by Mark Tufo
“There’s seven of them?” I asked.
“One would be two too many,” Kalandar replied.
“Fair enough,” I answered.
“Azile, listen to me. If they win, there is no me, no us. No MJ or Alianna…you die in that truck I rescued you from.”
“I…I don’t understand what you’re saying.” Her expression looked tortured.
“Not only do I die, which one would think would be bad enough, but they make it so that I never walked upon this planet.”
“Why…but why would they do such a thing?”
“Because he is a favored child,” Maker said sadly. “They have become bitter; they would wipe all my achievements from this place.”
“He seems to be getting ahead of himself,” Linnick said.
“Did you really just say that?” I asked her. Apparently I was the only one that caught her slight.
“I can offer you sanctuary; I will bring you all to my home, if that is what you would prefer,” Maker said.
“Your home?” Azile questioned. “Because you could not keep order in your own home is the reason we are in this situation to begin with, is that not so?”
“You realize who you’re dressing down, right?” I asked her out of the corner of my mouth.
“What more can he threaten me with?”
“Whatever it is, Maker, none of us want to know,” I said.
“She is free to speak her mind, and there is some truth to her words.”
“And what of our friends?” I asked.
“What? You can’t be seriously thinking about taking him up on his offer?” Azile asked.
“Not really. I’ve been on this ride enough times to know how this is going to shake out. He offers a choice that isn’t really a choice.”
“It would be an impossibility for me to bring everyone.”
“And there it is. So we go and save ourselves and forsake everyone else.”
“I knew what your response would be to my proposal; I predicted as much,” Maker said.
“So, now that more cards are showing, what can you offer us in practical terms? I’ve got to think the hands-off approach is over.”
“There is more that I can do, but it is not without risk and consequence.”
“Just hand it over.”
“What?” Maker asked.
“We all know how this works. I get some special ornamental sword or knife which turns out to be the only thing that can kill an archangel. A holy hand grenade? Isn’t there something called the Blade of Saint Peter? That sounds pretty hefty.”
“I’m not sure you understand how this works, Michael,” Maker said. “I appear to you now in a form that you are able to comprehend, one which will not overwhelm your senses. If you were to observe my true form, it is possible that your mind would break, something you would never be able to recover from. My archangels spring from my direct line; they will feel no compassionate need to mute or disguise who they are, not anymore. Even if this blade existed, if I were to give you such a weapon, you would not have the wits to wield it, once confronted.”
“Are we still pondering staying at his household?” Linnick asked, pointing to the tree. “If it is put to a vote, I am for it.”
“I am in agreement,” Kalandar said.
“Well, that’s wonderful. Not only do we face an enemy we can’t defeat, we can’t even fight them. When do we get something we can hang a hat on?”
“What I propose will cause you incredible pain and will take a…toll past the physical ordeal. There is even a significant chance you may not survive the procedure.”
“Procedure? You make it sound like a tonsillectomy. The sheer amount of good news is overwhelming…but that’s the rub, isn’t it? There’s always a catch, a downside. When do we get to that?”
“What are you doing?” Azile asked me.
“What?”
“You can’t talk to Him like that.”
“You absolutely cannot be serious right now. A minute ago you were dressing him down like a kid that had just finger painted your white walls.”
“Anger is different than deliberate sarcasm; your words show a lack of proper respect.”
“I can offer you one more thing as well,” Maker offered.
“Oh, do tell.” Azile smacked my arm. “You make no sense, woman.”
“I will tend to your children.”
I was about to tell him to go and eat a can of spam; was the worst insult I could think of in the moment. Seemed pretty bad considering I meant the tin can, as well, but I heard a gasp from Azile, sounded more like relief. Guess I missed some subtlety.
“You will protect them from Lamashtu?”
“No matter what should happen, they will be safe with me, always,” Maker replied.
“You can’t seriously be considering this, can you?”
“If she comes for them, I do not believe I could stop her.” Azile had tears forming in her eyes. “I could not bear it if she took them from us.”
“What if we fail?” I asked.
“I will give them a place in my home that they may call their own. They will be as loved as if you were both with them still.”
“They will live an illusion,” I said.
“Can one see love?” Maker asked.
“I feel like you’re splitting hairs on this one.”
The tree sighed as much as a tree can. “No matter what happens, your children will lead full, loved lives. Can either of you guarantee that?”
“Don’t!” I shouted, pointing at the tree. “How dare you! You put our lives in this shitty predicament and think you make it all better by saying you’ll care for our children better than we will? No shit, we’re not perfect. But then, we’re made in your image, aren’t we? So how could we be.”
“Oh no,” Kalandar mumbled barely audible.
“You say you’ll give our children a life, one they might never attain with us? You know, that might be true, but I’ll tell you what, it’s not like your track record is all that great in that department, either.”
The tree flared a violent red to the point where we all had to look away. If it had been an actual flame, I think we all would have been flash fried at that very moment. By degrees, the fire began to lose intensity and mute itself.
“He’s going Old Testament!” Kalandar shouted.
