by Rebecca Lim
Lauren studies my electronically mediated features for a long time before her frown evens out. ‘Mercy?’ she says tentatively. ‘It is you, isn’t it? You have Carmen’s hair. It was so wild. It’s exactly the same. It’s even the same length. I remember looking at you, uh, Carmen in the hospital and wishing I had hair like that. You always want what you haven’t got, right?’
She falters to a stop, appalled by her own words.
‘You look well,’ I say quietly with my stranger’s mouth, neither confirming nor denying. ‘I’m glad.’
‘Thank you,’ she whispers. ‘This is one of my, um, better days. You just … left, and I had no one to talk to about any of it after Jennifer went home. No one could possibly understand, you see, if they weren’t there …’
‘I’m sorry I didn’t get there sooner,’ I say.
‘At least you got there.’ She looks down momentarily, her voice almost inaudible. ‘I was ready to die.’
Ryan’s still stubbornly refusing to take back his stupid mobile. ‘Show her,’ he begs. ‘For me? I want her to see you, the way I do.’
My eyes snap to his and I see how desperately he wants her to understand and, suddenly, I don’t know why I’m fighting him. We’re all of us crying out for proof, aren’t we? So I hold the screen up before me again and shift. Just long enough for Lauren in the middle of God-knows-where, to see me again, the way I truly am. I hear her gasp at my gleaming hair, my gleaming face, everything so different from the girl I was before. I must be shining out from the screen at her like a little sun. Lauren’s hands are over her mouth, as if she’s going to be sick.
‘No trick photography,’ I say quietly, ‘no special effects. Just me. Doing the freaky shit that I do.’
Ryan slips an arm around me, and gently takes back his phone with his free hand. The plane gives a sudden lurch, riding out a pocket of intense turbulence.
‘Keep him safe!’ I hear Lauren plead, as if in prayer.
I turn my face away from the screen, let my human guise fall back into place. I can’t bring myself to answer her — for I live with that specific fear every moment he’s with me.
‘I’ll call you again when I can,’ I hear Ryan murmur. ‘And maybe she’ll let them see her next time, talk to her. It can’t go anywhere beyond us. Love you. Bye.’
It’s his turn to put his arm around me from behind, moulding himself to me, his lips against my hair. But I do not bend, I do not soften into sleep; I just lie there facing the seat back, paralysed by love and fear, until I feel sleep overtake his human physiology the way it always does.
16
Ryan sleeps through a quick refuelling stop somewhere on the Gulf of Aden. We’re over the Bay of Bengal when I hear the Frenchwoman walking hesitantly down the central aisle towards us. Instantly, I’m mist. Just a pocket of energy, watching as she stands over him — short, pretty, blonde — wringing her hands a little before tapping him on the shoulder. She straightens immediately and steps back, and he rolls over and looks at her, startled, almost falling off the couch again onto the floor.
‘Monsieur Dal-ey?’ she says hesitantly, and I sense that weird anxiety coming from her again. It’s sky high. Right now, she’s just nerves held together by good grooming.
It’s not helping that Ryan’s looking around wildly for me rather than focusing his attention on the young woman standing before him. His eyes keep moving around the plane and her anxiety hits overdrive. She doesn’t want to be here, that’s plain.
‘The pilots,’ she ploughs on gamely, ‘they wish me to inform you that we cannot make the requested pass over SMfu-iwa — it is too far and too dangerous. The closest we can take you is a short pass over Izu-Lshima,’ she stumbles charmingly over the unfamiliar name, ‘the first and largest of the Izu Islands, before we land at Narita International.’
It takes Ryan a little while to focus on what she’s saying, and she has to repeat her entire message twice before he gets any of it.
‘Why?’ he replies finally, sitting up and placing both feet on the floor, looking around for his boots. ‘Don’t we have enough, uh, fuel?’
She shakes her head, already backing away. ‘There are current aircraft warnings in place for the entire NanpM Archipelago.’ Again she stumbles over the name. ‘Extreme levels of activity, the volcanoes, you understand. It’s too dangerous,’ she says again nervously, her English beginning to fray. ‘I’m sorry, monsieur. If you would please to return to your seat?’ She turns and hurries away.
