Ben climbed into the car with me an hour later, not much of a conversationalist this morning, and I was grateful for that. He hadn’t talked to me about Claire since her first visit. As we stopped in front of the main building, I was surprised when he looked at me with an unreadable face and said, “Claire is lucky to have you.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I raised my eyebrows, sensing his vulnerability as much as the anger boiling underneath the surface. What was going on with Ben? It couldn’t just be simple jealousy. I probed his eyes with my gaze and found another emotion. He was anxious for me. If he only knew…I was lucky to have Claire. Before I could shut up my head and feel sorry for him, he opened the door and stepped out. “Thanks for driving me.”
The moment I stopped focusing on Ben, a tidal wave of voices and noises flooded my mind. I could hear everything. The shoes on the gravel between the buildings, the doors of cars, the rustling of jackets, conversations—about algebra, toilet paper, love and betrayal—and even my own, too fast heartbeat. I didn’t have the strength to leave the car. Instead, I remained inside, hiding from the world. It was past ten when I decided to drive back to the library and find the mysterious book.
The blond boy was reading behind the counter when I entered. I was eager to get my hands onto the old leather binding. He looked up and a ray of recognition shot at me from his direction.
“Welcome back,” he greeted me and put down his reading.
With a nod, I turned into the row, eyes searching the spot in the corner on the bottom shelf where I had picked up the book. Even from a distance, my new eyes saw that it was empty. I ran toward the vacant shelf and stared as if it would reappear by sheer willpower. It didn’t. I could feel the heat boiling in my veins as I bit down anger and disappointment. I had relied on the strange book to give me some answers.
Before the blond boy could sneak up on me and bother me again by offering his help, I rushed to the exit.
“Have a good day,” I heard him call after me, confusion following me in his voice.
I was out the door and back in my car before I could think. If my abilities kept developing like this, my environment might notice something was different with me. It would be best to just wait until whoever had borrowed that yellowed stack of pages brought it back to the library, sneak in and check every day—except for Thursdays—until I had what I needed.
On the way back to campus, I felt chilly. As if my whole system was shutting down. Frustration was peaking from the moment I parked. By the time I was sitting in Bennet’s classroom, little bubbles of anger had boiled up in my veins, making it hard for me to perceive anything but the cluster of terror that the old professor kept spreading. As he called out Karren on her lack of effort for her recently handed in paper, I couldn’t tell if I was just thinking what I wanted to say to him or if I was actually saying it, but Toby’s hand on my shoulder indicated it was time for me to calm down.
“You look sick, man,” he pointed out as he guided me from the classroom a minute later. “Seriously, Adam, what’s wrong?”
With a look around, I leaned toward him and felt as if I was going to throw up. Concern—not my own—was pushing down on my shoulders.
“Maybe you should go home and lay down,” he suggested with a frown.
Getting out of there seemed more and more attractive by the second as students were trickling into the hallway, flooding the space with so many different kinds of emotions that I wasn’t even sure I could name them all. The nausea welled up again.
“Maybe you’re right.” I straightened up. “Tell Karren I’m sorry. She shouldn’t take it personally.” I was talking about Bennet and the paper. “He’s not a nice person and I’m sure she deserves better than that.”
“Thanks, man,” Toby patted my shoulder, “I will.” He walked me back to the car.
“See you when you’re back to normal,” he said and made sure I was okay to drive.
As I veered away, by myself again and free of the ocean of uncontrolled emotions, I immediately felt normal, whatever that meant in my situation. I even felt a bit like experimenting. Maybe, if I couldn’t read about winged creatures, I could try to gain control over my new extremities. My parents’ woods weren’t too far off the road on the drive back toward town, and so I decided to make them my safe space. No-one ever went there except for some woodworker once a year cleaning out dead trees and replanting where necessary. During the winter time, the most I would encounter were curious deer and maybe a fox or two on the search for food.
I parked the car near the edge of the woods and walked until I got to the middle of the forest, where nobody would see me. Knowing the area from my childhood, I wasn’t worried I'd get lost, and the dense cover of branches was just what I needed to feel safe.
After a couple of minutes, I stopped and took off my jacket. Despite the fog my breath was forming, I didn’t get cold. The changes in my body came with a new sensitivity to temperature. I could feel the cold and yet I didn’t actually feel it. It was like being a sensor without knowing the implications of what temperature meant. If I hadn't been so freaked out about myself, I would have found myself an interesting study object. At least it was the right approach—understand everything in a rational way, find logic and patterns in my new abilities. Then I would be able to rely on them in public without revealing myself. I slipped out of my sweater and shirt and let the icy air touch my skin with a smile. It was strangely satisfying to not shiver or have chattering teeth.