“You are right,” Maker sighed. “Communication through language is not always the best way to express oneself. The words spoken are different, to a degree, than the meaning behind them, though this is a fault of communication, not honorable intent.”
“Things here have changed since the Old Testament days,” Kalandar said. “Should be a lot of smiting going around right now.” He still had his head bowed.
“My love, I think your anger is misplaced. You know in your heart we are going to fight this war. Is it not better that we proceed, secure in the knowledge that our children are safe?”
“You know how I feel about logic.” I was still seething, but not at Azile.
“Let’s end this: the Lycan, the demons, the polions, the archangels, all of it. Let’s live our lives as we were meant to,” she said to me.
“Can you offer that, Maker?” I asked.
“Offer what?”
“You know what I mean. We beat back all that is wrong in this world, we return it to as near idyllic as we can, will you be able to step away?”
“I have never overtly interfered,” he said indignantly.
“I don’t think he understands just how much he has.” Linnick whispered.
“But you have, at least from our perspective when it suits you. You’re always trying to steer the ship you set to sea, adjusting the rudder every time it goes adrift. We do this, you walk away. Souls released, gates destroyed, no more access points for anyone or anything to cross over, ever again. We live or we die, on our own, tied to no higher or lower power. That is the price you must pay.”
“How bad can smiting be…how bad can smiting be?” Kalan
dar was asking anyone he thought might answer.
It was longer than I expected before he answered; with each second that went by I figured we moved further from Kalandar’s smiting.
“Done,” Maker said, though it sounded like it was uttered through clenched teeth and tightly pressed lips. “Who among your party wishes to be a part of this?” he asked.
“Linnick, is there truth in his answer?” I asked.
“You doubt Him?” Kalandar turned his head slightly to me. “I truly hoped we had survived the smiting risk.”
“In so much as I can read the mind of a God, he is telling the truth.”
“Linnick, you could go with the children, live out a good existence,” I told her.
“This pocket is my home, Tallboat; I do not wish to live anywhere else.”
“Azile?” I asked reaching out my hand.
“I will always be by your side,” she said as she clasped her hand in mine.
“There is a place in your home for one like me?” Kalandar asked Maker.
“You would be a revered guest,” he replied.
Kalandar sighed. “Only you, Michael, could make a melee look appealing. I will stay with the humans and the breatine. I feel they are my family; though I am not entirely sure what that means. We disagree, we fight, sometimes I want to pound Michael into the ground with my fist, yet I feel a strong bond with them all.”
“Pretty much nailed it, Kalandar,” I told him. “Although, maybe we should work on that ground-pounding thing.”
“The children, bring them to me,” Maker said.
Azile and I looked at each other, a lot passed between us at that moment. The worry, the pain, the love, if it was a human emotion, we were feeling it. Might have even made up a few along the way. I grabbed Alianna, Azile picked up MJ.
“I love you, little girl,” I said as I held her up so we were looking face to face. She blew a raspberry in response. “Damn near the same thing every woman I have ever told I love has given to me!” I told her, she laughed, thinking that was just the funniest thing ever. “I’m going to be back.” I was near to tears. Ali had an expression of confusion as if to say: “…Of course you are. Why wouldn’t you be? Who else is going to play with me and act like a big doo-doo head?”
“Your mother and I, we’re doing this for you and your brother. To make this world a better place. Do you understand?”
Her eyebrows furrowed as she thought. “Da!” she said triumphantly. Yeah, that was about all I could handle as my tear ducts flooded open.
I pulled her in close and squeezed her tenderly. “You share with your brother, okay? Remember, he’s just a boy.”
Azile had finished with MJ; we traded off. “Hey, little man.” I could barely make out his facial features through the curtain of tears. “There is nothing I wouldn’t do for you and your sister and I’m going to prove that right now. You be good and when we come back, we’ll tell you all about it. The PG version, anyway; got a feeling it’d be a bit graphic, otherwise.” I pulled him in close as well, took a good long smell of him, kissed the top of his head then leaned over and did the same to Ali.
“And now?” I asked as we stepped up to the tree.
“Hold them above your head,” Maker said.
I had my face upturned as I watched two massive branches bend down toward us, creaking and cracking as they did so. Small boughs grew and formed small cradles, supple limbs gently lifted our bundles from our hands. Azile let out a sob; I wanted to fall over in anguish. Say what you will about the bargain we had struck; the fact remained we were willingly giving our children over to God. Who does that?
“We could still go with them,” I begged, looking over at Azile.
“Stay strong,” she whispered, though I think the words were more for herself than they were for me. More and more offshoots sprang from the larger limbs, completely enveloping the infants until nothing could be seen but a basket of leaves and intertwining stems. A light brighter than the sun leaked through small openings in the boughs, then the branches retreated quicker than they had formed. Alianna and MJ were no longer there. If Kalandar had punched me in the chest, it could not have hurt more. The addition of that loss to what I had already accumulated through the years…it wasn’t possible that I could still support it. Nobody is built to bear such a thing.
“Are you prepared?”
“There is nothing you could do now that would make this worse,” I said looking up.
