Mitchell Gelan has been given a great gift. He can recover quickly and remain looking young. Born in the year 500AD, Mitchell spent 300 years in England before deciding to explore the world; starting with Rome, where MG found and lost love. After that, Mitchell turned into a man with the initials MG. He travelled the world, meeting explorers, artists, and royalty and worked in many trades, from painting and building to keeping watch and protecting. He fought in many wars and survived many plagues. As the world changed, Mitchell remained the same, adjusting to the world he helped create. As technology advanced, the world got smaller, and it was getting easier to travel from country to country.
As Mitchell travelled, he spotted the same face watching over him, and after decades of isolation, it was soon the 26th Century, and Mitchell arrived to a world of new dangers, and new threats and everything he saw was forgotten in the minds of humanity. He went to find answers and ended up face to face with the one person he didn’t expect to find. The woman that has been appearing throughout his life who happens to have a great gift also.
The year was five hundred and Clovis, the founder of the Frankish state has conquered most of France and Belgium converting his people to the Catholic religion. Early in the year, a couple hid from the marching troops and expressed their forbidden love, for their families were rivals and forbade them to see each other. Three weeks after that day, Judith the daughter of Adelaide found herself sick and very weak, they called a healer in and asked Judith questions which she refused to answer in front of her mother. When the mother left and Judith freely replied, “The last interaction I had with the outside world was three weeks ago with the love of my life.”
The healer said, “Then you might be with child, but we cannot know until your body shows signs, you can come to me in two weeks’ time.”
The next two weeks were slow and painful with Judith staying in bed, hiding the news the healer gave her, her mother asked what it was and Judith replied, “An illness mother, it should go away in a month’s time.” Nevertheless, when two weeks ended later, and Judith was feeling sore and tender in her belly, she went to the healer and asked, “How bad is it, for can you tell if I am with child?”
The healer (a female) felt under the garments and when Judith jumped at the touch of her breasts, she nodded and replied, “Yes dear, you are with child, and shall I inform your parents?”
“No, we must not, for if they find out, then both the baby and I will surely die, I must inform my lover and then we can sail across the border to seek sanctuary.”
“But that trip could take days, weeks even, and you will not manage alone, you must take family.”
“Sorry, healer but once I fell in love with my family’s rival’s son my life was given a death sentence. I must flee to the Island in the north, and seek Sanctuary, please tell my mother that I died of the illness I had, a week after I write to you telling you where I am.”
“If that is your wish, my dear, I will do so.”
With that Judith ran to find Baxter and tell him of the news, Baxter Gelan was over the moon with the news and they fled to the shores of what will be the town of Oostende and grabbed a boat. Baxter after packing a bag of food started rowing out. They started rowing as the sun began to set. The journey took a day, eleven hours and twelve minutes, but it felt like weeks. After twenty-four hours of rowing and running out of food they soon fell asleep and drifted with the current. When they woke up they were cold and wet and off course. They both rowed towards Britannia and after another 12 hours, they arrived at what will be Hastings. They landed and found themselves a home.
A few weeks later, they recovered from their trip. Judith was now nine weeks pregnant, she started to make crazy demands and was screaming and crying one minute and laughing the next. This lasted two weeks and Judith was complaining about her breasts. Another four weeks later and Judith's belly was visible under the loose garments, she was bleeding from the nose and was having trouble eating with swollen gums. It was Friday the sixteenth of June when they found themselves a means to get married. On the first of July when seventeen weeks pregnant, Judith was suffering from nightmares of demon children. They got married on the second and Judith became Judith Gelan, after the wedding they found an inn and Baxter made love to her, lowering her libido.
Soon it was August and Judith had growth in the breasts, her belly was larger and her back was aching, she was around twenty-three weeks when she started to complain about the pain. After another week or so and the pain was throughout her body, she was screaming and wishing it would just stop, the bed they had was uncomfortable in the house Baxter built with the boat and spare parts. They were sleeping on the floor and Baxter worked with the bread to make his money. The kicks were slow and steady and were not as painful as the aches in the back, legs and arms. After another month of troubled sleeping and pains from the changing body, Judith looked healthy with perfect hair, skin, and nails. Then, on the night of the twenty-eight of September, the east wall of their house collapsed. Judith was screaming as the baby kicked inside her, she was now thirty weeks pregnant and blood was coming from above the stomach. A piece of wood was sticking out of her chest where the wall fell from wind and rain. The wound was open and the splinters were heading towards the bloodstream. Baxter ran for the healers the minute the wall collapsed. The healers were doing their best and after countless hours, the wood was out.