My hands reached across my shoulders, searching for the spot where my wings had grown out from under my skin. There was no sign it had ever happened. With closed eyes, I focused on the memory of the feathery extremities, the muscles which had run from beside my spine into the lengths of my wings. It stung for a fraction of a second before I felt the weight pulling down behind my back. I stumbled backward and hit a fir tree with my left wing. This time it didn’t startle me. I was prepared to face what I was—whatever that might be. Slowly, I brought the wing back toward my spine and folded it, then flexed it again, just enough so it didn’t hit any other part of the flora. It wasn’t exactly easy, but after a couple of times, it felt more natural. Everything needs practice. I remembered my grandmother’s words. She’d had plenty of them. Everything has its time, was another. Now was the time to get over my fears and regain control over my own body. I dropped to the ground and started a set of push-ups, wings hanging from my sides, covering the cold ground. After fifty, I stopped, not having sweated one drop. Curious about my strength, I reached for the tree I’d hit and pulled on a long branch. It hit the ground beside me the second I let go. My mouth fell open. What were the limits? Could I uproot the whole tree? I didn’t want to try. But I had another idea, way more harmless than trashing the woods. With steps too fast to be normal, I rushed back to my car and put my hands under its body. With a little effort, the entire front came off the ground until I held it up perpendicularly, then almost dropped it, shock settling in. I could lift cars?! An impulse of laughter shook my body as I wrapped my head around the absurdity of what I was doing.
I carefully set the car back on the ground and ran back to pick up my clothes. Then I kept sprinting back and forth, exhilarated by the speed that was possible. It seemed every time I tried again, I was a bit faster. When I stopped, not even breathing hard, I focused on my back and shoulders and slowly tried to pull my new extremities back into my body. It didn’t work at first and the thrill of my strength and speed faded as fear set in. It took a whole hour until I was able to make them disappear. Too long to start practicing this at home. Before I even considered using my own room as a lab, I would have to come here more often until I got everything under control.
It had gotten dark by the time I went home. I went straight to my room and flipped open my laptop. Geoffrey’s quiet footsteps were audible in the kitchen below, reminding me that revealing my superpowers would impact more than just my family. It would be best to stick with the plan and act as if I was sti
ll the same.
My free hand was typing at inhumane speed, repeating the words ‘wings, angels, sons of God’ over and over in every search engine I could think of. The results were moderately satisfying. There were some beautiful images of angels. Drawings, paintings, statues, and some photoshopped photographs. Some of them were far off from what my own wings looked like—like a huge eagle’s wings, but clean, white, and strong—while others looked so perfect they could be of someone like me. I browsed through Wikipedia, learning about different religions and the meaning of angels in their understanding. I even found myself absorbing esoteric forums, something I couldn’t have imagined I’d ever do. When the information became unbearably confusing, pointing towards two opposite ends of the scale of impossible and surreal, I shut the computer and roamed the drawers of my dresser for old shirts I wouldn’t miss if they got accidentally torn, Antonio’s eyes following me skeptically.
“I am going through a difficult phase,” I explained to the dog, earning a yelp as he curled up beside my couch and watched me, nose resting on his paws. “If you saw me with my wings, you wouldn’t recognize me.” It was easy to talk to him. He wouldn’t share my secret with anyone. “I promise, I’ll spend more time with you soon, but at the moment I need to get things under control. Ben is taking good care of you, isn’t he?”
Antonio stretched out to the side and licked his muzzle. He was lucky not to need to understand what was going on. All he needed to do was be a dog and do what dogs do. No rational explanations of anything needed. He was already drifting into sleep while I was still putting together a bundle of clothes which I wouldn’t cry over in case I destroyed them in the woods. I took a quick shower, ready to end the day and eager to go back to the library and find the book.
When I slipped under the sheets, Antonio was snoring quietly beside the sofa. I didn’t bother waking him up and bringing him to his basket downstairs, instead, I rolled to the side and closed my eyes, hoping to drift off as easily as the dog had.
Claire’s face was behind my lids, smiling at me with wonder, and that little part of me that seemed to belong to her rather than me resonated with yearning. Was she okay? With all my searching for answers, I hadn’t checked in on her. I wouldn’t know what to say. This was nothing I could discuss over the phone and I wasn’t ready to face her until I had at least some insight on my situation. Debating with myself if I should let her know I was alright, that my situation didn’t change the way I felt about her, sleep overcame me and I saw her in my dreams, fair-haired and bright-eyed and the key to anything that mattered in my life. I kissed her and pulled her into my arms, cradling her against me, and instant comfort soothed my restless mind, even if it was just in my dreams…
It took a solid three days until I had enough control over my wings to make them appear and disappear at will, but once I’d figured it out, I felt confident I wouldn’t randomly explode into a feathery mess on the street if someone upset me. That alone made getting through the days easier. Dad and Jenna didn’t notice that I was more stressed out than I would usually be around this time of the year, or if they did, they didn’t let on. Ben was quiet. Whether or not he noticed a change in me, I couldn’t tell. My family felt the same as always, their auras a warm and safe space for me to shut out the rest of the world. But I couldn’t be myself with them the way I had a month ago. It was becoming more difficult, now that I wasn't just reading their emotions but also hiding my superhuman strength.
Claire called numerous times every day since I had bailed on her. Most of the times I was busy when the phone rang. The few times I wasn’t, though, I forced myself to exercise patience even more than I had in the beginning. Of course, I wanted to hear her silky voice, I wanted to see her face and hold her. At the moment, I needed to understand myself, or I would never be able to answer her questions. And naturally, there was the fear that she would eventually realize I might not be the best person to be around. I was changing, and I couldn’t tell if it was for better or for worse.