Ryan runs his right hand over his scalp. ‘Did you get all that?’ he says quietly.
I materialise beside him in my usual human get-up, my curly black hair pulled back from my face in a low ponytail. We regard each other warily.
‘What we have — you’ll never find it again, anywhere. You know that don’t you?’ he whispers. ‘I’ll be waiting for you in the arrivals hall. You don’t get to leave without saying goodbye.’
In reply, I crawl into his arms. He holds me fiercely and we don’t speak.
We’re still entwined as the plane flies over the island of Hainan and up the Taiwan Strait before veering northeast, and I imagine — looking through the porthole window — I can see lights in the sea.
‘Monsieur!’ The stewardess calls down the length of the plane from the safety of her seat. ‘It passes, Izu-Lshima.’
Ryan places his hands on either side of my face, lays his forehead against mine, murmurs desperately against my mouth. ‘I’ll be waiting.’
‘I know,’ I whisper back against his lips. And we bind ourselves to each other until he can bear no more, gives a gasp against me of real anguish. And I tear myself away, letting my outline shred in his arms as he scrambles to hold onto empty air, almost sobbing.
Then I can no longer feel his sweet breath on my face because I’ve already left the Gulfstream behind. I’m just a pocket of energy riding the chill and turbulent air above the northwest edge of the vast Pacific Ocean. The jet is a faint gleam in the sky behind me, already turning towards the north having completed its promised pass.
I hadn’t imagined it before. There is light in the ocean. Fire. Under the water. Like a molten chain that points almost due south, lighting my way towards SMfu-iwa.
And I wonder who I’ll find waiting for me, when I get there.
The air is acrid with gas and steam, as if the earth is breathing out through those underwater wounds, as if it is a dragon beginning to wake beneath me.
It’s early morning, not yet dawn, but electric lights gleam on some of the islands that make up the Izu-shotM. I keep flying, keep eating up the miles, until there are no more lights; only treacherous outcroppings of rock, then one dizzying peak after another rising out of the water, inhabited only by birds and sparse vegetation. Until I come to the last isle of all: a striking pillar of basalt, sheer on all sides, rising out of the water like a knife blade.
No birds occupy that silent island, and the reason soon becomes clear as I descend through the sky, thousands of feet per second, to see a single, seated figure there, shining in the darkness. Pure energy comes off his skin in errant curls that blur and fade in the icy pre-dawn air. He doesn’t bother to hide it, because there’s no one and nothing to see what he so clearly is. It’s Uriel who awaits me upon the peak of that rock, over three hundred feet above sea level. Uriel alone, dressed in his customary robes of such brightness that he is like a shining beacon, a man made of fire.
He lifts his head, sensing something approaching, though I myself give out no light, make no sound, for I am still small, still human-sized, wearing my travelling face.
I feel the same small frisson of shock that I always feel when I first see him: for to see him is to see me. It’s like looking at myself sitting there upon the rock, if I were created male. We’re physically identical in almost every way, save that he’s a fraction taller, broader through the shoulders, his strong features shading towards the masculine where mine shade towards the feminine. He could be my brother, my twin, and ther
e’s never been an explanation for it. We are what we are.
I’m about a thousand feet off landing on the peak when I realise that Uriel is no longer sitting there. All I get is a blur of movement below, the sound of a blazing broadsword igniting in the night, the sensation of giant wings displacing the air, and then I’m suddenly fixed in place by a powerful force-field, frozen mid-descent. He will not let me land, or even approach him.
It’s clear he doesn’t recognise me at all, for he roars into the space between my eyes: ‘Appare!’ Show yourself!
I have no time to fight the command. My human disguise shreds instantly, just melts away, and I am completely myself, as I was created.
Uriel moves into view below me, his right hand outstretched, his left grasping his fiery weapon. And he finds himself looking up into his own face, or so it must seem to him, for he gasps aloud, falling back in surprise, and the force-field is suddenly gone.
I land on my feet on an incline so treacherous that only a bird, or an angel, could keep their footing upon it.
‘Uri,’ I say, shaken, as he lowers his right hand, his sword and wings instantly disintegrating into motes of light.