Two months after the accident, Judith was lying on the straw bed with water next to her and the female healers telling her to push. She was forty-one weeks, she counted and the baby was holding on as if it did not want to leave. After a long night, at sundown on the twelve of December, a silent baby was born, but that was not right, where was the crying. The healers checked the baby and after long hours, finally spoke “The baby is dying, his body is shutting down, for he is dying on the inside!” they sounded sincere and with no money, they were looking at the baby.
Judith said, “Well if he is going to die we better give him a name, what do you think Baxter?”
“I think we should name him Harding as he will be brave and come back from this.”
“How long until he dies?” Judith asked the healers.
“Three days.” they replied showing all signs of sadness, they left saying; “there is nothing we can do.”
The next morning around midday, an old man with a beard and scars appeared and said “I am a great healer, a man of magic; I can cure your child, but to do so I need his blood.”
Baxter asked, “How will you heal him?”
“I will give him power from beasts, I will combine his blood with the blood of a dragon, the essence of a sea star and a scale from a fish of life and he will recover.”
With those words, Baxter allowed the man to prick the baby's skin. He came back and gave him a needle that night, and the baby went to sleep. “When he wakes, he will cry for the first time.”
The baby was having trouble breathing, Judith kept watch of the baby that night and when the sun rose, they heard a sound around the house. The baby was crying, Judith was relieved and Baxter was thrilled, then Judith said, “His name will be now Michel Harding Gelan for he was a gift of God to still be with us.”
And for the next few years, they watched Michel grow up and noticed that he was different and remembered the medicine man's words. “He will be different when a human’s cell dies, it takes a long time to grow a replacement, Michel’s will recover and replace way faster, it will be like there never was a dead one.” It was true; every scratch, every bruise was recovered in a heartbeat and every broken bone was recovered in a day. Judith and Baxter were both in their twenties and watching him grow made them realise that there would be a day when he would live beyond their age, which would cause him to mourn. Knowing that, they went to their bedroom, wrote a letter, and placed it in a hollow bone of a horse, the letter read. “To our son, if you are reading this then you have lived a long life and are still living, remember that the Lord placed you on this earth to live for a reason. The world would have changed but you remain the same, you will be remembered but promise us you will remember the way of the Father and you will not live in pain and suffering but to the fullest, you can do, Signed your parents.” They created a necklace and placed it in a box. They then wrote their last requests and continued to watch their son grow.
On Michel’s fifth birthday, they celebrated for life to this point was a battle, but Michel suffered no disease, no wound that killed him. A few years later and Michel was eight and with that, his parents had turned thirty and they were on the edge of the bell curve for they were strong, Judith didn’t take another risk, so Michel was their only son and they loved him all their heart. Times were tough and the food was low but they survived off fish and by luck or by fate, Michel ate the poisonous fish and survived while his parents had the safe ones. By the time he was thirteen, they praised the Lord that they were alive to be there for him. They were getting older and feared they would not see him become a man. With their risky lifestyle, hiding the truth from the rest of the town’s folk was becoming a nightmare. With them working by the sea, they were far away, as they could get but they were still getting strange looks and after another six years, they finally were getting old and their bodies were dying.
In the streets, Michel was trying to get some fish from the Fishmonger when the man refused. Michel pushed past the man and reached for some fish, only the Monger grabbed his arm and threw him into the sand. Michel spat sand out of his mouth and dusted the grains from his cheeks. He stood behind the man, snarling and panting, he punched him in the ribcage. The Fishmonger groaned and spat on the ground, before grabbing the hook from one of the boats and stabbed Michel in the chest, he pulled it out and said: “Guess you will all die now.” However, to Michel’s surprise, he was healed after the bleeding stopped, a few minutes later he was scar-free, he ran home to see his parents lying in bed and cried “Mother, Father, I was dying but I was healed, why was that so?”
“You are special son, remember that, you cannot get injured for a long period of time, you will grow strong and you will be an example to the people that believe in Satan. You will do great things, but listen before you do great things, you will be tested, you will have to lie to survive and the Lord will forgive you for that, you will pretend to be another man in order not to be called a demon. You will see great things, so remember that we love you. Take this box and wear the necklace proud, it will be your heirloom, make us proud.”
Michel cried and turned to his father and Baxter spoke with a cough draining his voice “Son, you are a Gelan, you are Harding and Michel, Brave and Gift of God, do us proud and never forget that title.”
