Cross-Born's blood would ever be able to remember them even for a second unless they were in their physical presence. After bearing these children for the two kings Mary traveled onward to Iceland, where, so it is said, she had a son with the High-King of the Elves that lived in that country in those ancient days, but that's not germane to our tale.

What is relevant is that Mary's Daughter by the king of Leinster, Mariah, took to riding in the woods and forests of her father's realm as a girl of 13, finding many secret glades and valleys where grew strange and wondrous plants with potent abilities for healing and the curing of sickness. Though she was not one of her father's legitimate children she was still a powerful political tool and so as her 16th year approached the king faced a stark choice, marry Mariah to the second son of the king of Ulster, who was the only worthy lad to offer for her hand, or have her remain unmarried as the greatest healer and herbalist in all of Ireland. He agonized over this choice for forty days and forty nights, when with a thunderous clash of hooves and blare of trumpets an entourage of four-hundred-and-ninety men and women on horseback approached his castle in the night, and their leader, a tall and regal man in livery the king didn't recognize called out to the guard to "Allow me to enter and make my bid for the hand of the King's Daughter Mariah!" Now four-hundred-and-ninety soldiers were about equal in number to the entire standing army of the kingdom of Leinster, so the king ordered the visitor and a small group of bodyguards to be let in and make their bid. When they did so, he was astounded, for they offered gold and gems in such profusion that he could scarce comprehend, and herbs and spices such as he had never seen or smelled, and many other wonders besides. Gulled by his greed, the king had Mariah brought and sent aboard her coal black mare Geliavia with the man at once!

However, with the coming of dawn, the king knew he'd been played for a fool because the gold and gems turned to autumn leaves and flower petals, the spices to sand and ash, and the silks and samite to moss and cobwebs!