‘You are the very last one I would have expected to come here,’ he murmurs, bewildered, looking into my eyes. ‘How did you even know to …’
There’s suddenly a living flame cupped in his left hand where before there was a weapon. He plays the light across my features, my form, his dark brows knitted together in consternation, seeking a trap, the hand of the Devil in this. Finally satisfied with what he sees, the flame in his palm goes out and he smiles. It transforms his stern countenance utterly.
‘You’re alive,’ he says, and I hear the praise and wonder in his voice.
I’m shocked into immobility when he reaches out and embraces me, murmuring, ‘You’re safe.’
I close my own arms around him almost awkwardly, seeing the same expression on his face as must be literally mirrored in mine: embarrassed affection, surprise, a softening, perhaps, of entrenched attitudes.
‘We used to fight like cat and dog,’ he mutters, letting me go.
‘Don’t believe those days are over, brother,’ I reply with a crooked grin. ‘But it is good to see you, you don’t know how much. Jegudiel sent me.’ Instantly, Uri’s gaze sharpens. ‘He told me to tell you that he’s taken Selaphiel beyond Luc’s reach. Selaphiel will need time to heal, but he lives.’
I see relief flood Uri’s countenance.
‘What of the others?’ I ask, my own anxiety sharpening my voice. ‘Gabriel, Raphael, Jeremiel, Barachiel? And what of the great Michael?’
Uriel’s smile is instantly wiped clean. ‘Of Jeremiel, Barachiel and Michael, I have no word. From Milan, they went in pursuit of Luc and vile Hakael, Luc’s paramour Gudrun, a score of fallen ophanim and malakhim shrieking in their wake. Gabriel and I followed the deceivers Jetrel and Shamshiel to the east, but Gabriel was ahead of me by some leagues, and I saw him taken …’
My soul seems to go cold at his words. ‘Gabriel?’
‘Your great friend and protector, yes,’ Uri says quietly, ‘taken by a score of demons over the mountainous citadel, Machu Picchu — a place that has always reeked to me of blood and untold power. They bore him into the earth there, and, though I scoured the ancient city for two days, I could find no trace of him, though I could still feel his presence very strongly there.’ I hear the puzzlement in his voice.
‘We have to get him out,’ I say, shaken.
Uri shakes his head. ‘It falls to me to free Gabriel. With Jegudiel and Selaphiel gone, Raphael missing, Barachiel, Michael and Jeremiel unaccounted for, there is no one else. I can no longer afford to wait here for news, or reinforcements, though I will leave a sign here of where I have gone.’ His voice becomes very quiet. ‘If I must take that place apart, stone by stone, then I will do it.
‘And as for you …’ He places his gleaming hands upon my shoulders and looks into my face that is so much like his. ‘It is no longer safe for you to remain in this world. You are alone, and we can no longer afford you any kind of protection, for we ourselves are under siege. So you must do the one thing that will secure us all: quit this place, as Selaphiel has done; take yourself out of Luc’s reach forever. Now. Tonight.’
I go cold as I hear my own thoughts coming back at me from Uriel’s mouth. I thought I would have more time; when I should have known that time has been against me from the very start.
I shake my head wildly, hear myself say, as if from a great distance, ‘But it’s too soon. Not tonight. Let me at least help you locate Gabriel —’
Uriel cuts me off imperiously. ‘We are balanced on a knife’s edge. You should never have fallen; this “Eden” was never intended for you. Like you, the world beneath our feet is beginning to awaken — Kangra in India has just been levelled by an earthquake greater than the one that destroyed it in 1905; and ruinous tremors have been felt in places as diverse as Ning Xia and Quetta, Erzincan and Asgabat, Messina, Edinburgh and Sumatra. The world is moving, sister; it is on fire.’
He sees me shake my head in denial and his voice roughens. ‘You must have seen that the seas around the Izu-shotM are filling with magma. All this must mean that Jeremiel, Barachiel and Michael have somehow failed; they no longer have Luc contained, and his ancient plan of conquest, the war to end all wars, has begun. Hell is coming, sister, and you are our greatest liability, our greatest weakness. Leave now, or doom us all.’
‘But I can’t just leave,’ I whisper, seeing flame-haired, emerald-eyed Gabriel, prince among princes, bound by chains of fire far from the light of the sun; seeing Ryan sitting alone in an anonymous airport terminal, surrounded by strangers.