Michel’s parents died the very next month in the harsh of winter, for during the nights, the fire couldn’t keep them warm and they started to feel drowsy, during the days the coughing got worse and their speech was going. Michel fed them, done the jobs but the food could not ease the cough. Michel woke up to hear the parents coughing up blood and he watched the life fade from their eyes before the sunset. He buried their bodies and wrote on their tombs, he then found a house on the coast away from the town and lived alone.
Time past and soon Michel was celebrating his thirtieth birthday and he began to notice that he was slowing down, he was not growing old with age, his skin was as healthy as always and his hair was not getting any greyer. He lived in the house for the next ten years, rarely going out and watched, as he did not change. His face stayed the same and so did his skin, no scars, not even a sign of him being forty made him remember what his parents said the day he asked the question. “You are special son, remember that, you cannot get injured for a long period of time, you will grow strong and you will be an example to the people who believe in Satan. You will do great things, but listen before you do great things, you will be tested, you will have to lie to survive and the Lord will forgive you for that, you will pretend to be another man.” Therefore, he walked out the door and entered the streets and went to buy some food, the Fishmonger’s son saw him and said, “Hey, your face is familiar, have we met?” The man was in his 50s and hair was grey and Mitchell lied “Name’s Matthew Gelan, my father spoke of you, he died and said ‘Never buy fish from the traitor,’ my mother found him dying on the streets when he was nineteen and they moved in together on the hill, that’s my home now.” Indicating the house that he lived all this life.
“My father passed away, more like drowned, guess we are both fatherless, sorry for what my father did, he was greedy.” Michel forgave the man for his father’s deeds knowing in his heart that the man does not know that he is Mitchell.
This happened every few decades, Michel grew old and pretended to be his own son, by the time he was pretending to be Michel the fourth, Heraclius became Emperor in Constantinople and the Persian Empire tried to invade the Byzantine civilisation and that becomes their history.
He lived through the battle between the Persians and the Byzantine civilisation and heard about the reclaiming of the cross. He was Michel the sixth when Heraclius died in the year six hundred forty-one. Even was there as Michel the seventh saw the downfall of Byzantine to the Arab nation. Michel grew tired and old pretending to be his own son and travelled east out of the country only to get as far as Thrace, when stopped by the Arab Nation during their takeover attempt in six hundred seventy-seven CE. After surviving the arrows and rocks, Michel picked himself up and returned to his home on the hill as Michel the tenth. Sick of being Michel, the next time he came out of hiding he was Matthew the second in the year seven-ten, ten years after Benedictine missionaries complete the conversion of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms. Michel as Matthew went to the church and prayed. Then he went to the graveyards, looked at the tombstone that was about the length of a coffin and on it was a list of all Michel’s lies, every names he pretended to be and their corresponding wives all without a date of death. Above their names was a single line, ‘the Gelan family will be remembered’. Then he went to his real parent’s tombs and waited until dark. He then got out a candle and prayed.
“Father, I was told I was to suffer, but I have lived for two hundred years and I am looking at my parent’s tombs, I have seen bloodshed and my generation die over and over again. If you wish for me to continue please send me a sign that I am doing the right thing, give me a sign, for Father, I am becoming a lie, my real name is lost decades ago and all I am is an echo of my true self. Please show me that I am meant to live on.”
Seven years after that prayer, the Arabs were defeated by Byzantine Emperor Leo the Isaurian, using what he called ‘Greek Fire’, a combination of sulphur, naphtha, and quicklime. They started to reconquer Asia Minor and take their ground as a civilisation and Michel starts to see trouble as he becomes Matthew the fourth in the year seven hundred and forty and watches the name of Christ vanish from the Byzantine civilisation. He goes there by a boat with the fishermen and arrives months later on the coast. Sixty years under Matthew the sixth hears word that Carolus Magnus has succeeded after his father and that he accepted Alcuin of York into the area to teach. Michel leaves for the Frankish area and asks under the name of Matthew the seventh to help teach the people. He helped at the school for a decade, went into hiding around the year seven hundred and ninety, arrived at the turn of the century as Matthew VIII, and got word that Charlemagne might be getting crowned emperor before the end of the year.
With that news, Michel Gelan headed to Italy to the centre of Rome to become a Roman citizen and help spread the word of Christ by reading the scriptures and teaching anyone that listens. He left at the end of spring after the Celebration of Easter and walked towards the border, fearing no death or illness, his wounds from his bare feet healed and the dust in his blood released itself when an animal attacked him. He walked all day and night; he arrived when the day was long on June 24th and asked for Sanctuary. When they asked for his name he lied and said, “My name is Maximus Gladius, I have travelled far to find a way to earn money is there any way to do so?”