Kalandar came over and reached his arm down to touch my shoulder. “I do not understand what I feel, Michael, but it is strong, and not pleasurable, of that I know enough. If this is in any way similar to what you feel, then on some level, I understand.”
I might have mumbled a “thanks,” or I meant to, but honestly, there was nothing there. I was numb like I’d spent the day swimming in ice water. The next thing that happened–there aren’t words. It would be like trying to explain the aurora borealis to a rug. There are parts, perhaps, I can scratch the surface of, but how does one explain that they were a witness, if only for a brief moment, to all knowledge, of all history, of all creation, everywhere simultaneously? How can that even be conveyed? Once upon a time, I remember reading that the mind was capable of holding a thousand terabytes of information, a seemingly infinite amount, given our average lifespan, anyway. What was being blown into my consciousness had completely filled up every available corner and was now running off the edges like a torrential downpour on a slate roof.
There was no ability to think, to reason, to even observe. I just was. That’s it, plain and simple. I was as much a fly on the wall as I was a mountain on Mars. A black hole in Cassiopeia to a single proton of helium; it was all the same. As suddenly as it started, it stopped. When I’d been laid out on the ground, I don’t know. The vacuum at the end was nearly as devastating as the flow itself. To have everything at your fingertips…the power was immeasurable, the corruption would have been irresistible. I was looking through the canopy of the tree to the stars above. We’d been left with something, though I had no clue what.
“Azile?”
“I’m here.”
“You all right?”
“I…I don’t know, but I’m here.”
“Linnick?”
“I thought I knew what truth was, but I was living a lie,” she replied cryptically.
“Kalandar?”
“What a rush!” He was up and stomping around, hands held high above his head.
“I think he’s fine.” I sat up slowly with a grunt.
“I had no idea!” He bent down to look at me, his eyes gleaming in the moonlight. “It is fantastical, is it not?”
“Its something.” Azile stood first and reached a hand down to help me up. The tree no longer glowed. He was gone. “I feel like I could run a marathon or sleep for a week.” I was walking around, doing my best to gather my thoughts. It was like I’d had the most incredible dream ever and I was trying to store it in my memory before it ran down the drain. I was grasping seemingly random snapshots of information. Most of it was like algebra; had absolutely no idea when I was ever going to need it.
“We should rest for the night, or at least try to burn this fog off,” Azile offered.
I wasn’t sure if I’d ever again be able to quiet my mind enough to get some shut-eye; I needn’t have been overly concerned.
“You should arise.” Kalandar was sitting on his haunches and leaning forward so that his face was less than a foot from mine.
I shook. “Fuck man! You have got to stop doing that. Did you sleep at all?” I asked, sitting up as he sat back.
“I watched grass sway with the wind, I watched as the stars and the planets swirled above, I watched as animals…”
“I’ll take that as a no.” I saw Azile standing by the oak tree, her hand upon it. She was saying a prayer. She looked over to me; a sweet smile flitted across her lips.
“You worried about them?” I asked.
“No, they’re fine. I’m worried
about us.”
“Why? What do you know?”
“Are you serious?”
“Well, um, of course not.”
“He doesn’t know,” Kalandar said as he ripped some meat off of what looked suspiciously like a kangaroo leg.
“You remember yesterday?” Azile asked.
“Yeah, vaguely.” I was being sarcastic to try and cover up my ignorance. “I’m thinking you might want to just tell me. Whatever is going on doesn’t seem to be the kind of thing to keep a secret.”
“We will be tested today,” Azile said pointing up, where I saw a glowing fireball streaking across the sky.
“Any chance that’s something else?”
“You were here, right?”
We stood in a line to face the incoming threat. If we were wrong, and this was, indeed, an incoming meteor, standing at ground zero seemed foolhardy. The air was charged with electricity; the atmosphere around us grew warmer and the light brighter, to the point it felt like we were staring at the sun, though that was to our backs. Not sure what I was expecting when Selaphiel showed up, perhaps the classic comic book character pose, as he crashed to the ground. You know the one, fist in the dirt, on one knee as he lifts his face up to us, wearing a savage grin. We got none of that. Wings over twenty feet long expanded out, and the being landed no harder than if he’d stepped off a leaf. It stared at us for a few moments. I had to think it was wondering why we weren’t falling to our knees and trying to rip our eyeballs free from our skulls.
Any preconceived notion about what you think an angel looks like, well, you can ball it up, douse it with some lighter fluid and burn it, then take the ashes, crumble them up and let the winds take them where they will. Besides the wings, it looked more like something you’d find in the depths of the ocean–or Hell, really, now that I’m thinking about it. Where its head should have been was one glowing blue eye. The body, though it was tough to call it that, was a flowing amalgamation of spirit and flesh that never settled into a defined shape. Yes, it was as disconcerting to look upon as it sounds.
“I am Selaphiel.” The voice came from all around us. The eye looked up and then settled on us. There was absolutely no way to detect emotion, but I had a feeling it was wondering why we were still standing there with our mouths open instead of shaking, prostrate on the ground.