I’ll wait, Ryan once said. I’ll wait forever if I have to.
And he will. It will destroy him if I never come back, if he never knows what happened to me, or how I feel about him.
‘You don’t understand,’ I say, anguished. ‘I’m not alone. Not any more. I have ties again, both old and new.’
Uriel’s voice is uncharacteristically gentle. ‘Forget him, as he will forget you, in time. Their lives are but a fleeting moment in ours, and the pain, too, will be fleeting.’
‘But I love him. And he’s waiting for me. I have to say goodbye. At least let me say goodbye. And I love you. And I’m so sorry.’ I begin to shake.
Uriel’s fingers tighten in anger upon my shoulders. ‘It is your capacity to love, that disastrous capacity of yours to desire, to want, that has brought us all to this pass! You would condemn Gabriel to additional torment for the sake of a mortal man? He is not for you. He is nothing to such as we are.’
‘But Ryan is everything to me,’ I plead, even though I know that it’s like pleading with a stone. ‘He brought me back to life, and loved me when I was unlovable and untouchable, an outcast. He saw me and knew me, in life after life, even when he’d never seen my true face. Yes, I made the mistake of falling for Luc, and you will never cease to blame me for that single, youthful folly. But what Luc does now, the destruction and terror and evil he brings down on everything and everyone, he does not do those things in my name, but solely in his.
‘To everyone but Ryan,’ I whisper, ‘I will always be a marked creature, an exile. He deserves to know that I love him, and that I was forced to let him go. He’s been hurt enough, Uriel. Gabriel knows how I feel about him. Gabriel would understand.’
‘Gabriel was always too soft-hearted where you were concerned,’ Uriel growls, releasing me as if I disgust him. ‘And now I must be similarly afflicted, because this once I will allow it — I will permit you to exchange your pretty farewells with your pretty human, and then you must go.’
‘But Gabriel …’ I plead.
‘But Gabriel nothing,’ Uri snarls. ‘I will get him out myself. I will fall upon the demons that hold him like the pestilence that once emptied that sacred city itself of life. But before I do, I will come with you to find this “Ryan”, and he and I will both watch y
ou leave. This time, there is no escape.’
I look at Uriel and see all the power and arrogance and inflexibility that so defines our kind. ‘You’re a bully,’ I say bitterly.
His reply is sharp and instant. ‘I’m a pragmatist. It is the only choice, and you know I am right.’
I know he is, but it doesn’t make it any easier to bear.
I cover my face with my hands and weep then, weep tears of fire. They fall through my fingers onto the stone, each one glimmering for a moment, like a jewel, before dispersing into the chill night air.
‘Tears? And for a human?’ Uriel murmurs in amazement, making no move to comfort me because this is something I’ve so clearly brought upon myself. ‘What have you become?’
‘I am what you’ve made me,’ I sob. ‘You Eight. Luc, even. Deserving of neither love nor pity. And because I am a creature of my word, I will do my duty. I will do as you command. But if you’re coming with me,’ and now there’s disdain in my voice at the sight of him standing there so regal, so beautiful, the very essence of what it means to be exalted and all-powerful, ‘you’re going to have to do things my way. For a change.’
17
It’s not hard to find Narita International Airport from the air. Even at four in the morning, the flow of traffic towards it seems steady and endless, and there’s a snarl of taxis and hire cars waiting outside the arrivals hall, surrounded by a cloud of exhaust fumes, choking and white.
Inside, the building is blazing with light. As the sliding doors open to emit a rush of hot air, my eyes take in — almost at once — too many things: multiple TV screens filled with reams of flight numbers listed as Delayed or Cancelled; queues of people at ticket offices and telephone booths; people asleep on almost every available surface, some with luggage, some without. It’s a vast and toxic ocean of bodies, of colour, of noise, of smells, of energy. Uriel and I almost reel backwards in a kind of psychic shock.
I’d expected the place to be empty, but it’s teeming with people, and I know that Uriel is right. Luc has begun some terrible process that only I might be able to contain to this realm, this world. This is just one airport amongst thousands. Only Luc would be capable of setting the very earth upon a course of rebellion that affects so many places, so many people, at once.