It was a Monday when I finally found the leather-bound book back in its spot on the library shelf. The boy behind the counter smiled as I finally borrowed a book and didn’t just roam that one aisle with a grumpy face. I was out the door and in my car almost too fast to feel as if I was using normal speed, but nobody seemed to notice. People were focused on finding Christmas presents rather than looking for anomalies in my motion-patterns. I didn’t even head home, that’s how curious I was. Instead, I started reading the first chapter, eager to get a hint of what I was dealing with. The book didn’t disappoint. It took me right into the world of angels. After the first couple of pages, I decided it was safer to take this home and read there, undisturbed by my environment and hidden from curious eyes should I lose control and accidentally spread my wings. The first pages were enough to make me wonder if I would be able to hold it together. There was a bit of history, angels and how angelic DNA ended up in the human realm. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Was this really a textbook on angels and how they functioned?
With a surge of urgency, I sped into traffic, ignoring angry beeps. My pulse had quickened at the prospect of real answers, and I made it home in record time. Jenna arrived at the same time as I did, eyeing me suspiciously as I rushed past her at the front door, leaving a confused Geoffrey behind. “I need to catch up on reading,” I said truthfully, glad to have something to say that wasn’t actually a lie, and sprinted up to my room, cautious not to be too fast for human speed.
Once on my bed, I flipped the book open again and dove right into the paragraph I had interrupted.
The strength of an angel’s lineage defines how pronounced their abilities are and whether or not they ever catalyze. My eyes stopped at the word catalyze. The sentence was scribbled at the side, a fairly modern handwriting, not as elegant as some of the comments which were strewn across the entire book. Some of them must be at least a hundred years old. Was that what had happened? Claire had catalyzed me? The paragraph was describing in detail how strong emotions, positive or negative, could trigger the angel nature if the lineage was strong enough. It made sense. In biology, every process had a catalyst. Things didn’t just happen. What I didn’t understand was the lineage. It meant that one of my parents must have angel-blood, but if it had been my father, he would have told me. He would never keep me in the dark like that… It must have been my mother. The way Dad spoke about her, on those rare occasions when he did, what he said made her appear as if she might have been something more than human. An angelic creature.
They are stronger than man, but not omnipotent. They are greater than man in knowledge, but not omniscient. They are more noble than man, but not omnipresent. Another line caught my eye. It was on a double page with a passage on the birth of the angel-nature.
When it gets close to their angel-nature breaking through, the person in question will start to perceive emotional patterns among the people of their kind. They will develop a sixth sense for the emotional status of people around them only. In a further phase of the development of their angel-nature, they will start to intuitively understand people’s problems and reasons without having to converse. It did sound like what I had been experiencing. And after half the night was over, I had read plenty on angel genealogy, the way an angel and their catalyst were connected through the exchange of a fraction of each others’ souls.
The mark of an angel on their catalyst is irreversible. The mutual bond is pristine, and once established through the spreading of the angel’s wings, will surpass either side’s death, leaving the surviving half of the bond left to the torture of experiencing the absence of the other. Angels will go insane if they lose their mark, as will the marks if they outlive an angel.
By the time I had skimmed the book, I didn’t even flinch anymore at the thought of not being human. It was a fascinating read, full of details on how my abilities might develop. I might even be able to teleport after a while and be able to age at will. If that was true, it meant the time-space-continuum w
ouldn’t exist for me at some point. The only thing that made me worry was that according to the book, I was immortal. If the book was right—I took a slow breath and rested it on my chest—I would outlive everyone in this household. My dad, Jenna, Ben, Geoffrey… and I would outlive Claire.
My heart screamed at the thought. Even before reading this book, I had known that our bond had somehow deepened. I could feel her differently. I was her, and she was me. We were one unit, even if just linked by a tiny fragment of ourselves. Thinking of a life without her wasn’t an option. But thinking of losing her in sixty, seventy years…
I picked up my phone from the bedside table. Claire had called only once today. She hadn’t texted like she had the days before. Was she already giving up on me? The fragment of her soul was nudging me to dial her number and let her know I didn’t want her to give up on me, ever. But I wasn’t ready yet. I had to digest my intake of information first and understand what that meant.
The next couple of days I skipped classes, going to the woods like the days before. I tried hard to figure out a way to teleport. It would be the most useful of all abilities, but however hard I tried, I couldn’t even make a finger disappear. The rational thinker in me cautioned me not to experiment like this. What if I lost a body part, teleporting only half of me to a place and never finding the way back? Could I accidentally behead myself in a failed attempt?
That last thought did it. I dropped all experiments for a day and decided I needed to keep up appearances and check in with Toby and Karren at least once before Christmas. It was less than two weeks and I still had an exam or two to attend. Studying wouldn’t be the issue now that my mind worked at superhuman speed, and my capacity to memorize details had increased to a degree I yet had to figure out. Who knew, if I made it through a day of classes and conversation with Toby, I might be ready to face Claire.
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